When project activities were postponed due to the corona pandemic, the project team started to look into the possibility to move parts of the “Preparing Future Teachers in the Western Balkans” project online. With a dedicated group of experts, trainers and participants the first webinar on session planning was held May 18, with representatives from all 12 university faculties present.
Facilitators of the webinar were Rolf Gollob from the Zürich University of Teacher Training and Maja Raunik Kirkov from the University of Skopje. Professor Raunic Kirkov is currently implementing her course “Culture of Democracy through the Visual Art Education”, developed within the framework of the project. The content of the webinar was based on her experiences and the challenges she encountered when planning on how to implement democracy as a content and as an approach in her lessons.
Professor Dragana Jovanović from the University of Niš in Serbia attended the webinar:
“We were really happy when we received the information that we will continue to work in a virtual environment, and we were glad to see that, despite the challenging circumstances, the initial optimism of this project did not disappear. The workshop was very useful for our continued work, and the support from trainers helps us to further develop our own sessions”, she explained.
The professor and her team are now finalizing their session “Constructive resolution of conflict situations”, which they will present at the next webinar in the beginning of June.
“We have applied for accreditation for our module Skills of Democratic Communication in Teaching and hope to start implementation in university classes already November this year”, prof. Jovanović explained.