The reform of initial teacher training: collaboration between universities and compulsory schools. European experiences.

Abstract

Introduction

European teacher education policies have fluctuated over the last twenty years in an attempt to improve the efficiency and quality of teacher education. In the last five years, several European countries have proposed or developed different types of teacher education reform. In Spain, two years ago, in December 2018, the government convened a macro-meeting and in February 2020 announced in Congress a new initiative to improve teacher education.

Method

Once the training diagnosis had been carried out, various documents from CRUE, the Conference of Deans, the Palma group, the Generalitat de Catalunya and documents from French-speaking Belgium, which published new aspects of teacher training, were analysed. In addition, various experiences of internships (Italy), collaboration with compulsory school teachers (Belgium) and professional induction (England and Germany) were studied in depth.

Results

As examples of collaboration between initial teacher education and primary and secondary schools, the results of the Italian experience of organising the practicum, the Belgian experience of collaboration between teacher education institutions and schools, and the German and English experiences of the induction period have been presented.

Discussion

The four experiences present us with new forms of collaboration between the University and compulsory schools that show the way forward in the Spanish case, as they highlight the virtues of such collaboration to propose a new teacher training that is closer to practice, and in which the teachers themselves can intervene in the initial training, which will undoubtedly generate benefits for the student, who will arrive at school having at various times stepped into the teaching classroom.