2015 ATEE Annual Conference
Association for Teacher Education in Europe
24-26 August, 2015 - Glasgow, Scotland
Teacher Education through Partnerships and Collaborative Learning Communities
Partnerships in Teacher Education - Empty Rhetoric?
Abstract
In the Call for this conference there is a quote from The Council of Europe’s Conclusions on Effective Teacher Education that “Teacher education programmes should draw on teachers' own experience and seek to foster cross-disciplinary and collaborative approaches, so that education institutions and teachers regard it as part of their task to work in cooperation with relevant stakeholders such as colleagues, parents and employers” (The Council of the European Union, 2014/C 183/05). Political decisions at the European and national levels strongly push in the direction of establishing partnerships between the practice field and higher education institutions, but there is less discussion of how this is to be done, and even less financial support for establishing, developing and sustaining partnerships in education. Moreover, does the academy form genuine partnerships with the practice field, or do we in higher education invite schools to be our partners on our premises? Is the vivid argumentation in favour of partnerships empty rhetoric or do we practice what is preached? In this presentation I will first present a brief overview of central partners for teacher education before critically elaborating on partnerships between higher education and the practice field.
References
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Author
Kari Smith, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway