Under the title “The future of the teaching profession – teachers as a key factor in quality education”, the 13th Regional Conference of the Community of Innovative Teachers was held in Konjic, from November 18 to 20, 2022. While evaluating the event, Petar Bezinović, an education expert and one of the representatives of the European Union project Education and Employment in BiH, said: “This is an exceptional event characterized by spontaneous communication and direct exchange, and it seems as if a movement for the quality of education in Bosnia and Herzegovina is being born in this place.”
The EU Project Education for Employment in BiH and the Centre for Educational Initiatives (COI) Step by Step organized this conference with the aim of opening a dialogue on models for the improvement of the teaching profession in a theoretical and practical sense.
Nedim Krajišnik, the CEO of the COI Step by Step, emphasized the importance of the teaching profession and said that this conference offers a valuable opportunity to establish authentic connections among great professionals dedicated to the field of education.
“These people perceive their professional vocation as something much bigger and more valuable than the simple employment contract or the schools they work in. These are people who strive to change this society for the better, and that is why they represent its most important factor,” added Krajišnik.
Driven by the central idea “The future of the world is in my classroom”, the program of the conference covered six different fields: Standards of the teaching profession, Continuous professional development, Initial teachers’ education, Professional communities for exchange and learning, Promotion of teaching excellence, and Mobility of teachers. Within these thematic fields, a number of parallel sessions were held presenting high-quality teaching practices, tools, methods and instruments that improve the overall quality of education and maintain high standards of the teaching profession.
“The main message of this conference is that the teaching profession is extremely important, but at the same time the teaching profession is losing its status in this society. What we need is to create our successors!” said conference participant Dženana Husremović, professor at the Faculty of Philosophy in Sarajevo.
The Regional Conference of the Community of Innovative Teachers has a long tradition and reputation that for many years has been attracting the most committed and innovative regional professionals in the field of education. The conference offers its participants the opportunity to improve their knowledge and get acquainted with the latest and most innovative approaches in educational practice.
This year’s conference was attended by 320 practitioners, educators from all fields of education, educators at all levels of education, researchers, teachers and university professors, as well as representatives of ministries of education, regional and international educational networks and organizations. In addition to participants from Bosnia and Herzegovina, the conference was attended by a number of participants from Macedonia, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia and Montenegro.
To the great satisfaction of the organizers, in the anonymous evaluation modules, numerous participants evaluated the conference in Konjic as highly successful, useful and innovative, while one of the participating teachers wrote the following comment:
“It is a great honour and pleasure to be part of such a wonderful story. After this conference, we change our views on the world, we expand our horizons and go for new victories, because the future of the world is in my classroom. Wonderful people, thank you once again.”
