The aim of this paper is to thoroughly examine how students in Serbia experienced their education through distance learning during the 2020 Spring school closures due to the pandemic. Schoolchildren’s multigenre narratives about learning during school closure were elicited by online surveys; qualitative thematic and values analyses were conducted; and data was further analysed by cluster analysis, ANOVA, and t -tests. A total of 45 lower and upper secondary school students produced 106 narratives providing 429 thought units for analysis. Altogether, 6 themes and 26 value codes were identified. They demonstrate the wide range, complexity, and nuanced positioning of students’ experiences towards the new situation, their role in it, and the role of others i.e. teachers and the technology itself. The paper draws implications on the policy and educational-psychological and methodological level.

In this contemporary world, hyperconnected by migrations and digital media, discourse studies can add important insights about diverse interacting voices. Given increasing contact among individuals, groups, and institutions, understanding discursive interactions across geo-political migration systems requires methodological innovation. This article presents a theory-based research design and analysis of how diverse participants in the process of migration use discourse genres to make sense of displacement and interventions. We illustrate this dynamic narrative inquiry with an activity-meaning system design sampling discourses by diverse participants along the Balkan migration route and an analysis of values salient to them. Animating this method is a study in an education intervention in Serbia, where hundreds of young refugees, arriving from violent displacements in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria attended public schools alongside local peers. This methodology integrates principles of critical discourse analysis to study how displaced youth, their peers, educators, national/international policymakers, and public media used relevant genres to make sense of social inclusion. Analyses of participants' narratives, letters, policies, education guidelines, and news reports yielded 17 values and their dynamic interactions. A discourse-based values analyses revealed echoes across student and institutional expressions (the importance of subjectivity and cultural practices) and diverse group values: migrant students' uses of narratives to emphasize geo-political injustices, Serbian students' emphasis on local cultural practices, and institutional emphases on social inclusion. The study demonstrates the ecological validity of an inquiry sensitive to webs of meaning among diverse actors, adding complexity to social inclusion.

This paper aims to help understand how relational trust between students and teachers embedded in the teaching-learning process unfolded during the emergency distance and flexible hybrid education in Serbia in 2020. It also identifies niches in student-teacher relationships that hold potential for repairing and building trust. For the student-teacher relationship to be trust-based and thus conducive to students’ learning and wellbeing, a consensus about role expectations must be achieved. As the Covid-19 crisis interrupted schooling and education, participants faced uncertainties and ambiguities in role enactment, and the cornerstones of relational trust were disrupted. In an effort to understand 1) the context in which trust was challenged, 2) the ways in which trust was disrupted, and 3) the opportunities for its restoration, we relied on a multi-genre dynamic storytelling approach to data collection and values analysis for data processing. A total of 136 students and 117 teachers from 22 schools wrote 581 narratives in three genres: stories, letters and requests. The analysis yielded 22 codes that allowed further understanding of how changes in structural and institutional conditions affected both students’ and teachers’ expectations of each other, and how incongruence of these expectations fed into feelings of helplessness for both students and teachers, disengagement from learning for students, and heavy workload and poor performance for teachers. In addition, the narratives account for positive outcomes when these expectations were met, and for opportunities for trust-building if students’ and teachers’ perspectives are brought to each other’s attention and negotiated locally. Finally, recommendations for restoring trust are given.

Student teachers’ school practice is an important part of initial teacher education (ITE) as it bridges the gap between ITE and subsequent induction and professional development. Since recently, school practice has been obligatory in Serbia as part of ITE. However, this development faces many challenges. We examine the results of a survey carried out to find out how school practice is organized at 44 faculty departments that educate future teachers at the four biggest state universities in Serbia. The results show that the requirements and organization of student teachers’ school practice vary across different faculties and that the outcomes and the content of the student teachers’ school practices are not aligned with the new demands of the teaching profession. Differences are found between departments educating class teachers and subject teachers, yet intra-group differences are high, indicating overall fragmentation of ITE in this respect. All surveyed departments report on a lack of essential cooperation between the faculty and practice schools, insufficient duration of student practice and a lack of human resources. As a response to the state of affairs in ITE in Serbia, we discuss a “practice school” model, aiming to overcome the gap between the academic part of ITE and student practice, as well as the initial challenges of this model.Key words: faculty-school cooperation; initial teacher education; practice schools; student teachers’ school practice.---SažetakStručno-pedagoška praksa koju pohađaju budući nastavnici važan je dio njihova početnog obrazovanja (PON) jer premošćuje jaz između PON-a i njihova kasnijeg uvođenja u profesiju, kao i profesionalnog razvoja. Donedavno je stručno-pedagoška praksa bila obvezna u Srbiji te je činila neizostavan dio PON-a. Međutim, taj je razvoj suočen s mnogim izazovima. Istražujemo rezultate studije provedene kako bi se utvrdilo na koji je način stručno-pedagoška praksa organizirana u 44 fakultetska odsjeka koji obrazuju buduće nastavnike na četiri najveća državna sveučilišta u Srbiji. Rezultati pokazuju da se uvjeti i organizacija stručno-pedagoške prakse razlikuju od fakulteta do fakulteta i da ishodi i sadržaj stručno-pedagoške prakse nisu usklađeni s novim zahtjevima nastavničke profesije. Nailazimo na razlike između odsjeka na kojima se obrazuju učitelji razredne nastave i predmetni nastavnici, no i razlike unutar skupina su velike te ukazuju na opću fragmentaciju PON-a. Svi proučavani odsjeci izvještavaju o nedostatku osnovne suradnje između fakulteta I škola vježbaonica, nedovoljnom trajanju prakse i nedostatku ljudskih resursa. Kao odgovor na to razmatramo model „škole vježbaonice“ s ciljem nadilaženja jaza između akademskog dijela PON-a i stručno-pedagoške prakse te istražujemo početne izazove tog modela. Ključne riječi: početno obrazovanje nastavnika; stručno-pedagoška praksa; suradnja između fakulteta i škole; škole vježbaonice.