Achieving the Priorities of Teacher Education
The 5th TEAN conference was held at Conference Aston in Birmingham on May 16 2014. Colleagues from Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales and England came together to celebrate the contribution made by us all to teacher education. Our theme this year looked to go beyond policies and regulation and re-discover our raison d’être. Why do we do what we do? What is our fundamental purpose? What is our definition of the moral purpose that drives us to be so successful at what we do? The excellent keynote presentation and wide range of papers on offer presented a rich diet for delegates who thoroughly enjoyed the challenge and inspiration of the day.
Thanks are again 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. HEA involvement in teacher education helps reinforce the important role played by HE in teacher education and is most welcome. We were also pleased to welcome Darius Jackson representing Holocaust Education and also Julia Morris from Critical Publishing.
Dr David Frost
Dr David Frost from the University of Cambridge graciously accepted the invitation from TEAN to give the opening keynote at the conference and was very warmly received by delegates who found his address to be inspirational. His talk was entitled: ‘Mobilising and enhancing moral purpose in teacher professionality’ Dr Frost advised that we should not underestimate the power we possess to effect change and asked how we can mobilise the moral purpose which underpins our work. He made a distinction between professionalism and professionality, defining the latter as ‘about the way we do it’. Everyone is capable of leadership and we can all inspire one another; something that all the presenters and delegates at the conference went on to do throughout the day.
Download Dr Frost’s PowerPoint presentation.
David Frost is a member of the Leadership for Learning group at the University of Cambridge Faculty of Education. He is one of the co-founders the LfL Network which is committed to developing democratic forms of leadership and learning. His ongoing research focuses on teacher leadership. Through partnerships with schools and local authorities he has developed strategies for supporting teachers as agents of change who play key roles in the creation and transfer of professional knowledge. He is currently the Programme Director for the HertsCam Network.
Over a period of more than twenty years David has coordinated networks which support teachers as leaders of change and innovation. These have acted as test-beds for his ideas on teacher leadership and, since 2008, he has led the International Teacher Leadership initiative which has partner programmes in 15 countries around the world. He is the founding editor of the journal Teacher Leadership. He is co-author of Teacher self-efficacy, voice and leadership, a report for Education International, the global association of teacher unions. He is currently a member of the Kazakhstan education reform research team.
Other presentations
The keynote was followed by a wide range of presentations, round tables and workshops which were of a very high standard and much enjoyed by delegates. Many thanks to all presenters for the time they gave in preparing their presentations to help create a successful conference. Thanks also to the writers of some high quality posters which were a welcome enrichment to the day.
You can access some of the PowerPoint presentations and other materials from the day by clicking on the items in the following list, which shows the lead presenter(s) with institution, and the title of the presentation:
