On 1 November 2000, the Mershon Center was awarded a two-year contract from the US Department of State, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs for the conduct of the project ‘Education for Democracy in Ukraine’. This project was part of the Transatlantic Civil Society Support Program for Ukrainian Civic Education, a joint effort of the European Union and the United States. The program activities were planned in accordance with CIVITAS International and drew upon Mershon’s prior collaboration with the Center for Citizenship Education, Warsaw (CCEW) and the success that they have achieved together in promoting civic education in Poland.
At that time, the Ukrainian educational system was still reflective of the imposition of Soviet ideology and identity, so the core of the project consisted of several activities designed to practically address teaching democracy in Ukraine. One of the tasks set before us in our cooperation was to assist our Ukrainian colleagues in adopting new methods and content for teaching about democracy without committing the same impositions of other foreigners. Recognizing this danger, we set forward a program that was based first on developing Ukrainian capacity for democratic educational reform while also achieving the objectives of the governmental contract.
Implicit in our program design was the development of our Ukrainian partner, the All-Ukrainian Association of Teachers of History ‘DOBA’, to function as a viable non-governmental organization to conduct teacher-training and curriculum development without extended reliance on foreign financial or other resources. Secondly, we sought to assist our Ukrainian colleagues in developing materials that were reflective of best practice, so we applied the successful Curriculum Development Seminar model to the project, an approach pioneered by Richard Remy at the Mershon Center and subsequently adopted by the US Department of State as their preferred model for education development assistance. At its core, the Curriculum Development Seminar consists of hosting a group of teacher/curriculum developers for multiple weeks at a US university where they can be involved in intensive seminar sessions with experts in democracy and curriculum development, have access to the best possible facilities and resources for their task and most importantly, have the opportunity to interact with exceptional teachers who teach civic education. Thirdly, we developed our program on a cooperative partnership model, based on our successful relationship with the Center for Citizenship, Warsaw (CCEW) that stresses mutual decision-making, long-term commitment and respect for contextual knowledge. Lastly, we designed the program to include our Polish partners as major contributors because we strongly believed in the importance of providing our new Ukrainian colleagues with a model for successful development that was closer to their own circumstances politically, geographically, socially and economically.
While the program design was left largely to the contractors, the project activities were largely dictated by the contract language. The principle goal of the project was the development of curriculum and materials for teaching civic education in 9/10th grade of Ukrainian schools. However, the project was also tasked with several other goals including improving relations with the Ukrainian Ministry of Education, developing the Ukrainian partner NGO and devising a cooperative model for working with the EU partner. To achieve these goals, the project was designed with six components that spanned the policy and practice of education for democracy.
In considering these components, we were very cognizant of two powerful forces on Ukraine: Soviet history and the question of a national identity. We attempted to address the ‘Soviet mindset’ still reflected in the educational system and curriculum in a number of ways. First, we held ongoing consultations with the Ukrainian Ministry of Education to foster understanding and administrative support for civic education. The Ukrainian partner achieved this by including Ministry representatives in planning roundtables where the transparency of the project decision-making could reassure the officials of the intent of the partners. In addition, the US partner conducted a two-week study tour to acquaint key officials in the policy and practice of civic education in the United States and provide answers to their questions and concerns about implementing such a curriculum on a practical level. Secondly, by focusing on the professional development of ‘DOBA’ staff, the project sought to decentralize educational reform by assisting a non-governmental association of teachers in acquiring the capacity to conduct curriculum development and teacher training.
The project addressed the needs of developing a Ukrainian ‘national identity’ by creating materials that help students understand the complexity of their national history and how commitment to democratic principals can be a unifying force to provide Ukraine with a self-determined future. An important aspect of these materials is that they were wholly developed by Ukrainians drawing upon their own, European, Polish, Russian and US resources. At no time did Americans write or even instruct our Ukrainian partners on what to write for their curriculum. Instead, we served as consultants, resource providers and colleagues by sharing with them our ideas, aspirations and experiences (both good and bad) with civic education in the United States.
The materials that they subsequently developed are a stark departure from the Soviet educational tradition of passive, didactic lecture that lingers still in Ukraine. The lessons in ‘We Are Citizens of Ukraine’ utilize active teaching-learning methodology that international research Steven Finkel and others has demonstrated as being important for teaching democracy.
Teachers were trained as teacher-trainers to teach the new materials to their colleagues and a series of teacher training workshops were held throughout the country. The first of these involved trainers from Poland, Russia and the United States but as the Nova Doba trainers gained experience, they soon took over all trainings and are now outstanding teacher-trainers in their own right.
Through our cooperation with Nova Doba we not only fulfilled the contractual terms but also exceeded them to the point that the US Department of State has continued to support us in spite of their dwindling budget for civic education. From the first Transatlantic program to our current efforts, our partnership has accomplished a remarkable amount in developing education for democracy in Ukraine. These accomplishments are supported by our recently completed study, using the instrument designed by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA), on the impact of the ‘We are Citizens of Ukraine’ course on students’ learning. From a random sample of forty-six classrooms we found a number of statistically significant differences between Ukrainian students who participated in the course and those who did not. Among the findings were that students who participated in the ‘We are Citizens of Ukraine’ course were likely to:
Full results of this report can be found at www.bgsu.edu
These findings demonstrate the positive impact of the project on student learning and on teaching practice in Ukraine. The growth and development of Nova Doba as the leading voice for civic education in Ukraine also demonstrates the effectiveness of the partnership model we used in the project. Lastly, the fact that many of the students who participated in the program took to the streets of Kyiv to peacefully demand democracy during the past Presidential election proves the importance of continuing this and other effective projects to insure that democracy continues to develop and thrive in this ‘borderland’ of the European Union.
Alden W. Craddock, Ph.D., International Democratic Education Institute, Bowling Green