“Brainfinity” is already widely known in Serbia as a competition that encourages students’ creativity, collaboration, and logical reasoning. The high responsiveness of school-age children and teachers made us think about the internationalization of this great initiative.

One of the most important goals of education should be to make students productive and able to independently and creatively solve various problems. Unfortunately, the traditional school curriculum, tests, and writing assignments often do not allow these skills to be developed to the right extent, and that is why the most successful teaching practices in the world use problem-solving.

The teaching process based on problem-solving engages students in many ways, requiring them to simultaneously use cognitive capacities, creative and critical thinking, communication, and teamwork skills. All of that contributes to the results achieved in this way being exceptional.

The vision of the project is to help students to think creatively and to solve problems independently so that they are able to successfully overcome various challenges in their future careers.

Today’s education system is based on memorizing facts, not on finding solutions to problems and testing whether those solutions can lead to success. Rather than learn formulas, facts, and dates by heart, problem-solving requires students to use their thinking skills to solve different types of open-ended problems. The best results are achieved when students work in a group and try different solutions to certain problems through cooperation. On the other hand, due to the development of technology, the labor market is very unpredictable, so it is necessary for today’s and future generations to develop skills that will allow them to be adaptable. Problem-solving and creativity are the future. We need to start developing these skills in students already in primary school so that they are ready for what awaits them in life. With “Brainfinity”, we can achieve that!

By implementing this project, we want to create a new approach to teaching and learning. It is interesting for the students and will encourage them to think, link information, collaborate, and find creative solutions. Of course, we also want to provide training and tools to teachers so that they can easily adopt this approach to teaching.

The consortium that will implement the “Brainfinity” project consists of organizations from Portugal, Bulgaria, Slovenia, and Serbia.

The project partners are:

• AEG1 – state school, Portugal;
• JumpIN HUB – non-governmental organization, Portugal;
• TC Ragina – educational center, Bulgaria;
• 119 Secondary School ”Academician Mihail Arnaudov”, Bulgaria;
• Smart Idea – MSP, Slovenia;
• Primary School “Šalovci”, Slovenia;
• Primary School “Savremena”, Serbia;
• Institute for Contemporary Education, Serbia.

The main goals of the project are:

• increase the capacity of teachers to move from the traditional ex-cathedra teaching style to the role of facilitator, motivator, and mentor;
• empower teachers to motivate students and involve them in the learning process;
• help teachers understand what skills need to be developed in order to teach students innovative concepts – how to think, solve problems, search for data and collaborate;
• motivate students to get used to looking for information instead of just asking their teachers, to be literate and able to evaluate the validity of collected information;
• teach students to express their ideas freely, without fear;
• teach students to form teams, work together, use their strengths for the benefit of the team and support each other.

Expected results of the project:

• matrix of competencies and skills for teachers and students;
• educational content for teachers;
• training for teachers when it comes to creating detective tasks and organizing the national competition “Brainfinity”;
• a guide for the organization of the national competition “Brainfinity”;
• a guide for using Brainfinity methodology in teaching;
• a portal with a collection of Brainfinity challenges.

The project duration is 30 months.