Amman, 26 October 2015 – UNESCO Office in Amman, in partnership with the Ministry of Education, Queen Rania Teacher Academy (QRTA), and the generous funders of this project, the European Union (EU) and Saudi Fund for Development, held the launch event of the “Blended Approach to Teacher Training (BATT)”. The event featured remarks from QRTA, the EU Delegation, the Ministry of Education and UNESCO. Additional guests included the embassies of Canada and Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and other QRTA partners, like EDRAAK.

With such positive repercussions linked to the accomplishments and positive impressions of the initial project, which was funded by the European Union, UNESCO and QRTA are partnering to stimulate a new phase developing a technologically Blended Approach to Teacher Training (BATT) project that will substantially increase the project outreach and strengthen its impact.

The educational challenges experienced by students and teachers in Jordan’s public schools as a result of the aftermath of the Syrian conflict and the consequential refugee crisis in Jordan, were the catalyst for the initial collaboration between UNESCO and QRTA. The initial European Union-funded project successfully met its objective of developing resource materials for teacher training, preparing 500 MoE trainers and training 2000 public school classroom teachers with the knowledge and skills necessary to intervene on behalf of students who were struggling with the psycho-social trauma experienced by their forced displacement.

The impetus for the new BATT project is motivated by the need to enhance the materials and ideologies of the initial project, digitalize and create an on-line teacher professional development platform, incorporate a specialized science and math component and reach a wider audience of teachers within Jordan. The program can serve as a foundational training course for all teachers offering focused training for teachers on how to manage large numbers of students, promote dialogue, detect early signs of behavioural problems, and ensure inclusion of all children. The course has the potential to also address the immediate pedagogical needs of teachers during times of peace as well as in times of crisis by incorporating subject specific training components to address the learning needs of secondary level math and science students.

On this occasion, QRTA CEO Haif Bannayan stated that “BATT is not only important for the subjects it addresses: psychosocial instruction, pedagogy, math and physics, as it also boasts being a hybrid model featuring online and face-to-face training, which is a relatively new concept that ensures wider outreach to teachers and allows them to access the training online at their own pace.”

Ms. Costanza Farina, UNESCO Representative to Jordan remarked: “the concept of this project in Jordan is timely for our math and science teachers as it encourages their self-development in a twenty first century -yet a crisis- context by giving them the freedom to choose when and where to receive their training while still spending appropriate time with their students.”

''In our bilateral EU-Jordanian cooperation we have always supported opportunities in the field of Education. A good example is the EU Support to the employability of the youth by strengthening the Technical and Vocational Education Training in Jordan which will be launched in 2016 with EUR 52 million'', said Mr. Ibrahim Laafia,  First Counsellor at the of the European Union Delegation to Jordan. ''This offers extra opportunities to fund teacher training, especially in the field of vocational education and training. Additional opportunities for developing the teacher training exist under the EU funded Erasmus+ program aimed at mobilizing Jordanian universality teachers, administrators and students. The new call for proposals will be officially launched on 9th November here in Amman'' he added.

This new project is funded in part by the European Union, a continuation of the “Sustaining Quality Education and Promoting Skills Development Opportunities for Young Syrian Refugees in Jordan” Project, and the Saudi Fund for Development, and is comprised of two main tracks: psychosocial pedagogy targeting all teachers, and math and physics instruction for secondary school teachers.