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Many countries have embarked on creating standards of teacher competencies with the ultimate goal of improving teaching in their schools. The aim of this paper is to compare Standards of teacher competencies in Serbia with those in countries/regions which perform well on PISA (Australia, Singapore, Ontario, Estonia, the Netherlands and Slovenia) in order to highlight important similarities and differences which potentially account for teacher quality in those countries, as well as inform policymakers in Serbia on how to reformulate standards of teacher competencies and, consequently, improve teacher quality and pupil outcomes. The criteria on which sets of standards in different countries are compared are: development of standards (who and how developed the standards), content of standards (subject knowledge, didactics, etc.), differentiation of standards (existence of separate sets of competencies for novice teachers, experienced teachers, etc.), purpose of standards (teacher certification, performance monitoring, career progression, accreditation of teacher education providers, etc.), and context in which the standards operate (whether they are a part of a larger framework of standards and educational practices or not). Several important differences exist between the Standards of teacher competencies in Serbia and selected countries, the greatest being the much higher level of utilisation of standards in various segments of teacher professional lives in those countries than in Serbia. Recommendations for the improvement of standards of teacher competencies in Serbia are drawn. [Project of the Serbian Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development, Grant no. 179034: From Encouraging Initiative, Cooperationand Creativity in Education to New Roles and Identities in Society and Grant no. 47008: Improving the Quality and Accessibility of Education in Modernization Processes in Serbia]

Improving the quality of in-service teacher training is a very topical issue in educational policies of a number of countries. This segment of the system was also subject to considerable changes in Serbia in the past ten years. The changes brought about certain improvements, but also opened up numerous dilemmas and issues. This paper is aimed at acquiring an insight into the opinions of different participants on the ways of improving the quality of in-service teacher training. The sample included three groups of respondents: the employees in education bureaucracy and experts in the field of education (N=34), principals (N=50) and expert associates from primary schools (N=93). We developed a questionnaire for the purposes of this research, using open-ended questions to collect respondents’ suggestions on improving the quality of in-service teacher training. The content analysis method was used to process the collected data. Research results point to three directions of the necessary changes: (1) better governing of the system of in-service teacher training, (2) providing funding and other forms of support, and (3) higher flexibility of in-service teacher training and implementation of the acquired knowledge. The range and quality of respondents’ suggestions demonstrate the need to take into account different perspectives in overcoming the difficulties in the system and practice of in-service teacher training. Consequently, the obtained results should be observed as a contribution to creating a more purposeful and efficient system of in-service teacher training.

This paper presents one part of the findings of a research that deals with teachers’ perceptions of educational reforms in Serbia. More specifically, the paper focuses on the segment of the research that was aimed at exploring teachers’ views on the ways of improving the system and practice of in-service teacher training. Pursuing this topic is very important since the findings of recent studies have shown that this aspect of education system needs considerable improvement, while the authors who deal with educational change point to the importance of consulting the teachers in the development of the new system solutions. The questionnaire was used to collect the data from 326 teachers from 125 Serbian primary schools. The teachers provided answers to open-ended questions on what needs to be done in order to improve the quality of their in-service training. Content analysis was used to process the data - response categories were created inductively on the basis of teachers’ answers, and then their frequency was established. The results indicate that, according to teachers, in-service teacher training has to be improved, primarily through increased funding, higher quality of programmes/seminars, diversification of types of training, as well as through creating a more encouraging system and school setting for in-service teacher training. These results are significant from the aspect of the in-service training system since they point to developmental priorities, as well as to the necessity of a more complex and comprehensive approach to the reform of this segment of education system. [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. 47008: Predstave o obrazovnim promenama u Srbiji - refleksije o prošlosti, vizije budućnosti čiju realizaciju finansira Švajcarska agencija za razvoj i saradnju, Unapređivanje kvaliteta i dostupnosti obrazovanja u procesima modernizacije Srbije i br. 179034: Od podsticanja inicijative, saradnje i stvaralaštva u obrazovanju do novih uloga i identiteta u društvu]

This paper presents the main results of the international study of students’ mathematics and science achievement TIMSS 2011. The focus is on presentation and discussion of the results achieved by Serbian students. In Serbia, this study was conducted in the fourth grade of primary school on a nationally representative sample of students - a total of 4379 students from 156 primary schools were tested, i.e. 219 classes. The average achievement of students from Serbia was 516 points in mathematics and in science, which in both cases represents achievement that is significantly higher than the center point of the TIMSS 4th grade scale. The paper also presents results according to content domains, differences in achievement between boys and girls, as well as students’ distribution according to international benchmarks. The results are observed from the view point of overlapping of the Serbian curricula and the TIMSS test. Overall, these results can be seen as encouraging indicators of the Serbian education system for the first education cycle, particularly if we bear in mind relatively poor performance of students in higher grades in Serbia which had been shown in various previous studies. Since TIMSS findings should primarily be used in planning the development of education, the concluding part discusses the importance of regular participation of Serbia in international studies of this kind, as well as the importance of greater involvement of domestic researchers in analysis of available international databases. [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. 47008: Vrednovanje postignuća učenika u matematici i prirodnim naukama - TIMSS 2011, Unapređivanje kvaliteta i dostupnosti obrazovanja u procesima modernizacije Srbije i br. 179034: Od podsticanja inicijative, saradnje i stvaralaštva u obrazovanju do novih uloga i identiteta u društvu]

School development planning is an instrument of school internal development. It has been present in Serbian schools since 2002, but until today there have not been enough data regarding the way development planning takes place and what its effects are. The main question in this research is how the teachers directly involved in the process itself evaluate development planning in their schools. The sample consisted of 291 teachers from 51 primary schools in Serbia. They replied in written form to the open-ended questions regarding their opinion about the positive and the negative sides of school development planning. Data processing included creating categories of teacher answers and calculating the relative presence of answers by categories. Teachers estimated that the following were the positive sides of development planning: strengthening cooperation and team work, introducing planning practice, school development, increased participation, successful project realization and acquisition of new knowledge and advanced training. Teachers most often had no objections to development planning, and when they did, these referred to the following: insufficient support to the development team, resistance and lack of interest of their colleagues, demands of planning, problems with the functioning of the development team and poor plan realization. The results point out to the conclusion that school development planning is predominantly positively evaluated and at the same time provide the foundation for arriving at practical ideas regarding the future direction of the policies in the field of internal school development.

The paper presents different approaches and international trends in governing education systems and analyses the causes of the perceived convergence of education policies in this field. An overview of the situation in countries throughout the world indicates an increasingly greater mutual similarity in governing education systems, especially when it comes to insisting on the following: searching for balance in (de)centralization of the system, increasing school autonomy, reinforcing the role of evaluation and professional accountability, and developing quasi-market regulatory mechanisms in education. The author argues that convergence of governing education systems is conditioned by common, primarily, economic challenges and increasingly greater importance of transnational regulation in education. Besides the traditional ways of transferring, such as borrowing solutions from other systems, numerous multilateral organizations have lately had a significant role in transnational spreading of education policy. In the concluding part, the author argues that a relatively neglected model of internal school development, based on the idea of organizational learning, has a potential to significantly complement the prevailing regulatory models and thereby enhance their effectiveness and efficiency.

This paper reports on the research results regarding children's positioning in their daydreaming narratives. A special feature of the research was its cross-generational character, i.e. we have collected and analyzed written accounts of primary school children's daydreams in grade 4, which were produced in the year 1984 and the year 2009. One of the major insights from our research is that children's daydreaming narratives broadly belong to the category of 'preferred self' constructions. We classified these preferred self-constructions in three categories, namely 'fictional selves', 'future selves' and 'actual selves', which emerged from repetitive themes in children's narratives. Each of these broad categories was further 'unpacked' into more specific constructions of preferred selves. Based on the qualitative data we developed hypotheses about generational shifts in preferred self constructions and used nonparametric statistical tests to evaluate these hypotheses.

One of the key messages of the contemporary approach to school development is that teacher participation is a necessary precondition for the successfulness of this process. Experience from the world, however, shows that broad and active participation of teachers in school development is neither easy to achieve nor to sustain in the long run. Similarly, the first experiences with school developmental planning in Serbia from the first half of this decade also pointed out to the differences with respect to readiness of teachers to take over this new role. The research that will be presented in this paper was conducted with the aim of discovering and determining the levels and ways in which different factors influence teacher involvement in developmental activities in school, whereby those activities are of cooperative and leadership character. The research was conducted on the sample of 385 teachers from 51 primary schools in Serbia. The findings indicate that teacher involvement in school development is a product of a complex combination and interaction of numerous personal and contextual factors, bearing in mind that harmony of personal and professional identity and meanings ascribed to changes in school is of primary importance. The final part of the paper provides recommendations for system and organizational level in order for teacher involvement in school development to become a widespread and sustainable practice.

In this paper, author tries to analyze complex character of the relation between law and morality in contemporary law philosophy. There are three approaches to the issue of relation between law and morality: natural law theory (identity thesis), positivist (separation thesis) and Anglo-American analytical jurisprudence (polarity thesis). The identity thesis-law and morality are basically identical, although basic principles of morality are subordinated to the positive legal rules; the separation thesis-law and morality are quite different system of norms: positive legal rules are completely deprived of any moral content; Polarity thesis - law and morality are different systems of norms which complement to each other. The polarity thesis is exemplified in theories of Herbert Hart and Ronald Dworkin's. At the logical level, polarity thesis overcomes and specifically synthesizes abstract character and reductionism of identity and separation thesis. At the socio-historical level, the polarity thesis is result of historical development of legal and political institutions.

Having in mind that student achievement and interest in subject are some of the most important educational goals, and that quality of teaching is the crucial schooling factor influencing them, we examined the contribution of teacher-level variables from the dynamic model of educational effectiveness to student achievement and interest in mathematics and biology. The representative sample included 5,476 students from 125 elementary schools in Serbia and 5,021 parents. Data on student and teacher variables were collected through student and parent questionnaires, while data on prior and current achievement were comprised from students' Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) 2011 scores and national examination results, respectively. Data were analyzed using multilevel modeling. The results indicate that teacher factors from the dynamic model did not impact student achievement in mathematics and biology but influenced student interest in both subjects. We offer recommendations for educational policy and directions for further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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