PRO-Teachers: Comenius 1 Influence on Teachers' Professional Development.

In 2004 European Commission published Restricted call for proposals concerning activities to disseminate – decentralized actions AEC/85/03. The main objective of this proposal was to encourage SOCRATES National Agencies to play a more active and more extensive role in the process of exchanging best practices and experiences throughout Europe.

The Slovak National Agency submitted the dissemination project PRO Teachers in the frame of this call, which was approved accordingly.

The realization of the project started in August 2004 and will last till July 2005. The main aim of the project is to analyze the impact of the international cooperation within Comenius 1 projects at teachers professional development as well as to make these results visible to the broadest target groups possible: decision makers in the education resort (national, regional, local), other teachers, which have no experience with the international cooperation, media, experts in education, National Agencies in participating in SOCRATES program, European Commission.

We intend to aim our project at these specific areas of teachers professional development:

• the teachers skills to plan and accordingly realize the activities (management skills),
• the management and teachers openness to the implementation of new teaching methods (observed at the other schools or realised during project activities),
• the creation and use of the new teaching materials, which were developed within Comenius 1 projects or under the influence of international cooperation,
• innovations and use of ICT,
• influence of project cooperation at language learning in different countries (the methods and teaching materials used),
• the impact of the project cooperation at teachers personal development (social skills, improvement of the relation teachers-student, the ability to communicate the teachers needs at school, community, regional and national level, etc.)

All National Agencies involved in cooperation with experts are going to develop the questionnaires aimed at specific thematic areas, which are going to be distributed to the addressed teachers (primary and secondary level, involved in Comenius 1 projects). In order to assure the broadest dissemination effect we are going to present regularly the project development at our web pages, we will organize the national workshops with teachers where we intend to invite also the regional experts in education. On the basis of the questionnaires we will prepare the analysis of the findings (15 pages brochure) and translate it into the language of communication (English). The national analyses are going to be presented by the national experts during the international dissemination conference (19 – 20 May, 2005 Portugal).

For this event each National Agency is going to choose 3 teachers, 1 decision makers in the area of education. The conference findings as well as the conference evaluation will be published afterwards together with the national analysis in the language of communication and presented at the WebPages of the National Agencies.

We intend to disseminate the publication at all mentioned levels of the planned target groups.

The participating National Agencies:

SOCRATES National Agency, Slovakia – coordinator

Partners:

• Socrates National Agency, Iceland
• ES Socrates programos koordinavimo paramos fondas, Lithuania
• Agência Nacional para os Programas Comunitários Sócrates e Leonardo Da Vinci, Portugal
• Cirius, Denmark