School teacher professionalisation: Intercultural resources and language

The European Commission report, Supporting teacher competence development, was published in July 2013 and made primary school teacher training a key priority for Europe’s educational policy. 
Co-funded by the European Commission within the Erasmus+ programme, the SPIRAL project aimed to meet this priority through a collaborative project undertaken by universities and public bodies across five different European countries. The project partners, all experts in teacher training, language teaching methods, and curriculum reform, have committed to carry out a strategic partnership for Higher Education that will lend an important role to innovative practices. 

This research and development project was led by the French Ministry of Education alongside Spanish, German and Dutch partners and taught to strengthen the quality of Initial Teacher Education (ITE) programmes for primary school teachers through a common reference framework.

SPIRAL aimed to improve the quality of training programmes for future primary school teachers through a common reference framework containing evaluation grids, a quality charter, a competence framework, skill cards as well as a mobility guide, all compatible with respective European national teaching systems.

The expected results for this project included:

> a situational survey on cross-training programmes
> a European competence framework
> an online collaborative platform
> an impact study on mobility for teacher-trainees in Europe
> policy recommendations at national and European levels.

Partners
Centre international d’études pédagogiques -CIEP (chef de file )Université de Paris-Sorbonne (Paris IV), France; Université de Caen Basse-Normandie, France; Universidad de Alcalá de Henares, Spain; Universität Hamburg, Germany; Hogeschool van Arnhem en Nijmegen, Netherlands.

Associate partners
Académie de Caen, France; Balfour Primary School, United Kingdom; Blinkertschool, Netherlands; British Council, France; Comunidad de Madrid, Spain; European Centre for Modern Languages, Austria; Instituto de Educaçao, Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal; Jyväskylä Yliopisto, Finland; Ministère de l’Education nationale, de l’Enseignement supérieur et de la Recherche, France; Ministry of Education and Research, Estonia; Pädagogische Hochschule Weingarten, Germany; Université Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris 3, France; Saint Nicolas Primary School, United Kingdom; Symposion Network, Netherlands; Universidade de Aveiro, Portugal; Université de Luxembourg, Luxembourg

SPIRAL seminar – The future of teacher education and the role of Europe – 9 June 2016:

At the end of the first year of the SPIRAL project, the University of Brighton hosted a seminar to share preliminary findings and to coincide with a week of events for the SPIRAL consortium. The project facilitated the professional placement of 30 trainee teachers in schools across the partner countries. The British Council, the consortium partners, educationalists from France, Germany the Netherlands and Spain as well as Nadia Edmond from the University of Brighton contributed their perspectives on the future of teacher education and the role of Europe.

The SPIRAL project had five main results called “outputs”.

Output 1 contained a view on the content and modes of delivery of cross-training programmes for trainee teachers within SPIRAL partner countries.

Output 2: Common Reference Framework
The Common Reference Framework is a tool elaborated for trainees, trainers and teacher-training institutions with postgraduate teacher-training programmes in Europe. It consists in a practical, multilingual tool. It aims at facilitating the integration of mobility periods in cross-training teacher training programmes.

Output 3 was an online training platform containing training modules in order to prepare trainee teachers and their trainers to a mobility period abroad.

Output 4 studied the impact of that mobility and of cross-border cooperation on the profile of the teaching professions.

Output 5: Recommendations ebook
This ebook formed the fifth and last output of the SPIRAL project. The project aimed at strengthening the quality of teacher-training programmes for primary school teachers by facilitating the integration of a placement period abroad during the teachers’ initial training. The ebook contains information, data, messages and tools produced during three years by participating institutions. It aims at providing the project’s target audiences with key messages and recommendations backed by data gathered through research. This ebook is organized in a way that, depending on who you are, you are directly pointed to the results and messages that may be of interest for you. Nevertheless, we invite you to read the ebook in its entirety. [See link, right]