Exploring the features, benefits and challenges of the eTwinning ite. A multiple case study in five Italian universities.

Initial Teacher Education is the first, crucial step in a journey of a teacher's professional life. By shaping future teachers' knowledge, skills, and mindsets, it lays the foundations for their capacity to lead and facilitate successful student learning. Having as a starting point that teaching needs to be considered as a continuum of lifelong learning, to consolidate, further develop, and share best practices, then the best moment is to start with ITE, during the early stages of the profession, continuing into and throughout career development. Designing and implementing this continuum requires new approaches to support collaborative learning environments for teachers that are essential for cooperation. Since 200s, eTwinning offers, among other services, a professional social network for teachers in over 40 countries, which has been gradually transformed into an innovative European community of teachers. This community would not be complete without the presence of the student teachers and those that prepare them for their future. Having this in mind, the Twinning for Future Teachers initiative started in the academic year 2012-13 as a European pilot project to include Twinning in Initial Teacher Education.