Every individual is valuable and contributes. Sharing reduces sadness and increases joy. Our program includes young people with all their individualities and talents. We believe that only through education and solidarity can we create a better society and a sustainable future. By bringing together professionals, artists and teachers in the realization of an integrative teaching model, we create a place where everyone wins and no one loses. Join us too. Find out why it's important that everyone h
National
Serbia
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It addresses urban-rural linkages
It refers to other types of transformations (soft investment)
No
No
Yes
As a representative of an organization, in partnership with other organisations
Name of the organisation(s): Licej Type of organisation: Non-profit organisation First name of representative: Dragana Last name of representative: Božinović Gender: Female Nationality: Serbia Function: President of the Board Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Konjuh planine 2, Belgrade, Serbia Town: Belgrade Postal code: 11000 Country: Serbia Direct Tel:+381 61 6666503 E-mail:dragana2243@gmail.com Website:http://greenwave21.org
In creating the pilot program, we started from the hypothesis that it is possible to introduce an inclusive and integrative teaching model that will ensure a level of educational outcomes that meets the different abilities of students and ensures further development (progress) through the teaching process. A pilot thematic teaching in the field of ecology was organized and the hypothesis was confirmed through the research methods of experiments, analysis of the achieved results and surveys.
Through multimedia and multidisciplinary work on the production of the printed edition of the book "13 and a half stories", we managed to interest numerous schools and numerous students and to ensure broad support for our inclusive approach to education. Each student was needed with their own specific characteristics and contributed to a group that reciprocated their support.
With such experience, we created an experimental program of integrative and thematic teaching in the Secondary Vocational School for students with disabilities. Inclusive, integrative, and thematic teaching in the field of ecology was conducted during the first two weeks of May 2018/2019. with 11 departments.
The research was conducted that resulted in a scientific paper that was presented in 2022 at a conference and published in a collection of scientific papers.
Through cheap and accessible methods, it is possible to achieve much better results in education in the Balkan region and to include those target groups that do not have equal access to the opportunities that society provides, and without which a society is neither humane nor complete. By including this target group, society does not defend just a vulnerable individual but defends the very purpose of its existence.
In the next phase, through cooperation with institutions, we will organize support for schools and international cooperation with the aim of using integrative methods in teaching in order to adapt teaching to each student.
Integrative
Inclusive
Multidisciplinary
Thematic
Teaching
We have already started cooperation with numerous schools and institutions in the region where we transfer our experiences and achieved results, not only as experience but also as scientific research documented in the scientific collection of papers from the 5th international conference "Multidisciplinary approaches in education and rehabilitation". Together with the Society of Psychologists and the Society of Special Education, the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Serbia, and other competent institutions, we are preparing certified seminars that aim to change the narrative in education and introduce modern methods that enable maximum success for each participant.
If a greater number of educational institutions were able to implement an integrative model in teaching, it would mean that there would be no obstacles to the establishment of this type of education in schools, the results would be positive, as well as the recognition and inclusion of students from the Individual Education Plan 1 to 3 .
Over the course of several years, we implemented the initiative in Serbian language classes among schoolchildren. Thousands of students have gone through our program, and the most interested came to the workshops. We taught them how books are made and what is needed to present a book to the public. All participants were able to help with their peculiarities. Some wrote some illustrated, others helped with contacting the public. The project was declared the best inclusive program for young people, and the state publisher "Službeni Glasnik" published a book.
From all that experience, a program of integrative thematic teaching for schools about ecology was created, where knowledge was not grouped by field, but the topic of ecology was used to integrate different disciplines. Through scientific research, we have proven that 100% of the intended students achieved maximum results during integrative teaching, regardless of prior knowledge, and other factors.
Our initiative was extremely interested in the inclusion of the population from rural areas that are ecologically threatened and connecting and bringing scientists, artists, and humanitarians to those areas. Thanks to such an approach, we managed to open the Museum of River Protection on Stara Planina and create a center there that brings together pupils, students, researchers, scientists, and artists from all fields. The Museum also has a gallery that has its own commission for fine and related arts, and the artists who exhibit there have a certificate that allows them the status of independent artists in the national association. Thanks to that, a large number of artists volunteered to help with our work on a professional level.
Work with local residents and artists on Stara Planina also led to the holding of the "Clear Rivers" International Documentary Film Festival.
We believe that we have brought about significant changes both for the local population who recognized the importance of art and education, but also for the increased number of guests in private accommodation, as well as the sale of healthy domestic products. We would say that without the artistic thinking of our collaborators, we would not be able to raise the message about the importance of environmental protection and inclusion to a higher level. The exhibition was created in collaboration with us by the artist Ivana I. Kostić with motifs of Stara Planina, she traveled the whole world with her motives.
We believe that the key to the success of the initiative was that we found ways to understand the importance of each participant's participation in the program. The coordinators tried to give each participant an adequate task according to their abilities, as well as to encourage peer education. The initiative was open to proposals and supported initiatives that arose from the core initiative. Since there are not many such programs, the schools were very open to cooperation, which resulted in other institutions opening their doors, and international cooperation was also achieved. Our organization had the privilege of collaborating with the Swedish Embassy on their participation in the book fair, and our workshops were directly inspired by the work of the Swedish artists Martin Widmark and Helena Willis.
It is no less significant that we relied on the support of experts and specialists from various disciplines and we allowed them to be the bearers of their ideas with our support. they participated directly in the program and were implementers, advisors and collaborators. We were guided by only one idea, which is that the results point us in the right direction and that we used research techniques to confirm what we saw in practice, which is the undoubted exceptional progress of the participants. We think that this kind of cooperation between the non-governmental sector and experts, which has been transferred to the institutional education system itself, is the model that should be further developed in order to overcome the great difficulties that have arisen in the education system, which concern individual education plans.
it is difficult to enumerate all the benefits that citizens have had. At the elementary level, a large number of students with disabilities, as well as students with exceptional abilities, are involved in work. Educational outcomes have been achieved to their full extent. An example of good practice was shown in schools, and teachers were given tools to improve their work. The topic of ecology was introduced into the teaching and students and teachers were given tools to deal with the topic.
On the second level, the local population is supported in a concrete way: by creating a center for local initiatives, an art center that brings together artists and scientists and establishes a connection between them. The most important supporter of the initiative was certainly the support of the local population in the fight against mini-hydropower plants, and that resistance ended with the ban on their construction on the drinking waters of Stara Planina, but it also served as a respectable example for further nature protection.
Established artists had the opportunity to support the initiative, but also to show their films, pictures, photos, texts in the Museum, as well as to achieve international cooperation as a result of cooperation with our initiative.
On the one hand, we raised the level of awareness about the necessity of nature protection, and on the other hand, we brought guests to rural areas and raised the quality of life of the local population.
The beginning of initiative began with the Translation Portal at the Faculty of Philology and intensive cooperation with the Swedish Embassy in Belgrade. This cooperation resulted in Sweden being a guest at the Book Fair in Belgrade, as well as hosting the initiative at the Book Fair in Gothenburg. The Secretariat for Sports, as well as the Secretariat for Education of Serbia, supported the project, which was implemented in schools as part of the teaching process.
With such experiences, we created experimental teaching in the Secondary Vocational School for students with disabilities on the topic of ecology and thanks to this, we did research that resulted in scientific work and cooperation with Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia, Bulgaria, and Greece.
The creation of the River Protection Museum was supported by the British Embassy, which financially supported the reconstruction of a part of the local community in Temska for the needs of the museum, gallery, and library.
Teachers who were involved in these processes received strong support, and students raised the level of achieved outcomes. Experts from completely different fields and disciplines networked, and scientists from the social and natural sciences, as well as numerous artists, contributed. The arrival of the international film festival in the rural village on Stara planina brought numerous visitors, and the local residents felt the improvement of their position both materially and with access to art, culture and education and all the contents that the museum offers them.
Through cooperation with schools, colleges, domestic and foreign institutions, scientists, researchers and artists, local population, we had the opportunity to be a conduit and point of communication between all of them, which greatly increased the success of the initiative. Just as our initiative was supported, we also supported our partners and collaborators. We highlighted their successes on our networks and followed their further work. Thanks to this, we were able to receive support from the most diverse sectors: education, natural and social sciences, arts, etc. We have signed protocols on cooperation with numerous institutions and media, which enables our partners and collaborators to access them more easily. Thanks to the Museum we are able to welcome researchers and artists who want to work in the area, our website is open for virtual hospitality. All stakeholders in the process are open to working with our students in all areas of the arts and social sciences. Lyceum is an association that has been involved in education and culture for 20 years. Our members are professionals with extensive experience in various fields. Among them are university professors, academics, and renowned artists. We would say that the first step was the great knowledge and experience of colleagues who work in schools and know very well the weaknesses and strengths of educational systems. It was on their initiative and energy that this continuous process was started by which integrative teaching found its way to the scientific public. Collaborating with psychologists who helped create the customized Vineland scales was extremely helpful as we were able to track participants' progress. From the field of ecology, we were helped by numerous experts who are engaged in the research of flora and fauna, as well as geoheritage, biodiversity, and the geological history of the country. Public relations and IT experts helped us reach the general public.
We believe that this is a unique example in which an initiative managed to work on concrete education through a methodologically innovative model that was not previously applied in education in the field of ecology, but on the other hand, to provide concrete support to the local population on the ground, as well as to achieve concrete results in changing the legal regulations by which, on a concrete example, we do what we teach students in school classrooms. We believe that a specific example is extremely important and that without obvious examples, students can hardly understand the importance of both education itself and environmental protection.
Inclusive teaching in the Balkan region hasn't been introduced abruptly, without sufficient knowledge, aresources and without respecting the positive previous experiences in working with students with disabilities. Teachers in the regular system could not replace special educators in their work and the support of pedagogical assistants was lacking. Inclusion, instead of improving the situation for students with disabilities, often led to their isolation in the regular system, loss of opportunities for socialization, individual treatment, life skills training, and more. Creating a pilot program of integrative teaching, we started from the hypothesis that it is possible to introduce an inclusive and integrative model of teaching that will provide a level of educational outcomes that meet different abilities of students and provides further development (progress) through the teaching process. Pilot thematic classes were organized and the hypothesis was confirmed through research methods of experiments, analysis of achieved results, and survey.
The innovative model of integrative teaching can be repeated according to the description in the scientific paper EXAMPLE MODEL OF INCLUSIVE, MULTIDISCIPLINARY, INTEGRATIVE AND THEMATIC TEACHING AS AN EXAMPLE OF GOOD PRACTICE published in the proceedings of the 5th international conference "Multidisciplinary approach in education3-rehabilitation2707". 4, 4, but through the described methodology it is possible to apply the same principle to different areas, contents, and groups of users. The initiative is working on it right now and our experts are cooperating with interested parties, observing their possibilities, capacities, and needs, so that they can adopt the model in their organizations. Any integrative teaching requires observation of the potential of the program holder, his strengths and weaknesses, and needs, and opportunities for development. By adopting the methodology we give them, they are able to create their own programs with topics that are suitable for their target group. There are no restrictions in the choice of topics or disciplines, and everything takes place through an extremely creative process that insists on proactive approaches. The program is also very convenient because during the program the main activities are changed. The preparation process is longer and requires greater engagement, but once the implementation is started, it facilitates the work of both active participants and those who are just preparing for the cycle in which they themselves will be the bearers.
IIn the methodology, we distinguish the so-called technical and logical research methods. We used both approaches. On the one hand, as extremely experienced teachers and professional associates, we already had logical assumptions about the scope of integrative teaching, but we conducted an experiment that included a large number of students and from which we collected data for quantitative and qualitative analysis.
At the beginning of thematic lessons in the field of ecology, students filled out a questionnaire. The questionnaire was designed so that it was difficult for most students to reach demands. This was done on purpose so that we could measure the obvious student achievements at the end of the thematic classes. We conducted testing on a representative sample.
On the initial test in the control group, 16.67% of students who were partially satisfactory completed the questionnaire, and 100% of the students of school did not give a satisfactory answer. In the end, we did not test the control group in the thematic classes. There was no need for that, because we evaluated the success of the trial classes in our school, while the control group did not have a thematic block, and we believe that their results would be the same or different only within statistical errors.
In a representative group of students from our school who completed the control questionnaire at the end of the thematic classes, 80% of the students achieved a satisfactory result, and 20% of the students achieved a partially satisfactory result.
Experimental teaching in the field of ecology proved to be significant for improving the knowledge of 100% of students in a representative sample. 90% of teachers show the highest level of satisfaction with this type of teaching, and 10% show a high level. There is no dissatisfaction with the sample teaching among the examined sample.
The most significant limitation was that the organization performed most of its work on a voluntary basis. The lack of professional help and relying on one's own strength slowed down the process, which was at times very frustrating for all participants.
We didn't feel we had any other restrictions.
The initiative was very well received at the regional level and we found interested partners in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Croatia, Bulgaria and Greece. The performance at the scientific conference was very useful, as was the presentation of the results to the general public. This certainly contributed to the fact that the most important institutions responsible for education and methodical approach are open to cooperation and the creation of certified seminars that will give schools professional support to implement such a program.
An expert meeting that will be specially dedicated to this topic is also announced.
The next step is regional cooperation on the implementation of the initiative. We have already planned a trip with students to Bulgaria, North Macedonia and Greece. We hope that our program will eventually include a larger number of professionals and students, because this is necessary to create the better society we strive for.
We are extremely sorry that we only found out about the announced competition for awards today and that we are aware that we did not have enough time to present all the achievements, as well as to do it in the best possible way, but we hope that part of what we presented is enough to it is understood how important such a program is for inclusive education.
As the program includes organizations that already have independent funding such as schools, colleges and professional associations, we believe that the issue of organization alone is enough to be solved in order to be able to respond to the request of an extremely large number of interested participants.
All our programs can be implemented within regular education, without the need for additional funding.
