European cooperation in teacher education until the 2000s

From 1957 until 2000, European cooperation focused on economic issues and education was not formally recognised as a field of cooperation between Member States. Until 1971, cooperation was officially acknowledged only in the context of vocational education and training. In the period between 1971 and 1992, there is an emergence of references to education, marked significantly by the launching of the first community education programmes. From the moment of signing the Maastricht Treaty in 1992 and until the 2000, the way of officially including education in soft legal competences of the EU is paved. The following sections trace the position of teacher education during those periods of time, employing the vocabulary that official EU documents were using at the time.

1957-1971: Teacher training in the context of vocational training

During this initial phase, starting with the Treaty of Rome, in 1957, and the establishment of the European Economic Community, the education sector remained outside of the Community’s policy coordination efforts. Education, closely aligned to the notions of citizenship and national identity, remained a “taboo” topic for almost twenty years after the signing of the founding treaty, and the sensitive topic of cultural and educational cooperation became the task of the Council of Europe (Pépin, 2007, p. 122). Due to the absence of Community engagement in the field of education, there are almost no references to teachers and teacher education in official policy documents of the specific period.

However, the Treaty of Rome offered a clear legal basis for Community cooperation in vocational training, an important development that allowed the Commission, almost thirty years later, to launch the Erasmus programme by expanding the definition of vocational training to include higher education (ibid). Under the Chapter on the European Social Fund, Article 128 offers the possibility for implementing a common vocational training policy

“capable of contributing to the harmonious development both of the national economies and of the common market” (Treaty of Rome, 1957). This possibility was materialised in the 1963 Council Decision, which established ten general principles for implementing a common vocational training policy. The specific Council Decision is important, not only because it referred to the necessary link with general education (Pépin, 2007), but also because it promoted for the first time the need for suitable training of teachers and instructors in the field of vocational training. The seventh principle refers to the Member States’ responsibility for encouraging the improvement of such training, including “harmonisation of instructor training,” “with the assistance of the Community where necessary” (Council of the European Communities, 1963). Despite this clear policy framework at the Community level, actual implementation in terms of policy cooperation between Member States remained limited also in the field of vocational training (Pépin, 2007).

77 1971-1992: Strengthening the European dimension of teacher training through mobility It was not until 1971 that cooperation in education started by adopting general guidelines for a Community action programme, which was eventually approved in 1976. Pépin (2007) identifies a change in the attitude of Member States following the May 1968 events, which revealed a dissatisfaction with regard to the university system and management, and the 1969 call of the European parliament “for a Europeanisation of universities as the foundation for a genuine cultural Community” (p. 123). Moreover, the economic and social context of the 1970s (e.g. oil crisis, growing unemployment) resulted in a need for greater action in the field of vocational training and led to the emergence of cooperation in education between Member States (ibid.).

The working party established by the first Council and Conference of Ministers of Education, in November 1971, supported unanimously the need for policy cooperation in education, including the possibility of establishing a European Centre for Educational Development (European Communities Commission, 1974). During that time, the cultural aspect of education was still prevalent, with education ministers reaffirming that “on no account must education be regarded merely as a component of economic life” (Council of the European Communities, 1974, p. 1). With regard to teachers, policy cooperation focused on encouraging professional mobility, mainly by removing administrative and social obstacles regarding their free movement, and by improving the teaching of foreign languages (Council of the European Communities, 1974, p. 1).

In 1976, the Council of the European Communities for the first time adopted a Community action programme and suggested Member States take into account a number of actions in order to improve the preparation of young people for work. Among other measures, the initial and continuing training of teachers received particular attention so that young people could be more effectively prepared for working life and for choosing alternative opportunities in employment, further education and training (Council of the European Communities, 1976, p. 2). The Council considered teacher training as a way to strengthen the links between education and employment.

The 1976 resolution launched a cooperation of “mixed” nature, unique for that time, which combines classical procedures within the European Community with the voluntary commitment of education ministers to work together on a continuing basis outside the legal framework of the Council (Jones, as cited in Pépin, 2007, p. 123). Legal competence in education remained in the hands of the Member States, but cooperation gradually started through pilot projects, studies, study visits and joint study programmes (Pépin, 2007).

However, it was mainly after the Gravier Case in 1985, when the European Court of Justice included higher education in Article 128 on vocational training, that the Commission used the new legal opportunities to launch first, in 1986, the Commett programme, and right afterwards, in June 1987, the Erasmus programme (ibid).

Moreover, to stimulate cooperation in school education and following up the 1985 report on a citizens’ Europe, the Commission launched initiatives to promote the European dimension in schools through teacher exchanges and school partnerships. Under this new umbrella framework, teacher training received a new task, linked to the cultural aspect of education, but also closely attached to the objective of creating a unified labour market by 1992, meaning to introduce and promote the European dimension in education. Specifically, the 1988 Resolution of education ministers documented the commitment of Member States to make every effort to give greater emphasis to the European dimension in initial and in-service training, “within the limits of their own specific educational policies and structures” (Council of the European Communities, 1988, p. 5), by achieving the following:

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 making suitable teaching material available;

 access to documentation on the Community and its policies;

 provision of basic information on the educational systems of the other Member States,

 cooperation with teacher training institutions in other Member States, particularly by developing joint programmes providing for student and teacher mobility;

 making provision in the framework of in-service training for specific activities to enhance serving teachers’ awareness of the European dimension in education and give them the opportunity of keeping up to date with Community developments;

 opening up, to some teachers from other Member States, certain in-service training activities, which would constitute the practical expression of belonging to Europe and a significant means of favouring the integration process (Council of the European Communities, 1988, p. 6)

The specific resolution triggered various non-governmental initiatives on teacher-training links, some of them supported through the Erasmus programme (Sayer, 2006). The Commission was even authorised to organise a European Summer University which led to the Réseau d’Institutions de Formation, or network of teacher training institutions to promote the European dimension in teacher training (ibid, p. 65). Other cooperation programmes, such as Lingua, established by the European Community in 1989, included, among other objectives, the goal of improving in-service training of teachers and trainers (Holdsworth, 2010).

Generally, during the late 1980s and early 1990s, teacher training institutions engaged in initiatives to pursue and identify common issues, including mutual recognition of qualifications and possible convergence (Sayer, 2006). It was also in the beginning of the 1990s that the first phase of TEMPUS was implemented enabling inter-university cooperation with the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, including mobility of teaching staff. Several of those objectives related to teachers were subsequently further developed by the Socrates, Leonardo and Lifelong Learning programmes (Holdsworth, 2010).

1992-2000: Teachers as lifelong learning professionals in the knowledge society

With the signing of the Maastricht Treaty, in 1992, both higher and school education were included in the Community’s action programme with Article 126 for school education and Article 127 for vocational training, supporting and supplementing national action. Any harmonisation was ruled out, and Member States remained responsible for the content of teaching and the organisation of education systems. The principle of subsidiarity was officially enshrined, defining the circumstances in which action can be taken by the Union regarding areas which do not fall within the Union’s exclusive competence.

The Memorandum on Higher Education, completed one year earlier, proposed a strategy of modernisation of higher education and included the training of teachers as a proposed area of action of a “European Community Dimension in Higher Education”

(European Commission, 1991, p. 13). Emphasis was given once again on professional mobility using the Erasmus and Lingua opportunities in order to enhance the European experiences of teachers and promote the European Dimension. For the first time, an attempt was also made to sketch the diverse ways in which teacher education is organised across Member States, differentiating between concurrent and consecutive training schemes. The Memorandum recognised the growing involvement of universities in the academic and professional training of teachers, and fostered joint action between Member States on the development of curricula, curricular materials and new approaches to learning. However, the specific agreement caused intensive debate in Member States and the academic community. It was particularly criticised

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“for being too oriented towards the economy and for failing to understand the nature of the university” (Corbett, 2011, p. 40).

The 1993 White Paper on Growth, Competitiveness and Employment, by Jacques Delors, further promoted the idea that investing in knowledge through education and research is necessary for employment, competitiveness and social cohesion. The role of teachers is considered essential towards the new information era. Teachers and teacher training need to use new technologies, while universities can support this process by offering lifelong education, for example retraining primary and secondary school teachers (European Commission, 1993, p. 120). The 1995 White Paper Towards the Learning Society overcame the traditional division between education and training (Pépin, 2007) and acknowledged the transformation that the teaching profession is undergoing as a result of technological advancements and the growing needs of the learning society. New teaching approaches and innovation, validation of non-formal competences, second chance schools, recruitment of the

“best teachers”, and mobility opportunities are the main recurring themes attached to the interests of lifelong learning (European Commission, 1995).

The growing significance of lifelong learning for a knowledge society was further promoted by choosing 1996 as the European Year of Lifelong Learning and was given constitutional status with the 1997 Amsterdam Treaty, stating that the Community is

“determined to promote the development of the highest possible level of knowledge for their peoples through a wide access to education and through its continuous updating” (Treaty of Amsterdam, 1997, p. 24). With the Agenda 2000, the Community proposed to make policies that foster the knowledge society, consisting in innovation, research, education and training, one of the four fundamental pillars of the Union’s internal policies, a theme that was taken up by the Directorate-General Education with the 1997 Communication Towards a Europe of Knowledge and suggested possible Community actions for the period between 2000 and 2006.

Although higher education and particularly teacher training were left aside, the Europe of Knowledge envisaged mobility of teachers in the European education area (European Commission, 1997, p. 4). It further promoted the provision of competences that citizens needed.