For over twenty years the KASTALIA network has tried to improve the flow of information to those students of education in Europe who want to look beyond their own university. KASTALIA is a network of 16 institutions of teacher education, with a wide spectrum of subject areas. It covers all levels of education from pre-primary, primary, secondary and tertiary up to the research level.
The network arranges both student and staff mobility, perceives and develops professional teacher-education-student profiles, develops ways of co-operating in different educational areas and shares academic activities.
The name KASTALIA comes from Greece. KASTALIA is the sacred spring at Delphi, the sanctuary of Apollo and the seat of his oracle, Pythia. The spring is said to have a divine power of purification and foretells the future. Pythia used to drink from the clear waters of the spring. Education is like water, it is a life force, it quenches the thirst for knowledge, and it moistens dry soil into fertile land.
Future teachers should see their educational work as a spring which diffuses new ideas like moisture. In the light of internationalization and unified Europe it is crucial for future teachers to be familiar with and respect other cultures, other educational systems, other methods of teaching. In the near future, teachers will not only meet people from other nations and cultures when they travel abroad, but more and more at home, in their own classrooms.
This handbook annually informs both students and lecturers about the members of KASTALIA network and the possibilities which different institutions can offer for a period of exchange in another country. Some universities give very exact dates for their term times and others prefer to give guideline information.
