New Perspectives in Science Education

This paper analyses the role of academic education in cultural heritage preservation in Bulgaria by conceptualising the “Bulgarian model” as a de facto configuration of regulatory expectations, disciplinary higher-education trajectories, and institutional practice that operates without consistent conceptual coordination. It argues that Bulgarian heritage governance presupposes an integrated professional profile combining disciplinary expertise, procedural literacy, and inter-institutional coordination skills, while higher education predominantly produces partial profiles shaped by disciplinary programmes; as a result, institutions complete competences through compensatory learning-by-doing mechanisms. The analysis further shows that digital learning environments – digitisation workflows, documentation standards, 3D imaging, immersive visualisation and virtual reconstruction – are reshaping competence requirements and intensifying the mismatch between regulatory demands and educational outputs. The paper uses the University of Library Studies and Information Technologies (ULSIT) as a case study of practice-oriented heritage education that integrates fieldwork training in archives, libraries, museums and archaeological contexts with laboratory-based learning (conservation and restoration, identification and authentication) and digital heritage laboratories (digitisation, 3D imaging and VR), particularly at master’s level. The findings support the conclusion that sustainable improvement in heritage preservation depends on coordinated competence frameworks linking cultural and educational governance and embedding digital learning as an integrated competence environment rather than a purely technical add-on.