The University of Tartu (UT), established in 1632, is the oldest, largest and the only classical university in Estonia with about 13,000 students and 1,700 of academic staff. UT is Estonia’s leading centre of research and training — more than half of the PhD theses written in Estonia are defended in UT and more than half of the country’s research publications are authored by UT academics. The university stresses the importance of international co-operation and partnerships with reputable research universities all over the world.
The Institute of Education offers research-based, in-service training for teachers, special educators, speech therapists and social educators. There is an extensive in-service training programme for teachers, head teachers and university lecturers. The institute’s research focuses on teacher training, educational technology and digital literacy, special needs education and educational management. Important recent publications deal with phases of inquiry learning, student metacognition and the relationship between teaching methods and student achievement.
Center for educational technology
The Centre for Educational Technology was established in 2014 and is formally part of the Institute of Pedagogy at the University of Tartu. Among other research, the project “Making Technology Meaningful Through Digital Pedagogy” focuses on the development of teachers’ digital pedagogy as a meaningful use of digital technology in the classroom. In addition, the project “Next Generation Stakeholders and Next Level Ecosystem for Collaborative Science Education with Online Labs” (Next-Lab) developed materials and scenarios to support STEM teachers in developing digital competences in science education. Since 2017, the centre has offered a mixed international Master’s programme in Educational Technology.