Agreeing on key concepts in the Digital TA project

This article presents the key concepts developed and adopted in the Digital TA project. The text focuses on the most important of these concepts: university, school, teacher training centre, university teacher, novice teacher, school principal, mentor, internship/practicum, and internship supervisor/practitioner. The concepts were often understood similarly, but differences in definitions across partner countries required clarification. The terminology related to beginner teachers (beginning teacher, novice teacher, newly qualified teacher) needed to be addressed first. Based on a literature review and findings gathered in preparation for the project, co-participants from countries such as Belgium, the Czech Republic, Spain, Ireland, and Poland agreed that, in the Digital TA project, novice teachers would be defined as graduates of higher education programmes who are entitled to practice as teachers and are within the first 1 to 5 years of their employment.