TESTEd Closing Conference "Teaching the Future - Re-shaping the Present"

The TESTEd closing conference ‘Teaching the Future: Re-shaping the Present’ took place from 2 to 3 April 2025 with international guests from Portugal, Finland, Ireland and Spain. Like the TESTEd project itself, the conference addressed teachers, student teachers, researchers and stakeholders from education administration and policymaking.

In order to anchor the results of the TESTEd project sustainably at all participating universities, the TESTEd consortium discussed next steps for the project results on 31 March and 1 April 2025. Through discussions and group work, further methods to integrate cross-cutting issues and TESTEd results at the different universities were established.

The conference started on 2 April with an event for pupils from the region in the Alfried Krupp Student Lab at Ruhr University Bochum. Prof. Judith Visser welcomed the classes with a keynote speech on the topic of multilingualism. International scientists from University College Cork, the University of Oulu, the Universidade Catòlica Portuguesa and the Universidad de Sevilla then organised workshops in the Alfried Krupp Student Lab. Students learnt about online algorithms via a social media simulator, built a sustainable future with Lego Serious Play and learned about foreign language learning strategies and a toolkit to improve their own wellbeing.

In the afternoon, the conference warming began at the German Mining Museum in Bochum. A guided tour of the museum was offered to promote networking, and a panel discussion was held in the evening to discuss policy recommendations on the integration of cross-cutting issues such as sustainability or democracy education in schools and teacher training. Building on the TESTEd policy paper, the topic was introduced with an impulse by Dr Marie Vanderbeke (Ruhr University Bochum). Afterwards, Prof. Kati Mäkitalo (University of Oulu), Prof. Nils Jäkel (University of Hildesheim), Dr Mirja Beutel (Städtisches Gymnasium Bergkamen) and Jonas Herrmann (Ruhr-Universität Bochum) answered questions from the moderator Juan-Miguel Diaz Castro and the audience.

After welcoming speeches by Prof Björn Rothstein and the Pro-Rector of Ruhr University Prof. Kornelia Freitag, the main conference day began with a keynote presentation on future skills in higher education by Prof Ulf-Daniel Ehlers (DHBW). Over 200 participants then took part virtually and in-person and attended poster presentations, single paper sessions and workshops on the cross-cutting topics of sustainability, digitalisation, gender-sensitive education, democracy education and multilingualism. The TESTEd Syllabus was also presented to the public for the first time. The conference ended with a networking conference dinner on campus, which was joined by the TESTEd consortium and other colleagues from teacher education.

For more information on the programme of the closing conference, please visit our conference website.