Blended Learning in Teachers‘ Professional Development Erasmus Project

Project Title

Blended Learning in Teachers‘ Professional Development

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for school education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2015

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Open and distance learning; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Key Competences (incl. mathematics and literacy) – basic skills

Project Summary

The BleTeach project addresses two crucial needs in teachers´ continuous professional development (CPD) in most European countries: (1) A general structural problem: The unsatisfying structures of teachers’ continuous professional development (CPD) in the EU, and (2) a specific, content related problem: the lack of expertise of secondary school teachers, i.e. content area teachers required to address the problem of low literacy skills of children and adolescents in many European countries.
(1) In many European countries the time for face-to-face learning in teachers´ CPD is limited to a few days per year and thus privileges “one-shot-approaches” which are not effective in changing classroom practice (as research has proven). Therefore, this project will explore and analyse the most promising formats in blended learning offers in CPD for teachers in order to develop and implement a blended learning course (BLC) for secondary teachers (nd teacher trainers. (2) The PISA studies carried out by the OECD (2000 ff.) revealed severe deficits in basic literacy skills among adolescents (15 year olds): In European countries, one out of five adolescents lack the necessary basic literacy skills to cope with literacy requirements in education, training, workplace, societal participation and lifelong learning. One reason for these deficits of adolescents in literacy is seen in the lack of a systematic reading instruction in mother tongue and content area education in secondary schools. International research found that understanding content area texts (or disciplinary texts) should be taught in all subjects and all grades systematically. In most European countries, however, secondary teachers mainly study their subjects and subject-related didactics during pre-service education but do not get trained in content area literacy. The term content area literacy (CAL) refers to teachers’ competence to deal with reading / writing and learning instruction not only on the elementary level in the language arts classes, but in all subjects and all school levels. But in most European countries, content area teachers are not trained to fulfill this task.
The BleTeach project thus pursues two objectives: (1) Modernizing structures of teacher education by integrating digital learning opportunities into teachers´ professional development, and (2) Developing a model blended learning course (BL-course) in CAL to be included into the regular course programme of numerous European Teacher Training Centres in the 6 partner countries: Belgium, Germany, Hungary, Portugal, Romania and Russia (on a self-financing basis).
The BleTeach project builds on two previous Comenius projects, which have been coordinated by Prof. Garbe (University of Cologne) as well:
BaCuLit stands for „Basic Curriculum for Teachers´ In-Service Training in Content Area Literacy in Secondary Schools” and was funded as Comenius multilateral project in 2011 – 2012. BaCuLit was developed from experts of 7 European countries (Germany, Hungary, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Romania and Sweden). The curriculum consists of 6 core modules comprising about 40 hs of training. These modules contain the BaCuLit principles of lesson planning, engagement, interaction and metacognition as well as basic knowledge about text structure and text diversity, academic vocabulary instruction, reading strategies and formative assessment. The BaCuLit training concept builds upon international research on effective in-service training and engages participants in building new knowledge through practical exercises in their everyday classrooms between the course units, documented and reflected in a portfolio. The BleTeach project further developed this course by applying two additonal principles: (1) Updating and adapting the Engish Master Version according to new research and development; e.g. the curriculum was completed by one module about writing strategies. (2) Granting more flexibility to the national versions: they could add modules to the 6 agreed modules of the English Master Version, according to national needs, and they should try as much as possible to make use of material from the national contexts.
In the Comenius project ISIT (Implementation Strategies for Innovations in Teachers´ Professional Development, 2013-2014) a first cohort of BaCuLit trainers was trained in three partner countries (Germany, Hungary, Romania) by means of an E-Learning course; this inspired the BleTeach project to further explore and exploit the potential of Blended Learning (BL) formats for teachers´ CPD. BleTeach published National Reports about Good Practice in BL in teachers´ CPD and a Handbook of Success Factors for designing BL-courses for this target group.
More information about both previous projects (BaCuLit, ISIT) and about the BleTeach Course and project´s results can be found on the BleTeach-website: www.blend-ed.eu.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 256171 Eur

Project Coordinator

UNIVERSITAET ZU KOELN & Country: DE

Project Partners

• UNIVERSIDADE DO MINHO
• Asociatia Lectura si Scrierea pentru Dezvoltarea Gandirii Critice Romania
• UNIVERSITE DE LIEGE
• Pädagogisches Landesinstitut Rheinland-Pfalz
• HAUTE ECOLE DE LA VILLE DE LIEGE
• Neumann János Egyetem