Future Elementary School Teachers Modernization in Kurdistan

In the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, students enrolled in public elementary schools are educated by elementary school teachers; 90% of them are graduated from colleges of Basic Education of the HEIs in Kurdistan. Therefore, the Basic Education colleges in Kurdistan are the main providers of the primary government school teachers in the region. So, to raise the standard of the governmental schooling system, the first step is to raise the quality of graduates from the Basic Education Colleges in Kurdish universities. Elementary school teachers are trained with very old-fashioned techniques, and seldomly exposed to innovative teaching methodologies. As a consequence, the graduates from Basic Education colleges have no modern skills to eventually tackle the kid in the elementary schools and make the classroom a magnet and enjoyable time to the students rather than a poorly stimulating time. All Partner HEIs in the Kurdistan region agreed that the governmental primary school system needs to be changed through enhancing the quality of the future teachers.
The TeachersMOD project aims to enhance the capacity of the Basic Education Colleges in each Kurdish beneficiary institution with the long-term outcome of improving the general Regional standard of primary education. The project builds on two main assumptions: the first relates to the education’s pivotal role in the society for the fulfillment of human rights, peace and responsible citizenship from local to global levels, and the second relates to the relevance of the digital transformation as embedded in teaching and learning models.
Higher Education Institutions , therefore, need to increase their capacity at two levels: 1) updating and reviewing curricula towards a student-centered approach; and 2) a pedagogical approach y based on interactive teaching methods integrating participative and innovative techniques. For this reason, TeachersMOD seeks to modernize and improve the quality of teaching, by innovating teaching methodologies, by reviewing curricula and by reinforcing the competences of university staff members in the Basic Education Colleges in the Kurdish universities to be prepared for the new generation of learners in the region.

Education and Moral Development through the Voices of the Community

Exploratory investigation on citizenship education.
Recognizing the existence of multiple difficulties that teachers of the discipline of Citizenship and Development (CD) face, the project assumes the following objectives:
1. Contribute to the collaborative construction of a theoretical framework to support education for citizenship, integrating cultural, philosophical, psychological, and pedagogical perspectives.
2. Adapt to the Portuguese context the model of moral education Minnesota’s Community Voices and Character Education Project (CVCE).
3. Identify training needs of teachers of the discipline of CD in middle schools.
4. Create a collaborative network of Citizenship Education researchers and teachers.
CVCE is based on the design of the of Rest moral development and differs from other integrative models of moral education by its systematicity, pedagogical intentionality and collaborative orientation: part of the reality of communities and school culture, includes and values the reflective practice of teachers and students and recognizes the investigative relevance of their questions and difficulties.
The adaptation of the CVCE to the Portuguese context involves students' assessment tasks (to be performed through translation, adaptation and validation scales related to moral sensitivity, judgment, motivation and action), auscultation of teachers and analysis of the guiding documents of the CD discipline.