Ilia State University

Ilia State University is a flagship public research and comprehensive higher education institution in Georgia that was established in 2006 as a merger of six different institutions, each having a long history and a diverse institutional profile. Its schools offer distinctive training in their respective direction and in-depth research opportunity in social sciences, humanities, life sciences, earth sciences, and hard sciences. With the highest competition rate for PhD programs in the nation, approximately 15,000 students, 988 highly qualified academic staff, and with renovated research infrastructure in several Georgia’s regions (including 30 large and small scale research institutes, centers and stations), ISU has become one of the most desirable universities to study and work for in the country over the last 10 years.

ESTA allows us to work together with a nice international consortium during three years. We’ll prepare together student-centered activities for science classes that consider the diversity present in the classroom, also new courses and materials for pre-service and in-service science teachers.

Millenium School, Tbilisi

2nd Public School of Marneuli

Prof. Dr. Marika Kapanadze

My name is Marika, I am a professor for Science Education at Ilia State University and head of Science Education Research Centre SALiS. My research interests are science teacher professional development, science curriculum development, inquiry-based learning and investigation of teachers’ attitudes and students’ interest in science. Looking forward development of new and innovative programs in science education through an interdisciplinary (science, languages, intercultural education) and collaborative approach together with the international ESTA consortium.

Prof. Dr. Ekaterine Shaverdashvili

My name is Ekaterine. I am a professor of Educational Sciences at Ilia State University (Georgia) with a focus on second / foreign language teaching; I am a head of the Innovative Educational Research Center. My research interests are didactics of foreign and second language; language policy; values education; In recent years I have been interested in the CLIL method and would like to work on the integration of science subjects and foreign or foreign languages with CLIL. It is very important for me to share experiences with international colleagues and learn from each other.

Assist. Prof. Dr. Tinatin Kiguradze

My name is Tina (a short form from Tinatin) and I am working in the field of teacher education for Georgian as a Second/Foreign Language and German as a foreign Language at Ilia State University. My interest towards CLIL raised during a previous TEMPUS-project on Multilingual Education in ethnic minorities in Georgia: Teaching/learning languages with a particular aim (e.g. understand some topics in chemistry or history) seems to be more effective than teaching/learning a language of it’s own. As the area of CLIL is very broad and there are many good but also less effective cases of using this methodology in different and diverse classrooms, I am interested in connecting with more colleagues to discuss particular issues and exchange knowledge among us in the framework of this project.

Ekaterine Slovinsky

My name is Ekaterine. I am invited lecturer at Ilia State University and a member of the Science Education Research Center – SALiS. My interest as a researcher is students’ motivation in science learning, context-based and inquiry-based science teaching. I have working experience in the field of science education as a teacher, academic consultant, curriculum developer, science textbooks evaluator, pre-and post-service teachers’ trainer. During all my past activities I was facing with the language-sensitive science teaching and learning classroom problems. Hope cooperation with ESTA colleagues will promote development of CLIL based science teaching.