Today
only a few people know about it but it will possibly be known in a wider circle
in the next school year that a new civil organisation helps the
self-organisation of teachers. CENTA Central European Teacher Academy was
established in January and now several conferences, professional initiatives
and publications are associated with its name already.
The goals of the Academy
The Academy is meant to explore and convey human, content provider and
methodological values. It is aimed at communicating outstanding teacher
personalities, careers and single achievements (exploration of human
values); as well as activities showing curricula, programmes, study
aids and textbooks (exploration of content provider’s values), and
presenting the methods of successful collective models (exploration of
methodological values).
Exploration and conveyance of human values:
- searching for and exploring outstanding but insufficiently known teacher personalities, careers and single achievements
- analysing the same achievements and presenting them to the colleagues
- through this, incorporating the specifically “human” version of
self-education and extension training in the present system of courses
Exploration of content provider’s values:
- evaluation of local and subject curricula, programmes and modules
- evaluation of textbooks, study aids and other educational materials
- evaluation of journals, newspaper articles, museums, cultural
organisation workshops and university departments promoting education
and training
Exploration of methodological values
- valuating presentation of methodologies in the process of being established or showing achievements already
- also related to the two other categories: the analytical exploration
of their impact mechanism and tricks of the trade at conferences,
extension trainings and courses
A priority goal of the Academy is to stimulate the two-way relationship
between curriculum development workshops and the profession of
teachers. As a part of this the Academy maintains special relations
with Nemzeti Tankönyvkiadó Rt. (National Textbook Publishing Company)
as the number one centre of the above-mentioned development work.
Stimulation of communication within the society of teachers
The Academy is aimed at wording, collecting and analytically rewording
the special experiences manifested in the individual regions, subjects
and special fields. During this we would like to find out what concerns
and achievements the teachers of the individual fields are engaged in.
By clarifying the given issues and transforming them into theses we
prepare a professional dialogue and submitting the thoughts to
discussion at conferences and electronically we strive for wording
advancing conclusions. The Academy is also aimed at communicating these
conclusions widely so that progressing along the established
consensuses the society of teachers may have the opportunity of further
developing itself.
Organisation of the Academy
The work of the Academy is co-ordinated by the president and the
three-member presidium. The members are organised by subjects and
regions and the two distributions intersect. (For example: college of
teachers of Hungarian, college of teachers of history – organisation of
Somogy County, Budapest organisation.)
Projects
At present the Teacher Academy is seeking for colleagues for three projects:
A/ ”New Mohicans” project: finding the new place of reading in the life of 21st century youth.
B/ ”Keel 2000” project: forming such stable personalities through
school activity who will be able to enter the ring of the labour market
more successfully later, owing to their well-balanced nature.
C/ ”Wednesday, third lesson” project: collecting and publishing the
individual creative solutions of everyday teacher’s matters and
establishing easier access to each other’s creative achievements.
Just as the development of drugs and effective agents is not the task
of family doctors or hospital physicians, similarly, the elaboration of
macro-strategies and procedures fitting the present conditions is not a
teacher’s task. The textbook publishing houses, curriculum development
workshops, background organisations of the ministry, research
institutes and universities are meant for this purpose. The task of the
Academy is to choose the most suitable drug, to determine the dosage,
and to forward the therapy to children, in accordance with their
personal demands and problems.
Increased, more lively and more objective communication is necessary
between daily practice and the development work of the big centres, and
possibly this is what our Academy is mainly destined to. The two kinds
of systems of the educational materials and the methodological devices
are compiled by two different characters of public education (namely,
textbook publishing and university methodological cabinets), and they
are meant for use to a third one (the teachers). Although the
publishing houses producing educational materials prepare teacher’s
manuals, too, this activity is kept near the minimum level because the
related costs are hardly refunded. At the same time, the training
institutions responsible for the methodological devices cannot easily
connect their accumulated knowledge to educational materials because
the supply is too varied and heterogeneous and they have to prepare
their students in such a way that they may hold on in the future school
environment independently of the background of textbooks they received.
On the other hand, teachers are overwrought and frustrated; being
engaged in everyday problems they do not look for new solutions but
mostly wait passively for their incorporation in their work.
We initiate communication between these different characters. We seat
the representatives of textbook publishers, universities and schools at
the same table. This communication should be cleared from formalities
and direct dialogue will lead to greater achievements than several
decades of paper work.
We are awaiting everyone in our colleges of different subjects and
among the members of our county organisations. Everyone can contribute
to our work as much as he/she has energy for. Details of our current
projects, conferences and news are available in our homepage (
www.tanarakademia.hu),
from where the registration sheet can also be downloaded. There are no
expectations because first of all we want to make friends with each
other. And if friendship exists sharing the tasks will be quite simple.