Branko Bognar

I started my professional career in the autumn of 1987 after two years of study as a teacher in a small school 50 km from Zagreb. After my pedagogical study, which I completed whilst I was working, I was hired as a pedagogue in a primary school "Vladimir Nazor" in Slavonski Brod where I spent 12 years (1993-2005). In the role of a pedagogue I have tried to assist teachers in introducing changes whose aim was to break from the boundaries of traditional teaching. From May of 2005 I have become an assistant professor at the Department of Pedagogy at the Philosophical Faculty at the University of Josip Juraj Strossmayer in Osijek.
At the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Zagreb I gained an MA degree in May 2003. In my dissertation under the title "Critical-emancipatory approach to a professional development of  primary school teachers," I represented the experiences of an action research project carried out in a primary school context. The main aim of this project was to help a group of primary school teachers to become action researchers. It was the first attempt to help teachers to become action researchers in a Croatian school context. The results of this project were represented at the BERA 2004 conference in Manchester. In December 2008 I defended my Ph.D. dissertation entitled, "The possibility of becoming a teacher-action-researcher through e-learning". In order to acquire the learning and cooperation of teachers in this two-year project we used a course-management system called Moodle (www.e-lar.net/moodle). In September 2006 in Opatija (Croatia) and in April of 2007 in Aberdeen (UK) at IATEFL conferences I represented the experiences of a two-year collaboration and critical friendship with Dr. Moira Laidlaw who then facilitated Teaching Methodologies with Action Research in Ningxia Teachers University in Guyuan in China's northwest. I have been a member of the editorial board of the Croatian Journal for the Philosophy of Education "Metodički ogledi" from 2001.