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Abstract
Teacher
education as a field of study in Europe is at an interesting stage. Moving
beyond descriptions and comparisons of systems, it is on the verge of
creating a European conversation about the economic, political and cultural
contexts of teacher education in the national and regional spaces in which
it exists and within the global effects of international partnerships,
cross public and private cooperation and world education effectiveness
research. The old insularities of national policies in the professional
formation of teachers are being overlaid with the demands of European
regulation and cultural and economic convergence. Market competitiveness
links national well being to school performance and has opened schools
to comparisons drawn from across the world, particularly the Pacific Rim.
So, as a field of study, teacher education needs to develop a European
conversation which is built on developed and focused thematic subjects,
drawn from collaboration across sites, which reconceptualize the subject
of study. The focus of the Sub Network, the policy making contexts and
processes of teacher education, provides considerable scope for collaborative
study. That scope has not yet been exploited, however, as most work on
teacher education is narrow in its focus, concentrating on issues of content
and design, without reference to context. Even where there is comparative
study, there is little attempt to move beyond the description of different
national structures and no attempt to link their analyses to economic,
political and social change. The purpose of this sub network within TNTEE
would be to attempt such connections, in order to explore the extent to
which policy for teacher education is being shaped by trans national forces
and global concerns, and with the intention of identifying those features
of the national and local context that contribute to distinctive systems
of professional formation. The sub network is concerned with how policy
in teacher education is created within each member state, the political
and social judgements it is based upon, the frameworks and agencies which
interact and devise it and the teacher educator community who manage and
shape it.
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