European Association of History Educators

Georgian history educators met in Tbilisi for 3 days of fruitful exchange and hard work during the fourth workshop within the EUROCLIO/MATRA project 'Tolerance Building through History Education'. The workshop was attended by more than 50 people coming from different parts of the country and representing the various ethnic communities and religious living in Georgia. The event, held on January 22-24 2010, aimed to further work on the development of teaching materials addressing the key issue of tolerance in a multicultural Georgia. Interesting topics such as a Country without God; Shared Food; Tbilisi Yard and Migration from various countries were interactively presented by the authors of the worksheets. The materials showed  significant improvements related to the variety of sources, the methodological approach as well as the applicability to the classroom. All participants, both those involved since the beginning of the project and the new comers, showed a great motivation to learn from one another and achieve a truly collaborative work. The results of this workshop gave very positive signals to the external observers and monitors from Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria and the Netherlands and the management team on the fact that the project is truly contributing to the innovation of history education in Georgia. A teacher seminar on Thursday afternoon preceded the workshop. The training, attended by 50 teachers, was promoting the Georgian History Educators Association and offering an workshop on active working methods.

The full report of the event is now available here.

On October 22-25 2009, the Project Team within the project EUROCLIO/MATRA Project Tolerance Building through History Education, which consists in a group of about 20 history teachers, trainers and historians acting as authors and experts in the project, met with over 30 other history educators and stakeholders in Telavi, Kakheti region, Georgia. During 2,5 days, this group of 50 people actively collaborated to further the development of educational materials on teaching diversity in Georgia. The open and inclusive discussions as well as the efforts to narrow down the debates to essential issues related to the relevance, quality and applicability of the teaching modules represented real improvements towards the aims of the project. The thinking process of the whole group was carefully monitored by Joke van der Leeuw-Roord, EUROCLIO Executive Director, and Rumyana Kusheva, international expert from Bulgaria. The portfolio of existing educational materials still needs to be developed into fully active teaching modules and enriched with additional materials addressing key topics related to diversity in Georgia, but the direction taken by the team is certainly a very promising one. The next results of the authors and experts work will be presented during a workshop in Tbilisi on January 22-24 2010.

The full Workshop Report is available under Materials/Seminars and Workshops/October 2009.