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Chemistry Teachers’ Training in the Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles (Belgium)

Zlata Selak, Julien Keutgen

with contributions from
Divna Brajkovic (HELMo), Myriam De Kesel (UCL), Nathalie Matthys (ENCBW),
Bernard Leyh (ULg), Jean-Luc Pieczynski (SeGEC), Bernard Tinant (UCL)
Inforef (Belgium)

[email protected]

Abstract

In Belgium, education is not a national matter. Belgium is divided in three territorial regions (Brussels, Flanders and Wallonia) and three communities based on the three official languages of the country (Dutch, French and German). Education is the responsibility of communities, in our case the French-speaking Community, officially called “Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles” (referred to as FWB) as French is spoken in Wallonia and Brussels. In the FWB, teacher training depends on the Ministry of Upper Education.

Two approaches to teachers’ initial training are organised:

The initial training of primary school (for pupils between 6 and 12 years old) and lower secondary school (12 to 15) teachers is called “régendat”, or AESI. It is organised in non-university colleges, called in Belgium Hautes Écoles (HE) This training last three years and leads to a bachelor’s degree with a professional orientation.

The AESS is the initial training of upper secondary school teachers (for 15 to 18 year old students). It is organised in universities in a five-year cycle and leads to an academic master with a didactic orientation, or in a six-year specialised academic master with extra training in didactics.

A project of structural reform of teachers’ initial training is currently under consideration to change the composition of the upper education landscape. The project intends to extend the non-university training cycle in order to harmonise it with university training and to build new frames of reference of skills. All secondary school teachers would therefore be trained in the same way. This approach has to redefine the profession of teacher in its multiple missions: pedagogic, didactic and as a social and cultural partner.

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Comments about this Paper

Your comments are welcome


Date: 2014.03.30

Posted by Mariusz Jarocki (Poland)

Message: The paper present the state of art of the teachers' education in Belgium. The document is divided into two parts: the first one is related to initial training, the second - in-service training. Both of them describe the subject on the various level of educations, present current organisation and curriculae. Unfortunately, the paper suffers from a lack of generalisations and conclusions, which could help to move results to other contexts. The Belgian solutions are very interesting for people which decide how the longlife learning system is organised, but we need a little more information about solution which can be realised on a lower level of generality. Proposals of changes, mentioned in the section 3, has to be described in more detailed form. However, the work is strongly related to the aim of the Chemistry is all around network Project, so my rating cannot be negative - the work is useful as a base for further considerations.

National Reports on successful experiences to promote lifelong learning for chemistry The national reports on chemistry successful experiences to promote lifelong learning for chemistry are now available on the related section of the project portal. The reports presents examples of successful experiences in the partner countries and the results of testing of ICT resources with science teachers.

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