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 at the same time as teacher quality is increasingly being identified as crucial to educational outcomes and pupil gains.  Consequently, teacher education researchers need to work together in order to:

• 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
• Develop important emerging themes to give teacher education research a distinctive profile within EERA and elsewhere.

The network is concerned with Teacher Education in a wide sense and is not limited to teacher education in Higher Education Institutions.  However, research concerned specifically with school-based Continuing Professional Development is more appropriate to Network 1. 
We see ourselves as more teacher-focused than Networks 2  and 27 although we recognise thar teacher education is by definition vocational.

Proposals submitted to the network for conference papers and symposia should not be about classroom teaching methods, 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 international interest and are not descriptive of issues or processes of purely national interest.  Thus, they should draw on a wide range of sources and should include  discussion of the international implications of findings.

Themes suggested at the network meeting 2008 and subsequently 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 relevant to any or all of the above would be appropriate for proposals to the network.