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The Relations between Student Foreign Language Anxiety and Social Variables
87-100Views:231Due to the labour market expectations, universities are responsible for preparing their students for competitive employment in Hungary or abroad. However, language anxiety is an insurmountable problem for many people, making it difficult to learn foreign languages, even though a confident command of them is a key factor in any job interview and essential in the world of work. This complex is one of the main factors hindering language learning, affecting all people to either a greater or lesser extent. In 2023, the University of Debrecen's researchers studied the impact of language anxiety on foreign language learning, surveying approximately 400 students of the university's commerce, marketing, and business management courses. After having a questionnaire filled in, descriptive statistical and cross-tabulation analyses were conducted, and the focus was on analysing the impact of social variables on language anxiety. Our research shows that women are significantly more anxious than men. Students who work while studying and use their foreign language skills at work experience significantly more anxiety than students who do not use a foreign language. Parents' language skills significantly affect their children's language anxiety. The research topic is relevant, as it highlights the importance of teaching strategies to reduce language anxiety in university foreign language teaching. The present study facilitates the teaching of those students who would not be able to overcome the anxiety barrier.
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Aspects of the Well-being of University Instructors Related to Online Education During and After the Pandemic – Case Study of a Hungarian University
14-25Views:165In the past decade, quite a few articles have been published about the advantages and disadvantages of working from home online, and by studying the experiences that they present, it would be possible to much more thoroughly plan the rather complex, multi-faceted process of digital transition. However, the coronavirus epidemic that broke out in early 2020 did not allow for thoughtful preparation. The new work schedule resulted in profound changes to the work of university lecturers, thus, it obviously also had a significant impact on their well-being. In this study, we examine the state of the well-being of the instructors at one of the biggest universities in Hungary, the University of Debrecen. The period in question is at the introduction of emergency remote teaching and at the end of the pandemic period. Using quantitative and qualitative methods, we collected data and information at different times. Based on this, we revealed what resources the instructors relied on, how they were able to meet the challenges of education online.
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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:182The 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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The Relations between Students’ Intercultural Communication Competencies and Employability
72-79.Views:329In 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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The Differing Effects of Symbolic Interpretation and Inclusion of Transcendence on Life Goals and Mental Health in Hungarian Adults
61-75Views:426This study aimed to investigate the influence of religious attitudes, namely Inclusion of Trancendence and Symbolic Interpretation on life goals and different aspects of mental health.
Participants (N = 604) filled in an online questionnaire including the Post-Critical Belief Scale (Martos et al., 2009), the short version of Aspiration Index (Martos et al., 2006), and the Mental Health Test (MHT; see Oláh et al., 2018).
We investigated the relationship between religious attitudes, life goals, and the subscales of mental health using path analyses. The Symbolic Interpretation of religious content predicts support for intrinsically motivated life goals, while the Inclusion of Transcendence predicts the refusal of extrinsic aspirations. Positive effects were revealed between the Inclusion of Transcendence and global well-being, strategies aim at creating and enchancing happiness, and resilience. Symbolic Interpretation was positively related to creative, executing individual and social efficiency, while negatively influenced resilience.
The Inclusion of Transcendence and Symbolic Interpretation separately predict different aspects of life goals and mental health, and jointly support a higher quality of life. -
Family-School Partnership in Supporting Level 4 Students at a Community Education and Training College
52-59Views:182Family-school partnership is essential for achieving quality school and academic performance to level 4 students at a Community Education and Training (CET) College. The partnership comprises the ability of families and schools to provide holistic support and guidance to students as they progress toward independence and becoming responsible community members themselves. However, this is not prevalent in the majority of CET centres, particularly those in low-income communities (Madzinga, 2021). This study explored the role of different stakeholders within the CET Colleges in enhancing family-school partnership and supporting level 4 students. The current study intends to assist schools/centres with strategies that could be used by the centres to involve families and communities to enhance the academic performance of students in the CET College. This study was underpinned by the interpretivism paradigm. Data was gathered using semi-structured individual interviews. Epstein's model of school, family, and community interaction served as the foundation for the study. The idea was deemed appropriate for this study because it promotes parental and family involvement through mutual collaboration among many stakeholders. The findings of this study show that families want to be involved in their children's education, but they don't have the time owing to various commitments.
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Educational Psychology
107-111Views:212Bibliography of the reviewed book: Santrock, J. W. (2018). Educational Psychology (6 Ed). McGraw-Hill Education.
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Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation to Learn as Factors of Resilience in Students' Pedagogical Disciplines - Pilot Study
17-23Views:561Motivation determines the dynamics of behaviour and helps in overcoming obstacles. A related concept is resilience, which also relates to overcoming stressful situations and speaks to an individual’s ability to adapt to challenging circumstances in life. The aim of this paper was to investigate the relationship between resilience and motivation to learn in students studying in the field of education. One hundred and thirty students participated in the research (100 bachelor students and 30 master students). The research instrument used to measure resilience was The Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC 10) and to detemine motivation The Academic Motivation Scale (AMS-C 28) tool was used. The Mann-Whitney test found no significant difference between the two groups of students in each of the variables measured. The results show a significant association between resilience and types of intrinsic motivation in particular, but the strongest relationship was found between resilience and the lack of motivation. Students with low resilience scored higher on amotivation. For students at university, motivation to learn based on intrinsic drives is assumed to be self-evident. However, the ability to overcome obstacles is also necessary for the attainment of learning goals. Its degree can also be developed through educational intervention, which provides an opportunity for university teachers to expand their area of operation.
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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.
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Curricular and Extracurricular Learning among Students with Resilience Potential. Social Inequalities in Higher Education
37-42Views:272Does 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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Reading Assessment for Diagnosing Acquired Reading Disorders in Adults: Theoretical and Practical Aspects of its Development
70-83Views:239The study of reading processes is of particular importance in the assessment of cognitive-linguistic functions in both atypical development and acquired disorders of the adult developmental skills system. A comprehensive assessment of cognitive processes allows the selection of the appropriate therapeutic techniques, which in turn contributes to the best possible quality of life following rehabilitation. A common leading symptom of cognitive dysfunction in adult acquired neurological impairment is a deficit in reading. Our aim was to develop a reading assessment procedure based on national and international theoretical and empirical research to allow a complex assessment of reading processes. In order to investigate the reliability of the test and to develop an assessment system for it, a large-scale survey was organised. During the analyses, an evaluation system was developed which would allow us to objectively describe not only the fact of impairment but also its extent. Based on our results, the design of the Adult Acquired Reading Assessment and the comprehensive assessment system associated to it have resulted in a complex test procedure that is not only well applicable in clinical diagnostics but also in exploratory empirical work.
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Different Forms of Civil Activity and Employment in Hungary and Abroad, and the Development of Student Drop-out
41-54Views:483Young 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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Favouring Middle-and Upper-Class Students? The Structure and Process of Attending China’s Selective Universities
1-16Views:452Research suggests the increasing influence of family socioeconomic status, as measured by parents’ income and occupations, in access to Chinese higher education. Yet, the literature remains inconclusive about the extent to which the social background of rural and urban students is associated with academic and social performance at elite universities. We address this limitation by looking at the academic and social success of representative samples of first- and second-year students enrolled at four Chinese elite universities. Our aim is to understand the characteristics that students from both urban and rural environments bring with them and how those characteristics bear on academic and social performance in university. We found an overrepresentation of students from middle- and upper-class backgrounds in both urban and rural student groups. The fact that the process indicator of cultural capital has a direct association with social success suggests students from urban areas exhibit traits valued in the selective university environment.
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How Do University Students Get Relevant Information?
67-79Views:313The 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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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.
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Evaluation of Indexation Consistency in Publisher Subject Metadata
28-34Views:219This work aims at evaluating the indexing of subject metadata published on the MercadoEditorial.org platform. The goal: to verify if the indexing is consistent. First, analysis was done of the tools available on the platform for assigning keywords, and, afterwards, publishers on the platform were documented and verified by running intrinsic evaluation for interconsistency. This was all done to compare the indexing of one work by four authors. The authors were Ciranda Cultural, IBEP, Excelsior Editora, and Via Leitura. The chosen book was “The Alienist” by Machado de Assis, a classic in Brazilian literature. The result of the indexing analysis was that publishers gave keywords such as title, author’s name, characters’ names, names of other books, and excessively used and repeated words. The last category was further broken down being with or without accentuation, being in the singular or plural form. Other terms were assigned that were related to university entrance exams. Thus, it can be concluded that an absence of vocabulary control can make retrieval of a work difficult, simply by assigning terms that inadequately define the subject of the book, and by lacking semantic, syntactic, and morphological standardization among the terms.
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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.
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Playing Purposefully with Students in Courses – a Concept, an Implementation, and an Evaluation of a University Module
76-86Views:151Playing as a method of learning is predominantly applied in preschool and primary education. However, in the context of higher education, the method of playing is only sporadically used. The novelty of this topic lies in its application at the tertiary level, particularly in teacher education, where the aim is for students to plan and support learning processes for pupils from deep structures. This study investigates how playful learning methodologies can be effectively integrated into higher education and examines the impact on student attitudes and teaching practices. The module 'Playful Learning in Primary Education' was evaluated during the autumn semester of 2023 at the Institute for Primary Education of the PH FHNW in Switzerland. Initially, the topic of play is defined from multiple theoretical perspectives. The module description outlines the research questions addressed in the study. A central component of the evaluation is the students' certificates of achievement, which were analyzed using qualitative content analysis. The results highlight the attitudes toward playful methodology that students had at the beginning of the module and the attitudes and experiences they acquired by the end of the module. The evaluation results are presented in summative fashion in tables and interpreted in the discussion. The article aims to motivate university teachers to offer playful learning methods in higher education and to experience the positive impacts of this methodology with the students. The results clearly show that this methodology can lead to changes in teaching practice.
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The International Comparison of the Educational Systems of Iran, Myanmar and Ethiopia
84-94Views:334Education systems usually fall into two main types: the Continental and Atlantic systems of education. Countries
belonging to the third world often follow after the characteristics of the continental system, however, the
specificities of the country may overwrite some characteristics of the original concept. This article aims to
introduce some specific aspects of the educational systems of Iran, Ethiopia and Myanmar through the
comparison of these systems. According to the data analysis, centralisation is relevant, but decentralisation
tends to be strengthened in each country. Concerning their structure, similarities in the division of levels were
identified, along with differences in duration and focus. Unsurprisingly, the curriculums are different in each
country; however, the basic subjects are almost the same. Finally, the grading systems use similar categories,
although the underlying points providing the basis for the grades significantly differ. Comparing them can
contribute to their evaluation and further development. -
Dropped-out Students and the Decision to Drop-out in Hungary
31-40Views:1019The 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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For the Sake of the Cause – Persistence of Romanian Higher Education Students in Finishing their Studies
22-30Views:339As a consequence of the expansion in higher education, the number of students has increased and the academic population has diversified but at the same time the university dropout has become a general problem since the last century (Trow, 2005; Kozma, 2010; Barro & Jong, 2013; Stanciu, 2014; Berei, 2018). In this paper, I proposed to analyze the persistence of students from 5 universities from Romania. We examine at institutional and individual level the perspective of their willingness to finish their studies. In partnership with the Center for Higher Education Research and Development - Hungary, named CHERD – H, from the University of Debrecen, was collected dates among students in 2012 (N=1323) and in 2014 - 2015 (N=323). Through a quantitative analysis, on a longitudinal perspective, I used SPSS statistical program to analyze data. The question of the research was: is there any difference between students` intentions to graduate on private and state institutions? Who is intending to finish and who is preparing to abandon his study? I concluded that students with unfavorable family background have nearly two times lower chance to enroll at state university and in private institutions students intention to enter into possesion of diploma was significant lower. With logistic regression I found also, that low financial status or low schooling of parents is not a significant obstacle on student academic path if they make every effort to participate in educational programs, submit assignments on time and are able to prepare for exams.
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Physical Activity and Workplace Stress: Influences on Health Perception Among Academics in Central and Eastern Europe
1-13Views:214Several studies have drawn attention to the unhealthy lifestyles of academic staff (lack of physical activity, unhealthy diet, high levels of stress, etc.). However, few studies have addressed the physical activity (PA) of academics, the problem of inactivity as compared to the average population or university students. Our study aims to determine the role of PA and participation in university sports, as well as other health behaviours and sources and resources of stress at work, on the self-assessed health (SAH) status of academics in five Central and Eastern European countries (Hungary, Ukraine, Slovakia, Serbia and Romania). To answer our research question, we used the database of our international survey (CEETHE 2023, N=821). According to our results, SAH is mainly and positively influenced by PA and health-conscious eating, as well as work engagement, and negatively correlated with age, burnout, work-life conflicts and workplace bullying as work stressors. Based on our findings, workplace interventions including sports and time management programmes are recommended for universities, and a safe working environment is essential to improve academics' subjective health status.
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Participation in Shadow Education in Church- and State-Maintained Schools: The Role of Cultural and Social Capital
60-75Views:170Research on shadow education is often justified based on Bourdieu’s theory of capital as it is assumed to contribute to social inequalities. This paper focuses on the role of cultural and social capital and on the differences between state- and church-maintained schools in the North-Eastern parts of Hungary. Using a convenience sample and our own constructed measurement tool, a quantitative survey of secondary school language learners (N=711) was conducted to explore the relationship between the effectiveness of supplementary private language tutoring as well as the cultural and social capital of language learners in cross-sectoral comparisons. Our results highlight the positive correlation between the highest educational attainment of the mother, the participation rate in shadow education and language learners’ achievement. In our study, language learners whose mothers had a higher education level demonstrated greater efficiency, in terms of academic achievements. Despite being less successful in passing language examinations as a result of a lower social composition in denominational grammar schools, language learners could count on a higher level of support both from their language teachers - who were better able to support their students to progress at their own pace - and from their classmates and families, demonstrating that social capital had a compensating effect on their learning trajectories.
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Higher Education Research on the Issue of Dropout
90-94Views:323Book review on Pusztai, G., Szigeti, F. (eds.): Dropout and Persistence in Higher Education. Debrecen University Press, University of Debrecen, 2018.
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Dual Career through the Analysis of Policy Documents: A Case Study Focusing on Athletics
86-96Views:394Careers can be influenced by several factor groups: opportunities provided by (1) the environment, (2) ambition, and (3) personal aptitude (Juhász & Matiscsákné Lizák, 2014). In the case of a dual career in sports, an athlete’s career is not limited to sports only, but also can include education. It is worthwhile for sportsmen to learn alongside their athletic career. For, a sporting career can come to an end at any time due to any unexpected event (Baráth et al., 2014). This dual career’s success depends heavily on the people in the athlete’s immediate environment. In our research, we used a qualitative method to conduct a content analysis of policy documents and semi-structured interviews with Olympians of three countries, one from Slovenia, one from Germany, and one from Hungary. We divided up our investigation into questions related to funding, professional background and studies. Their opinions showed that all three athletes are satisfied with the support they receive for their current dual careers, with only the Slovenian athlete feeling a slight deficiency. They have successfully combined their studies and sport, and all three have attended or are currently attending higher education. It can be concluded that all sport policy efforts show the potential for dual career assistance with a focus on self-efficacy. No differences can be found in the expectations of these elite athletes, and all feel the need to continue their studies in addition to sporting, regardless of whether or not it coincides with their previous studies. As regards the need to continue studying, the Slovenian athlete felt the least need. This degree of “need” does not affect the performance of the athletes in their respective sports, as all of them love sports. All receive adequate funding as well. In all three countries studied, we found such a level of support for the athlete that ought to be held up as ‘good practice’. The German competitor in particular possesses such professional staff that we would highlight and recommend it as good practice to follow.