On March 22, the Civic Education Lecturers Association held a working meeting in Kutaisi. At the meeting, CELA members introduced their educational materials and methodology used in scope of the Democracy and Citizenship university course and shared their experience with colleagues.
Ketevan Mukhiguli, Associate Professor of Caucasus University, made a presentation on causes and theories of state origin. She tried to demonstrate importance of the methods of Socratic seminar in the teaching process of the Democracy and Citizenship course.
Arina Tavakarishvili, Lecturer of Sukhishvili Teaching University, gave a presentation on “IDP Rights and Conflicts in Georgia, as Study Material.” This approach is based on six-stage model of conflict resolution. Students are given the opportunity to become acquainted with the essence of the conflict, discuss its causes, seek ways leading to conflict resolution and construct knowledge on the basis of the aforementioned.
Successful graduates of the Democracy and Citizenship course made presentations based on their own experience. In most cases they reviewed students’ projects prepared during the course. They analyzed advantages and disadvantages of the projects, issues concerning their content, as well as some interesting and innovative ideas, how effectively students manage to transform their thoughts into statements and how it is possible to assist students so that they prepare interesting and high-quality projects.
Students’ presentations were also concerned with the problems of communication between students and NGOs. In particular, they put emphasis on bureaucratic part of the communication which represents a problem to both parties.
At the end of the meeting, Tamar Karaia, executive director of the Civic Education Lecturers Association congratulated its members on one year anniversary of the founding of CELA and noted that on an informal basis, CELA members had been collaborating with each other for 5 years. In addition, she presented a detailed annual report to the members of the association and also referred to the activities planned by CELA in the near future.
The meeting was held by the Civic Education Lecturers Association and made possible with the financial support of USAID in the framework of the project Strengthening Electoral Processes (SEP), implemented by the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES).
