History

The Teacher Education Research Network has been in operation for over fourteen years and we are greatly indebted to (amongst others) Pat Mahony, Jim O'Brien, and Marit & Halvor Hoveid for taking things forward.
The Teacher Education Research Network was formed for the 1997 ECER in Frankfurt. The original coordinators were Prof Daniel Kallos [Chair], Umea; Prof Nico Verloop, Leiden; and Martin Lawn, Birmingham. In later years, Douwe Beijaard and Petra Ponte [from Leiden] took responsibility for the Network until Prof Pat Mahony, Roehampton, became the main convenor in 2004/5. Maria Figueiredo has done a huge amount of work since then, and has gone on to become network representative on the EERA board, replacing Marit H. Hoveid who will soon be secretary general of EERA.
In the early years, there was a close cooperation between the TERN and the Thematic Network for Teacher Education [TNTEE], which was EU funded.
TERN was one of the first EERA Networks and became one of the biggest so the task of convening [and often chairing] sessions was onerous.It was  concerned early on about the European and the national, and was determined that 'national' papers were rejected or encouraged to widen their scope.It wished to promote cooperative research projects in Europe, and to study teacher education policy making.

Over the last six conferences (Berlin, Helsinki, Vienna, Gothenburg, Gent, Geneva) the membership has begun to stabilise. We are still developing themes and links to other networks, and the crucial next stage is to become involved in activities between annual conferences, although these will continue to be the main focus of the network. The network holds an annual dinner at the conference. In 2010 a successful colloquium on Quality Assurance in Teacher Education was held in Dublin, with support from EERA.

This year (2011) we have fourteen convenors/reviewers including the joint link convenors, and we welcome Judith Harford from UC Dublin and Peter Gray from NTNU, Trondheim as joint link convenors, and those who have joined the reviewers’ group. The network continues to attract increasing numbers of submissions and we are working on ways of improving the quality and European relevance of the resulting papers and presentations. Our themes are gradually evolving but still reflect the diversity of research methods and purposes within teacher education.