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8th TEAN Annual Conference

Thinking deeply about teacher education

TEAN Guidelines for submissions for the 8th Teacher Education Advancement Network Annual Conference

Venue: Conference Aston, Birmingham, Thursday 11 May and Friday 12 May 2017

What is TEAN?

TEAN, the Teacher Education Advancement Network, is an independent network for teacher educators, supported by the Institute of Education at the University of Cumbria. TEAN’s aims for teacher education are: to enhance practice; support and promote innovation and development; and contribute to and help build research capacity.

The TEAN conference offers an opportunity for colleagues to spend time together to share great practice and ideas. In a supportive and welcoming atmosphere you will be able to share ideas with an appreciative audience who will both encourage and challenge you. The TEAN conference is held over two days and it is important to make the most of the time available to us.

Last year’s conference was hailed as ‘an excellent conference which enables and encourages reflective and evaluative conversations, which feed into ongoing improvement of pedagogy and practice’. We have listened carefully to your feedback to help us plan the 8th TEAN conference. We want always to retain what you like about the conference and to do our best to improve anything which needs a rethink. Your ideas and suggestions are valuable to us. TEAN remains, as ever, committed to supporting all involved in teacher education.

If you are new to TEAN, you will find a conference which offers a range of highly interesting topics in an encouraging and supportive atmosphere. For those of you who have been to the TEAN conference before, we look forward to your company again this year. If you want to discuss an idea you would like to present, do not hesitate to contact us at TEAN; we are open to your ideas.

The 2017 conference returns to Conference Aston in Birmingham city centre. This two day conference is a fantastic opportunity for teacher educators from HEIs, schools, further education and all organisations involved with teacher education to come together to debate and share inspiration. Please put the two dates 11th and 12th May 2017 in your diary. We look forward to welcoming you to this event.

Our conference title for 2017 is inspired by last year’s conference feedback: ‘Thinking Deeply about Teacher Education’. This should give you a wide range of possibilities but keeps your eye on a firm acknowledgement of the complexity of teacher education and the depth of skill needed to be a truly effective teacher educator. Is it a skill? Does it involve craft? What is craft? Does it involve theory? What do we mean by theory? Does it involve research? Why should it? Does it involve pedagogy? – that is to say, does it claim a pedagogy/should it claim a pedagogy? Why should we bother to think deeply about it? How would you define deeply’?

We look forward to your ideas and inspirations behind this title and are suggesting a possible new way to contribute for 2017. 

View abstract submission guidelines – please read with care

Invitation

We invite you to submit abstracts for this conference on any themes which contribute to the overall title. It would be appreciated if you could be as certain as is possible when you submit your proposal that the dates and venue are convenient for you. On the submission templates you are reminded of this and asked for information pertaining to the dates; we very much hope that you will be able to attend for the full two days. We look forward to an exciting conference and value the time you will spend on your submission; we look forward to reading about your work.

It is important to note, that the final format of the conference will be decided dependent upon the number and type of submissions received.

Information concerning transferability and audience

It is important to indicate the transferability of your paper and the way in which it can be of wider interest and significance to teacher educators. This is particularly important if you intend to submit a paper linked to a specific curriculum area. As the audience for such a paper is potentially low, we would advise you to indicate its relevance across other areas, using the subject specific elements as exemplars that can be transferred to other contexts.

The main audience of the conference is usually made up of teacher educators and other interested parties from the school Teacher Education sector. However, we are pleased to include contributions from the post compulsory Teacher Education sector. We would again suggest that colleagues from the post compulsory sector consider and indicate the transferability of their work to other contexts. This has been done extremely successfully by presenters in recent years. If you would like to discuss possibilities, please contact us – contact details are given below.

We are dedicated to the notion that we can learn much from each others’ practice. We therefore welcome submissions from Scotland, Northern Ireland, England and Wales and international colleagues. Again the transferability and applicability of your paper to a wide range of delegates is an important factor to consider. 

The TEAN journal

It is hoped that you will submit a paper to the TEAN journal, based on your presentation at the TEAN conference. The TEAN journal is an online, peer reviewed journal with fifteen issues available to date. You will find full details of the journal guidelines on the TEAN website.

Becoming a Teacher Educator

The highly successful ‘Becoming a Teacher Education’ workshops are integrated into the conference and provide a challenging perspective on the pedagogy of teacher education and on the place of scholarship and research in the work of different teacher educator roles. The aim is to provide a supportive environment for sharing experiences and for considering useful strategies and resources for building practice and identity as a teacher educator.

Student teachers

Student teachers are most welcome at our conference. They may be part of your presentation or can present a paper on their own behalf. The Student Teacher Perspectives initiative on the TEAN website has shown that students engage in valuable research activities and show themselves to be most thoughtful and reflective about their practice.

Please note: Because TEAN would like to offer special rates for students we must be strict with our definition of student to be fair to all. A student at the TEAN conference is an undergraduate or postgraduate student not employed in Education. The student will be asked for the name of the tutor who recommended them and TEAN will contact that tutor. If in doubt please contact TEAN.

Duration of the conference

The TEAN conference is a two day event; all rooms are booked for the full two days. On Friday, May 12th the conference will end at 15.45. The last session will be from 14.45 to 15.45.

How to submit

Please ensure that you follow the guidelines for submission with care. We have provided templates for submissions available to download from the website. As we receive a large number of submissions, unfortunately we will be unable to consider your submission if you do not use the appropriate template.

Please save the template with the lead presenter name and type of proposal as part of the file name before emailing the completed form to TEAN. The final format of the conference will be decided according to the submissions we receive.

If anything is unclear, please contact TEAN on 01524 385441 or 01524 385459, or e-mail tean@cumbria.ac.uk or alison.jackson@cumbria.ac.uk

All submissions should be emailed to tean@cumbria.ac.uk. Please write TEAN conference submission in the subject box. An acknowledgement will be sent immediately if on a working day or the next working day otherwise – if you have not received an acknowledgement within a week of emailing please contact TEAN to check that your submission has been received.

NB. When writing your submission, it is very important to consider what your audience will be able to take back from the conference which will impact upon their practice.

Submissions

The conference will include opportunities for presentations, workshops, round tables, poster/idea forums; details of what these entail are below.

Please note, the timings given are as accurate as possible at the time of writing, but largely depend upon the range of submissions received. Any change to the plan will not be effected without arrangement with the presenters.

Templates and further information about each type of submission can be found below.

Submission Proposals

Presentation

Please note that the scale of our conference does not usually allow colleagues to present a whole package of several papers for a symposium. Where possible, the grouping together of papers for a themed session will be carried out centrally when all papers have been decided upon. There will also be scope for individual papers which do not easily fall under a particular themed heading. In this way we can better ensure a full range of institutions and variety of submissions.

Presentation sessions will provide presenters with an opportunity to engage in active discussion with conference delegates on a piece of on-going work or a completed paper. The proposal should contain the following elements:

  • Title
  • Name of lead presenter
  • Names of any co-presenters
  • Information about availability
  • Institution
  • Contact details – telephone and e-mail
  • Details of other presenters with institution and contact details
  • Aim of  presentation (50 words)
  • Content of the presentation, including any impact on practice if appropriate (200 - 300 words)
  • Link to conference title (50 words)
  • The country to which the workshop relates and any possible cross-reference to other UK countries (or international work if appropriate)

Timing - A presentation will be 20 minutes + 10 minutes for discussion.

Download template

Please save the template with the lead presenter name and type of proposal as part of the file name before emailing to tean@cumbria.ac.uk with a subject heading of 'TEAN conference submission' for the e-mail.

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