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Students with Special Needs and Their Parents – Informal Participation of a Parent in the Education of an Adult Child
44-51Views:301The article presents the issue of participation of adult students’ parents in their academic life. There are many examples in the literature of how important is the support of students’ with disabilities parents at the universites. This determines academic success. Disability (its depth, type, cause, limitations resulting from it) is a determining factor for independence, and consequently for the parent’s participation in the student’s academic life. The parent’s attitude towards their own child’s disability is also related to the parent’s participation in the study. The main questions of presented research is: how do students, parents and university staff see the participation of parents in their adult chilredn higher education? This study was qualitative in nature and the individual in-depth interviews were conducted in the course of the study. Two female students with disabilities and their mothers, as well as a member of staff from the one of Polish university’s disability office, were invited to participate in the study. The results show that students, parents and university’s staff can present different opinions about parental suport. The fact is that parental participation cannot be permanent. Each time this type of support should be considered on an individual basis, with particular regard to the welfare of the the student. The results of the survey are relevant to the university’s process of planning support for students with disabilities so as to work with parents with the students’ consent.
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Metamorphoses Creative-Developmental Fairy Tale Therapy Against the Dangers of the Internet. A Series of Activities for Young Undergraduate Students
83-100Views:507This paper is about the practical application of Metamorphoses creative-developmental fairy tale therapy, which is presented based on a three-session Metamorphoses creative-developmental fairy tale therapy session. The sessions were conducted between April and May 2021, among students (n=24) of the University of Debrecen, who were previously not familiar with fairy tale therapy, nor with the works of Ildikó Boldizsár. Through the media environment of the session, we also reflected together on the effects of internet consumption and the dangers of the internet. The study highlights the students' attitudes towards this method and their participation and activity in the online space. The experiences gained during the 3 sessions and the feedback of the students appear as a guideline to conclude the study. The practical application of the Metamorphoses creative-developmental fairy tale therapy will show whether this methodology has a role to play in higher education.
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Use of Electronic Resources in Teaching Religion in Higher Education: Best Practices from the SULSIT, Bulgaria
56-60Views:346This 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.
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A Test of the Effect of Denominational Schools in Romania
38-47Views:464Studies in sociology of education in recent decades have consistently found an advantage for students in denominational schools - those with religious subordination - in terms of educational performance, compared with those in secular schools. Although in Romania a large part of the students from pre-university education attend confessional schools this advantage has not been investigated for the Romanian case. Taking advantage of the increased validity of the Romanian baccalaureate exam, following the measures from 2011-2012 and the availability of the statistical data regarding the schools in Oradea (Bihor county), we checked whether the hypothesis of such an advantage is confirmed in the Romanian case. Applying bivariate analyzes by type of schools (secular vs. confessional) and by types of tracks of the net pass rates (from the total of the graduates) we find that, although the promotion rates are higher for denominational schools, the support for the hypothesis of an advantage of denominational schools is fragile as much of the difference can be attributed to the academic orientation of denominational schools and to the fact that they succeed, probably, in selecting students with better educational skills.
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Family and Career. Future plans for university students. Ed. Ágnes Engler.
99-101Views:269Bibliography of the reviewed book: Engler, Á. (2018). Future plans for university students. Debrecen: Center for Higher Education Research and Development. p. 212., ISBN 978-615-80077-6-4.
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Happiness, trust, and social relationships: The social dimensions of urban quality of life in Debrecen
51-62Views:45The study of happiness and quality of life in urban settings has become increasingly prominent in both international and domestic social science research. The quality of social relationships and the level of trust are among the key determinants of subjective well-being. This study aims to explore the relationships between happiness, trust, and social ties among the urban population of Debrecen, and to examine how these vary across different demographic groups. The analysis is based on a representative sample of 500 respondents from the “Debrecen 2025” survey, using questionnaire-based data collection. The findings indicate that the subjective well-being of Debrecen’s residents is generally favourable and closely associated with the quality of their social relationships. In particular, family and friendship ties, as well as levels of trust, show consistent associations with life satisfaction. At the same time, it is not the quantity of social ties, but their quality, that proves to be decisive. No significant gender differences were found, whereas notable variations emerge across age groups and levels of educational attainment: older individuals and those with higher levels of education tend to report higher levels of well-being and trust. The results confirm the importance of social capital in shaping urban quality of life and suggest that strengthening social relationships and fostering trust may play a key role in improving overall well-being.
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Labour Market Characteristics of Helping Professionals
66-75Views:386In 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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Social Integration of the Former Transcarpathian Students of the Balassi Institute
82-89Views:344In 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.
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Self-Study: Tensions and Growth in Graduate Teaching Assistant Development
14-22Views:415Graduate 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.
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From Ukraine to Hungary: A Specific Case of Student Mobility
101-103Views:245Bibliography of the reviewed book: Pallay, K. (2024). Mobility, career development, integration. Mobility, career development, integration. Students of the Balassi Institute in Transcarpathia]. University of Debrecen Centre for Higher Education Research and Development (CHERD).
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Academic life in shade and light: Snapshots of well-being
172–174Views:50Bibliography of the reviewed book: Pusztai, G., & Kovács, K. (Eds.) (2026). Well-Being of Academic Staff in Rapidly Changing Higher Education. A Focus on Central and Eastern Europe. Peter Lang Verlang.
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Criteria determining school choice among the ethnic minority high school students
17-25Views:305In our paper we sought for the answer to the question: based on which motives do students from various types of high schools (in our case, denominational or non- denominational school) make their choice of educational institution? The target group of our research consists of the 9th and 11th grade students of Harghita County’s denominational (Roman Catholic, Reformed, Unitarian) schools and the non-denominational ones added to them. All in all, eight high schools got into our sample. We conducted a survey by questionnaire, the sample including 1,064 people. We analyzed the decision criteria formed based on motives behind the decision (primary and secondary effects) on the one hand, and followed the decision making process on the other. The non-denominational sector is often chosen by the elite- and institution-oriented student group, who has great expectations of the institution, e.g. - top of the line standards of education, outstanding achievement indicators, prestige of the institution, local reputation. According to the clusters created from the motives, the value- and community-oriented student group, as well as the one following the orientation of the peer group, can be found in significantly higher proportion in denominational schools.
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Students’ Motivations to Study Abroad: The Case of International Students at the University of Debrecen
76-81Views:2264Today 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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The Use of Linguistic Features in Indonesian Students’ Texts at Hungarian Universities
131-141Views:295Students 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.
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Staying aspirations among Hungarian minority students in Central and Eastern Europe
61–70Views:43Research on youth mobility in Central and Eastern Europe has primarily focused on migration intentions and the drivers of out-migration. Much less attention has been paid to the motivations behind staying, particularly among national minority youth living in peripheral regions. This study examines the staying aspirations of Hungarian minority university students in Central and Eastern Europe and explores the demographic, human, economic, and sociocultural factors that shape their intentions to remain in their home regions. Drawing on the aspiration–capability framework developed by Carling and Schewel, the study analyses survey data from 1,107 hungarian minority students enrolled in higher education institutions across several Central and Eastern European countries. Using multivariate statistical models, the analysis investigates how different forms of capital and regional embeddedness influence students’ aspirations to stay rather than migrate. The findings suggest that staying aspirations are not merely the result of limited mobility opportunities. Instead, they are strongly associated with sociocultural embeddedness, minority community ties, and forms of social capital that connect students to their local environments. These results challenge the dominant migration-centred perspective in mobility research and highlight the importance of immobility as an active and meaningful life strategy. The study contributes to the growing literature on youth immobility by demonstrating how minority status and regional attachment shape mobility aspirations in Central and Eastern Europe.
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Recent graduates and labour market competencies – Issues of horizontal matching
29-38Views:63This study examines the differences between the competencies possessed by recent graduates and those required in their jobs, with particular attention to horizontal matching. Its theoretical framework integrates human capital theory, job matching models, the skill mismatch approach, and competence theories, highlighting the growing importance of transversal and non-cognitive skills. The analysis is based on the Hungarian dataset of the Eurograduate 2022 survey (N = 6,797) and compares possessed and required competencies based on graduates’ subjective self-assessments, while also examining the degree of horizontal mismatch. According to the results, in most of the examined competencies, only moderate differences can be observed between the required and actual levels, and in several cases, recent graduates rate their own competencies higher than those required for their work. Prominent differences can be observed in some dimensions of digital and communication competencies. Horizontal matching is high, although significant differences are observed by level and field of education. The findings suggest that both the level and the type of competencies play a decisive role in labour market matching, while mismatch is more of a differentiated rather than a general phenomenon.