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.

View presentation (PDF)

 

References

Darling-Hammond, L. (2012). Powerful teacher education: Lessons from exemplary programs. John Wiley and Sons.

Darling-Hammond, L (2006). Constructing 21st century teacher education. Journal of Teacher Education, Vol. 57, 2006, 1–15.

Grossman, P. & Hammerness, K. (2009). Redefining teaching – re-imagining teacher education. Teachers and teaching: Theory and practice, 15 (2).

Halvorsen, K. (2014). Partnerships in teacher education. PhD dissertation, University of Bergen.

Hansén, S.E. (2008). Rapport från den koordinerande programsensorn för lärarutbildningen vid Universitetet i Bergen. Universitetet i Bergen, December, 2008.

Shulman, L.S. (1986. Those who understand: Knowledge growth in teaching. Educational Researcher, 15, 4–14.

 

Author

Kari Smith, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway