The internationalization of teacher education (TE) and the creation of a European Higher Education Area (EHEA) are increasingly important aspects of European TE, political deliberations, and scientific research (European Parliament, 2015; HRK, 2018). The goals of this internationalization lie primarily in the enhancement of TE through an increased perspective of one's professional development, comprehensive cooperations between Higher Education Institutions (HEIs), joint teaching-learning programs, degrees and research, the creation of coherent curricula, and an increase in both student teachers’ and educators’ mobility (European Commission (EC), 2013; EP, 2015). As mobility cannot be realized by all students, universities should prepare for “internationalization at home” (EC, 2013; van Gaalen & Gielesen, 2016). Physical mobility can thus be supported and/or supplemented through virtual mobility (ibd.), in order to give fair and equal access to internationalized TE structures and curricula for all students. Needs analyses conducted by the applicant organization (PHFR) in 2018 and 2019 have already pointed to the needs of both student teachers’ and educators’ for a stronger orientation towards both coherence and digitalization in onsite TE. Both internationalization and digitalization can be achieved within the context of coherence. Coherence can be created between domains, subjects and phases of TE, and it reduces the experience of discontinuities during one’s professionalization. Considering the rather weak coherence between educational structures and concepts within national TE systems, transnational coherence appears to be especially weak: The large diversity of European TE systems currently represents a central barrier for the physical and virtual mobility of student teachers and educators. A transnational approach to the issue seems promising in two ways: A systematic comparison of TE structures and concepts in the participating institutions will provide deeper insights into current paradigms of coherence orientation in European TE. Building on this, the joint development and evaluation of teaching concepts and learning opportunities as good practice is paramount for student teachers. ConnEcTEd aims at dealing with challenges to coherence in European TE in a collaborative way in order to strengthen structural, conceptual, and transnational coherence. Coherent teaching-learning concepts, related and ‘internationalised’ curricula, the use of innovative practices in the digital era, and a mutual recognition of qualifications and learning outcomes between institutions will make a further important contribution to the internationalization of TE and to the physical and virtual mobility of student teachers. ConnEcTEd also supports TE educators’ mobility by establishing transnational professional learning communities, providing knowledge about European systems, permitting access to professional training opportunities (e.g. video-tutorials, virtual scenarios), and by integrating a coherence orientation in their teaching. These activities will greatly contribute to the development and use of innovative practices in the digital era as well as to the strengthening of coherence and an “internationalization at home.” The ConnEcTEd consortium consists of universities which all have expertise in aspects of structural and conceptual coherence in TE. Systematic conceptual analyses based on the notion of coherence in TE initiate the collaboration. A shared conceptual basis will precede an empirical (quantitative and qualitative) research study on actors’ (student teachers, teacher educators, other TE stakeholders) perceptions of coherence throughout the project. Coherent teaching-learning concepts will be developed and evaluated in transnational project teams. Results of the analyses will be used as “good practice,” disseminated among participants and beyond the project (in the context of Open Educational Resources, OER), and published in scientific journals and volumes. The results and impacts of ConnEcTEd are manifold, as student teachers, educators and other stakeholders of TE all profit from the innovative work. The creation of transnational coherence through a jointly developed vision of European TE, coherent teaching-learning scenarios, the use of innovative practices in the digital era, and a mutual recognition of qualifications and learning outcomes, will broaden the perspective taken on coherence so far, and enable more physical and virtual mobility for students and staff. The developed products will be freely available for participating universities, and, after the completion of the project, will be disseminated to the public. Additionally, results of the theoretical and empirical research will be published in scientific journals and volumes. This will lead to a further enhancement of European TE and represents an important step towards a strengthened TE within the European Higher Education Area (EHEA).
In the project, we aimed to achieve an internationalization of TE using the conceptual framework of coherence and by means of developing and using virtual scenarios. Both structural and contextual coherence can be created between the central knowledge domains (content knowledge, pedagogical knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge), subjects, phases (university TE, teacher induction, professional development) and between TE actors, and help in reducing a) discontinuities during one’s professionalization and b) the perception of fragmentation and isolated knowledge and skill acquisition. The project thus aimed at dealing with challenges to coherence in European TE in a collaborative way, especially to strengthen the transnational cooperations between institutions of TE. This was to be achieved by introducing related and ‘possible-to-be-internationalized’ samples of national curricula, the use of innovative practices in the digital era, and a mutual recognition of qualifications and learning outcomes between these institutions. Considering the rather weak coherence between educational structures and concepts within national TE systems, transnational coherence appeared – and proved – to be especially weak. The large diversity of European TE systems represents a central barrier for the physical and virtual mobility of student teachers and educators. A transnational approach to the issue of coherence in TE seemed promising in two ways: A systematic comparison of TE structures (IO1) and concepts (IO3) in the participating institutions was to provide deeper insights into current paradigms of coherence orientation in European TE. Building on this, the joint development and evaluation of teaching concepts and learning opportunities as good practice (e.g., within IO 5 and 6, in IO 7) should have various benefits: to help the concept initiators to understand, beyond the general contribution of collegial practice, consultation and exchange, whether their teaching concepts have unrecognized curricular prerequisites, that might prohibit a transnational approach towards European TE. An open dissemination of coherence-oriented teaching concepts (see output in showcase/IO 3 and in the IO5 and 6 sections on the project website), in turn, should contribute to establishing a higher degree of transparency and comparability, as well as creating communities of practice in teacher education (TE) (IO8). The original goal of introducing virtual mobility through this project, was of course influenced by the reality of TE during the COVID-19 pandemic. When we drafted the application in 2019, virtual mobility was only offered by a few institutions of TE, and mostly in FLTE. Suddenly we found ourselves in a situation where virtual mobility was the only way to cooperate, and even the planned Project Meetings of ConnEcTEd had to be carried out in a virtual way for the first 17 months of the project. This has had a strong influence on the project, e. g., on IO 8, where we had aimed to experience with firsts steps of virtual mobility. But also, all other IO work and cooperation were very much influenced and challenged by the situation starting in 2020. This situation even led to the departure of one of our project partners. ConnEcTEd managed to established transnational professional learning communities and provided a systematic analysis of five European TE systems to prepare the grounds for deeper international cooperation. Furthermore, the project permitted access to professional training opportunities that are made available to all project partners as well as all TE actors outside the project as materials, recordings, webinars, and many more for later use (e. g., video-tutorials, virtual scenarios, virtual lectures). These activities contributed to the development and use of innovative practices in the digital era as well as to the strengthening of coherence and “internationalization at home.” Above all, the possibility of new international cooperation and continuous exchange on the TE educator level, which could not have been achieved without financial and structural support of the European Union, is a main result of the project that should not be underestimated. This cooperation is a central prerequisite for all further efforts towards transnational coherence and was further captured in IO8. The goal here was to realize a digital conceptual toolkit. This required a comprehensive process, involving careful planning, content development, technological infrastructure, testing, and dissemination. By doing so, it empoweres TE institutions across Europe with the resources and tools they need to enhance coherence in internationalization and transnational collaboration, as was done in ConnEcTEd.
At its core, the ConnEcTEd project aimed for coherence, profession-orientation, and internationalization through communities of practice in virtual scenarios. The internationalization of TE and the creation of a European Higher Education Area (EHEA) are increasingly important aspects of European TE (European Parliament, 2015; HRK, 2018). The goals of this internationalization lie primarily in the enhancement of TE through an increased perspective of one's professional development, comprehensive cooperations between Higher Education Institutions (HEIs), joint teaching-learning concepts (TLCs), degrees and research, the creation of coherent curricula, and an increase in both student teachers’ and educators’ mobility (European Commission (EC), 2013; EP, 2015) to strengthen professional development and competencies. As physical mobility cannot be realized by all students, universities should also include offers of “internationalization at home” (EC, 2013; van Gaalen & Gielesen, 2016). Physical mobility can thus be supplemented by offers of virtual mobility (ibid.), to give fair and equal access to internationalized TE structures and curricula for all students. Furthermore, internationalization can be achieved through the mobility of faculty members of TE institutions. Needs analyses conducted by the applicant organization (PHFR) in 2018 and 2019 had already pointed to the needs of both student teachers and educators for a stronger orientation towards both internationalization and digitalization in onsite TE. As the diversity of the various national TE systems and especially between subject cultures (e. g. in Foreign Language Teacher Education, FLTE) are very wide and steps towards internationalization existed mostly only on a small scale and were oftentimes locally limited, efforts towards adding to the EHEA require a lot of personal, conceptual, and structural work as well as knowledge of and transparency between TE systems. The ConnEcTEd consortium consists of universities which all have gained expertise in aspects of structural and/or conceptual coherence in TE in the past, and in part already successfully collaborated in TE before the project (for example, integrated French-German TE study programs). Together, they started working on issues of transnational coherence collaboratively to meet the challenges that the diverse TE systems pose on the internationalization of the European TE. Systematic conceptual analyses based on the notion of coherence in TE initiated the collaboration. A shared conceptual basis was accompanied by a categorization and collection of already existing good examples of coherent TLCs. These samples helped a lot if getting a first understanding of what is meant by coherence in the very different TE systems. Also, an empirical (quantitative and qualitative) research study on TE actors’, especially student teachers’, perceptions of coherence took place. Moreover, coherent teaching-learning concepts, virtual lecture series, podcasts, among others, were developed and evaluated in transnational project teams. Results of this work can be used as “good practice” for transnational coherence, were disseminated among all participants and beyond the project (in the context of Open Educational Resources, OER) and will be published in scientific journals and volumes. This joint conceptualization and development, implementation, and evaluation of coherent TLCs in ConnEcTEd especially helped to gain deeper insights into current paradigms, contexts, and practices of coherence in European TE systems and university sites and broadened the perspective taken on coherence so far. This work is an important, not to say indispensable, component for creating synergies in European TE, and represents an important step towards a strengthened TE within the EHEA.