10. Teacher Education Research

Teacher education is an important field for research since the quality of teacher education has been regularly questioned by European governments, whilst teacher quality is increasingly seen as crucial to educational outcomes and pupil gains.  Consequently, teacher education researchers need to work together in order to:

• Identify emerging themes to give teacher education research a distinctive profile within EERA and elsewhere.
• Share emerging research findings
• Develop innovative research methodologies within teacher education
• Disseminate innovative pedagogical methods within teacher education
• Find new publishing outlets within an overcrowded academic field
• Support colleagues in institutions with underdeveloped research profiles.

The network is concerned with Teacher Education in a wide sense and is not limited to teacher education in Universities.  However, research concerned specifically with school-based Continuing Professional Development is more appropriate to Network 1. We are interested in professional development as a wider theme and also in teacher induction and re-qualification research.
We see ourselves as more teacher-focused than Networks 2  and 27, although we recognise that teacher education is by definition vocational.

Proposals submitted to the network should not be about classroom teaching methods (pedagogy), subject didactics or teacher identities unless there is a specific focus on how these are formed in teacher education. As with other EERA networks, it is important that proposals have an element of European or international interest and are not simply descriptions of national or local programmes.  Thus, they should draw on a wide range of sources and should include discussion of the international implications. Research questions and discussion should include a critical element and if numerical analyses are involved, these should be more than just descriptive statistics.

Appropriate themes include:

• Research on programmes in (initial) teacher education.
• Research on continuing professional development (CPD) within teacher education, i.e. as opposed to CPD in schools etc).
• Challenges of the European dimension in teacher education research.
• Research on pedagogical approaches in teacher education.
• Research on professional knowledge, identity, beliefs & understanding of Teaching & Learning in teacher education.
• Building a research agenda for teacher education research.
• Research on teacher induction
  

Papers and posters relevant to any or all of the above would be appropriate for proposals to network 10. Symposia should have a clear overall theme, at least three different national contexts and some provision for focused discussion. If a discussant is arranged, it is important for papers to be provided to that person in advance. All sessions should have at least one third of the overall tme devoted to audience questions and discussion.