Statutes
1. Introduction
The European Teacher Education Network, hereafter to be referred to as ETEN, aims to promote a wide range of co-operative and exchange possibilities for students and staff between partners in education:
- Institutions engaged in Higher Professional Education,
- local educational and social authorities, and
- relevant associations of teachers and social educators.
- 1.2 ETEN operates within the following:
- SOCRATES 2 and other EU and International programmes;
- Bi-lateral agreements;
- NORDPLUS for partners in the Nordic countries; and programmes financed from other available sources.
1.3 ETEN seeks and cooperates with partners outside Europe. The standard working language is British English.
2. Vision
- The visions of the network are:
- to provide knowledge and recognition of teaching and educational work at all levels.
- to provide status, respect and inspiration for the teacher and social educator professions.
- to influence development and innovation of teacher and social educator education in the member countries.
- to learn about and promote understanding of the history, culture, values and traditions of the member countries, as expressed through teacher and social educator education.
3. Mission
- The missions of the network are:
- to promote opportunities for exchange and/or visits of individual and/or groups of students as part of their programmes of study (inclusive of teaching experience, practical training, curriculum work and research).
- to promote opportunities for exchange and/or visits of staff members in relation to student education, teaching, school development, curriculum development and research.
- to promote opportunities within teacher and social educator education programmes and school practice to incorporate comparative and intercultural perspectives on education.
- to promote opportunities for cross-national and international collaboration in research and development.
- to provide opportunities for professional staff development.
- to disseminate the work of ETEN in a wider educational context.
- to continually evaluate the extent to which the aims of the Network are fulfilled in order to assure the quality of the Network.
4. Aims
- The aims of the network are:
- to involve as many students as possible in ETEN programmes during their studies.
- to involve as many staff as possible in ETEN programmes each year.
- for each member institution individually or in co-operation with other member institutions to offer at least one international student activity within ETEN, in English, each year.
- to describe, evaluate and report all ETEN activities on the ETEN Website.
- to be pro-active in essential matters concerning national and international debates on education in general and teacher and social educator education in particular.
5. Organisation
5.1 The ECO (ETEN Coordinator)
Every member is to appoint an ETEN Coordinator, hereafter referred to as the ECO. The ECO initiates appropriate actions at his member organisation represented in order to realise the aims of the Network and is the representative of the member organisation at the ECO Meetings.
5.2 The ETEN Board
The ETEN Board represents ETEN in external matters and coordinates internal affairs between ECO meetings. Also the Board organises the official meetings. The board consists of five members, which include the Chairperson, a Treasurer and a Secretary. To avoid a complete change of Board Members in any one year elections take place annually with two Board members elected one year and the other three members elected the following year. The Board will meet as necessary.
5.3 The ECO Meetings
ECO meetings are held twice a year in April and September. The Board and any ECO can suggest items for an ECO meeting. Suggestions for items from ECOs should be received by the secretariat no later than 6 weeks before an ECO meeting. The agenda for an ECO meeting should be sent out by the Secretariat and received by the ECOs no later than 3 weeks before a meeting. At the meetings the member institutions have one vote each. All decisions are to be agreed.
- Matters to be considered at the ECO Meetings:
- Monitoring and initiating activities within ETEN
- Evaluation of activities
- Presentation and approval of the ETEN Annual Report (April Meeting)
- Matters concerning research, development and Thematic Interest Groups. (April Meeting)
- Presentation and approval of the Annual Financial Report (April Meeting)
- Approval of the ETEN Draft Budget (September Meeting)
- Matters concerning student and staff mobility (September Meeting)
- Presentation of applying organisations
- Reports from Thematic Interest Groups
- Current Reports
- Bi-lateral Meetings between representatives from partners (September Meeting)
- General policy, administration and business matters (including the policy for the expansion of the Network)
5.4 Thematic Interest Groups
Groups of institutions joining a mutual project are called Thematic Interest Groups or TIGs. TIGs are open to all members who can contribute to the work. TIGs can use all of the co-operation possibilities to develop its work.
- Each TIG is required to present definition and description:
- Title
- Vision, intentions and expected outcomes
- ETEN members involved (members/co-opted members)
- Name of TIG leader and members and their experience and interest in the field outside ETEN partners (schools etc.)
- Time frame, plan and timetable
- Funding and budget
- Recent activities (history)
- Published reports, articles etc.
- Future activities
- Planned publishing activities
- Conditions for joining - how to join.
6. Conference
6.1 The ETEN TIG based Conference
It is of great significance for the development of ETEN as a Network that staff of ETEN members can meet to discuss subject-based issues. Relevant guests from outside ETEN are invited to take part in the conference. The ETEN TIG based Conference is a platform for TIG Seminars, each presenting their reports and future activities.
6.2 Organisation of an ETEN TIG based Conference
The ETEN TIG based Conference is held each year in connection with the ECO April Meeting.
The ETEN TIG based Conference is a forum for seminars in each of the ETEN TIGs - e.g. focussing on reports and future activities. These seminars should be focussed on the content of the TIG.
Furthermore The ETEN TIG based Conference can be a forum to provide new research and actual development, theories, knowledge, experience and ideas concerning the development of educational practice.
The Conference should be introduced through a powerful theme. It may present a key speaker with an international profile followed by a plenary for discussion, questions and comments. The rest of the conference takes place as TIG seminars inspired by the key speaker.
The theme of an ETEN TIG based Conference is decided in co-operation between the Board of ETEN and the ECO of the arranging member institution not later than one year before the conference.
The arranging ETEN partner makes the necessary arrangements including signing a contract with a key speaker.
- Also The ETEN TIG based Conference is a forum for participants to consider
- Innovation and comparison in Education Issues in membership countries.
- Subject based academic or other relevant staff exchanges at a bi-lateral level.
6.3 Responsibilities
The TIG Seminars are managed by the TIG leader and members with participation of interested and qualified, academic or similar colleagues from ETEN members. The TIG is supposed to present aims, theoretically and practical results and reports. Also it is supposed to call for a dialogue between the seminar participants and the TIG members.
- Each TIG is responsible of preparing its own seminar in form of working out necessary papers for the participants.
- Furthermore the TIG has the possibility of calling for papers among the enrolled participants.
- The TIG leader and members have the responsibility of opening the discussion and initiating the work for instance through academic lectures or other contributions,
- Leading the discussions
- Working out a report from it's seminar and
- Dissemination of the results through the ETEN website or an instiutional ETEN page linked to the ETEN website.
- In cooperation with the Board, the arranging ETEN host partner takes care of the organisation of
- Innovation and comparison in Education Issues and
- Subject based academic or other relevant staff exchanges or other concerning, actual topics.
7. General procedures and commitments
7.1 Procedures
The Network programmes operate through a series of bi-lateral institutional agreements, monitored and revised according to need. The ETEN co-operation programme is to stimulate groups of ETEN partners to apply for funding from appropriate agencies.
Information and Communication Technology should be used in accordance with the different activities of the Network.
The general procedures and commitments are student mobility, staff mobility and publications.
7.2 Student mobility
Student mobility takes place in accordance with Socrates guidelines or bi-lateral institutional agreement.
7.3 Staff mobility
The visit of staff members from ETEN partners is to be effected on the basis of selection by the home organisation according to the needs and requirements of the host organisation.
7.4 Publications
The results of ETEN Activities and associated papers are published on the Web site.
The minutes of all Board and ECO meetings are circulated to the ECOs and TIG leaders.
When ever necessary the ETEN page from each member institution is updated on the homepage of the institution with a link to the ETEN Website,
8. Membership
8.1 Admission conditions and procedures
- ETEN membership is open to European Universities, Higher Education Colleges and Advanced Education Institutions educating and training teachers and/or social educators, local educational and social authorities and relevant associations of teachers and social educators. To widen the co-operation perspectives, the Network can also comprise ETEN members from outside Europe.
- Admission can take place through application or invitation.
- Application for admission is to be addressed to the Secretariat and submitted to the Board.
- The Board will decide whether or not to invite potential members to an ETEN meeting as guests to present their organisation.
- The final decision whether to accept an applicant is taken by the Board, normally in consultation with members from the same country.
- As soon as an applicant is admitted, it is the responsibility of the ETEN secretary to send out Statutes, regulations and other relevant material.
- The educational ETEN members should use a Student Information Package according to the ECTS (European Credit Transfer System) recommendations.
8.2 Criteria for admission
- An ETEN member educates teachers and/or social educators on nationally recognised programmes or represents additional fields of expertise according to education.
- An ETEN member must be able to document in which parts of developing teacher and/or social educator education or school development it is engaged or if it has special experiences which can be offered within the ETEN co-operation.
- Generally staff and students of the members must be able to understand and speak English at such a level that it is possible to exchange experiences and opinions in a professional and educationally relevant way.
- It would be appropriate if a new ETEN member already has some experience with international co-operation.
- An ETEN partner must be ready to earmark the necessary resources to join the other ETEN partners in an equal co-operation way.
- The ETEN membership agreement is entered into for a period of two years as from January 1st and shall be extended automatically unless notice of cancellation is given to the Secretariat before January 1st.
8.3 ETEN Alumni
To support ETEN former ECOs, board members, TIG leaders and others who have been active within ETEN and are retired from their respective institutions can join the ETEN Alumni. The purpose of the ETEN Alumni is to support ETEN activities and keep the network active. The alumni members have the possibility to meet every year in connection to the TIG based Conference. One Alumni representative can attend the ECO and TIG leader meetings with no voting rights. The alumni members have access to the ETEN website. ETEN will have no annual membership fee for Alumni members.
9. Finances and Administration
9.1 Membership fee
In order to meet the cost of administering the Network each partner is to contribute an annual membership fee, to be fixed each September meeting. The fee is calculated according to a scale based on the GDP of the country that the member belongs to. The scale refers to the statistics of Human Development's annual report. There are three levels of fee: Full fee (Number 1-39), half fee (number 40-78) and one sixth fee (number 79-177). The Board is to recommend to ECO Meeting the fees for the coming financial year. The participating members are to take joint steps to acquire external funds which can be used to support activities to be carried out as part of their collaboration.
9.2 The Secretariat
The Secretariat consists of the Board Chairperson and the ETEN Secretary. The latter, unlike the Board Secretary, has an overall remit within the Network. The duties of the ETEN Secretary and the associated costs are decided by the Board.
February 2006