A VIRTUAL SOLUTION FOR A COMPREHENSIVE AND COORDINATED TRAINING FOR FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEACHERS IN EUROPE

Recent studies developed by the European Commission [1] have outlined an urgent need to improve Initial Teacher Education (ITE) to enhance its attractiveness and cooperativeness, as well as system widely focused. Among the detected weaknesses, following elements are highlight: national system ITE deregulation, discrepancies in teacher competences and selection, short term vision and poor evaluation system performance. This situation is particularly evident in the initial training of prospective language teachers who will teach a foreign language to EU citizens for convergence and communicative purposes. In this sense, it is mandatory to enhance the cooperation, coherence and regulation of teacher educational standards to improve ITE of prospective language teachers at a European level. To this end, the VIR_TEACH (A Virtual Solution for a comprehensive and coordinated training for foreign language TEACHers in Europe) project pursues as a general objective to position ITE within broader teacher education policies and to create new and coherent structures of participation, through the creation of a European network of universities and secondary education centers to promote the exchange of innovative practices in the initial training of language teachers and the internationalization of the respective training practices. VIR TEACH is approved by the Erasmus+ Spanish National Agency and runs from September 2018 until August 2021. Project leader is Burgos University (Spain) and partners are UCLL (Belgium-Flanders), Universidade Lusofona (Portugal), Szczecinska Szkola Wyzsza Collegium Balticum (Poland) and Universitatea Crestina Dimitrie Cantemir Organizatie Nonprofit (Romania). Consequently, the project has defined the following objectives: The main objective is to create digitals tool to improve the postgraduate certificates or Masters in Education (depending on each country and normative), specifically, in Foreign Languages, providing teachers, researchers, prospective teachers, and policy-makers in the field of education with open-source tools and resources. The implementation of language training activities both for trainers and students. The convergence of curricular formats in the training of prospective language teachers staff at University level in Europe. The creation of a digital reference platform, VIRTEACH, to share the valid actions selected. The design of a friendly and easy-to-use digital tool, but effective and universal, suitable for monitoring the prospective language teachers during the internship phase jointly between the pre-service and the in-service teacher educators. The design of a final document that includes a coherent competence framework and the key lines of institutional action for improving the quality of language teacher education at an international level. The target groups involved in this project are pairs of Universities and secondary schools of the participating countries, each represented by pre-service and in-service educators respectively, policy makers of the participating tertiary education institutions, prospective language teachers enrolled at the participating universities and national representatives of teacher training policies. The development of this project requires the transnational cooperation to ensure the exchange of best policies in ITE, a continuity through institutional partnerships during ITE, the development of coherent competence levels at an international level and the advancement of methodologies for better regulation in educational policy. Moreover, it will foster more transparency and the creation of a series of digital tools that favor the convergence of educational systems and the exchange of good practices.