AN INTER-UNIVERSITY CO-OPERATION. REPORT OF A 2-YEAR EXPERIENCE

Abstract

Participating in an international conference is often a ritual. It happens very frequently that the participants, although coming from different contexts and sharing the same field of interests, although discussing about the works presented in the conference, actually save the same opinions that they had before, and the effect of the exchanges fades with the last conversation during the conference dinner.

The international conference for the ten years of the Institute of Special Education and Rehabilitation, University “Ss Cyril and Methodius”, held in Ohrid on September 2003, was not a mere ritual. During that conference, a small group of researchers and experts coming from Macedonia and Italy gave start to something new, spontaneously beginning to talk about the two different educational systems for people with special needs, the one practiced in Italy and the one practiced in Macedonia. Few months after that encounter, that small group of people (the writers of the present article were among them) gave birth to an inter-university co-operation project between “Ss Cyril and Methodius” and “La Sapienza” Universities, that has been lasting for two years and still going on.