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The project is aimed at designing an internationally competitive, contextually adapted and culturally aware Postgraduate Teaching Programme (with Postgraduate Teaching Certificate as the final award), which will be offered by University of Kurdistan Hewlêr to the graduates with Master’s degree in order to empower them with the best international teaching practices, adapt their teaching methodology to post-ISIS and post-conflict context, and promote historical, cultural and artistic heritage of the Kurdistan Region. This project will enhance local teaching expertise at a tertiary level in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, promote understanding and better collaboration between countries and cultures in the field of higher education, and induce internationalization of local teaching staff as well as better adaptation of international teaching staff to the local environment and culture;
Another focus will be honouring and bringing up attention to the Kurdish history, art and culture; establishing the postgraduate teacher training ground for upbringing patriotic Kurdish elité in the sphere of higher education and beyond.
The project will consist of three consecutive parts: research, design of the Postgraduate Teaching Programme and implementation of the outcomes or delivery of the programme. The first stage of the project, or the actual research, which will last for 3 months and will be conducted in the local universities, will provide the data about the current Teaching Methods programme for postgraduate specialists who intend to start a teaching career at tertiary level. In stage two, which will go on for 3 months and will be based on the research outcomes of the stage 1 (that will highlight the areas of improvement of the existing programme and suggest potential solutions of the issues) a new Postgraduate Teaching Programme will be designed and offered by University of Kurdistan Hewlêr in two versions. The 3-months’ programme will be directed at the experienced international and local teaching staff and focus on the cross-cultural and intercultural communication, along with historical and artistic heritage of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. The 6-months’ programme will be directed at inexperienced international and local teaching staff and will consist of modules on teaching methods, psychology of teaching in post-conflict zones, cross-cultural communication and Kurdish culture and history. The third stage of the project will be devoted to the implementation of the project outcomes or delivery of new 3- and 6-months’ versions of the Postgraduate Teaching Programme, presentation of a number of workshops for educators in the region, submission of a research report to the Ministry of Higher Education of Kurdistan Region and publication of a research paper. It is anticipated that the new programme will include, among others, modules on Fundamentals of Cross-Cultural and Intercultural Communication, History of Kurdistan, Kurdish Literature and Art, International Law and Intellectual Property in Higher Education, and Psychology of Teaching in Post-Conflict Context. The content of a new Postgraduate Teaching Programme will be finalized and built on the educational needs discovered in the course of the research conducted in the first stage of the project. The graduates of both 3- and 6-months’ Postgraduate Teaching Programme will be awarded with Postgraduate Teaching Certificate by University of Kurdistan Hewlêr.