The kick-off meeting of the Erasmus+ project of the Faculty of Natural Sciences and Mathematics named “Improvement the quality of chemistry teaching in vocational education in Bosnia and Herzegovina – ChemTeach” was held on the 21st and 22nd February 2024 in Bratislava. The coordinator of the project is the Slovak Technical University in Bratislava, i.e. the Faculty of Chemical and Food Technology of this university, with which the Faculty of Natural Sciences and Mathematics has been cooperating for many years. Five secondary schools in which chemistry is an important subject in the teaching process participate in the implementation of the ChemTeach project. These are the Secondary School of Chemistry from Bratislava, the Higher Secondary School of Chemistry from the Czech city of Pardubice, and three schools from Banja Luka – Gymnasium, Medical School, and Technological School.

The goal of the project is to develop experimental methods and digital tools tailored to students, to connect scientific concepts with everyday life, and to create manuals with digital teaching material, which will contribute to the competencies of teachers. These activities will certainly contribute to the modernization of teaching at our Faculty and provide guidelines for curriculum development for future chemistry professors. Special attention will be devoted to communication with representatives of the companies and institutes to ensure relevance in terms of the needs of the economy for appropriate chemical knowledge and skills. At the kick-off meeting, the first project activities that will take place at the Faculty of Natural Sciences and Mathematics at the end of March were announced, and our team was represented by Sanja Pržulj, Dragana Gajić, and Dejana Savić, assistants of the Department of Chemistry.

Author of the text: Prof. Milica Balaban