Launch of the Teacher Academy, a European response to teachers' professional development needs

European Schoolnet is delighted to announce the launch of the Teacher Academy to support educators in their daily classroom work and address key challenges in teacher professional development. Created for the European Commission, Teacher Academy will offer a variety of online courses for teachers and is available on the School Education Gateway, a multilingual European website dedicated to education matters. 

Date 2016-06-06 Author EUN
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With rapidly changing societies, Europe's 5 million teachers are facing an increasing number of challenges and demands in their daily work in the classroom. The Teacher Academy, the School Education Gateway's new service, is here to help teachers across Europe.
 
Teachers are increasingly expected to play a key role in addressing some of the challenges for our societies linked to technological, social and economic changes. However, teachers often face a range of barriers to accessing professional development, ranging from a lack of relevant courses and conflicts with work schedules to the high cost for some teachers of taking advantage of what is on offer (OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS)).
 
To address these barriers and support teachers in their daily work in the classroom, European Schoolnet has created the Teacher Academy on behalf of the European Commission as part of its School Education Gateway platform. Strong of the success of the European Schoolnet Academy and its 25000 course participants, European Schoolnet has used its experience in the domain to design Teacher Academy's concept and courses to bring a free and qualitative training offer to teachers across Europe.
 
The Teacher Academy is a single point of access to professional development activities including:
  1. A new service of online courses specifically made for the School Education Gateway.
  2. The hugely popular on-site courses, which have already helped European teachers to meet their training needs.
  3. Versatile teaching materials created by the EU institutions and EU-funded projects.

Online courses – New service of the Teacher Academy

A selection of unique free online courses will be offered exclusively and directly on the Teacher Academy starting from June 2016. The courses are designed around the requirements of teachers, specifically addressing some of the key barriers addressed by teachers in the TALIS survey. The courses are available in English and one other language. This year's scheduled courses are:

  • Introducing Project-Based Learning in your Classroom, starting on 6 June - for more information including details to sign up, click here.
  • Supporting Diverse Learners in your Classroom, September
  • Competences for 21st Century Schools, October
  • Maths 2.0, October
  • Supporting Newly Arrived Migrant Students in Schools, November

These online courses will engage participants through different types of materials and activities, such as videos (classroom observations, animations, interviews and screencasts), lesson plans, webinars, peer-review and sharing with peers, interacting with experts, quizzes, learning diaries and many more. Participants will also be awarded digital badges and certificates enabling them to demonstrate their accomplishments.

Further information
 
Follow #EUteacheracademy for the general activities of the Teacher Academy and #PBLcourse for the Introducing Project-Based Learning in your Classroom online course activities (already more than 1,700 users registered!)
 
 
As part of the launch of the Teacher Academy, a Thunderclap campaign was organised gathering more than 220 supporters to spread the news and achieving a social reach of over 285,000 people. Read more on www.thunderclap.it/projects/41197-europe-supports-its-teachers
 
About the School Education Gateway
 
Presented in 23 European languages the School Education Gateway is a single point of entry for teachers, schools, experts and others in the school education field. It presents European education policy action for schools through news, good practices, expert articles and interviews, publications, and many more. The School Education Gateway is funded by Erasmus+, the European programme for Education, Training, Youth and Sport. It is operated for the Directorate General for Education and Culture of the European Commission by European Schoolnet, an international partnership of 30 European Ministries of Education developing learning for schools, teachers and pupils across Europe. The School Education Gateway is associated with eTwinning, the community for schools in Europe.
 
Visit the School Education Gateway: www.schooleducationgateway.eu

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