Teachers in Croatia: “All citizens should learn and integrate competences for

democratic culture in their everyday life!”

Zagreb 13/03/2017
Two focus groups in Croatia, within the project „Democratic competences in digital era“
were held in the beginning of March in Zagreb and Bjelovar, where 20 teachers and experts
working with youth and young people discussed on competences for democratic culture in
digital era. Focus groups were conducted by two experts from partner organization – Forum
for Freedom in Education.

Focus groups were a good chance for teachers and experts to gather and speak about
important topics for young people today – communicating offline and online, democratic
competences and media literacy. From gathered data, it can be seen that pupils in Croatia use
different forms of social media for communication purposes, such as Snapchat, Instagram,
Viber and Whatsapp. Some still use Facebook, especially young people from rural areas.
Furthermore, it has to be mentioned that teachers are also using Facebook and Viber to
communicate with students, as they receive information right away (which is quite different
when they communicate via e-mail).

It was reported that pupils’ communication influenced their writing skills, where a lot of them
are using abbreviations in writing essays, as well as emoji’s. Communication changed with
usage of online tools and internet, teachers concluded.

Teachers believe that, in order to communicate democratically, young people need to acquire
critical skills, reflection skills, have empathy, tolerance and understanding to others. They
believe that all stakeholders are responsible to teach young people how to communicate
democratically – schools, teachers, parents, media, non-governmental organizations and
(local) government. When mentioning media literacy skills, teachers are aware that pupils can
recognize tricks in commercials; however, it is hard for them to differentiate between various
sources (e.g. fake and real news).

Regarding Competences for democratic culture, all teachers believe they are important and
should be included in the school curricula. They are addressing the need to teach values and
attitudes, as this is missing in Croatian educational system. From values, they detect that
pupils are missing the following ones: valuing cultural diversity and valuing human dignity
and human rights. When they talked about attitudes, they highlighted openness to cultural
otherness and to other beliefs, world views and practices, as well as self-efficacy.

In general, teachers say that these competences can be included in extra-curricular activities
and that they would like to have more opportunities to work on these with pupils. In the end,
they concluded that these competences are important for the whole society and that all people
should have them.
 

Press release - Forum for Freedom in Education - Project 4 "Democratic Culture in Action - Democratic Competences in the digital era".