Aleksandar Baucal

Aleksandar Baucal is a professor in Developmental and Educational Psychology at the University of Belgrade and a visiting professor at the University of Tartu as well as an elected member of the International Academy of Education (IEA). He has been actively involved as an expert and policy advisor in numerous projects aimed at enhancing the relevance, quality, and equity of education. Additionally, he has also been a staunch advocate for the right to quality education for children from vulnerable groups. His work is based on the socio-cultural approach to lifelong learning and development and devoted to integration of knowledge crafted through research, advocacy, and engagement in education improvement projects.

https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=95RyBmMAAAAJ

It Doesn’t Come Spontaneously: Cultivating Student Collaborative Problem Solving In Educational Contexts

In European knowledge-driven societies facing increasingly complex challenges, collaborative problem-solving (CPS) is recognized as a key competence. Becoming able to participate in a productive CPS is essential for future citizens as it enables students to deepen their understanding of problems and create better solutions. Furthermore, engaging in productive CPS promotes the enhancement of individual competencies, fostering overall personal and academic growth. Thus, education need to provide all students with opportunities to develop competences necessary for productive CPS.

Although students often acquire foundational collaboration skills early in primary education and regularly participate in group work in school, many continue to struggle with establishing and maintaining productive peer collaboration even through upper secondary education. This keynote presentation introduces the development of an innovative PEER training model aimed at cultivating students' CPS competence and examines its impact both at the group and individual level.

The keynote is organized into four parts. The first part identifies key barriers - related to teachers, curricula, and educational policies – that limit opportunities for students to cultivate competences essential for effective CPS. The second part presents findings from systematic reviews that informed the development of the PEER model training, designed to improve students' competences to engage in productive CPS with peers. The third part focuses on empirical studies evaluating the impact of the PEER training on the quality of student collaboration in CPS, and quality of CPS products, and the improvement of individual student competences. The talk will conclude with a discussion of the implications for educational practice and policy and with charting a way forward to better prepare all students for future collaborative endeavors.

Upcoming ECERs

Title
08.09.2025
ECER'25, Belgrade
17.08.2026
ECER'26, Tampere
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Important Dates ECER 2025

Title
01.12.2024
Submission starts
31.01.2025
Submission ends
01.04.2025
Registration starts
01.04.2025
Review results announced
15.05.2025
Early bird ends
25.06.2025
Presentation times announced
30.06.2025
Registration Deadline for Presenters
08.09.2025
ERC First Day
09.09.2025
ECER First Day
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Conference Venue

Main Building (Check-in etc):
University of Belgrade
Faculty of Philology
Studentski trg 3
Belgrade

Ed Research in Serbia

While preapring for ECER 2025, read the Blog Post introducing some specifics of educational research in Serbia.
Towards reconnecting within and beyond the educational research community in Serbia

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