The three-day symposium on December 9–11, arranged by the ministry and Faculty of Education at University of Ljubljana, was a preparatory meeting before the field trials are scheduled to start in early 2020.
After many months of online meetings and email exchanges, the Listiac partners finally met face to face again – this time at Ministry of Education, Science and Sport in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Eighteen Listiac members were present during the symposium.
The symposium began with a shorter session, during which the project partners got the chance to catch up on what has been going on in the project during the first year. The leaders of the upcoming work packages presented their thoughts on how to move forward with the field trials and the evaluation of the project.
The second day was long and tough but well-needed; the methodology and the terminology as well as the research instruments (observation protocol, staff and student reflections, online survey, logbooks, good practices, semi-structured interviews) were discussed. The last morning was spent at two linguistically sensitive schools. The school visits gave the project members a lot of inspiration and motivation, and there were so many thoughts to share with the others afterwards that the meeting ran late.
Visiting Ljubljana in December turned out to be a great idea, not only to wrap up the first project year, but also to get into the Christmas spirit. One evening the team had a traditional Slovenian dinner at the medieval castle, which had both a spectacular view of the city centre and a cute Christmas market to offer. The only thing missing was the snow, which came to Ljubljana immediately after the Listiac team had left the city.
