Impact study confirms benefits of teacher training abroad
A new impact study produced for the European Commission underlines the positive effects for teachers and other school staff of going abroad for in-service training. Participants in the EU's Comenius programme said that training in an international environment helped them in their professional and personal development, improved their teaching methods, foreign language skills and boosted their motivation. More than that, the joint training events gather teachers from several countries and often lead to international co-operation between schools.
Each year approximately 10,000 teachers and other educational staff take part in Comenius In-Service Training. They attend professional development courses, conferences, seminars and job-shadowing activities held across Europe. The main objectives are to support improvements in pedagogical approaches and school management, to introduce a European dimension into teacher training and to support more frequent and better teacher mobility in Europe.In order to find out to what extent these objectives are being met, an impact study was ordered by the European Commission. More than 3,400 teachers and school staff who took part in Comenius In-Service Training between January and July 2009 responded.
The results of the study clearly show that Comenius In-Service Training contributes to a significant extent to the professional development of teachers and other educational staff and triggers impacts not only in the classrooms but also at an institutional level in schools and training organisations. This is true in particular where the EU programme is embedded in the school's development strategy as an instrument for internationalisation and staff development. Training abroad creates the added value of a more pronounced European and international dimension in teaching and learning and more co-operation between schools across borders.
Over 93% of respondents said they were satisfied or very satisfied with the outcomes of the training abroad, and felt motivated to continue developing their professional competences. However, the study pointed to the need to achieve a more balanced distribution of participants by type of the training activity, subject taught and by host country.
To know more
- Executive summary of the impact study
- The full text of the impact study (Kassel, 2010, GES - Geselleschaft für Empirische Studien bR on behalf of the European Commission)
