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European Journal of TeacherEducationPublication details, including instructions forauthors and subscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cete20

Education and Culture inTeacher Training Educationin Europe: A dialogue amongEuropean educators to shareknowledgeMireia MontanéPublished online: 02 Jul 2010.

To cite this article: Mireia Montané (2002) Education and Culture in TeacherTraining Education in Europe: A dialogue among European educators toshare knowledge, European Journal of Teacher Education, 25:1, 7-9, DOI:10.1080/0261976022000012813

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European Journal of Teacher Education,Vol. 25, No. 1, 2002

Guest Editorial: Education and Culture in TeacherTraining Education in Europe: a dialogue amongEuropean educators to share knowledge

Socrates/Comenius Action 3

Amending and updating our representations of Europe and those of our students;increasing our competence on European issues; transforming our methodological skills,our knowledge and our European beliefs—these have been some of the main goals ofthe Action 3 for Teacher Education on the Socrates/Comenius programme, promotedby the European Commission.

The idea was to undertake measures that would modify attitudes and provide toolsfor a better understanding and mastery of the social, cultural and educational, as wellas the organisational, economic and political changes in Europe today. We had toremember that as well as educators, we are European citizens and for that very reasonit was not just a question of giving priority to attitudes, but also of recognising ourselvesas cultural and emotional beings. Because, in addition to developing teachers’ andpupils’ cognitive systems, we need to promote other kinds of intelligence, especiallyemotional, in this Europe today where peace is still a Utopia. Turning the everydaytensions and problems of Europe into everyday topics in lessons, talking about realproblems such as feeling offended, rejected or excluded, or thinking about feelings ofenvy, anger or hate, whether individually or as a group; these are actions which, whendone in co-operation among universities, schools and teacher training institutions, indifferent European countries, help with systematic learning and emotional self-control.Social and emotional competence is raised and violence is avoided. Both educators andstudents � nd our roots in a host of identities from which we evolve and grow. Thebroader and deeper that knowledge of one’s own identity and that of others, the easierit is to stop the escalation of hostility. By reading the Comenius Actions 3 in this issueof the EJTE we con� rm that these educational projects have helped to change ourEuropean representations, to transform our ideas and to manage our classes differently.

The articles that make up this issue aim at providing an answer to a series of generalquestions, which had already been posed, such as:

· Have the educators and students taking part in Comenius 3 been introduced intothe network of relations that makes up the ecosystem of European learning? Havethose Comenius projects led to a more ecological and European training, whichplaces teacher and pupil in the European social environment?

ISSN 0261-9768 print; ISSN 1469-5928 online/02/010007-03Ó 2002 Association for Teacher Education in EuropeDOI: 10.1080/0261976022000012813

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8 Mireia Montane

· Has the fragmented structure of the curricula of each university and each countryallowed us to move towards more global and interdisciplinary structures?

· Do these types of training (on the European co-operation network over three yearswith on-line communication resources and personal meetings) have more impacton the in-service education of teachers?

· Are they projects which really and substantially modify the beliefs of educators andstudents? Or does our own culture as educators, trainers and researchers some-times help to perpetuate the myths which hide an understanding of the Europeanprocess?

· How should we teach in Europe today? Should we change our present point ofview?

· What have been the in� uences of these ideas on the teachers’ and students’ beliefs?

We believe that the results shown by the actions described in this volume not onlyprovide material for imagining new actions for the European Union Socrates/Comeniusprogramme, but for thinking about, analysing and improving them.

The results supply tools for assessing the changes from the point of view of theteachers taking part, the experts, and, most of all, from the departments and schoolsthemselves and the educational administrations.

The results are hopeful. I shall just pick out a few particularly interesting ones in thepresent educational context. For example, the teachers believe that working with otherteachers in other countries leads to a more positive perception of their professional taskand boosts their self-esteem. The experts believe that these actions also improve thepupils’ self-esteem and change their attitudes and beliefs about other countries, makethem more open-minded, improve their instrumental skills, especially in languages andcommunication with the information technologies. The schools and universities be-come European institutions and the European dimension is introduced into theactivities that they develop. Europe becomes a tangible reality in a real context ofreference and destination. A new educational culture focused on international under-standing appears. Teamwork and the adaptation of the school to a European contextare promoted. A European culture which stresses equality, integration, inclusion,interculturality, interdisciplinarity, plurality and diversity gradually takes shape. Thereare innovations in methodology and the emphasis is placed on processes rather thanresults, in spite of the importance given to the preparation of materials for distribution.The degree of satisfaction of students, educators, as well as pupils, parents and teachersin every social sphere is one of the most encouraging results.

On the other hand, there should be an improvement in the degree of involvementshown by the management of the centres and the university departments to bring in thelargest possible number of experts in all areas, to obtain a strong commitment from stafftowards interdisciplinarity (while keeping the discipline/interdiscipline balance) and toactivate the co-operation of the local authorities.

We will need further analyses based on looking in more detail at the elements whichcreate the success of the co-ordination meetings between the associate countries, thefrequency of those meetings, and the quality, quantity and frequency of communica-tions between the associate centres. There must also be analyses of the exchanges ofvideo recordings of both pupils’ activities and teachers’ meetings. And we shall have togo more deeply into the criteria for analysing the production of materials, dossiers,portfolios and other elements as the projects develop. Other factors to be analysed willbe the degree of consistency between the idea of the project, its execution and its

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Guest Editorial 9

assessment processes. Or an analysis of the most intense moments of the co-operation:the meetings, the frequency of exchanges of educational materials and materialsproduced by the students, and the assessment materials and situations.

Lastly, we shall need to analyse the regularity of the patterns or models of actionthat were repeated in Comenius 3 in order to analyse the degree of difference betweenthe different types of contents, and to see if they are projects that can be adapted todifferent groups of students, classes, universities and countries. We can also analyse thevisits or the preparatory, motivation, process and product activities. We can observeco-ordination and assessment meetings live. We can analyse the co-ordinators’ role inde� ning the joint activities and the ones that are diversi� ed for each institution andcountry. And the students’ marks and the importance of those activities in thecurriculum and in the assessment of the students. Here, we can analyse the degree offormalisation of the assessment of those activities by student, group, subject and courseor year. We shall need to analyse the � nal reports where we can easily see the effectsand results of the mobilisation of the team partners from the initial potential.

These are proposals for improving the Comenius 3 EEP. From them, new comple-mentary proposals and amendments for future projects emerge, designed to encouragethe success of the students, in both the privileged and disadvantaged social environ-ments and countries. We believe that the Comenius 3 EEP help the students to moveahead. That is why educational policies must encourage these projects and the co-operation among educators, make access to the necessary documentation easier, createspecialised virtual resources sites and boost the participation of the education authori-ties. A good balance between these factors, which have to be constantly reconstructed,is the surest guarantee of good results.

This survey has essentially taught us two things. Firstly, that the European educa-tional teams have real room for manoeuvre, though it may be different from onecountry to another, to act against blinkered attitudes, immobilism and social andeducational determinism. Secondly, that room for manoeuvre depends on the educa-tional policies implemented by the different countries and their universities in order tocreate a real awareness of European citizenship, which will avoid confrontations, hatredand wars and help us to progress towards stable peace processes, recognising the rightto be different peoples within the European Union, but with the same Europeanequality of opportunities. The reading of the following studies provide us with data thatwill enable us to � nd out more about the Comenius 3 projects, but most of all, it is a� rst guide to avoid our getting lost in the European labyrinth of the education projects.We hope that the effects of the publication of these actions will be positive, insofar asthey provide arguments for debate and decision-making about the future Socrates/Comenius 3 programmes.

MIREIA MONTANEATEE Former President (1995–1998)

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