As part of the educational reform in Armenia, education experts responsible for developing teaching materials and textbooks for primary and secondary education gathered for the three-day online training to discuss the principles of gender equality and gender mainstreaming in education. What is the concept of gender in educational settings? What are the gendered characteristics and how those relate to contents of the educational materials and to interaction between teachers and students? These questions among others were discussed and reflected through participatory training methods. The training facilitators and gender equality experts Ani Kojoyan and Katerina Hodicka provided to the training participants recommendations on how to adopt and apply gender-sensitive education and communication, including the Recommendation CM/Rec (2017)13 of the Committee of Ministers to member states on gender mainstreaming in education.

“This was an excellent opportunity to systematise the bits and pieces of knowledge on gender-responsive pedagogy. We discussed the existent situation and ways of making our teaching more gender sensitive in the future. The highlight of the training session was the reference to critical thinking as a way to question the gender imbalance and the status quo in education.” said Kristine Soghikyan, one of the participants at the end of the training.

The training was organised in the framework of the Council of Europe Project “The Path towards Armenia's Ratification of the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence “.