Shared Practice in Teacher Education

The project is part of the JoMiTE initiative that has been started by the University of Groningen. The partners (teacher education institutions and schools that are hosts for student teachers) within this project find it important that student teachers will do part of their teaching practice in other countries. We expect this will increase the cultural awareness of students, improve their social and cultural competences and increase their knowledge about different pedagogies and educational methods. This is however rather complicated. Every country has its own regulations around teacher education and especially about doing practicing teaching by student teachers. Also the required competence differ between (and sometimes even within) countries. Furthermore, teacher education institutions have different visions about teacher education. The different countries have all their own educational and cultural history, which is of influence on teacher education and on what happens in schools. We think these differences are, although they make the project rather complicated, interesting for student teachers and the teacher education institutions and schools itself. All can learn from these cultural and educational differences and can adopt the good practices from the different partners and countries.

In this project teacher education institutions and schools that are experienced hosts for teacher students cooperate with each other. Teaching practice is not only something for teacher education institutions, but school should have a voice in how teacher education will be organized.

In this project we want to develop four important products:

1. a list of competences that we require from student teachers when they are ready with teacher education master,
2. a pedagogical framework for supervision of student teachers who will do their practice in several countries (preferable each student will practice in their home country and two other countries),
3. a pedagogical framework for working with an electronic portfolio as a tool for supervision and assessment and
4. a online cultural background course, where student teachers will be prepared for their teaching practice abroad.

Extracted from SPriTE