The mission of the network is to:

• Provide knowledge and recognition of teaching and educational work at all levels;
• Provide status, respect and inspiration for the teacher and social educator professions;
• Influence development and innovation of teacher and social educator education in the member countries;
• Learn about and promote understanding of the history, culture, values and traditions of the member countries, as expressed through teacher and social educator education;
• Be pro-active in essential matters concerning national and international debates on education in general and teacher and social educator education in particular;
• Promote opportunities for exchange and/or visits of individual and/or groups of students as part of their programmes of study (inclusive of teaching experience, practical training, curriculum work and research);
• Involve as many students as possible in ETEN programmes during their studies;
• Offer at least one international student activity within ETEN, in English, each year for each member institution individually or in co-operation with other member institutions to ;
• Promote opportunities for exchange and/or visits of staff members in relation to student education, teaching, school development, curriculum development and research;
• Involve as many staff as possible in ETEN programmes each year;
• Promote opportunities within teacher and social educator education programmes and school practice to incorporate comparative and intercultural perspectives on education;
• Promote opportunities for cross-national and international collaboration in research and development;
• Provide opportunities for professional staff development;
• Disseminate the work of ETEN in a wider educational context; and
• Describe, evaluate and report all ETEN activities on the ETEN Web site, in order to assure the quality of the Network.