Building capacity of Serbian agricultural education to link with society

Abstract

Knowledge transfer in agricultural sciences is rather limited after students' graduation from the Faculty of Agriculture. There is a lack of courses for professional development of teachers from agricultural middle schools, as well as a need of permanent improvement and upgrading of courses and trainings created for advisors in agricultural extension services. The CaSA project objective is to contribute to the improvement of agricultural education to meet the needs of Serbian society. CaSA foresees: upgrading quality and availability of vocational agricultural education by strengthening professional and pedagogical competences of educators (University teachers, secondary school teachers, advisors) and creation of the repository for courses and additional contents important for agricultural education. Improvement of agricultural education will be achieved by introducing trainings in active teaching learning (ATL), communication skills, e-learning, together with newest knowledge emerging from research activities incorporated in vocational courses. Creation of the National Repository for Agricultural Education (NaRA), will enable networking of all stakeholders in agricultural education and assure sustainability. In addition, among 13 project partners, the Ministry of education is a compulsory partner for Structural Measures TEMPUS projects. This is important for recognition of the National repository by relevant state authorities. Online courses and teaching material, live stream trainings, results from the research projects, and different data bases will be available in NaRA after project life-time.