EuroClio is glad to inform that the first short term staff training for the project ‘Learning to Disagree’ was a success. The training was organized by EuroClio in cooperation with the local partner Education for the 21st Century and took place in Topola (Serbia) from 23 March 2018 to 26 March 2018. Network Coordinator Jaco Stoop said it was organized with “[the] aim of responding to the needs of educators who experience difficulties in addressing sensitive and controversial issues in the classroom.” For the training there were 35 history and citizenship educators present from 21 countries: Spain, Serbia, France, Ireland, Turkey, Germany, Denmark, Bulgaria, Romania, Croatia, The Netherlands, United Kingdom, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Slovenia, Macedonia, Estonia, Belgium, Italy, Greece and Hungary.

The training consisted out of a variety of activities that were relevant for the project topic. Our partners from Mount School York, Maynooth University and Education in the 21st Century gave high quality workshops on teaching and the assessment of sensitive topics in history and civic education. They provided the participants with some very useful teaching strategies and tools to stimulate responsible dialogue, discussion and debate in their classes. Furthermore, the participants were motivated to actively engage in the Learning to Disagree topic by participating in discussion sessions where participants shared their thoughts on teaching about the project’s topic in history education in their countries. Overall, participants said they were excited and looked forward to implementing the newly learned strategies in their classrooms. They also liked the fact that the workshops provided participants with various opportunities to discuss different manners in teaching history in Europe, “as well as the awareness of connections, similarities and parallel developments across Europe (regarding historical development). This all provides interesting cases of information to bring back to [their] school.”

The next training event for the core team of Learning to Disagree project will take place in Germany from 22-24 August 2018. EuroClio is very satisfied with this first productive training and hopes that the enthusiasm amongst the participants will continue over the course of the entire project.

The report of this meeting can be found here.