HUPE – Branch Karlovac ran its first meeting in the school year 2017/2018 on Saturday, 30 September 2017 at 10 30 a.m. in Industry and Trade Vocational School, Domobranska 2, Karlovac. The meeting was attended by ten teachers.

The presenter, doctor of science Ljiljana Pintarić Mlinar, an assistant professor working in two Departments at Faculty of Education and Rehabilitation Sciences in Zagreb - Department of Inclusive Education and Rehabilitation and Department of Visual Impairments had a short introductory talk on the topic and ran a 90 min workshop English language teacher in interaction with children with special educational needs.

Faculty of Education and Rehabilitation Sciences is the only higher education institution in the Republic of Croatia that creates and offers well established university-level programmes in speech-language pathology, educational rehabilitation and social pedagogy in addition to developing and advancing high-quality research as well as clinical best practices in these areas.

Ljiljana Pintarić Mlinar’s main interest has been for more than 20 years research of processes of bio-psycho-social rehabilitation of children with intellectual difficulties and functioning of their families, i.e. creation of individually tailored strategies necessary in encouraging the development of these children.

However, her recent interests are very much focused toward transdisciplinary and interdisciplinary insights in supporting children’s and youth development from social context: family, school and teachers, peers interactions as well as global perspective influence to values in curriculum planning, changes, etc...

The workshop introduced some latest research conclusions and trends in teaching students with special needs. As introduction to the workshop, teachers saw a short video on early language learning sensitive periods “Young children citizens of the world” and had a brief overview of legislative framework in Croatian Education System, a little bit of statistics related to children with special needs as well as clinical best practices in the areas of speech-language pathology, educational rehabilitation and social pedagogy.

In the main part of the workshop different issues such as cognitive preparation for work, creativity in presenting curriculum for children with special needs, relationship pupil with special needs/teacher, emotional feedback – likes and fears, children’s needs, examples of teaching strategies and rationale for improving learning outcomes were tackled.

The second issue on the agenda was the election of the Branch president. Dubravka Lapčić was elected the president in the new term.

Dubravka Lapčić,
HUPE-Branch Karlovac President