This paper presents an empirically study on the attitudes of female university students at all Teacher Education Faculties in Serbia (TEFS). For the purposes of this study, a survey was prepared to be completed by students online, and virtual exponential non-discriminative snowball sampling was applied. The independent variables were religion, major subjects, year of study, age, the completion of secondary schooling, whether an optional subject was studied during previous schooling, and whether female students were employed. The dependent variables were the respondents’ attitudes to religious instruction and civic education. The sample included 372 students from all TEFS, and the research was conducted in the period from 15 May to 8 June 2022. The data were processed with the aid of nonparametric statistics. The results showed that religion did not contribute to differences in students’ attitudes and opinions regarding the method of performing religious instruction and civic education, but that some other factors contributed to it, such as previous experience with these subjects and whether the respondent had completed secondary schooling. These results may be interpreted in the light of the weaknesses of the confessional model, that is, the lack of knowledge regarding the basic paradigms of other confessions, which is of great importance for countries such as Serbia which have numerous national minorities and religious communities.

The state of emergency was declared in Serbia in the spring of 2020 due to the pandemic of the new disease, COVID-19. As a result, distance learning was introduced for the first time at Serbian universities - online learning in utterly specific crisis circumstances caused by the outbreak of the pandemic of a completely unknown infectious disease. This model of learning was adjusted to that fact in the form of emergency remote teaching. The paper presents the results of examining the attitudes of female students of teacher education faculties in Serbia regarding the efficiency and sustainability of the distance learning model in which they gained experience. The sample included 399 female students, who completed an online survey designed for the purposes of this research. The results of the survey showed the strengths and weaknesses of distance learning as a formerly untapped potential in higher education in Serbia, which specifically refers to the teaching model applied during the state of emergency introduced due to the crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Also, the differences in the knowledge of digital technologies by the professors came to the fore in terms of the methods that the professors used in their work. The results suggest that distance learning can be a useful tool in the process of knowledge transfer in higher education, but that final year students are most affected by the inability to acquire knowledge in practice that cannot be virtually compensated, which is a very important step in their work training, as well as the pronounced general problem of lack of social interaction and meeting social needs, arising as a result of the pandemic. In contrast, increased leisure time and health reasons stand out as the main advantages of the new teaching model, which is significantly characterized by the crisis environment.