Initial Teachers Education: The eTwinning experience in five Italian universities

The eTwinning programme aims to foster the exchange and circulation of good practices between European schools, with positive implications for teachers' professional development. Through the Initial Teacher Training programme for several years now, it has also been extended to universities, mainly involving Primary Education students, future teachers. The present study aims to identify practices and organisational models in use in five Italian universities, as well as potentials and lines of development accompanying the integration of eTwinning in pre-service teacher education. The specific objective guiding the present research is to find out in different contexts what the benefits and criticalities of the eTwinning initiative are in terms of organising and managing training in Higher Education for future teachers. In this research, data collected through 21 in-depth semi-structured interviews with various stakeholders and analytic procedures of the multiple evaluation case study are the main source of evidence. From stakeholders’ perspective, the most significant advantage of joining ITE is the expansion of the collaboration network in the national and worldwide academic communities, as well as in the educational system.