Search
Search Results
-
Policy Against Drop-out in Italy
1-9Views:631In this essay I set out the current situation of Early School Leaving (ESL) in Italy by considering both data provided by institutional sources (national and international) and a review of the most recent contributions from the educational work that have been done intensively to fight against ESL over the last 20 years. I will argue that the way followed so far will not lead to surprising results, due to deep and structural persisting factors of inequality. After a short overview on the position of Italy in the European rankings, the article recalls the main interventions that took place in the country by different investors (public and non-public), setting up a multiplicity of fragmented macro-politics. Then I will look at the mechanisms of differentiation and unequal distribution of educational opportunities and I will conclude with suggestions on how to make the fight against ESL more efficient and forward-looking.
-
Differences in Foreign Language Choice of Students from Different Social Backgrounds
78-86Views:319According to previous research (e.g. Bernstein, 1971; Gogolin, 2014; Hegedűs et al., 2019), family background plays a decisive role in an individual's mother tongue acquisition and in learning foreign languages. In another study, parents with a high social background (54.0%) chose German for their children, and parents with a low social background (56.9%) chose English in primary school (Sebestyén, 2021). Based on this, in the study I examine what difference can be detected in the foreign language choice of high school students from different social backgrounds. In the study, I analyze the student data (890 people) of my database entitled “German learning and teaching in Hajdú-Bihar and Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg counties” prepared in the 2018/2019 school year, during which I perform cross-tabulation and cluster analysis with the help of SPSS program. The database contains data on 11th grade high school and vocational high school students who studied German and / or English in high school. As the results, there are differences between the learned foreign languages among secondary school students according to family background. Among the clusters related to high school choice, those belonging to the “Higher Education Oriented Local” cluster are most interested in foreign languages, most German-speaking (74.0%) and English (89,0%) students tend to be in this cluster. Overall, the majority of respondents learn English, while students from higher social backgrounds (also) learn German.
-
The interaction of meso and macro contexts with students’ careers. Three applied analysis
10-21Views:279This paper presents three applied analysis. Our principal interest is to understand how meso (university level) and macro (national level) contexts interact with micro phenomena such as students’ careers. To achieve this aim, the paper shows a secondary analysis of longitudinal administrative data by means of Sequence Analysis and Event History Models. Furthermore, it shows the results of an additional analysis using a quasi-experimental research on longitudinal data.
The paper examines typical pathways of Italian students, by means of administrative information’s on student enrollment from Sapienza University of Rome. The aim of this paper is triple: 1. describe students’ careers in higher education by building a typology of pathways using Sequence Analysis. 2. Identify how socio-economic and macro level characteristics affect students’ careers by multinomial logistic regression model where clusters are used as dependent variables and focus on the study of the “event” by using Event History analysis. 3. Evaluate the Italian Higher Education reform policies and their main outcomes throughout a quasi-experimental research.
Mainly, the outcomes show the importance of the warming-up period, the individual choice and the exogenous events after enrolment in determining the success/failure of each career. Our outcomes suggest that Italian universities should rethink the mechanisms available to manage failure and guide student choices.
-
International Trends of Remote Teaching Ordered in Light of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) and its Most Popular Video Conferencing Applications that Implement Communication
84-92Views:2742The global coronavirus pandemic that emerged at the end of 2019 and will reach its peak in 2020 has affected education systems worldwide and led to widespread, complete closure of schools, universities, and colleges. UNESCO estimates that a total of nearly 1.6 billion students worldwide have been affected by the closures of educational institutions. The indicator was the highest in the period from April 1 to April 5, when exactly 1,598,099,008 students were affected by the measures. This accounted for 91.3% of the world’s total learning community, with a total of 193 countries providing full nationwide remote teaching. In response to school clo-sures, UNESCO has proposed distance learning programs as well as open educational applications and platforms that have ena-bled schools and teachers to reach their students remotely and make online education easier (UNESCO, 2020). In addition to reviewing the recent literature and monitoring lockdown measures, the study also suggests a number of specific solutions.
-
College Begins in Kindergarten: A Path to Higher Education Through Family-School Partnerships in a K-5 School
1-12.Views:303As income inequality rises in the United States, students from low-income backgrounds and other excluded identities are likelier to remain in the lower income percentile, especially if they do not have college degrees (Kochhar & Cilluffo, 2018). Therefore, a critical approach is to focus on what happens before middle and high school, realizing that early childhood is prime for students to learn about college and their future. This study explored the practices influencing college-going aspirations for marginalized students in a K-5 school that engages teachers and families. The exploration extends the literature on how schools prepare elementary-aged students to develop college-going aspirations. The case study design collected data from observations, an administrative interview, and a document review. Findings revealed social and environmental practices influencing students and families regarding college-going attitudes and aspirations. The results have implications for curriculum and school culture to redefine the postsecondary conversation.
-
The perspectives of the doctoral students of the University of Debrecen related to migration
103-111Views:347Research 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.
-
Introductory Survey on Challenges Encountered by University Teachers in Online Teaching of STEM Subjects During COVID-19 Lockdown
22-32Views:4622020 will be remembered for COVID-19, a pandemic that forced the world to lock down and urged most educational providers to promptly implement e-learning solutions. In this paper, we point out some challenges faced by university teachers who had almost no earlier practice in online teaching. Nine lecturers working in different universities from Brazil, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, India, Macedonia, and Slovakia – all teaching science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) subjects – were interviewed to share their online teaching experiences during the COVID-19 lockdown. The aim of this introductory small-scale research paper is to provide a basis for future research regarding the influences that the COVID-19 situation has had on educational processes, as well as to assist educational providers in foreseeing and eliminating the possible problems of lecturers when establishing an online educational environment. Some conclusions are formulated from the interview survey, and possibilities for further research are described.
-
Sociology of Education – Theories, Communities, Contexts
107-109Views:267Bibliography of the reviewed book: Pusztai, G. (Eds.), (2023). Sociology of Education – Theories, communities,
contexts. Debrecen University Press. -
Interrelations between Sport and Leisure Activities among High School Students
41-52Views:298Research 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.
-
International Academic Mobility as a Capacity Building Factor in Higher Education
82-91Views:299International academic mobility means the teaching or research activity of higher educational instructors or researchers, which spans a couple of days or a few months, during which individual professional growth, the establishment of international cooperation and networks, personal relations and friendships may develop. It is also considered to be a fundamental necessity for building capacity and an outstanding supremacy, even if a country’s academic resources are modest. Thus it is crucial to gain information about its current and actual state, quality, standards, struggles and the direction it is heading towards. As a part of a bigger research study, we wanted to know how international academic mobility, used for capacity building, changes over time, and whether country-specific features and patterns could be traced. In this present study we made an attempt to uncover the international activity based on the academic mobility of the full-time instructors at two Hungarian higher educational institutions. One of them is a large university that plays a leading role in internationalization. The other is a dynamically developing regional knowledge center. We examined the instructors of two faculties from the first, and everybody from the regional knowledge center, since it is smaller in size. Altogether 210 instructors responded to our 60 questions in the survey. The surveys were processed in the SPSS statistical analysis program. Concerning the examined discussions, categories and proposed topics, our research was built upon two previously carried out investigations – a Hungarian and a Norwegian one. We found that in Hungary in the given time period (2012-2014), the instructors with the strongest international activity were: 1. the men; 2. those who held higher academic positions; 3. those who were married or were in a relationship; and 4. who were from the field of social science.
-
Use of Electronic Resources in Teaching Religion in Higher Education: Best Practices from the SULSIT, Bulgaria
56-60Views:303This paper describes actually methodical attempts to use library electronic resources in academic education. Some opportunities for improving the teaching of religious cultural heritage and for diversify the methods of assessment of students in Bulgarian universities are commented. The text describes the personal experience of the authors with students of 3rd-4th grades from the State University of Library Studies and IT (SULSIT), Bulgaria. Among the “best practices” are tasks of performing on-line survey of digital resources of periodicals from the digital resources of the “St. St. Cyril and Methodius” National Library, of making content analysis of the database on a particular subject, of preparing bibliographic descriptions of the new discovered resources, of writing historical analyses, of generating thematic bibliographies on topics related to religion, using the resources of the electronic catalogs of regional public libraries in the country.
-
Focus on Teacher Motivational Factors: Increasing Innovation Efficiency, Retention in the Teaching Profession
53-63Views:294The shortage of teachers and the challenge of popularizing the teaching profession are some of the most pressing problems in education today. Finding a solution to these issues is a priority task. Our research focuses on which teacher motivational factors improve professional life, create a better school atmosphere, and ensure new career paths, avoiding the harmful consequences of stress and burnout. In interviews with teachers teaching in disadvantaged schools, we tried to identify the motivational factors established by the literature, and we were curious about what factors influence someone’s becom1ing an innovative teacher. All this knowledge can be useful information for teacher training, and help to develop an incentive system for teachers in the field, preventing them from leaving the occupation. During our empirical research, we analyzed 24 interviews with Atlas ti. Our main research question was what are the motivational factors that enable teachers to make adequate professional decisions, and why their pedagogical problem-solving ideas and innovations do not remain isolated data. We investigated which motivational factors can be identified as drivers and which as barriers to the development of innovations, and which are responsible for retention in the teaching profession.
-
The Use of Linguistic Features in Indonesian Students’ Texts at Hungarian Universities
131-141Views:225Students enrolled in a higher level of education may face challenges in producing assignments, including writing an essay. They need to present appropriate linguistic features in the text to demonstrate their writing quality. Comparing linguistic features during university study is one fundamental aspect of administering writing quality and showing student writing development. The topic presented in this study describes an initial statistical analysis and the frequency of linguistic features in the texts produced by Indonesian graduate students enrolled at Hungarian universities. This study proposed two research questions: 1) How frequently do pre-selected linguistic features appear in the texts of Indonesian graduate students? 2) How do these features appear in a paired T-test statistical analysis? Seven MSc and MA graduate students took part in the study to meet the goal. They are students at three different universities in Hungary, which all have a Social Science Faculty. During their second-year studies, fourteen essays with a minimum text length of 2000 words were collected. The findings revealed an increase in conjunctions, adjectives, abstract nouns, concrete nouns, noun phrases, expanded noun phrases, active verbs, verb phrases, and passive forms. Meanwhile, the frequency of linguistic features such as prepositions, definite articles, indefinite articles, noun clauses, adverbial clauses, and adjective clauses decreased. In addition, both the rise of nine linguistic features and the decrease of six features in the second semester are not statistically significant.
-
Students’ Motivations to Study Abroad: The Case of International Students at the University of Debrecen
76-81Views:2048Today 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.
-
Is it Worth Getting a Doctorate?
142-149Views:227PhD training is part of the global education competition. The number of doctoral students per 100,000 people is a feature that moves together with the scientific performance of a country. Thus, doctoral training is an important element of a country’s innovation, in which Hungary is lagging behind. We assume that the main reason for the limited amount of doctoral students in Hungary is the low level of individual demand for training which, in turn, is due to the fact that the academic career of doctoral students promises low earnings compared to the placement of university graduates in other spheres. The earnings test and life earnings analysis presented by the study support this assumption: the earnings of those entering academically qualified academic careers are significantly lower than those of graduates working in the corporate sector. Though there are limitations present which impede the generalizability of these results, it does call to attention important trends to be acknowledged in future research.
-
Self-Study: Tensions and Growth in Graduate Teaching Assistant Development
14-22Views:354Graduate Teaching Assistant (GTA) development is an important undertaking for many higher education institutions in the United States. During the GTA preparation process, tensions can arise when the supervisor challenges GTAs by engaging in critical reflection and pushing them to advance their pedagogical skills beyond their comfort zone. Guided by Berry’s (2008) framework of tensions, this self-study aimed to answer the research question: How do tensions that arise during GTA development contribute to the professional growth of teacher educators and GTAs in their teaching? Self-study was the research method, and the data were analyzed using the strategy of inductive analysis and creative synthesis (Patten, 2002). This self-study reports five types of tensions: telling and growth; confidence and uncertainty; safety and challenge; valuing and reconstructing experience; and planning and being responsive. The findings explain how these tensions pushed the supervisor and the GTA to reflect on teacher preparation, manage challenges, and improve teaching. While tensions place teacher educators and novice teachers in uncomfortable positions, this study shows that reflections on and articulation of tensions in collaborative dialogues can help both discover aspects of their teaching that provide opportunities for growth and lead both to transform tensions into teachable moments.
-
Characteristics of Teaching Community Capital - Focus on Teachers in Reformed Public Education Institutions
48-55Views:416The 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.
-
Exploring the Prerequisites for Transforming School as a Learning Organization
39-52Views:256The organization model has shifted from treating the workforce as machines to improving human centricworking environments. The Learning Organization is conceptualized as an organism that evolves through continuous learning to adapt with a constantly changing environment. School is a typical organization and many scholars argued to reconceptualize school as a learning organization. The Integrated Model of School as a Learning Organization (Kools & Stoll, 2016)) has been widely studied and tested in European schools, particularly in Wales. However, there is a gap in the research needed to understand the prerequisites of SLO transformation and thus to better prepare for reform. To explore the prerequisites of SLO, a researcher applies a qualitative approach to purposely collect secondary data from the eight empirical studies in Wales, Greece, Latvia, Spain, Bulgaria, Türkiye, and Italy. To conduct data analysis, a data coding strategy is employed to create the prerequisites and assign them to the main themes- System Level and School Level. To achieve the SLO transformation, the researcher then recommends a systematic reform that involves the education stakeholders, both at system level and at school level - to put forward the practice of the SLO seven actionoriented dimensions. Further meta-analysis research is recommended to widen the scope of conceptualizing antecedents of SLO transformation.
-
Attendance of Pop and Classical Music Concerts among the Hungarian Youth
67-74Views:319In this paper we wanted to give a comprehensive picture of capital theories from a theoretical point of view, looking at it from several angles. In our empirical study, we analyzed the Hungarian Youth Research 2016 database, which was recruited Hungarian youth aged 15-29. The study was conducted with several variables in mind, mapping the influence they have on the attendance of classical and pop music concerts. We took into account the gender, age, place of residence of the respondents, the highest level of education and looked at the frequency of the concert attendance by counties and regions. Our results show that many variables influence the frequency of attendance at concerts by both genres.
-
Educational poverty in Italy: concepts, measures and policies
1-10Views:883In recent years in Italy, as a result of the initiative by the NGO Save the Children Italia and of the government action, we have witnessed the success of the notion of “povertà educativa”, as an effective way to indicate severe inequalities in education across the country. Firstly, the aim of this paper is to shed light on the different concepts and measures of educational poverty in socio-economic literature, in order to highlight specific and innovative aspects of this idea. Moreover, the paper intends to scrutinize Save the Children’s proposal in order to monitor and tackle educational poverty as well as to show how the action of the NGO has influenced the development of Italian recent government policies against child and educational poverty.
-
The Pedagogy of Witness. An Anthropological-Kreygmatic Perspective by Zbigniew Marek SJ & Anna Walulik CSFN – the Reflective Challenge for Education
111-115Views:243Review of the book The pedagogy of witness. An anthropological-kreygmatic perspective, by Zbigniew Marek SJ & Anna Walulik CSFN
-
Present to Anyone on Any Devices? The Conflict Between Telework and Family Life for Teachers and Researchers of Helping Professions
35-41Views:202The study examined the digital work experiences of academics in human services professions (teachers, doctors, health workers, and clergy). Answers to the following question were sought after: What are the patterns related to digital work? How does work-life or family conflict (WLC) affect teleworking? It was hypothesized that digital work generates WLC. Quantitative international data were collected by the Research and Development Centre for Higher Education (CHERD–H) at the University of Debrecen in 2023, across five countries (Romania, Slovakia, Hungary, Serbia, and Ukraine). A subsample of 315 academics involved in caring professions was collected and principal component analysis, ANOVA, and correlation tests were performed using the SPSS statistical program. The subsample included 114 male and 193 female teachers, 33 of whom were Romanian. Perceptions of advantages and disadvantages dominated the digital work patterns. In addition, a "digital super-power" component was identified. The ANOVA test showed that Romanian academics had a significantly higher average in perceiving disadvantages compared to others. Academics working minimal hours were considerably more open to seeing the benefits of digital technology than those with longer working hours. According to the correlation test results, there was a negative relationship between the level of WLC and the perception of technology benefits: those who detected digital advantages had lower WLC values, while those who recognized disadvantages had higher WLC values.
-
Third Culture Kids: Growing Among Worlds by David C. Pollock & Ruth E. Van Reken
161-163Views:832Bibliography of the reviewed book: Pollock, D., & Reken, R. (Revised Edition 2009). Third Culture Kids: Growing Among Worlds. Nicholas Brealey Publishing.
-
Labour Market Characteristics of Helping Professionals
66-75Views:328In 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.
-
Social Integration of the Former Transcarpathian Students of the Balassi Institute
82-89Views:300In the present study, we examine the social integration of former Transcarpathian students who participated in the university preparatory training of the Balassi Institute. Social integration plays a major role, both among mobile students settling in the destination country and in the sending country. Despite the fact that Hungarian students from Transcarpathia have the same linguistic and cultural background as their motherland, their integration into Hungarian society is often hampered: migration often involves giving up home connections, and the success of building new ones is unpredictable. Successful adaptation to the social environment of the destination country is not always an automatic mechanism. Our research was conducted using a questionnaire method. In the survey, we sought to answer the question of where the former Transcarpathian students participating in the preparatory training of the Balassi Institute settled after completing their studies and how they managed to integrate into the society of their place of residence. We compare the social integration of people returning to Transcarpathia, settling in Hungary and living abroad. In summary, we would like to present the results of the survey.