Collaboration

Importance of international collaboration

For three decades, policy makers, practitioners and scholars have been joining forces, focussing on making schools around the world (more) excellent and equitable (ICSEI; founded in 1987). In this tradition the department of Teacher Education of the University of Groningen, embraces this ambition focusing its research and interventions on the improvement of teacher (and school) effectiveness on a national and international scale.

Improving professional development of teachers at the national level will not reach its potential without learning from other countries’ strategies for supporting professional development of their teachers. Taking both successful practices and challenges into account could shed light both on factors that are beneficial for domestic schooling as well as factors that are valuable for the international level of schooling.

In this respect, paying attention to comparative and cross-national studies offers a great opportunity for an innovative perspective on generic and specific practices and stimulates teachers, educational developers, and policy-makers to learn from each country’s experiences. Additionally, scholars from different backgrounds and perspectives can join forces and greatly contribute to improving instruments which can be used to measure teaching quality with an international focus with the ultimate aim to contribute to teacher (and school improvement) efforts. We aim to strengthen the worldwide research community focused on teaching quality, the contexts of teaching and learning and teacher professional development.

We highly welcome researchers and institutions around the world that share our vision to cooperate in this project.