A short-term expert mission under Activity 1.5 Provide recommendations for improvement of education standards for qualification for programmes in the priority areas (incl. legislative arrangements) with a view to describing achievements based on competences and skills, considering the AzQF was implemented by the Twinning project on 19, 25 and 29 June 2020.

The online mission which took place via Zoom videoconferencing platform was implemented by Mr. Eckhart Hotzel, retired professor of Strasbourg University of France, Ms. Tatjana Koke, Vice Rector for Studies of Riga Stradiņš University of Latvia and Ms. Daiva Lepaite, Expert for Educational Development and Evaluation with the European Social Fund Agency of Lithuania.

The aim of the mission was to contribute to further improving the Foreign Language Teacher study programme of Bachelor level, which was previously revised by the above-mentioned experts within the Twinning project, and to help to finalize the work on pedagogical internship part and the credits to be allocated for field-specific courses to be taught under the study programme.

To this end, experts held a webinar with the members of the Working Group on Educational Sciences set up by the Ministry of Education of Azerbaijan and shared best practices in the three European countries concerning the pedagogical internship. As a result of the webinar, the Working Group members decided to hold an internal meeting in order to discuss a local model of pedagogical internship taking into account the EU best practices and also local specificities.

Moreover, the experts held an online meeting with the representatives of the pilot universities (namely, Azerbaijan State Pedagogical University, Azerbaijan University of Languages and Sumgait State University) offering study programmes in Foreign Language Teacher and held an exchange of opinion and shared best practices in their countries on the credits to be allocated for field-specific courses under this programme.

As a result of the mission, the experts produced a joint mission report putting forward their recommendations and proposals regarding the above-said issues.