Teachers’ Life-cycle from Initial Teacher Education to Experienced Professional

University of Latvia

From 24th to 28th August 2011 the 36th Conference of the Association for Teacher Education in Europe will be held in Riga, Latvia. The conference will be hosted by the University of Latvia. Under the conference title Teachers’ Life-cycle from Initial Teacher Education to Experienced Professional the conference programme focuses on teachers’ pre-diploma studies and post-diploma professional development until they reach the quality of an experienced professional in the context of lifelong learning and continuous professional development. The choice of this conference theme was motivated by the awareness that between pre-service teacher education and their first years of professional work there still is a gap. Therefore one of the main questions is whether there are stages in teachers’ life cycle from their pre-diploma studies till the experienced professional, what qualities can be distinguished at each of the stages and what assistance they need to smoothly reach the quality of the experienced teachers.

The main input for the conference theme and problems addressed was provided by the policy statements of ATEE regarding the quality of teachers’ professional development (ATEE, 2006), school development in the 21st century (ATEE, 2007), continuous activities of the thematic Research and development centres of ATEE. The suggested theme also follows the ideas of the policy documents for the European Union: Conclusions of the European Council on improving the quality of teacher educators (2007), the outcomes of the Teaching and Learning International Survey TALIS (2009) etc.

The Organizing and the Academic Committees will provide the participants of the conference with the conditions appropriate for the conference work: key-note reports will address the main problems of the teachers’ life-cycle, con-current reports will introduce more specific problems for further discussion at the parallel sessions.

Riga

The pre-conference work-shops on the 24th August will introduce the conference.

The university is located in the centre of Riga with easy-to-reach hotels – they are very close to the conference venue, and they will have reservations for the participants.

Secretariat: Linda Daniela, e-mail: ATEE_2011@inbox.lv

                                          Fax: +371 67033860

                                          Tel.: +371 67033860; +371 67033867

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