FISTE -Future in-service teacher training across Europe
University of Oulu, Eila Lindfors

Fiste is an European in-service teacher training project based on the needs for innovative and effective ideas for in-service teacher education. The most important question is how to integrate and best combine face to face learning and web-based learning in European in-service teacher education.

The project is a part of Socrates, Comenius 2.1 progamme. An idea of the project was born in Sinaia, Romania, in a Comenius contact seminar in autumn 2001. During the following three years permanent discussions continued between partners by e-mail and the project was approved by the Commission in autumn 2004. FISTE is a three year project and will end in autumn 2007. Partners are from five European countries: University of Oulu from Finland and In-service Teacher Training Centre in Jerez de la Frontera from Spain as representatives of old EU-countries, Iceland university of Education from Iceland as a representative of outside member of EU, University of Latvia from Latvia as a new member of EU and three representatives from Romania a membership applicant country: Babes-Bolynai University, National Academy of Physical education and Sport and Valahia University of Targoviste.

There is a clear need for the project. Teaching and learning of in-service teachers varies according to the national educational systems, national priorities of standards and finance, current political influences and to historical and cultural issues in Europe. The development of professional competence in teaching in-service teachers is very diverse throughout the countries within the European Union. The dissemination of good practice and innovations within in-service teacher education between European countries is very limited at present. One of the restrictions being that in-service teacher educators are unable to view and discuss how in-service teacher education is organized at a European level.

The project is aimed at developing in-service teacher education for today and, especially, for future to be able to increase the quality and possibilities of in-service teacher education. There is a need to find new ways of how to teach in-service teachers and how teachers themselves can learn and upgrade their knowledge and teaching methods by using ICT on national and on European level. The European dimension is considered in cooperation. Research and evaluation form the basis for dissemination of the project results on local, national and European level.

The first year of the project is devoted to the starting of the project and development of an on-line course for in-service teachers. The course is put into practice as a combination of face to face teaching/learning and using a BSCW-platform. The target groups are in-service teachers from primary and secondary schools from the partner countries, approximately 30 teachers from each country.

Databases and teaching materials for web-based learning in order to help the teaching on-line process and other documents to guarantee the success of the on-line course will be designed by the partners. They will be set in the e-learning environment and will be available for each participant who is able to download or consult on-line. The first language in the project is English (EN) and then translations in national languages (ES, FI, IS, LV, RO) will be available for most parts.

The second year of the project is for implementing the on-line course in each partner institution as well as for the evaluating the course results and teachers’ projects in their everyday work. The third year is for dissemination. Dissemination seminar will be organized in Romania. This will be a valuable occasion for in-service teacher educators from different parts of Europe to discuss the future demands and methods of in-service teacher education.

Research assessment tools are important to assure the quality of the whole procedure and trying to evaluate every element involved in the teaching-learning process. As a result of these evaluation tools, the partners will be able to modify or improve the outputs. The tools will be designed by the Oulu University (FI), University of Latvia (LV), and Babes-Bolyai University (RO), during the first and the second stage of the project. Beside that all partners are responsible for critical evaluation of the project and their courses and the dissemination of the results and experiences gained in the project. Research results and articles - all the partners which represent institution type EDU.4 (FI, IS, LV, RO) share the responsibility of researching the results of the project. The research results will be available in the second and third stage of the project and will be published in international and national journals and then on the project's web-site (http://fiste.ssai.valahia.ro/).