We wanted to build a partnership that would provide us with inspiration, critical external insight, new experiences and become the basis for building future partnerships, including for other European projects such as the Erasmus+ Teachers' Academy. We also hoped that our Irish partners would share with us their experiences of the process of developing and working with teachers on the new Irish core curriculum, which would be useful not only in the daily work of the Foundation for Good Education, but in its advocacy and expert work for the education system (participation in discussions and analytical work on the reform of the Polish school curriculum). The Irish partner was also keen to broaden its range of partners, including NGOs and also a non-Western European country, and hoped to be able to identify solutions that are not present in their teacher education programmes, but which have the potential to address teachers‘ departures from school and to build a more diverse educational culture, not so focused on competition and students’ academic performance.
The project was prepared in connection with the development of the School of Education, a programme run by the Foundation for Quality Education. On the one hand, we wanted to look for answers to the challenges of teacher education in Poland, such as professional burnout, leaving the profession and the need to deepen professionalisation. We believed that some of these challenges are transnational and, in particular, European. On the other hand, we wanted to share our experience and the solutions developed at the School of Education (teaching practice model, tools), while at the same time previewing solutions in other teacher education institutions. In particular, our needs included reflection on working with the core curriculum in the context of its much-needed and, as of October 2015, already planned changes, as well as reflection on assessment at school and the search for its alternative forms. The Irish partner was looking for fresh ways of working with future teachers and was interested in the educational culture of Polish schools because of the success of Polish 15-year-olds in PISA.