A Collective Model of Advanced Teacher Training: An International Experience

Abstract

The conventional course-based teacher training method doesn’t meet the requirements of time, and neither does the reproductive teaching style. The paper offers a new alternative to that system, which is project-based and result-oriented advanced training designed to stimulate creative thinking in teachers and to enhance the role of self-analysis and self-assessment. The main idea of this teacher training method lies in collaboration of teachers within a school to create new learning practices based on electronic learning materials and program tools. The paper describes terms and results of the international education project “ICT Learning Environment. Create and Use  Together”, which was realized in 2010–2012 and involved Russian and Finnish teachers and experts. Five school teams from Russia (represented by Saint Petersburg) and five from Finland had a mission of learning new technologies, developing new electronic learning materials and implementing them in their own teaching practices. The school teams collaborated for two years during live and online seminars, exchanged emails and talked on Skype, developing the selected projects together. The author investigates into the two factors of assessing team project efficiency: a) participants’ self-assessment of progress in their professional development and b) quality of created learning materials as finished products to be copied and distributed across the educational system. The paper provides benefits of the cluster-based model of project cooperation among teachers, which consists in grouping bunches of schools into clusters by geography or common teaching approaches.