On 2-4 February the CDRSEE, in cooperation with Euro Clio Serbia and the Government of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina, organised the fourth of a series of Workshops to introduce history teachers to a multi-perspective approach to looking at history.

Nenad Sebek (CDRSEE), Dr. Dubravka Stojanovic (Euro Clio Serbia) and Danica Stefanovic (Government of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina) welcomed participants to the Hotel Aleksandar in Novi Sad. Dr. Bozo Repe (University of Ljubljana) and Irena Stefoska (Institute of History, Skopje) joined the event as guest trainers.

32 participants discussed multi-perspective ways of teaching history and worked intensively on the “Alternative Educational Material: Teaching Southeast European History” developed by the CDRSEE.

This seminar was the closing event of a series of teacher training workshops which started in September 2006. The seminars also included an internal evaluation and participants were asked to fill in a standardised questionnaire assessing the four history books and the quality of the seminars.

In Novi Sad, 85 % of teachers agreed that the workbooks have a lot of positive aspects, while 75 % of them also mentioned that there is room for improvement in the books. Nevertheless 90 % of the teachers confirmed that they will definitely use the material in class to enrich history teaching and open up new perspectives.

4 of the teachers had already used the material in class and half of them agreed that it was easy for them to use the books. All teachers agreed that it was the right decision to participate in the workshop and declared that they were very satisfied with the materials. 90 % confirmed that they learned something useful to their profession. No participant responded in the negative, when being asked whether s/he now felt ready to train colleagues in the use of the books, but only 50% explicitly agreed that it would be within their capacity to conduct this training.

Open questions in the questionnaire allowed for free comments and suggestion, which can be summarised as follows: Many participants emphasised that it was important and pleasant to socialise with their colleagues and debate history teaching. The books were assessed to be of great value to critical thinking skills and democratic views, nevertheless teachers also felt that it would be a challenge to make students think about multiple perspectives towards historical events. There was a strong expression of interest in holding more teacher training workshops and to enrich the material and seminars with multimedia tools.

For 2007 and 2008, more seminars are planned in Serbia, depending on funding being secured for an expansion of activities.