Brussel, 23 April 2025

Building bridges in teacher education and research

On 11 October 2024, ECSWE and INASTE met in Brussels to explore collaboration between teacher training providers and school federations at the national levels.

Exploring examples of collaboration from four countries

Due to the press­ing need for coor­di­nat­ed teacher edu­ca­tion and research-based advo­ca­cy, the Inter­na­tion­al Net­work of Aca­d­e­m­ic Stein­er Teacher Edu­ca­tion (INASTE) and ECSWE rep­re­sen­ta­tives met in order to explore syn­er­gies. In the panoram­ic room of the Roy­al Library in Brus­sels, ways were explored to facil­i­tate nation­al lev­el col­lab­o­ra­tion. For this pur­pose, rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the Unit­ed King­dom, Fin­land, Swe­den, and the Nether­lands shared exam­ples of col­lab­o­ra­tion between train­ing insti­tu­tions and school fed­er­a­tions in their coun­tries which will serve as inspi­ra­tion for fur­ther discussions.

Promoting empirical research to support advocacy

Prof. Dr Johannes Wage­mann from Alanus Uni­ver­si­ty pre­sent­ed peer-reviewed research rein­forc­ing Stein­er Wal­dorf prac­tices through first-per­son empir­ic stud­ies. His con­tri­bu­tion showed how sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly sound research can pro­vide cred­i­bil­i­ty in pub­lic dis­course and strength­en lob­by­ing efforts. Par­tic­i­pants agreed that more research of this kind is need­ed to back up advo­ca­cy and secure recog­ni­tion for Stein­er Wal­dorf edu­ca­tion on the nation­al and EU levels.

Understanding EU policy challenges in teacher education

Andrei Frank from the Life­long Learn­ing Plat­form (LLLP) pro­vid­ed an EU-lev­el out­look, not­ing that edu­ca­tion is expe­ri­enc­ing a voca­tion­al cri­sis marked by low pay, poor recog­ni­tion, an aging work­force, and wide­spread teacher strikes. He high­light­ed the pol­i­cy paper on the 21st Cen­tu­ry Chal­lenges for the Edu­ca­tor Pro­fes­sion: A call for sys­tem change and dis­cussed pol­i­cy trends such as Eras­mus+ Teacher Acad­e­mies and Micro­cre­den­tials. Although com­pet­i­tive, these pro­grammes offer fund­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties that ECSWE and INASTE mem­bers may apply for to respond to sys­temic chal­lenges in teacher education.

Further reading