The annual meeting of the “Empowering Teacher Education” Research and Development Community (RDC) of the Association for Teacher Education in Europe (ATEE) was held in Vilnius, Lithuania, on April 22–24, 2026, under the title “The Pedagogy of Meaning in Teacher Education: When Values Become Practice.” The event was hosted by the Faculty of Pedagogy at Vilniaus Kolegija / Higher Education Institution.

The ATEE Empowering Teacher Education RDC, co-chaired by Assoc. Prof. Dr. Ufuk Ataş, a faculty member of our department, is an international research and development community that brings together teacher educators from Europe and beyond. The community aims to make teacher educators’ interests, potentials, and ideas more visible and to empower teacher educators and teacher education across Europe.

This year’s annual meeting provided a platform for comprehensive discussions on meaning, values, and how these values are translated into practice in teacher education. Throughout the meeting, participants addressed the professional motivation, sense of responsibility, value-based choices, and professional commitment of teacher educators. They also shared experiences from different countries, research findings, and institutional perspectives on the challenges facing teacher education.

The event also included a roundtable discussion for leaders and representatives of higher education institutions involved in teacher education. The discussion focused on how teacher educators’ motivation and value-based professional awareness can be strengthened at the institutional level.