Summarium
Summary

Summary/Abstract: Teachers and teacher training are steadily reliable topics of educational researches. However, there are times when an even larger attention is directed towards teacher training than usual. This phenomenon would deserve a more accurate analysis, yet, we can assume that labor force considerations play an important role in this. The congruence between the demand for teaching staff and the output of teacher-training is rare, though, but in case of larger disorders (like substantial oversupply or surplus) one can experience a growing dissatisfaction expressed against the training, and more lively professional debates and researches. A disorder could be one reason for the nowadays so active attention toward this topic worldwide. In the recent past there have been running several comprehensive international research projects on the situation of teachers and their training in the framework of OECD and the European educational information network (of which our readers can find information in this issue). Among the formulated problems one can find the shortage of teachers so much present in the developed part of the world. Although the contrary can be seen in our region (in post-socialist countries), issues like attracting efficient teachers to this profession, retaining them there, renewing the quality side of teacher training (the most important problems formulated by international researches) are issues with considerable actuality in our countries as well. This is why our participation in the above mentioned surveys enlivened the professional and public concerns in our country. There are wider reasons for the renewed interest than that of the narrow concept of teacher training. There has been such a rapid and spectacular expansion of higher education in the last one and a half decades in Hungary, that decision-makers and persons working in education had to face many problems to be answered through researches, professional debates and experiments. Questions related to the quality assurance of massified education (and teacher training as a part of this), the chances of the qualified persons on the labor market, the adaptation of content of education to the mass educational forms seem unavoidable in our days. As an imminent urge couples to this our joining the European Higher Education Area, a space where other European countries have tried to manage difficulties arising from the mass higher education since decades, among more fortunate economic conditions and with more extended experiences in learning from each other. And finally, we should not forget the latest development among the challenges of higher education, known as the “Bologna process”, which constrains the European higher education traditionally organized in a dual system to become competitive with the basically American-type two-cycle education, fit to serve mass education better. Therefore we cannot be surprised that actors having a key role in the transition and writing about teacher training as experts in our issue describe the events of our times as the most radical transformations of the last decades. Another great challenge represents the transformations of public education systems in the globalizing world. The idea of more or less homogenous societies, homogenized precisely by the culture and contents disseminated in schools, is pushed to the background, while the social-political expectations increase towards the publicly financed educational sector, where schools should have a serving role, equally paying attention to the demands of each social and cultural group. This trend makes the shift in the work of teachers to the pedagogical culture having the roots, again, in the Anglo-Saxon traditions, focusing on individual treatment, as opposed to the continental methods of “teaching classes”. Moreover, the demand towards the new pedagogical culture increases in teacher training itself. Changes have accumulated a little in Hungary. The articles of this issue were born in this changing, fermenting situation, therefore the lacks sensed by the editor and the authors themselves might tell as much about the topic as the works done. Let’s review these lacks first! The explicit lack of certain subjects (e.g. presentation of the efficiency of the educational system; analysis from educational policy viewpoint of the debates, views and interests concerning the transformation; studies on the level of student satisfaction in teacher training; conclusions drawn concerning the suitability of newly qualified teachers; analysis of content and methodology of teaching; the issue of training oftrainers, etc.) indicates well that researchers about teacher training in Hungary are not ready to fully cover the scientific background of policy transformations, or the professional analysis of actual events. The same conclusion is suggested indirectly by the emphasis on international approaches in this issue: it is remarkable that we have a more detailed view about the dilemmas of two-cycle teacher training in two German lands than about its situation in Hungary. However, we do hope that the thematic issue itself will inspire and revive of experts to do the analyzing work about teacher training in our country. The study of Istvdn Polonyi examines teacher training from an educational economist approach. He describes how demands towards teacher training have been decreasing since the middle of the decade of general expansion in higher education, of course, not independently from possibilities provided by the labor market. Reviewing the data on applicants in 2000 we can have a picture about some of the background features of students (they are mostly women, from rural areas, having middle or lower educational results). However, lacking longitudinal studies and comparisons with other educational areas, these data are only suitable to formulate hypotheses. On the basis of studies about employment of newly qualified young people the author shows how different employment chances for various teacher-training sectors. The article also examines in detail the trends in public financing teacher training and draws our attention, that lacking strategic thinking in financing teacher training is exposed to contingency and to disadvantages coming from the traditionally low level of interest representation of teacher training inside higher education sector. The article by Ivan Falus describes the change of attitude characteristic to international-level professional thinking about becoming a teacher. The author describes that in the intensive, yet short period ofbasic training of teachers an increasing attention is paid to examining input knowledge of students, to the prominently important period of the beginner teachers, as well as to the constant professional renewal of competencies. This means that the teacher career is seen much as other careers, a constant building on different stages. This approach gives the opportunity for a more concrete and accountable formulation of expectations towards teacher training, as well as for stating the output demands and standards of teacher training. The article by M aria Nagy - using the analysis of the relevant international literature as well as new empirical data - examines the special starting period in a teacher’s career. Although the statements of the research done with qualitative methods (interviews, fieldwork, case studies) are of limited validity, they focus our attention towards some not yet examined facets of schools employing beginner teaching staff. We can observe how little help freshly qualified teachers are provided for their work, and how poor their more experienced co-workers reflections about their work are. The negative aspects of professional dialogue are especially reflected by cases where young teachers are “forced” to work together with their teaching pairs - because of their duty to do so, for example in day-care centers -, which can be beneficial for the work of both teachers. The study also draws our attention to the possible usefulness of different methods of class work observation. Ilona Lisko examines the next phase of a teacher’s career: through the results of an empirical study she tries to answer the question whether the already practicing teachers receive any support for their pedagogical problems during their postgraduate training sessions. Based on questionnaires filled out by school principals, she describes the types of social-pedagogical problems faced by pedagogues teaching in different schools, and how these competencies are judged by their superiors, the school principals. Then, in the light of the above she analyses the offer in postgraduate teacher training, and the amount of courses teachers used up in the period of the research. She concludes that the offer and the choices of courses are not so much oriented by the actual competency-demands, but either by educational policy aims or by the expectations of teachers concerning their career-advancement (or keeping their job). The next two articles of the volume is dealing with the so-called “Bologna process”. The study by Andor Laddnyi and Krisztina Szoke reviews the recent transformation of several teacher-training systems in Europe, directed towards the two-cycle system. The review points to the colorfulness of teacher training in Europe, in traditions as well as in type, but it also reminds us that the adaptation of teacher training to the Bologna process is taking various forms. The authors subtly make a hint that the teacher training programs do not prove to have a strong power to protect their own interests, and the specific pedagogical (professional) considerations are often set aside. The authors undertake an evaluation of the situation in Hungary, acknowledging with content that there has been positive developments in nursery-school teacher and elementary teacher training, but ringing the alarm to the planned changes in secondary-school teacher training. Ldszlo Brezsnydnszky and Iren Virdg wrote about the debates and modeling experiments in a teacher-training system quite similar to ours in their traditions (more precisely in two German lands). By describing the model in Bochum and Bielefeld, the authors illustrate sensibly that the transition to the two-cycle system cannot be carried out either without a hitch or quickly enough, even where education has already been adopted to the new demands of public education. The description also points to the fact that without the interests and commitment of universities and higher education institutions a long-term and substantial transformation cannot be imagined, even if creating such a situation is never a rapid process. The German examples illustrate well the importance of labor-force, and the exploration and reconsideration of graduates’ chances for employment. The article by Nora Milotay also brings us to the realm of international situation, presenting the activities of an EU Workshop being engaged in policy formation in teacher-training. Through its activity, the workshop consisting of international professionals and European Commission experts, while working on the transformation of teacher training, it actually seeks for tools that could be helpful in developing the national policies. Working with the method of open coordination, the duties of the workshop include developing and carrying through strategic aims that builds on mutual learning processes based on partnerships. The study touches upon the Hungarian case as well, noting, that it might take a long learning period for the newly joining countries - and thus, for Hungary - to master communication and mutual learning as an effective regulating educational policy tool. The row of articles is closed by Magdolna Keller, who undertakes the discussion of the Hungarian language teacher training in a specific “international” space, that from outside of borders of Hungary. The study is filling a gap: there hasn’t been such a systematic review about Hungarian language teacher training in the four regions (Transylvania, Upper Lands, Vojvodina and Subcarpathia). The article examines how these education programs, while trying to solve most problems our authors posed in the previous articles about Hungarian and other European countries, also have to accomplish specific national aims (creating a national elite, preserving the Hungarian language in a minority situation). The synopsis of each region presents the various solutions, results and specificities of these struggles.

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