Aleksandar Baucal is interested in the development of children's new competencies

Aleksandar Baucal, a full professor at the University of Belgrade, has been a visiting professor at the Institute of Educational Sciences at the University of Tartu for the past nine years. In his research, he focuses on studying learning and development as socio-cultural and contextual processes. We asked what the professor thought the problems in the field of education were and how the Serbian and Estonian education systems differed from each other.

How did your cooperation with the University of Tartu begin?

I met prof. Äli Leijen at the EAPRIL conference in 2014. During the conference we discussed several topics of joint interest and we found out that our interests are similar both in terms of theoretical issues and research. At this time results of a PISA study were published, and Estonia belonged to countries where students learn a lot. It was very interesting to me to have an opportunity to learn more about the Estonian education system. This is how our close collaboration started. 

What was your role in the DigiEfekt project?

As a visiting researcher at the Institute, my role was to provide support in terms of research design, data analysis and report preparations. On top of this, I was responsible for selecting instrument for the anxiety scale, and to collaborate in developing instruments for the socio-emotional competences together with other colleagues from the project. During the project, it was my pleasure to have the opportunity to collaborate with several PhD students in their research studies that were done as a part of the DigiEfekt project. 

How do you evaluate the results of the Digiefekt project?

Frankly speaking I am impressed with the complexity of the research project as well as with the rich dataset that is created by the project. I am especially impressed by the fact that the project was realized in the most part during the pandemic period and in spite of all challenges we were faced with. To me it was also very important to see how a big group of researchers collaborate in a good way not only between themselves, but also with schools and teachers. I believe that these qualities enable us to finalize the project in a successful way. An important result of the project is a comprehensive dataset that will enable researchers to make additional analysis in order to get answers for both theoretically relevant questions, but also for some open issues related to practical work of teachers.

What is your research focus and what developments have you seen in the field over the years?

My research focuses on children development, especially in the question how children and young persons develop new competencies that are relevant for their future success in social and personal life. Taking into consideration that the education system plays an important role in that respect, I am primarily interested in opportunities that new generations get as a part of formal education. Moreover, we are all aware that some students are getting better opportunities in formal education than others, so my interest is also focused on the equity issue, that is how we can ensure that all students get a high quality education in the school.

What similarities and differences do you see between the educational systems of Estonia and Serbia? Is there an opportunity to learn from each other?

An important similarity between the education system in Estonia and Serbia is related to our common roots. In both countries education systems were shaped in an important way by socialist tradition. However, the education system in Estonia has made a huge transformation from the beginning of the 90s. Unfortunately, in Serbia we have still struggled with some social challenges that prevent schools and teachers from changing the domination of traditional educational practices. Understanding the reasons for this difference in trajectories of education reforms in our two countries is important for me. 

What are the hot topics in Serbia at the moment considering education? 

In Serbia the most important topic is related to the quality of education because our results on international examinations are not so high. Nobody is happy with these results and so there is a lot of discussion about how to improve the general quality of education. Second important topic is inclusive education like in many countries. There are a lot of disputes about that. Many teachers don't feel that they are ready. They don't feel that they have proper conditions in the school to implement inclusive education. So there is a lot of debate about inclusive education.

What are the main challenges in education if we are thinking about Europe? Nowadays everything is going very digital, students are having more and more screen time, while their attention span is quite short.

Our teachers are also very concerned like many other countries because of digital technologies and how they are overwhelmingly present in the life of children. Teachers sometimes have this feeling that they are losing the race with the digital technologies or they are not quite sure how to integrate digital technologies in their everyday teaching and learning practices. I would say that our teachers are not so different from other teachers in many countries because it is really some technological innovation that has potential to disrupt our traditional pedagogical practices. In many countries this is a quick question first at what time to start to include digital technologies in education of children? Should we include that from preschool education or maybe later? Then if we involve digital technologies, how to involve it and in what way? Because it's a new thing, there is no recipe and we are all exploring different ways that might be good for us. 

How could today's education be more inclusive? 

This is a common challenge in many countries and education systems. On one hand, we can easily agree that we wish for social justice in our societies, and that no child is discriminated against or marginalized. It is also easy to agree that every child should get opportunities for high quality education regardless of all his or her characteristics that are beyond their control (for example, education level of child parents, socio-economic condition of the family, gender, etc.). However, it is a long and bumpy way from these shared agreements to educational practices. On this road all societies and schools are facing different challenges, and everyone is trying to find their own best way to overcome them. This is the reason why we can learn from each other.