The main objective of the LOOP project is to contribute to the shift towards a comprehensive teaching profession policy that spans all stages of teaching careers. The project will develop formal training of mentors’ programme and teacher’s induction programme to improve the career paths in the teaching profession, field-test and modify these programmes and prepare them for scalability.
There are three ministries and 10 universities or research institutions from seven countries in the project partnership. The project duration is March 2021 – February 2024. The Faculty of Theology closely cooperates with the Ministry of Education, Science and Sport of Slovenia as well as other important stakeholders – both in the field of policy as well as institutions directly embedded in educational processes.
In addition to actively participating in all segments of the project – from developing protocols and tools, recording the current state of affairs to the field-trials implementation and policy recommendations – the most important role of the Faculty of Theology is in the leading and coordinating the second stage of the project. In this stage examples of existing (good) practices will be examined and surveys from the field concerning actual needs of young professionals entering the field of education, their mentors, school leaders and other stakeholders will be analysed. Based on this work specific teacher induction and mentor capacitation modules will be developed. These modules will later undergo field trials and serve as a basis for policy recommendations and systemic changes hopefully induced by this project.
The project runs under the umbrella of the Erasmus+ Programme, specifically its Support for Policy Reform sub-programme as a policy experimentation and is supported through a grant from the European Commission.