From 1st August 2025, the TEAN network has been incorporated into the British Educational Research Association (BERA https://www.bera.ac.uk/). As the BERA Teacher Education Advancement Network, TEAN will continues as a distinctive network and is governed by a steering group within BERA.
This change enhances the support we can offer to teacher educators and means that BERA members will have full access to TEAN webinars and a member discount for TEAN annual conferences, as well as all the benefits of BERA membership. For colleagues without BERA membership it will be possible to continue to engage with TEAN but there will be a small fee for TEAN webinars and a full registration fee for TEAN conference.
The 2026 BERA TEAN conference is at Sheffield Hallam University on 20 and 21 May 2026. The call for papers is available now with a deadline of 1st December 2025.
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Learning from TEAN Conference 2024
The TEAN (teacher education advancement network) Annual Conference 2024 was held in Manchester UK in May. The conference provides a powerful professional learning opportunity for teacher educators and the 2024 event included two outstanding and provocative keynotes, a choice of practical workshops, and a wide range of presentations by teacher educators of research into aspects of teacher education and development or their evaluation of innovative practice. Scroll down the page below to get a taste of TEAN Conference 2024:
Anti-racist teacher education
- Including selected abstracts and three 5 minute ‘mini-keynote’ videos
Surfing the semantic wave (Legitimation Code Theory – LCT)
- Including selected abstracts and video of keynote by Prof Lee Rusznyak
New thinking on the complexity of teaching and of education
- Including video of keynote by Prof Gert Biesta
The full abstracts pdf digital conference programme is available here. This document is suitable for downloading and searching BUT do not print, it is very long! The pdf is searchable using keywords or simply by browsing. Have a browse to see what teacher educators are currently working on.
Anti-racist teacher education
TEAN Conference 2024 included an important theme of anti-racist teacher education and decolonising the teacher education curriculum, selected abstracts for these presentations is available here.
The education policy context, especially in England, has arguably been hostile towards the development by teacher educators of teacher education that supports beginning teachers to be anti-racist and to work for social justice. In his five minute mini-keynote teacher educator Ian Cushing, of Manchester Metropolitan University, emphasises the need for teacher educators to build solidarity and resistance – click here.
Anjali Shah, teacher educator from the University of Chester, focuses on cultural capital through the lens of racial literacy and begins her mini-keynote with a story about Diwali and Christmas remembered from her own experience as a pupil. She argues that teacher educators need to prepare new teachers to be confident in building a culturally relevant, racially literate curriculum and pedagogy for their pupils – click here.
Mark Plater, building from Bourdieu’s concept of habitus, argues that a ‘personal worldviews’ approach is helpful or even essential to school education. he proposes practical strategies by which teachers can integrate a worldviews approach across the curriculum. This approach potentially could connect to efforts to decolinise the curriculum and to develop anti-racist education – click here.
During conference Lorraine Anim-Addo, studying her doctorate with University of Sussex, presented her research project which uses life history narratives to investigate the absence of black teachers from leadership positions in London. In her mini-keynote she shared reflections on her experiences as a black researcher. Introducing the conference audience to the concept of ‘blacknowledgement’ she emphasises the need to talk to people because even a black researcher has to work hard to appreciate the complexities of black identity.
Surfing the Semantic Wave (Legitimation Code Theory – LCT)
TEAN Conference 2024 included an important theme on the analysis of classroom teaching including the application of Legitimation Code Theory (LCT). A pre-conference workshop by school-based teacher educator Andy Ash, Holy Family Multi-Academy Trust, introduced key elements of LCT applied in his research to analysis of primary maths teaching. Dale Langford, from University of Witwatersrand in South Africa, used constellation analysis combined with analysis of semantic gravity, elements within an LCT apporach, to investigate how student teachers might use a conceptual toolkit to develop research-informed analyis of lessons. Diane Swift, based at Keele University, found that by engaging with LCT analysis mentors and mentees were enabled to both draw on and contribute to professional knowledge in a more dynamic way, increasing their epistemic agency. Pete Boyd, University of Cumbria, argues that classroom video stimulated recall interviews with teachers can, if carefully designed, generate rich data that lends itself to useful analysis using LCT tools. Andy Ash, Holy Family Multi-Academy Trust, outlined how he developed a methodology for his doctoral research that used a three phase approach to analysis, building on hybrid thematic analysis by applying LCT. Selected abstracts are available here.
In her keynote Prof Lee Rusznyak, Professor at University of Witwatersrand in South Africa, focuses on ‘Classroom Conversations’, using Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) to analyse and strengthen teaching observation debrief dialogue between beginning teachers and teacher educators. The 50 minute video of Lee’s keynote is available here.
New thinking on the complexity of teaching and of education
In his keynote Prof Gert Biesta challenged teacher educators around ‘Taking Teaching Seriously’, which has implications for research-informed practice, effective educational research, and pushing back on ‘learnification’. This engaging keynote is available here.
During this year, several colleagues within the TEAN community have formed international teacher educator reading groups and focused on some of Gert Biesta’s previous work. The TEAN Conference included presentations arising from these international collaborations and considering how concepts developed by Gert Biesta, such as subjectification and pointing, have been helpful in considering policy and practice in teacher education and development.
Previous Events
Check out a brief review of TEAN conference 2023 by clicking here.
To join the TEAN network send a request email to tean@cumbria.ac.uk.
Teacher Education Advancement Network (TEAN) 