Practices

Chapter 5: The Teaching Professions: Teachers,
Teacher's Educators and School Leaders
The quality of an education system depends largely on the quality of its
teachers, of those who educate them, and of School Leaders. Teachers play a
vital role in helping children and young people to develop their talents and
acquire the complex range of knowledge and skills that they will need in their
future lives.
The teaching professions now face rapidly changing demands, which require a new set
of competences. The pace of change in the world is so fast, that every teacher needs
to keep her practice under constant, critical review and adjust it in the light of
students’ outcomes and latest research. Teaching staff need to offer individualised
teaching so that all learners achieve specified learning outcomes, whatever their
particular learning needs, cultural or social background; they need to take maximum
advantage of the latest technologies and methodologies.
In short, teaching staff in the 21st century need a radically broader and more
sophisticated set of competences than before, and developing the competences of
teaching staff and school leaders, including those who have been in the profession for
a long time, is a continuing and increasingly urgent priority in all Member States.
The challenges also affect school leadership and the support schools are providing to
develop and maintain teacher quality. Schools need to develop into learning
communities where everyone - pupils and teachers - is involved in sharing skills and in
creating new knowledge; into environments for successful learning and teaching
practice.
This cannot be achieved without significant improvements to the ways that teaching
staff are encouraged and supported so that they can help every learner to achieve
optimum educational outcomes. The objective has to be the establishment of highly
efficient and effective mechanisms to attract, recruit, educate, retain and support
throughout their careers teachers, school leaders and teacher educators. The
Commission has recently proposed ten priority areas for action in its document
‘Supporting the Teaching Professions’ (Nov. 2012).
The European Commission facilitates the exchange of information and experience
between national policy-makers. A group of them meets regularly to discuss common
challenges in teacher education and to share good practices. These 'peer learning'
activities lead to policy recommendations that support national efforts to improve
policies on teachers and teacher education. A good example of this work is the
Handbook for Policy Makers on the induction of beginning teachers published in April
2010.
To complement this policy work, through the Comenius programme, the Commission
has also supported projects tackling the different challenges facing the teaching
professions. This compilation includes just some of these projects, which have helped
teachers, student teachers, School Leaders and schools to improve the quality of
learning and teaching by developing their professional competences; other projects
focus on school and pupil evaluation and assessment in order to identify challenges
and possible solutions. Many cross national partnership projects encourage teacher
reflectivity to improve their teaching styles and strategies; the issues of mentoring
and leadership are present in many projects.
To learn more: http://ec.europa.eu/education/school-education/teacher_en.htm
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