Teachers and Teaching: 
Teacher Education, Practice, Professional Development (TaT)

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The research programme called Teachers and Teaching: Teacher Education, Practice, Professional Development conducts research into the teaching profession with particular focus on the training, practice and professional development of teachers.

The participants carry out research within one or more of these three fields, joining forces to explore the ways in which the training, practice and professional development of teachers interact, change and develop over time. We create new insights into the training, practice and professional development of teachers, as well as generating knowledge about current issues applying in schools today.

For instance, in connection with the training of teachers, the programme focuses on recruitment and drop-out rates at teacher-training colleges, the relationship between colleges and placement schools, theory and practice, the transition between studying to be a teacher and working as a teacher, and the question of how the experiences gained by new graduates and experienced teachers can be used by teacher-training colleges.

In relation to the practice of the teaching profession, the programme raises questions such as:

• What defines and characterises the professionalism of teachers?
• What are the values and forms of knowledge on which teachers draw in their daily work?
• What kind of general-didactic and subject-didactic understandings and practices are used in teaching?
• How are subjects, learning resources and teaching practices created – and how do they change?
• And how has the teaching profession changed over time?

The programme is also interested in the development of subject-didactic, general-didactic and pedagogical aspects of the teaching profession in continuing and further education. For instance, we study the nature and extent of continuing and further education activities, the way teachers regard their participation in these activities, and how they are reflected in the teaching and lives of teachers in general. We also study the professional development of teachers by observing changes in their working conditions and collaboration with other educators, the Danish Folkeskole and local communities. 

In this programme we focus on:

• How the training, practice and professional development of teachers are related to each other – and how they change.
• How the training, practice and professional development of teachers are related to the changing goals of formative education in schools.

The programme adopts a variety of theoretical and methodical approaches, and benefit from the fact that the participants come from different disciplinary backgrounds (history of ideas, sociology, educational theory, linguistics and philosophy) and different subject-didactic approaches. Each of these approaches can contribute interesting perspectives on the teaching profession, and the programme seeks to unite them all with a view to enriching our understanding of the complex practice of teachers.

This enables us to contribute empirical analyses, methodological development and concepts that can identify and re-conceptualise tendencies and issues relating to the training, practice and professional development of teachers with the overall goal of generating new understandings and new inspiration for the world of practice.