Kick-Off meeting of the ICSE Academy project
On 20-22 September 2022 the University of Education, Freiburg, Germany organised the first on-line international meeting of the partners of the project 101052670 — proSTEM — ERASMUS-EDU-2021-PEX-TEACH-ACA ICSE Academy - European collaboration and mobility in professional development of pre- and in-service STEM teachers. The project partners are of three types: universities or institutions offering programmes in teacher education, schools and organisation involved in education. The partners for Slovakia are Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra, Teacher.sk Ltd. and Gymnázium Nitra, Golianova 68. Four Slovak schools will collaborate as the model schools: GAV Levice, Elementary school in Výčapy-Opatovce, Slatina nad Bebravou and in Nábrežná street, Nové Zámky.
The members of the project team from our university are Janka Medová (national coordinator), Ivana Boboňová, Martin Cápay, Soňa Čeretková, Silvia Harinová, Kitti Páleníková a Ľubomíra Valovičová.
The coordinator of the project is prof. Katja Maass from University of Education, Freiburg, Germany. The other universities involved in the projects are:
- Utrecht University, The Netherlands
- University of Malta, Msida, Malta
- University of Jaén, Spain
- EDEX - educational excellence corporation Ltd., Cyprus
- Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway
- Vilnius University, Lithuania
- Hacettepe University, Turkey
- Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic
- Klagenfurt University, Austria
- National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece
The ICSE Academy supports the EU’s endeavours to minimize the amount of low-performing STEM (science, maths, technology, engineering) learners. It does so by investing in a new era of a high-quality STEM teacher workforce by innovating based on existing best practices teacher education and transnational exchange strategies. This approach draws on mobility and collaboration as an integral part, thereby supporting young and established STEM teachers across Europe. Unique features of the project are, in a nutshell:
- A high-capacity partnership: The ICSE Academy partners are experienced higher education researchers, STEM initial teacher education (ITE) and continuous professional development (CPD) providers, educational policy makers, and schools from 13 countries learning with, from and about each other through specific innovative collaborative structures.
- Unprecedented professional learning concept with three innovative professional learning formats for pre- and in-service STEM teachers, achieving effectiveness, accessibility and transferability to all Member States and fostering European mobility and collaboration:
- Peer-learning through job-shadowing (ITE/CPD providers attend each other’s courses to learn from each other)
- Interdisciplinary European workshop series (for teachers across Europe, run jointly by all ITE/CPD providers)
- Collaborative European summer schools (in NL/CZ with focus on collaboration between participants as well as organizers)
- Distinct needs-feasibility-alignment: The development of our professional learning formats is needs-driven in two ways: (1) Teachers will communicate bottom-up what they need and (2) policy makers will communicate top-down requirements from the policy level.
The main objective of the meeting was to share the results of the analysis of need performed in the first months of the project and brainstorm about activities enhancing the European dimension of the initial teacher education and courses for professional development of STEM teachers provided by the partner universities and organisations.
Text and photo: doc. PaedDr. Janka Medová, PhD.
