ABSTRACT
In all European countries, teacher education is in the midst of turbulent but most interesting times, with new challenges seen to be ahead. The challenges European nations are facing originate in a number of developments in European societies that put high demands on their educational systems and, as a consequence, on their teaching forces. Those developments are: technicalization of the world of work, changes in the world of schooling, rationalization of the educational sector, and internationalization of education and training in Europe. This chapter shows how the European governments react to the challenges and how these reactions affect teacher education. It analyzes the trends towards rationalization and decentralization of the educational sector since the late 1980s and their impact on teacher education. In primary school teacher education, the major reforms appear to lie in two fields: the coordination between and the integration of preprimary and primary education, and between primary and junior secondary general education.
