TEAN Conference 2012 | University of Cumbria

Sponsored by the Higher Education Academy

The third TEAN conference took place at Conference Aston, Birmingham on May 18 2012. Our third conference considered the theme of ‘Creating effective teachers’, a subject which lies at the heart of what we do and concerns policy makers, teachers, teacher educators, student teachers, and most importantly, the children and young people in the present and future generations of the world. TEAN was very pleased to welcome delegates from a wide range of institutions from Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales and England. We also welcomed colleagues from the Lifelong Learning Sectors and a colleague hailing from Hazara University, Pakistan and hope to encourage others from the international scene in future years. We can learn so much by sharing our experience, challenges and solutions; a theme echoed in the keynote address. There were also a number of students attending this year which was great to see; hopefully this can continue and build in the future.

TEAN was delighted that Dr. Samantha Twiselton, the Dean of Education at the University of Cumbria, opened the conference this year. Dr. Twiselton welcomed delegates to this third conference and spoke of the importance of such a gathering in the challenging times facing Teacher Education at present.

Dr. Caroline Daly

The keynote address was given by Dr. Caroline Daly from the Institute of Education, University of London and was extremely well received by delegates who found it to be an excellent introduction to the day; topical, useful, interesting and thought-provoking. Dr. Daly addressed delegates on the topic of ‘The professional learning landscape: partners in free-fall’. Professional learning, she suggested, takes place in increasingly complex and distributed locations, as market forces continue to shape conditions for teachers to develop ‘from cradle to grave’. She shared with us a model of the current landscape, using it as a basis for exploring the meaning of ‘partnership’ in this context; the notion of ‘partnership’ can be seen to be under-problematised in a landscape in which collaborations to support teacher education are multi-layered and ‘multi-playered’. Many thanks to Dr. Daly for this superb start to our 2012 conference.

Other Business

Thanks are due to our main sponsor the Higher Education Academy and to Kathy Wright, the Education lead at the HEA for her support for TEAN during the year and for this conference. We were also pleased to welcome d’Reen Struthers representing the Association for Partnership in Teacher Education.

We are used to very high quality presentations, round table presentations and workshops in TEAN and 2012 offered delegates a rich and varied programme that was much appreciated. The only problem was being ‘spoilt for choice’ and wanting more time to visit more! Hopefully through our workshop and seminar series in 2012-13 we will come some way to addressing this. We also attracted some very good posters this year which help to enrich the conference experience. The winners of the poster prize were Alice Rutter, Stacey Vale and Rosie Round from the University of Worcester. Thanks to all presenters for the very high standards they maintained and the interest they generated.

Thank you all for your support for TEAN during the year and for all your contributions to the network as presenters, delegates, workshop organisers, TEAN journal reviewers and authors, Storehouse contributors. The conference was most successful thanks to your continued support; watch the website for information about next year.