My greetings to the Board. It’s so rewarding for me, one of the five founding members, to see how ETEN has grown and developed. Well done ETEN and all of you! Neil Hall had shared with me his detailed letter to you re. the history and development of the publications and suggested I might also write focussing on the early history. I had read the delightful ‘The History of ETEN’, which deals with the early history and the development of publications but I welcome the opportunity to expand on that a little. I have been fully retired since 2006 though was invited by the Board to attend the Helsinki conference to give a presentation on how ETEN had developed and to give the after dinner speech. It took me an eventful seven days to get home!

In the early years publication was not a priority. Student and staff exchange was. The Board and the ECO’s were two different groups who met separately and not always in the same place.

Each year’s conference had a selected theme and delegates attending chose one of normally four groups to discuss the lead lectures. In between they used the time to organise their exchanges.

When the  conference was held at Greenwich in 1993 a rapporteur system was established and a conference report was published focussed on the conference theme of ‘Interculural Education in Europe in the 1990’s’s: Teacher Education Perspectives.’ This contained all the conference details and the reports of the four discussion groups with a general set of conclusions. This became the pattern as each subsequent conference theme had four or five related discussion groups and the host produced a Report of the Conference for distribution to member institutions and participants.

It took some years for a Conference Proceedings to be formalised. The movement to the TIG structure for conferences was a  result of the setting up of various courses within ETEN due to the shared interests of members, e.g. ‘Urban Education’ and ‘Myths and Fairy Tales’. These often generated anE.C. funded project or a course for students to attend, all well described in ‘The History of ETEN’.The TIG model finally established itself in 1999. but as yet no formal system of publications. Neil Hall’s influence and drive now got this organised, helped by myself.

In 2002 the Conference was held at Greenwich when the organisation was around the eight existing Thematic Interest Groups. The aims of the Conference were:

1. To provide the opportunity for the eight existing TIGS to meet to exchange and share professional experiences through the presentation of papers and discussion.

2. To explore collaborative opportunities for student and staff exchange particularly involving educational initiatives, material development and research through joint projects.

All papers were published but the best would be refereed by an international editorial panel for consideration in a volume of Occasional Papers to be printed at Greenwich from 2003. This was a considerable shift for ETEN and provided the opportunity for conference attendees to get something published in the Proceedings with an ISBN number. It also meant that funding for attendance would be more readily available as for some institutions funding was determined by the research and publication profile annually achieved. The Conference Proceedings Neil and I produced involved considerable editing as many authors were not writing in their native tongue. By 2003 the best were selected for publication in the new Occasional Papers. After much debate this was now the model.

The Conference Proceedings lead to JETEN in 2005, a natural progression and a welcome one as a Journal really establishes an organisation.

ETEN now sits proudly as a major international group of over 60 members, something we original five find both pleasing and amazing. As I look back on my professional career my work for ETEN is something I’m very proud of in terms of it’s impact and the enjoyment I got from it. The evolution achieved takes considerable time, discussion and organisation. Long may it continue.

Doug Springate <dougspringate@yahoo.co.uk>

Categories: News, The history of ETEN