Smart Technologies for Innovation in Teacher Training. The EKT Handbook

The Education Knowledge Transfer (EKT) Project is an Erasmus+ KA 2 Knowledge Alliance addressing the EU educational practice in Initial Teacher Education (ITE). The project focuses on improving the in-school placement experience for future European teachers, which is a crucial component of ITE.

The EKT Handbook shares the experience gained in the project with teacher training institutions, schools, education authorities and e-learning service providers. The publication focuses on the:

• Analysis of the main ITE stakeholders and their needs (Chapter 2)
• Pedagogical and methodological approach addressing these needs (Chapter 3)
• Online platform: its architecture, functionalities and technological achievements (Chapter 4)
• Piloting activities and the impact these experimentation exercises had on the development and evaluation of the methodology and the platform (Chapter 5).

The whole Handbook, and in particular Chapter 5, bears in mind that the emphasis of “Knowledge Alliances” in the Erasmus + programme is not in the first place on creating and disseminating “products”, but on reflecting and generating methodological and technical knowledge, and sharing this among different -academic, educational and entrepreneurial - actors. To this end, the planning and development process of the EKT Project is described in the Handbook, as well as the insights gained and lessons learnt in the process. The Handbook is not so much intended as a promotional brochure presenting the EKT Platform as the ideal solution to placement stakeholders’ needs but rather as inspiration for adequately addressing these needs by the informed deployment of pedagogy and technology to facilitate a productive in-school placement. The authors believe that the EKT experience will enable teacher education providers to offer more individualized follow-up of students during in-school placement practice. This can enhance in-school teaching practice for ITE as well as enabling new systems of access to the teaching profession that can be implemented in Europe in the future.