Learning From One Another Internationally: Case Studies From the International Study Association on Teachers and Teaching, 4

• In Event: 25.043 - Learning From One Another Internationally: Case Studies From the International Study Association on Teachers and Teaching

Abstract

ISATT has been a great forum for enhancing knowledge and understandings about teaching, teachers and teacher education. I have been an ISATT member for more than 20 years. The participation in such an engaging research international community was and still is an inspiration for me both as a teacher educator and as a researcher. Over the last two decades, I have been involved in several projects with other ISATT members from around the world. However, in this paper I will try to illustrate the ways in which ISATT community has expanded and reached the Portuguese and Spanish speaking world when the 2011 biennial conference took place at the University of Minho, in Braga, Portugal. The theme of the conference was “Back to the Future: Legacies, Continuities and Changes in Educational Policy, Practice and Research”. Schools and teachers face various challenges in a rapidly changing world. In such circumstances, discussing and sharing concerns of mutual interest regarding policy, practice and research is crucial to creating more sophisticated understandings of the various challenges as a first step in the improvement of education. While the future should not be imprisoned in the past, the past does provide valuable lessons that will undergo new iterations in constructing the future. The future will be multi-faceted and complex. The book published out of the 2011 conference by Sense was intended to provide important contributions from which to build the future of education (Flores et al., 2013). Many colleagues from Latin America, and particularly from Brazil, participated at the ISATT conference in Portugal in 2011 and then joined the organization. Linguistic and cultural issues explained this expansion and development. The 2011 conference represented a hallmark in ISATT history as it was the beginning of a series of projects with participants from Latin America, which included: one ISATT regional conference in Brazil, at the Minas Gerais State, in 2013; one international conference for the Portuguese and Spanish-speaking countries (including Latin America, African, such as Mozambique and Asian countries such as East Timor), in 2014, and three books out of the 2014 conference which are published in Portuguese and Spanish (Flores & Coutinho, 2014a, 2014b; Flores & Ferreira, 2015). Other joint publications and projects were developed and are still underway (see, for instance, Marcondes & Flores, 2014). A very important topic was related to teachers’ work and to teacher education as Latin America countries face several challenges that resonate with dilemmas and changes in the teaching profession in some European contexts. Members from ISATT from Latin America are still very active and some of them play a very active role in the organization. These and other issues will be discussed further in the paper.

Author

• Maria A. Flores, Minho University, Portugal