2025 Conference
This year’s SCoTENS annual conference will take place in the beautiful Lough Erne Resort, Enniskillen on 16 and 17 October 2025. The theme for this year is A New Era for Professionalism: Teacher Identity, Authenticity and Agency
We invite researchers to explore the evolving landscape of teacher professionalism, examining how shifts in society, technology, and education policies have prompted a redefinition of what it means to be a professional teacher. Researchers are encouraged to examine the multifaceted influences that shape and define teacher professionalism, emphasising factors such as policy frameworks, curriculum reforms, and societal expectations. This conference aims to uncover both the pressures and possibilities shaping the future of the teaching profession in this new era and to explore the potential impact on pedagogy, collaboration, and teacher autonomy.
In order to address the theme, participants are asked to consider:
- How has the concept of teacher professionalism transformed in recent times?
- What influences, shapes and defines teacher professionalism?
- What sustains teacher identity, authenticity and agency?
- What threatens teacher identity, authenticity and agency?
This year’s SCoTENS conference offers a timely opportunity to critically consider this major theme and examine the questions indicated above.
Take a look at our conference page for further details!
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STUDENT-TEACHER EXCHANGE
Providing the next generation of teachers the opportunity to experience a very different educational, social and political setting.
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Seed Funding Scheme
Each year, SCoTENS provides Seed Funding to support a number of collaborative research projects and professional activities in teacher education in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
Read MoreAbout SCoTENS
Welcome to the home of the Standing Conference on Teacher Education, North and South (SCoTENS). SCoTENS is a network of 34 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.
SCOTENS was established in 2003 to create a safe space for teacher educators – North and South– to come together and discuss issues of common interest, and explore ways of co-operating closely together. A part of the broader peace dynamic that was gathering momentum on the island of Ireland at the time, it has always been rooted in the deepest commitment to quality teaching and learning for all. We believe that SCOTENS is the only network of its kind operating across a contested border in the world.
It has been involved in supporting a wide range of research, conference and exchange projects since it was founded in 2003:
The SCoTENS annual conference is a key fixture in the education calendar on the island of Ireland. The annual SCoTENS conference provides a forum where teacher educators across the island of Ireland can engage in open, critical and constructive analysis of current issues in education with a view to promoting a collaborative response to these issues.
The SCoTENS Seed Funding Programme promotes and funds a range of research-based initiatives with a view to establishing sustainable North-South partnerships and projects.
The North/South Student Teacher Exchange project, brings student teachers from Dublin to do a key part of their assessed teaching practice in Belfast schools, and Belfast student teachers to do the same in Dublin. Its membership is open to all Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) that offer programmes of Initial Teacher Education (ITE).