Participation of Assoc. Prof. Dr. Vesna Svalina at the international conference CALT 2026

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Vesna Svalina participated in the Second International Conference CALT: Creative Approaches to Learning and Teaching, held on April 17 and 18, 2026, at the Faculty of Education of the Josip Juraj Strossmayer University of Osijek. At the conference, she presented a poster entitled Transdisciplinary Interpretations of Historical School Songbooks: Creative Music Activities with Digitised Heritage.

The poster presented the possibilities of transdisciplinary interpretation of digitised Croatian historical school songbooks from the late 19th and early 20th centuries as a valuable yet still underutilised educational resource. It is based on the view that such sources should not remain merely archival material but can become a stimulus for creative reinterpretation, didactic planning, and contemporary teaching practice. Special emphasis was placed on connecting musical heritage, the history of education, and contemporary creative practice in the education of future teachers.

The analysis included three Croatian historical songbooks published between 1885 and 1914, as well as early methodological texts on vocal pedagogy and teacher education. The results demonstrated their musical-textual, historical-cultural, and creative-pedagogical potential. On this basis, various activities were proposed, such as adapting song lyrics, writing short stories and poetic miniatures, linking songbooks with the history of schooling and everyday life, and creating a contemporary classroom songbook that includes musical notation, text, drawings, and digital elements such as QR codes.

The poster shows how digitised historical school songbooks can become a meaningful resource for contemporary education when approached from a transdisciplinary and practice-oriented perspective. In particular, it highlights the possibility of transitioning from a digital archive to creative classroom application.

Conference website:
https://second-international-conference-calt--creative-approaches-to-le.webnode.hr/

Conference programme:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ppBtVuVj7r2UMA-NolllLtF-F-1_wg12/view

Book of abstracts:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1frk7EFw0NKz87zTBHLOXFG9swSGgA5SB/view