European Education Policy Network on Teachers and School Leaders (EEPN) project published its first year research dedicated to the topic of career and professional development of school staff. The network represents a broad geographic scope and a variety of backgrounds of participating institutions and associations, from policy, practice and it  addressed the theme with a multi-perspective approach that resulted in four research strands:

DESK RESEARCH REPORT 1 – Good practices from practitioner and parent perspective
The paper presents inspiring practices aiming at offering answers to the overarching question EEPN is working on: how to make teacher and school leader careers more attractive in different European countries. The report analyses practices from various European countries and from different phases of teaching careers considering how effectively the examples address the most important issues school systems are facing in connection to teachers to support answers to the overarching research question from the perspective of practitioners and parents.

DESK RESEARCH REPORT 2 – Good practices on policy advice and implementation
The desk research focuses on educational effectiveness and quality of education. It provides examples from a group of selected European Union countries, which, within different socio-economic and cultural contexts, provide efficient education and continuous professional development for teachers and school leaders, and implement policies and practices leading to quality schooling measured by the level of student achievement.

DESK RESEARCH REPORT 3 – Teacher recruitment, retention and motivation in Europe
The report provides a short overview on teacher shortages across Europe, pre-service teachers’ motivation to teach, the retention of beginning teachers, in-service teacher motivation and demotivation linking to student motivation and student performance. The desk research concludes that excessive workload and time pressures are strongly associated with low teacher well-being.

DESK RESEARCH REPORT 4 – Ten most relevant European Commission funded projects for teachers’ and school leaders’ more attractive career paths
The search for EC-funded projects focusing on teachers’ and school principals’ health, professional development opportunities, increasing professional demands and need for more support was performed via the Tempus project database as well as the databases for Erasmus Key Action 2 (KA2) and Key Action 3 (KA3)

All full reports are available in the research section of the EEPN website.