The purpose of the project No Teacher Educator Left Behind (NOTELEB) is to contribute to the quality development in higher education in general and in teacher education and training in particular, by planning, implementing and assessing a model based on informal learning in the workplace, comprising of hands-on, innovative activities to initiate and support teacher educators' development of their Professional Digital Competence (PDC). Teacher educators are our primary target group, and pre-service and in-service teachers a secondary one. Compared to teachers in schools and their professional development, there has been little attention and systematic support directed to development of teacher educators' PDC. Further, "excellence" and effectiveness in teaching and skills development must in today's information society, incorporate digital competence, not least pedagogical skillfullnes in using various digital tools. However, the practice in mainstream teacher training in most European countries largely still seems to be very different: the use of digital tools for pedagogical purpose and development of PDC lacking systematic national or even institutional approach and/or support, being instead rather haphazard; driven often by single enthusiasts among the staff; with little place to digital skills in curricula, thereby failing the newly qualified teachers' PDC to meet the reality and needs out in the schools. Consequently, it is clear that all too many teacher educators have serious skills gaps and mismatches in regards what is/could be expected from them in their work to promote 21st Century learning. NOTELEB will importantly support teacher educators’ lifelong learning in the context of their work with children and youth through continuous professional development. The project objectives are: O1. to tackle skills gaps among teacher educators by supporting of and contributing to development of their PDC. O2. to contribute to modernizing teacher education by promoting technology-supported teaching methods and tools, through linking PDC development with research, innovation, and work-based informal learning. The project comprises of the four main activities to reach the goals: (i) designing, implementing, evaluating and validation of a model for development of PDC in teacher education, (ii) building, testing and implementing a pedagogic-digital toolkit, (iii) producing a video and other interactive learning materials (including also smaller videos), and (iv) development and implementation of an online course for PDC development among teacher educators. Related to the implementation and evaluation of the PDC model, a follow-up case will be carried out, each partner institute constituting one case. Major events for disseminating project outcomes are two transnational conferences to be arranged. The project is planned for three years, 2020-2023. It will be implemented in collaboration between five partners: University of Stavanger, Norway (coordinator), University of Jyvaskyla, Finland, Tallinn University, Estonia, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), and Technische Universität Berlin, Germany.
Through NOTELEB we wanted ultimately to support teacher educators’ lifelong learning through continuous professional development, through informal workplace learning, in the overall context of the digital transformation in society and its impact on schools as well as the lives of children and youth. 1. to tackle skills gaps among teacher educators by supporting of and contributing to development of their PDC. Under this objective we were aiming at concrete development of teacher educators’ PDC development (skills - knowledge - attitudes) and producing of learning resources and materials to support this development. 2. to contribute to modernizing teacher education by promoting technology-supported teaching methods and tools, through linking PDC development with research, innovation, and work-based informal learning. The backgroud to this goal was the generally quite traditional state of play in teacher education when it comes to the pedagogy as well as tools and resources used in teaching future generations of teachers (students). As there clearly is a need to modernize teacher education, we approached this challenge from the perspective of PDC, also inviting them to critically reflect what is and should be meant with PDC.
We wanted to contribute to the quality development in higher education in general and in teacher education and training in particular, by planning, implementing and assessing a model based on informal learning in the workplace, comprising of hands-on, innovative activities to initiate and support teacher educators' development of their Professional Digital Competence (PDC). As teacher educators, we all saw an acute need to develop teacher educators' and thereby preservice teachers' PDC. Seen against the corresponding developments and investments to teachers' PDC in schools, it was clear that teacher educators were 'left behind', for different reasons.