About the project
The duration of the project is three years (36 months), from December 2013 to November 2016.
The Wider Objective of the Project is to contribute to modernisation and internationalisation of the societies in the partner countries through curriculum reform to enhance capacities of HEI-s and secondary schools for teaching European languages. In this way the project will address the national priorities for the programme Tempus for all the partner countries involved (non-university teacher training), will strengthen the interaction between higher and secondary education sectors and will facilitate the overall reform of the national system of education. The Wider Objective will be implemented through accomplishing the following Specific Project Objectives:
- develop a new model for teacher education;
- create a pool of retrained teacher educators who will train new trainers in a cascade model;
- develop and introduce a new 2-year masters programme for both pre- and in-service teachers of French, German and English;
- design an e-learning capacity for school teachers to improve access to teaching/learning resources;
- create potential for internationalisation through an on-line network of trainers.
The outcomes foreseen will be:
- the development of a new model for teacher education build on the study of current policy and practice in language teacher education in partner countries;
- a pool of retrained teacher educators in each of the partner countries;
- a new 2-year masters programme for both pre- and in-service teachers of French, German and English, as a first step towards harmonising and modernising the curricular for school teacher education;
- development of e-learning interactive language capacity via an on-line platform for school teachers to improve access to teaching/learning resources;
- on-line network of trainers across all partner countries.
The methodology of the project is based on the key concepts of the Bologna process: competence-based approaches, learning outcomes, ECTS. The key for the project concept is a ‘cascade’ model of teacher education for long-term sustainability. The cascade model will enable larger groups of school teachers to be trained in a relatively short time period with minimal resources and will allow schools to prepare learners for the requirements of HEIs in the framework of the on-going reforms of education in the partner countries aimed at internationalisation.
Project audiences:
- university language teachers (‘Training the Trainer’);
- Master and PhD students as the future teachers;
- teachers and instruct ors at the Regional Institutes for Teacher Professional Development;
- teachers of the European languages at secondary schools, including rural areas;
- representatives of the local/regional educational authorities.
Project work packages:
- establish current policy and practices in language teacher education in the PC-s and provide studies o f European good practice (2014);
- instruct the trainers in learner-centred language teaching methodologies on loop-input approach t o training and familiarise them with the principles and practice of on-line delivery (2015);
- establish the exact content of the blended master’s programme based on using new technology in language (2015);
- conduct a pilot phase o f the joint delivery of the new master programme with the modules developed by the Partner Countries Tempus work groups (2015-2016).