In ATU Gagauzia, there are enough teachers who would like to teach in Romanian, but they need support to improve competence in Romanian. The implementation of the concept of multilingual education would represent the best national strategy to ensure communication competence in Romanian for all those who accept it, Viorica Andritski, director of the National Institute for Education and Leadership (INEL), stated in a public debate titled “Moldovan-Romanian partnership in continuous training of teachers”.
The framework plan for primary, secondary and high school education for the 2024-2025 school year provides for the inclusion of an additional Romanian language hour in the schools attended by students speaking other languages than Romanian. Viorica Andritski said that everything is ready to ensure the continuous training of teachers. “I know that this process is managed by “Ion Creangă” State Teacher Training University. There is massive continuous training on this subject. There are interested people. There are also the results - the first groups to complete these courses. There are also prospects for the coming years,” noted Viorica Andritski.
The INEL director also said that when developing programs for continuous training, the specifics of adult learning are taken into account. “Learning when you are a child, when you are a teenager is one thing and it is another thing when you are an adult and participate in training. The adult does not accept theories for the sake of theory or things that cannot be applied in practice,” she stated. “We also take into account particularities, such as nationality, because the continuous training programs provide examples related to the traditions, the values promoted by particular ethnicities. In this regard, the trainers must be close to the people who come to training, to know not only their professional training needs, but also who they are as ethnic groups, as people, what values they promote.”
In another development, the INEL director noted that the classroom observation tool Teach, intended for general education, offers a good way to monitor what happens in the classroom of students in relation to what the curriculum says, in order to come up with remedial actions, to improve the quality of educational practices in the classrooms. “We are thinking of applying this instrument later by adapting it to the situation in the Republic of Moldova, to take it as a tool for the activity of the national network of mentors. Obviously, for the purpose we will have to adapt to the context and to our documents that are in force, but I was saying that this tool is actually a paradigm shift, that is, we are changing the perspective on managing the implementation of the curriculum in the classroom. Unfortunately, we still use a model of monitoring the implementation of the curriculum inherited from the Soviet period. And the new tool helps us to focus on the child, on the child’s reaction and on the impact of teaching on everything that a developing child means,” concluded Viorica Andritski, who took part in training on the application of the Teach tool in Romania.
The public debate entitled “Moldovan-Romanian partnership in continuous training of teachers” was the 13th instalment of the project “Double integration through cooperation and information. Continuity”, funded by the Department for Relations with the Republic of Moldova. The content of this debate does not represent the official position of the Department for Relations with the Republic of Moldova.
