Welcome to the home of the Standing Conference on Teacher Education, North and South (SCoTENS for short).
SCoTENS brings together 38 colleges of education, university education departments, teaching councils, curriculum councils, education trade unions and education centres on the island of Ireland with a responsibility for and interest in teacher education. It has been involved in supporting a wide range of research, conference and exchange projects since it was founded in 2003. Over 50 research projects have been seed-funded during that time: including on Special Educational Needs, continuing professional development, English as an Additional Language, the inclusion of newcomer and ethnic minority children, citizenship education, educational research, ICT and digital video in education, young children’s identities, social justice education, developing reflective skills, art and science education, physical education, autism, archiving education documents, religious education, Irish medium education, maths education, literacy and peer mentoring. The SCoTENS secretariat is provided by the Centre for Cross Border Studies in Armagh. The SCoTENS Administrator is Ms Patricia McAllister.
Three new reports will be launched at the 2009 SCoTENS annual conference in Malahide, Co Dublin, on 15-16 October: School Leadership Policy and Practice, North and South: SCoTENS 2008 Conference and Annual Report (by NI Minister for Education, Ms Caitriona Ruane MLA); Professional Development for Post-Primary SEN Teachers in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland; and Becoming a Teacher: Primary Student Teachers as learners and teachers of History, Geography and Science: an all-Ireland study. The 2009 conference theme is ’Reflective Practice: Challenges for Teacher Education.’
SCoTENS also sponsors the North/South Student Teacher Exchange project, now in its sixth year, which brings student teachers from Dublin and Limerick to do a key part of their assessed teaching practice in Belfast schools, and Belfast student teachers to do the same in Dublin and Limerick.
The themes of previous SCoTENS annual conferences have been ‘Challenges to Teacher Education and Research, North and South’ (Malahide 2003); ‘The Changing Contexts of Teacher Education, North and South’ (Armagh 2004); ‘Teacher Education for Citizenship in Diverse Societies’ (Malahide 2005); ‘Teacher Education and Schools: Together Towards Improvement’ (Belfast 2006); ‘Teaching in the Knowledge Society’ (Malahide 2007); ‘School Leadership, Policy and Practice, North and South’ (Belfast 2008).
This site highlights resources on Special Education, Citizenship Education and Digital Video which have been designed for teachers and teacher educators throughout the island of Ireland.
