In a report issued by Educational Research entitled, Meeting The Challenges of Generational Change in the Teaching Profession: Towards a European Model For Intergenerational Teacher Collaboration indicate that Europe is facing a similar problem as the United States, with the aging of their teaching professional staff.
Reports indicate that one-third of all teachers in Europe are older than 50 and that many senior teachers contemplate retiring asearly as possible (European Commission, 2009). At the same time, asignificant number of junior teachers leave the profession a few years after starting (ETUCE, 2008). European schools face a shortage of trained educational staff and the resultant degraded educational quality, so it is necessary to support junior teachers at the early stages of their careers and encourage senior teachers to remain intheir profession and continue their professional development. The number of teachers expected to retire in the next few years is especially high (European Commission, 2008), and these senior teachers take their expertise and knowledge about the schools’ micro culture with them.