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The Relations between Students’ Intercultural Communication Competencies and Employability
72-79.Views:154In today’s globalised world, businesses operate on an international level. Most business and economics graduates will interact with colleagues, clients, and partners from diverse cultural backgrounds. Intercultural competencies are essential for their success and effective collaboration in the labour market. A special questionnaire was compiled to investigate students’ intercultural competencies. Based on the statements and responses of the questionnaire, the examination aimed to establish the principal components of the intercultural communication competencies of the students of a Hungarian university. In the next phase of the research, the principal components served to create student clusters which were analysed from a labour market point of view, focusing on advantages and disadvantages. The crucial question was: which cluster is in demand the most in the labour market? By utilizing a principal component analysis, the dataset was reduced to three key components. Subsequently, to classify the students into groups, a multivariate statistical procedure, i.e., cluster analysis, was used to reveal the structures by clearly considering the similarities of a relatively heterogeneous population and to create a relatively homogeneous subset. The study revealed five distinct student clusters, each with varying advantages and disadvantages for employers. In this context, the Interculturally Active and Open with Good Language Skills cluster proved to be the most competent, with the least ideal collection indisputably being the Interculturally Reluctant in Cooperating cluster. The research underscores the importance of intercultural communication competencies for employees and enriches our understanding of the dynamics between intercultural communication competencies and workforce readiness. Developing these competencies in foreign language classes will significantly facilitate our students’ employment.
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Students’ Motivations to Study Abroad: The Case of International Students at the University of Debrecen
76-81Views:1682Today there is a growing demand among international students to study in Hungary, more specifically with the launching of Stipendium Hungaricum program in 2013. The number of international scholarship holders increases each year, but till now, we have no significant research results about their study motivations, research has focused only on institutional perspectives (Kasza, & Hangyál 2018). The motivation of students is an important research field in higher education, particularly because there could be various factors to motivate students studying abroad. The motives can be categorised as intrinsic and extrinsic. Our research question is, what are the main intrinsic and extrinsic motivational factors that encourage students to study in Hungary? We performed 15 qualitative interviews among international scholarship holders on postgraduate levels. We gathered semi-structured interviews with the help of an interview scheme with five main questions. The investigated dimensions include the following: 1. introduction and context of interviewees, 2. Reasons for leaving the country of origin, 3. Reasons for country choice, 4. Preliminary knowledge about Hungary, 5. Personal expectations. After the data collection, we analysed texts with open coding process in which line by line and word for word was analysed (Khandkar, 2009). Then we were able to form a typology of motivations and we found subcategories within the intrinsic and extrinsic classification.
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Dropped-out Students and the Decision to Drop-out in Hungary
31-40Views:794The interpretation of the phenomenon of student dropout, which represents a waste of a relatively large proportion of human and material capital in the social, individual and institutional domain, is impossible without examining dropout students. In this study, we analysed the DEPART 2018 database, which contains data from 605 Hungarian dropout students. We tried to identify higher education dropout scenarios and pointed out that higher educational dropout is a complex phenomenon. Based on the students' reports on their interpretation and evaluation of their dropouts, four student clusters were created. We compared the groups with their socio-cultural background and their decision to drop out from higher education, and their assessment of that decision. The most important result of the study is that it identifies a new group in addition to the international dropout types, and provides a detailed picture that calls our attention to the diversity of dropout groups, thereby moving beyond the over-generalised image of the dropout student.
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The Connection between Extracurricular, Leisure Time Activities, Religiosity and the Reasons for Drop-out
55-67Views:364The interruption of tertiary education and the reduction in the dropout rate have been a central issue in educational sociology and education research. Exploring the possible reasons for dropping out can significantly contribute to reducing the trend. Our aim is to map the links between students dropping out and individual factors. Consequently, we investigate the connection between extracurricular and leisure-time activities, health behaviour and religiosity in relation to dropout. This is explained by the fact that one of the axioms of the literature on dropout is that belonging to civil networks usually strengthens the commitment to the successful completion of studies. In our analysis, we used the database created during the research carried out in 2018 by the Center for Higher Education Research and Development (CHERD-H) in the framework of project No. 123847 of the National Research, Development and Innovation Fund of Hungary, entitled The Role of Social and Organisational Factors in Student Dropout (DEPART 2018, N=605). Our results show that the neglect of study obligations among those who are disappointed in the course and further education is closely related to the shift in value preferences and an increase in the time spent with entertainment activities and partying. It can also be stated that students take part indifferent types of extracurricular activities only to a limited extent, and the different forms of participation in activities and religiosity are not related to the causes of dropout.
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Teaching English for Students with Special Educational Needs During the Pandemic
20-31Views:102This research aimed to examine the impact of distance learning on SEN students’ English language education, parental involvement in the education of these children, as well as the ICT tools used for their development. There is little information about the difficulties and trials these students and their teachers had to face during the COVID-19 epidemic. Moreover, parental involvement plays a significant role in school performance, but there is little information about how this was realized during distance learning. We assumed that the biggest problem was the transition from face-to-face education to the online sphere. To examine this, we conducted semistructured personal interviews with elementary school English teachers from north-eastern Hungary. The most important result of our research is that during this period only a few SEN students could receive special, individual lessons, and differentiated education was implemented to a somewhat limited extent. To conclude, more programs should be created that meet the different needs of SEN to properly educate these children, and that as many development specialists as possible, who could provide group or individual lessons, should be recruited.
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Different Forms of Civil Activity and Employment in Hungary and Abroad, and the Development of Student Drop-out
41-54Views:364Young people involved in higher education have created a specific culture, to which, in addition to their studies, social and cultural activities associated with university life are also related (Kozma, 2006). Among these activities, student employment and participation in civic organizations should be highlighted. Voluntary and paid work among higher education students is increasing. These activities have several advantages in terms of future benefits; however, the attracting role of the labour market is one possible reason for dropout. In our current research, we emphasize the role of employment and civil activity in the development of student dropout. Masevičiūtė et al. (2018) found that a quarter of students stopped studying for work-related reasons. In addition, a negative perception of the marketability of the course they are on may lead to the interruption of university studies. In our study, we analysed the extent to which students are willing to interrupt their higher education studies in exchange for voluntary work. In our current research, we examined how often and for what reasons students who dropped out did paid work and volunteering during their studies.
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Interrelations between Sport and Leisure Activities among High School Students
41-52Views:218Research on the education, upbringing and habits of high school students is extremely varied and diversified across all areas of education. In our case, we would like to investigate students’ sporting and leisure habits, as several studies have found possible breakpoints in students’ lifestyles during this period, which is particularly true for sporting habits. Our research focuses on the leisure habits of students learning in Nyíregyháza and Debrecen. We were looking for answers to the following questions: What is the most common form of leisure time activity among the students investigated? and, what social and sport-related variables are associated with differences in leisure time use? We conducted a questionnaire survey in secondary schools in the two cities (N=450) to answer our questions. The analyses showed that screentime activities continue to play a dominant role in the leisure time of the age group studied, followed only by activities that can be linked to active leisure.
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English Language Learning Using Literary Texts in the Virtual 3D Space of the MaxWhere Seminar System
18-27Views:119Through this paper, we will provide a brief overview of the 3D virtual library project and a more detailed review of its current application for English language learning. The implementation of the library project makes use of the innovative 3D presentation features of the MaxWhere Seminar System. As an innovative application of the project, we compiled a bilingual learning material for Hungarian students to improve their language skills and competence in English at an advanced level. The complex structure and organization of the learning material is based partially on the hypertextual relationships between entries of selected keywords containing various contexts from different works of world literature. We developed the learning material taking into careful consideration the appropriate characteristics of the hyperlink structure. Our basic hypothesis was that if the bilingual learning material is organized as a more or less scale-free network of interconnected nodes, this might or would result in an optimized and efficient knowledge transfer in the learning process. After the first version of the material had been completed, we wanted to evaluate the overall difficulty of the material. As such, we were using the Google Translate (GT) service to check the proper understanding of a set of selected English language phrases and sentences through their Hungarian translations provided by GT. As a result, we created a more or less scale-free learning material whose linguistic content has been properly checked.
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The Mentoring’s Role among Alumni Students of István Wáli Roma College for Advanced Studies of the Reformed Church
36-52Views:257Colleges for Advanced Studies (CASs) are the oldest institutionalized talent development initiatives of higher education in Hungary (since 1895). The Act CCIV of 2011 on National Higher Education initiated the creation of a national network of denominational Roma CASs. In a CAS, students live in a dormitory, build a strong community, get scholarships and support from tutors and mentors. Important elements of Roma CASs are the following: religious education, social responsibility for society, and Roma identity empowerment (Godó et al., 2019; Kardos, 2013; Charta, 2011). In this study, we examined alumni (ex-university students) of a Roma CAS in Debrecen. Among other things, we were interested in how they relate to the mentoring process, how they feel about it, and how mentoring is perceived in their own lives. We are also interested in what types of mentors are mentioned and whether there is any form of mentoring in their current activities. Method of our research: qualitative interview analysis. Semi-structured interviews were conducted in 2018 with 17 alumni selected by snowball method. According to our results, the former students named 2 types of mentors who were next to them: layman and professional mentors, or they themselves can be typed as mentors on the basis of the following: layman mentors (layman persons involved in mentoring activities) and professional mentors. We consider it important to emphasize the role of the pastor in a Reformed institution, who has also been promoted to the professional mentoring category. In addition, our goal is to investigate the characteristics of networking patterns that emerge around specialist college students.
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Curricular and Extracurricular Learning among Students with Resilience Potential. Social Inequalities in Higher Education
37-42Views:151Does resilience potential in higher education mature into success or does it remain merely a promise of success due to rising social inequality? We studied curricular and extracurricular learning of students with outstanding academic achievement who entered higher education despite their disadvantage of social background (= students with resilience potential). A student survey database compiled in the research project “Higher Education for Social Cohesion – Cooperative Research and Development in a Cross-border Area” (HERD) (HURO/0901/253/2.2.2.) in 2012 was analyzed. Students of three Eastern Hungarian higher education institutions were surveyed (N = 1205). Students with resilience potential were identified in the intersection of two groups of variables: social background and input academic achievement. We have conducted a cluster analysis, which has resulted in the identification of students with resilience potential and other researched groups: drifters (low social background and low input academic achievement), beneficiaries (high social background and high academic achievement) and indifferent prodigals (high social background and low academic achievement). To sum up our results, the students with resilience potential only use higher education to fulfill curricular requirements, and hit a ceiling, compared to the beneficiaries, when it comes to the student year mining, meaningful extracurricular activities. Thus social inequalities crawl through these invisible channels into higher education and beyond.
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The perspectives of the doctoral students of the University of Debrecen related to migration
103-111Views:218Research on migration processes in recent years has highlighted the fact that migration is becoming more common among younger and more educated people. We believe that it is worth meeting the (self)selection of (potential) migrants at the beginning of the process, and also, measuring the willingness to migrate is important. During our research, we investigated the migration plans of PhD students at the University of Debrecen through paper-based questionnaires. In our study, we seek to determine the extent to which PhD students in Debrecen are willing to migrate. Also, we investigate what the fundamental difference is between PhD students with the intent of migration and those without. 53.4% of the responding doctoral students intend to stay in Hungary after completing their doctoral training, while 46.6% consider it possible to settle abroad. It has been observed that strong and weak bonds of those who wish to stay in the country of residence are significant, while those who wish to stay abroad own migration shells.
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Characteristics of Teaching Community Capital - Focus on Teachers in Reformed Public Education Institutions
48-55Views:270The issue of the effectiveness of teaching is constantly at the center of research. "Teachers count", presents the OECD report (2005), which confirms the research of the day that the work of the teacher contributes significantly to the performance of students. The question is how to capture the factors that influence school performance. The focus of the examination of the theoretical background is on the professional capital theory, with the emphasis on the examination of social / teaching capital in addition to the human capital and decision capital components. Our research is based on a secondary analysis of a questionnaire among teachers working in Calvinist institutions in 2017. The focus of our interest is on identifying the characteristics (frequency) and content (agreeing with norms) of staff capital and the need for teachers to develop collaborative networking opportunities for future professional development.
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How Do University Students Get Relevant Information?
67-79Views:234The web and learning have evolved parallel as technological changes have influenced teaching and learning processes. In this study, I intend to extend this parallel with two other dimensions, namely, human 1.0-3.0 and influencer 1.0-3.0. The concepts are closely related to how the online world became popular abroad and what their impact is on learning and education. Thus, the question, “what is the significance of social media, and of its latest, most popular actors, of the “work” of influencers (which can be interpreted as fake news) in the lives of students in higher education?”, is also a very pertinent issue to touch on. Its involvement in our lives is ever growing and very often influences our media literacy. This gives us even more reason to look into social media’s impact.
However, our main goal is to find answers to the following questions:
• What opportunities does the digital toolkit give to students? What kind of digital literacy do students think they need to thrive in the job market?
• To what extent does the ICT literacy of pedagogical students differ from that of other students (lawyer, economics, doctor, technical)? What form of cognitive development is used for lifelong learning?
• To what extent are students’ IT literacy influenced by cultural, material, and family capital?
• How is information acquisition implemented in education? How conscious is the use of media among university students, and what is their critical attitude?
• To what extent does online media penetrate the medium of formal-informal and non-formal learning? How does the influencer activity of professional opinion leaders help students to think critically and thoughtfully?The sample of the survey is made up of students from the University of Debrecen. From the results we can see, that university students behave differently in the online space, on social media platforms and on messengers than they would elsewhere, thus this affects how they get information. The current situation, the pandemic, clearly demonstrates that advanced digital competence is essential for a confident presence in the online space and advanced critical thinking. Problems of digital inequality and division have surfaced, and the constructed reality mediated by the media is becoming increasingly distorted. During this period, the relationship between the media and media consumers has changed greatly, and the interaction has intensified.
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Higher Education Research on the Issue of Dropout
90-94Views:216Book review on Pusztai, G., Szigeti, F. (eds.): Dropout and Persistence in Higher Education. Debrecen University Press, University of Debrecen, 2018.
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The Effect of Psychological Capital on Academic Success of College Students Mediated Through Student Engagement
64-80Views:124Although psychological capital is theorized to enhance academic success of college students, there is a lack of sufficient empirical evidence supporting this claim. Given this gap, the present study was conducted to explore the role of psychological capital in academic success of college students, mediated through student engagement. Undergraduate and postgraduate diploma students (N=502) were selected using a convenience sampling technique. The participants completed self-reported questionnaires assessing their psychological capital, student engagement, and academic success. To determine the statistical significance of the prediction, hierarchical multiple regression analyses were performed. PROCESS macro for SPSS was utilized for analyzing the mediation effect. Results obtained from the regression analyses revealed that psychological capital was positively and significantly related to both engagement and academic success. Notably, the mediation results also demonstrated that student engagement partially mediated the relationship between psychological capital and academic success. The results of the present study might contribute to the existing literature related to the importance of positive psychology in education by providing insight into the complicated relationship between psychological capital, student engagement, and academic success.
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Pandemic and Education
1-10Views:878The emergence and rapid spread of the Coronavirus in the spring of 2020 has fundamentally changed our lives. The most important change has been the attempt to minimise face–to–face contacts everywhere in order to keep the epidemic under control. Public gatherings were banned, shopping malls were closed, and sporting events were also cancelled. As COVID–19 spread as easily among children as among adults, schools could not escape the restrictions. During the first wave of the epidemic, institutions had to switch to emergency remote education (ERE) at very short notice, which presented a number of problems for all participants. These problems and experiences of the switch should be collected at all levels of education, as they not only help to prepare for similar situations, but may also lead to conclusions that can be used to make the methods and solutions of classroom–based teaching more motivating, more effective or even more efficient. In this paper, we review both the challenges of the transition and the possible implications for the future teaching–learning process by reflecting on the lessons learned.
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The Statistical Analysis of the Academic Achievement of Young People Living in the Child Protection System
29-38Views:259In recent years, there has been an increasing emphasis on placing children in foster care. Our main research aims to explore the connections between the future orientation of disadvantaged young people living in residential care homes and foster families. In our pilot-study, we made it measurable by a comparative analysis of their study results. The sample consists of children raised in the child protection specialist and aftercare system of the Greek Catholic Child Protection Centre of Debrecen and Nyírség. The comparative analysis included 57 children and young people living in residential care homes and 57 children and young adults living in foster care. The members of both groups were born between 1993 and 2003, so are 15-25-year-olds. The comparative analysis was made on the basis of the available documents and study statistics between June 2019 and November 2019, to measure and compare the academic achievement of young people living in residential care homes and with foster parents. According to the statistical analysis, it was found that the academic achievement, based on year repetitions, show a more favourable picture of students living with foster parents. Depending on our results, a number of additional research questions arise.
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The Challenges of Adopting a Learner-Centered Approach to On-Line English Teacher Education: A Teacher-Research Study on Jigsaw Reading and PeerTeaching in Cambodia
60-71.Views:210In Cambodia, the shift to on-line learning due to Covid-19 reinforced an already overly teacher-centric approach to education, leading to the risk of greater learner disengagement. To address this problem, I3 embarked on a research project involving the redesign of the on-line delivery of a final year English teacher education course on ‘School and Society’, in which all lectures were replaced with jigsaw reading (JR) and peer teaching (PT) tasks. To track the impact of this innovation, I recorded class sessions, kept observation logs, and obtained data from students’ reflective journaling, interviews, and a focus group. This paper reports on the design principles behind the innovation and its impact on student motivation and engagement. The research has implications for on-line teacher education and the introduction of learner-centered pedagogies in global south contexts.
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A General Overview of the Educational Programmes of the Hungarian Football Academies
101-110Views:296In the course of our research, we surveyed the educational programmes of the football academies of Hungary. We wished to reveal the educational aspects of the life of the students at the football academies. The purpose of our project is to comparatively analyse the formal and conceptual dimensions of the educational programmes of the academies through an analysis of the documents of the academies concerned. We also conducted semi-structured interviews with the heads of the social- and educational sections of the academies (N=6). We used the results of the interviews to check–confirm or refute–the results we found. We believe that the findings of our research make it possible for us to better understand the elements and value-based components of the educational dimensions of the football academies. In this way, our survey is similar to the projects of researchers who worked with local educational programmes (for example, Brezsnyánszky et al., 2000). As a conclusion of our research, we may point out that both the formal and conceptual dimensions of the educational programmes of the individual football academies are strongly heterogeneous, and the quality of their pedagogical programmes is often questionable. The results yielded by the analysis of the interviews suggest that although an educational-social department is present at each of the academies, some our former conclusions in connection with the general standards of the educational work were confirmed by the answers we received from our respondents. The academies, almost without an exception, produce their own educational programmes and carry out their educational work individually, and do not cooperate with the other institutions. There is, consequently, no uniform and standard educational work, and there is no professional documentation of the work going on either. In this way, the quality of educational work is not really able to improve.
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Parent-Teacher Communication from the Perspective of the Educator
13-24.Views:703Several, mostly quantitative, studies have already examined the relationship between teachers and parents, as well as the positive effects of parental involvement. The aim of this study is to explore how parental involvement is realized in communication between the two actors. In the framework of a qualitative study, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 31 teachers teaching in elementary schools, and the analysis was performed using the Atlas.ti software. Based on our findings, we concluded that regular communication, common language use, a positive attitude from both parties, and the appropriate use of information and communication technology tools are essential for effective communication. The practical significance of this is that teacher trainees should also emphasize practical education, with a special focus on their ability to establish appropriate communication with parents of different socioeconomic backgrounds.
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Labour Market Characteristics of Helping Professionals
66-75Views:245In Hungary, considerable efforts have been made in recent years to analyse the career paths of higher educational graduates, which have highlighted the need for field-specific and training-specific analysis. In this context, our research concentrates on a special training segment, focusing on the position of young professionals working in occupations helping the function of the society. Previous research focused only on the professionalization of the different occupations and the recruitment was examined from institutional and regional aspects. However, during the statistical analysis we examined the social recruitment base and the labour market situation of social pedagogy graduates in the Graduates 2012 (Frissdiplomások 2012) national database. The novelty of our work lies in the comparison of those who graduated in social work, pedagogy and andragogy in full-time programs. The most important result of our quantitative analysis is the statement that the differences in the composition of the group are strongly explained by the regional location of the institutions providing the training. In terms of horizontal and vertical congruence, the values of the humanities group are the most unfavourable.
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Higher Education Choice in China: Social Class, Gender, Parental Involvement and Educational Inequality
97-100Views:507Bibliography of the review book: Sheng, X. (2014). Higher Education Choice in China: Social Class, Gender, Parental Involvement and Educational Inequality. Routledge. 173 pp., ISBN: 978-0-415-84309-6. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315814254
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Why who cleans counts. What housework tells us about American family life.
102-104Views:155Bibliography of the reviewed book: Davis, N. Shannon and Greenstein N. Theodore (2020). Why who cleans counts. What housework tells us about American family life. Location: Policy Press Chicago. 172 pp., ISBN: 978-1-4473-3674-7
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First Generation Students in the Hungarian Higher Educational System
53-65Views:264The first part of the study attempts to summarise the most frequently used and cited theories and empirical findings in the field of first generation students. The specialist literature has identified those factors (cultural background of family, parents’ special attitude toward learning, the features of the time-budget etc.) which can generate a disadvantageous situation within the higher education system for these students. However, the presence of this group is a significant indicator of the openness of a society and social mobility, and a more careful analysis of this population may reduce the drop-out rate, as well. During the empirical analysis two databases were used (Eurostudent VI, Hungarian Youth Research 2012 and 2016). Our results draw attention to the process of social closure and the decreasing chance of attending higher education for young people from lower social groups. This unfavourable shift can mirror the relatively closed features of Hungarian society, but at the same time it can make the distances among social groups more rigid.
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Myth or Reality? Mobility Trends among Recent Graduates of Different Fields of Study
43-57Views:125The paper focuses on the intergenerational mobility processes in Hungarian higher education over the past decade. Its purpose is to explore these processes and to analyse the differences between the fields of study. The second-generation mobility theories, which serve to be the theoretical background of this paper, focus on the differences between income, education, occupational groups and social classes in connection with status attainment and mobility. Among the mobility theories relating to higher education, theories analyzing inequalities are studied, to discover whether they are found in Hungarian higher education („Maximally Maintained Inequality”, MMI and the theory of „Effectively Maintained Inequality”, EMI). The analysis also covers the „dynastic effects” related to mobility, whether they strengthen or weaken intergenerational processes. The database of the analysis is the Graduate Career Tracking System 2010-2021.