ICSE Academy - European collaboration and mobility in professional development of pre- and in-service STEM teachers

ended

The ICSE Academy supports the EU’s endeavours to minimize the amount of low-performing STEM (science, maths, technology, engineering) learners. It does so by investing in a new era of a high-quality STEM teacher workforce by innovating based on existing best practices teacher education and transnational exchange strategies. This approach draws on mobility and collaboration as an integral part, thereby supporting young and established STEM teachers across Europe. Unique features of our proposed project are, in a nutshell: • A high-capacity partnership: The ICSE Academy partners are experienced higher education researchers, STEM initial teacher education (ITE) and continuous professional development (CPD) providers, educational policy makers, and schools from 13 countries learning with, from and about each other through specific innovative collaborative structures. • Unprecedented professional learning concept with three innovative professional learning formats for pre- and in-service STEM teachers, achieving effectiveness, accessibility and transferability to all Member States and fostering European mobility and collaboration: • Peer-learning through job-shadowing (ITE/CPD providers attend each other’s courses to learn from each other) • Interdisciplinary European workshop series (for teachers across Europe, run jointly by all ITE/CPD providers) • Collaborative European summer schools (in NL/CZ with focus on collaboration between participants as well as organizers) • Distinct needs-feasibility-alignment: The development of our professional learning formats is needs-driven in two ways: (1) Teachers will communicate bottom-up what they need and (2) policy makers will communicate top-down requirements from the policy level. The ICSE Academy will use a systemic approach to inform national and European policy based on a profound policy needs analysis. It will include targeted dissemination/communication and institutionalized exchange structures (e.g. round tables).