ITT in Europe

Here you can find a short description of the project CHE-civic and history education, the contributors, training institutions and a databank containing the curricula of both subjects at European universities. Please consider also the literature and studies relevant for civic and history education.

Additionally, in this presentation, you find very interesting tables and figures about the following topics: number of trainee history teacher in Europe, job opportunities for trainee history teacher, their socio-economic situation, their age distribution, retirement age of history teacher, some statistics about the subject history in secondary school, the institutions involved in ITT for history teacher, models of ITT, relation of academic, general didactic, subject didactic and practical courses and the proportion of local, regional, national, european and world history - amongst others.

CHE-civic and history education

School subjects such as "Political/Civic Education", "Social/Cultural Studies" and "History" are expected to form the socio-political identity of the future citizens of Europe. Teachers of these subjects are expected to develop the pupils' skills and competencies towards democratic citizenship, intercultural dialogue, mutual understanding and tolerance. However, there has not been a lot of research on the education of teachers' skills and competencies on a European level so far. Results of the comparative studies ITT 2006 and ITT SEE on structures and standards of initial training for history teachers in Europe have shown that the education of teachers almost exclusively relies on national structures and organisations. The role and identity of (subject) teachers are formed and conceptualised at the very beginning of their career. It therefore seems to be of high relevance for educational planners, curriculum developers and teacher trainers to know more about the assessment and the initial education of teachers in the above described subjects. There is also little knowledge on a comparative European level about the structures of tutoring/mentoring and their impact on the retention of student teachers as well as their impact on the development of social skills and teamwork of the trainee teachers.In secondary general and/or vocational schools the subjects "Political/Civic Education", "Social/Cultural Studies" and "History" are partly taught as integrated subjects, partly as separate subjects. There has been little discussion about the theoretical and didactic concepts and the rationales that lie behind the decisions towards one or the other model of training. This project will contribute substantially to future discussions on curriculum development of the subjects 'political/social/cultural studies' and 'history' on the level of organisation, content, and didactics.

KA1-project "Assessment, tutorial structures and initial teacher education of trainee students in the subjects 'Political/ Civic Education, Social/Cultural Studies and History' in Europe - A comparative study"

The project is supported by the European Commission in the framework of the Lifelong Learning Programme KA 1 (Studies and Comparative Research), the ERSTE Foundation and the Austrian Federal Ministry for Education, Arts and Culture.

Running time: January 2010-July 2013