Teacher Education Network
Teacher Education Network (TEN) is an open Baltic and Nordic network for higher education institutions that offers primary school and kindergarten teacher training. The network’s activities give a special emphasis on aesthetic subjects, interdisciplinary art-based working methods and comparative education.
The network started in 1990 as a bilateral cooperation between two institutions and has since grown to include 9 institutions in the Nordic and Baltic countries. The purpose of the network is to increase the cooperation and cultural understanding between the countries through student and staff exchanges and to develop new intensive courses involving both students and teachers from all partner institutions. TEN has successfully organized several inter-disciplinary intensive courses and student and teacher mobility/exchange over the last 40 years.
Recent projects
2022–2025: Innovative and sustainable aesthetic methods for citizenship education – Climate Challenges (ISAMCE-CC)
TEN’s project ISAMCE 2016-19 opened perspectives on citizenship through the concepts of Freedom, Equality and Brotherhood. The current project (2022-25) is based on these concepts but addresses the urgency of climate challenges facing the world. The project’s subtitles Connect (2023), Consider (2024) and Change (2025) aims to engage a deeper understanding of citizenship related to moral principles and intrusive dilemmas concerning economy, ecology, responsibility, and power – which may interfere with traditional values and habits connected to production and consumption. The complexity of the theme demands reflections and considerations on many levels both local and global. The first part of the three-year project ISAMCE-CC project was carried out in Tallinn in April 2023.
Tallinn 2023
Day 1 - WarmUp and introductions
Day 2 - Creative City/Workshops
Day 3 - Workshops and visit to Arvo Pärt
Day 4 - Warm-up/Workshop
2020-2022:
TEN’s project had to be postponed due to the covid-19 pandemic.
2016–2019: Innovative and sustainable aesthetic methods for citizenship education: Nordic and Baltic perspectives (ISAMCE)
The aim of this project is to develop skills and competencies related to citizenship, such as the capacity for communication and dialogue, the capacity to live with others, to recognize and accept differences, sharing narratives, critical thinking, and participation by working in an aesthetical collaborative learning approach.
'Freedom' was the subtitle of the project’s intensive course part 1, successfully organized in Copenhagen, Denmark in April 2017. A second Intensive course with the subtitle 'Equality' was completed in April 2018 in Reykjavik, Iceland. The third course 'Brotherhoods/sisterhoods – Solidarity’ completed in Stockholm, Sweden in April 2019.
Aslaug Furholt is coordinator and project manager from 2018.
2011–2015: Mythology, culture and identity in the Baltic and Nordic countries
The project started in 2011 with an intensive course with the subtitle Norse Mythology through music and arts in Reykjavik in Iceland. The second course with the title Norse mythology through drama, dance, music and visual art was organized in Bergen, Norway in September 2013. The third and last course had the title Autumn equinox celebration - Baltic and Nordic cultural identity through traditional seasonal celebration and took place in Riga in September 2015. All three courses were very successful. See project description, reports and films.