A key event of the first project year was the second consortium meeting held in Ljubljana, Slovenia, from 1st to 3rd of July, 2010. Representatives of all partner teams attended making up for more than 40 participants.

The meeting was opened by the Dean of the Fcaulty of Education, Prof. Dr.Janesz Krek. In his introduction he presented the Slovenian White Paper on Education, a comprehensive process aimed at modernising the national education system based on comparative analysis. The subsequent discussion proved the high relevance of the GOETE research perspective for contemporary processes of policy making in the field of education.

After this introductory session, country reports were presented providing all consortium members with a fresh overview over the contextual similarities and differences within the GOETE project. This was followed by sessions in the plenary as well as in smaller working groups on the different empirical working packages (surveys, analysis of teacher training, case studies). In particular, the sampling process, methodological issues and draft questionnaires were discussed. Especially, during the working groups on survey questionnaires the consortium revealed a high capacity of working together and of reconciling the need of standardisation with openness for contextual difference.

This process was framed by the presentation and discussion of an operationalization matrix designed to incorporate all WPs in a cross-cutting perspective. This process proved to be highly relevant in order to prevent the single empirical work packages from developing particular agendas making later triangulation difficult.

The meeting was preceded by a meeting of the Young Researchers Group in which the young researchers involved in the GOETE project presented their own research projects (e.g. phd theses), discussed common issues as well as their interconnections with GOETE.