About the project

This is a strategic partnership project within the Erasmus + program. The three collaborating partners in this project are Tallinn University in Estonia, University of Helsinki in Finland, and Uppsala University in Sweden. The participating higher education institutions provide primary teacher education on the university level and have an interest in developing the content and quality of these programs. 

The collaboration of the partner institutions can provide learning experiences from each other and promote innovation in teacher education. We utilize the strategic partnership of our institutions to strengthen primary teacher education and create innovative approaches for teaching research and pedagogical competencies.

We envision long-term effects around teacher professionalism, curriculum implementation and school development, i.e., primary students trained in the programs will be better prepared to adopt an inquiring professional stance and to implement this stance in their daily work as teachers.

Teachers as reflective practitioners

We are taking the concept of the reflective practitioner as a point of departure, which in our context means an understanding of practice through theoretical lenses on practice as well as in practice. For teacher education, this implicates an effort to bridge the gap between theory and practice, building on a research-based approach.

Research-based approach

The institutions share the view that the development of teacher education should be research-based. A research-based approach means that a) program content and implementation draw on a subject, didactics, and pedagogy-related research about the latest knowledge, and b) it is an essential teacher education pedagogy enabling students to adopt an inquiring and researching approach in their own teacher development.

Subject-integrative/phenomenon-based approach

Subject-integrative/phenomenon-based approaches emphasize the need to break down disciplinary boundaries in school subject teaching. Student-driven action research would offer opportunities for exploring and developing this curricular demand and its implementation. Learning in open settings involves identifying learning environments (both real and virtual) outside the traditional classroom. It can also involve teaching and learning in the classroom but applying new ways of engaging with the learning.