It was my privilege and a great pleasure to represent EFIL at the conference of the Association for Teacher Education in Europe (ATEE) which took place in Dubrovnik, Croatia from 23 to 25 October. The theme of the 42nd Annual ATEE Conference was Changing perspectives and approaches in contemporary teaching. The conference focused on rapid changes and increasing complexity of today’s world bringing about new challenges and growing demands on education system committed to addressing all forms of disparities and inequalities in access, participation and learning outcomes, exclusion and marginalization. The central focus of this conference was the relevance of these changing perspectives and approaches in research and practice in teacher education and teaching.
The Association for Teacher Education in Europe (ATEE) is a non-governmental non-profit European organisation, bringing together teacher educators and researchers from all over Europe and beyond. ATEE aims to enhance the quality of Teacher Education in Europe, to support the professional development of teachers and teacher educators at all levels and to strengthen the voice of teacher education in European debates on (teacher) education. ATEE tries to reach these aims through active dialogue and international exchange of research and practice in initial and in-service teacher education.
The conference started with the keynote speech entitled Democratic accountability for teacher education: Now more than ever, by Marilyn Cochran-Smith, Lynch School of Education, Boston College, USA. The keynote speaker on the second day of the conference was Jasminka Ledic, of the Faculty of Art and Social Sciences, University of Rijeka, Croatia, with The European Dimension in Education in Croatia. The keynote speech on the last day was Changing teaching practices through creating communities of critical friends and action researchers, by Branko Bognar of the Faculty of Education, University of Osijek, Croatia. The keynote speeches were followed by numerous parallel sessions of interactive presentations, active workshops, interactive symposium, while e-posters were displayed on digital screens throughout the conference.
The areas of the conference which were of particular interest to EFIL were migrations, inclusion, building networks in education and sustainable changes in education. The interactive workshop by Lut de Jaegher of Artevelde University College, entitled Communication models in a super-diverse classroom was a great example of training future teachers for intercultural diversity.
I hope that in one of the future ATEE conferences, EFIL will present at one of the workshops or lectures.
by Ivana Gazikalovic Pavlovic, National Director, AFS Serbia