Abstract:

We are coordinating the Socrates Comenius European Project ‘An INTegral Teacher Training for Developing Digital and Communicative Competences and Subject Content Learning at Schools (intTT)’, financed by the European Commission. Six Universities are participating in the project: Alcalá (Spain, coordinator of the project), Comenius, Bratislava (Slovakia), Helsinki (Finland), Lisbon (Portugal), Leicester (United Kingdom) and Teknik Karadeniz University in Trabzon (Turkey).
The intTT project is concerned with initial teacher training, consequently it is addressed to student teachers. The project intends to use a methodology which is a fusion of subject content, communicative and digital competences in order to develop these competences and improve the acquisition of subject content in primary and secondary school pupils through the didactic materials elaborated by project partners.
One of the main project outcomes is the Mobility of student teachers, a total of sixty students take part in this action. Mobility is organized by the project team and coordinated in each country by every University member of the project. Ten student teachers, selected by each University, travel to the other member Universities and simultaneously every University will receive students from the other countries. Students spend two weeks, from April 16 to April 29, 2012, at schools supervised by mentors who are in touch with University tutors.

The main aims of Mobility are to:
• implement didactic materials prepared in the project at the host school,
• contrast these materials with others used at school,
• compare practice in the host schools with teaching in their own country,
• share their pedagogic and personal experience with other colleagues,
• know the system of education they will be in touch with for the first time and to compare it with others,
• be aware of different cultures

Student teachers and mentors are helped by University partners in this participation in Mobility, Universities are in charge of buying tickets, booking lodging, etc. and also are responsible for academic aspects, for instance, previous seminars to Mobility, addressed to student teachers and mentors, are celebrated in every country to inform and guide participants in this action and to obtain maximum benefit for everybody from the Mobility programme. Post-Mobility seminars are held to evaluate the programme.

The benefits of Mobility affect student teachers as they can:
• get in touch with different educational systems,
• discover different pedagogic approaches and methodologies,
• observe their mentor giving the lesson and the real situation in the classroom,
• have a period of self-observation to analyse their own practice,
• get in touch with other reality and other culture,
• enrich their personal and professional experience.

Moreover university tutors, mentors, pupils and schools also benefit from Mobility, they are in contact with other cultures and other points of view. Furthermore, student teachers can mean motivation for pupils, some fresh air in the monotony of school life as ten student teachers from five different nationalities share school lessons and activities with school community. Student teacher’s mobility enhance a motivating interchange which intends to show different methodologies when teaching and to foster awareness of different cultures and systems of education trying to improve communication and cohesion among the different countries

Keywords:

European project, mobility, secondary education, teacher training.