“Education for democracy in the Republic of Moldova” Project
An intensive capacity building programme for education professionals on the new curriculum and the new teaching, learning and assessment methods has been a key element of this support. In the school year 2019/2020, four rounds of training sessions for national teacher trainers of the Ministry of Education, Culture and Research were envisaged. The final round was planned for the end of March, however, due to the COVID-19 pandemc, the schools closed in mid-March and all face to face activities had to be cancelled.
The project reacted rapidly to the new circumstances and, jointly with Ministry representatives and national experts, re-designed the training sessions into online workshops. These targeted primarily national teacher trainers accredited by the Ministry – who would in turn train teachers in the regions, but were also open to interested teachers. The training materials, content and methodology were adapted to the on-line medium, and special guidance for teachers on teaching the civic education subject on-line was integrated. Zoom, the platform that is currently used by most teachers in Moldova, was used. As a result, with the help of six national trainers, 35 on-line workshops for about 900 teacher trainers and teachers were organised within the project between 30 March and 10 April.
The workshops provided timely and much needed support to Moldovan teachers who had to adapt to the digital teaching environment in a very short period of time and thus helped ensure the continuity of a quality education process for all children in Moldova.
