Journal on Efficiency and Responsibility in Education and Science

72-77

Authors: Kateřina Berková, Jana Borůvková, Lenka Lízalová

The article presents an analysis of factors influencing the students´ motivation to study economic subjects in economic and technical study programmes in the conditions of a practically oriented college. The research is focused on quality management systems of universities and the competitiveness in the tertiary education market. Specifically, the area of quality of higher education is addressed, through students’ assessment of the subject of Business Administration. Motivation factors related to teaching techniques were classified and the intensity of motivation of the respondents was investigated in the questionnaire survey. The statistical analysis of data suggests that there are differences in the motivation of students of economic and technical study programmes. Students of technical study programmes Applied Computer Science are more demanding and have higher expectations from study programmes compared to students in the study programmes of Finance and Management, whose expectations are lower. The results are discussed and compared with a similar foreign research. A pedagogical constructivism should be introduced into the Czech education, resulting in enhancement of attractiveness of the study programmes, thus increasing the level of competitiveness of the college.

85-92

Authors: Jarmila Novotná, Martin Chvál

The paper investigates how the order of numerical data in word problems on division of a whole into unequal parts affects achievement and reasoning of 14-16-year old pupils. The variable was altered in two word problems, in one of which also the context was changed (psychological variable) and in the latter “if-clause” is or is not used (linguistic variable). 182 pupils were involved in the experiment. The solutions were analysed quantitatively using Item Response Theory as well as qualitatively. The data suggest that pupils’ success is affected by the order of numerical data in the statement in an unfamiliar context. The presence of “if-clause” in the statement was studied in a two-level problem. The order of numerical data played its role in case of formulations without “if”. The results of the experiment are of interest for mathematics education as well as for construction of tests. The paper is an extended version of the paper by Novotná (2018).

45-52

Authors: Libuše Samková

The contribution investigates opportunities that an educational tool called Concept Cartoons can offer in future teachers' education, namely in comparison with word problems in standard written tests. The referred empirical study was conducted in two separated consecutive stages, with two groups of future primary school teachers (the first one from the Czech Republic, and the second one from Slovakia). The participants of the first stage solved four word problems (T1, T2, T3, T4) with increasing difficulty within the written test, and a problem with a similar structure and difficulty as T3 but in the Concept Cartoon form. The second stage of the study served as a complementary stage, its participants solved only the word problem T3 and the Concept Cartoon. In both stages, the comparison of results and solution procedures revealed many participants who mastered the word problem(s) but displayed a fundamental misconception when working with the Concept Cartoon. Two thirds of the participants presented non-corresponding responses to these two corresponding tasks: they solved one of them correctly and the other one incorrectly. All of the problems in the study were based on the part-whole interpretation of fractions, the revealed misconception consisted of incorrect determination of the whole.

65-71

Authors: Petr Mazouch, Veronika Ptáčková, Jakub Fischer, Vladimír Hulík

With the increase in the number of university students, the number of those who do not finish successfully the tertiary education is also increasing. The article uses a specific data source and analyses only a part of the group of unsuccessful students who re-enroll. This is a specific group of students - they did not finish the tertiary study in the past, but after some time they returned to education. The aim of the paper is to find significant factors that influence the decision whether the student changes the studied school or field of study. Factors will be searched using decision trees and binary logistic regression. Both methods were significant for gender and the fact that a student is studying his preferred university. Logistic regression adds to the student's health disadvantage. The data were obtained from the EUROSTUDENT survey, which was held in the Czech Republic in 2016 under the auspices of the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports. The results can be used to identify a risky candidate or student at the beginning of tertiary education.

22-28

Authors: Eva Milková, Petra Ambrožova

Modern information and communication technologies have progressed quickly. Mobile technology, personal computers and the Internet have become closely linked to human life. However, all these devices and their use bring various pitfalls. Cheating of pupils and students in the school environment has been an interdisciplinary issue linked not only to pedagogy, but also to the whole range of sub-disciplines, like for example social pedagogy or etopedy. The latter disciplines have been significantly interfered by information and communication technologies that bring new forms of illegal school activities. Due to modern technologies we can also trace an increase of inattention of pupils and students and their tendency to distraction during lessons. Signs of Internet addiction among pupils and students can be observed more often. The paper deals with a research focusing on Internet use by secondary school youth and possible risks of using the Internet for them. Three aspects entering the educational process of adolescents are discussed there; Internet use, school cheating and Internet addictive behavior. In addition, a relation between possible risks of Internet use and educational strategies according the Learning Combination Inventory originated by Christine A. Johnston was examined within the research.

38-44

Authors: Eva Hejnová, Petr Eisenmann, Jiří Cihlář, Jiří Přibyl

The article reports the results of a study, the main aim of which was to find out correlations among the three components of the Culture of problem solving (reading comprehension, creativity and ability to use the existing knowledge) and six dimensions of Scientific reasoning (conservation of matter and volume, proportional reasoning, control of variables, probability reasoning, correlation reasoning and hypothetical-deductive reasoning). Further, we present the correlations among individual components of the Culture of problem-solving and individual dimensions of Scientific reasoning with pupils’ school performance in mathematics and physics. We conducted our survey among 23 pupils aged between 14–15 years in the Ústí nad Labem Region. The results have shown that one component of the Culture of problem-solving – the ability to use the existing knowledge – strongly correlates with three dimensions of the Scientific reasoning structure: proportional reasoning, control of variables and probability reasoning. However, no correlation was proved between the creativity and the dimensions of Scientific reasoning. We have found out also that the indicators of the Culture of problem-solving and the Scientific reasoning largely do not correlate with school performance either in mathematics or in physics.

1-8

Authors: Ayse Taskıran, Belgin Aydin

This study explores the similarities and differences between adult language learners' and their teachers’ attributions of perceived success and failure in learning English as a foreign language in an intensive program. It examines attributions along with three dimensions: locus of causality, stability and controllability. 319 students and 81 teachers responded to a self-administered questionnaire and reported more attributions for failure than for success. The most frequent attributions both groups stated were effort, teacher, motivation, and participation. Causal dimensionality patterns of success and failure-oriented students did not show much differences. They both had significantly more controllable and unstable attributions. Teachers' dimensionality patterns did not differ from that of the students except for locus of control dimension. Causal dimensionality of both teachers and students seemed to be healthy attributional styles according to Weiner’s attributional model of achievement motivation.

16-21

Authors: Leonnard

The increasing number of educational services has caused a high competition in this industry. In Indonesia, the number of private universities is the highest compared to state universities and other forms of higher education institutions. Ability to predict factors that are important in providing educational services to achieve student satisfaction and make them loyal to the university is highly necessary. In this study, we investigated the main factors of service quality that affect student satisfaction and loyalty by collecting data from 319 students from London School of Public Relation in Jakarta. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was employed to analyze the data through AMOS 24 statistical package. The findings indicated that the main factors influencing student satisfaction in private university are tangible and reliability consisting of: 1) comfortable lecture rooms, 2) adequate library facilities, 3) neat staff appearance, 4) non-discriminatory treatments provided by staff and lecturers, 5) high ability and knowledge provided by staffs and lecturers, and 6) appropriate academic services provided by the university. Student satisfaction with these factors would indirectly lead to loyalty to the university. Finally, service quality measurement through SERVQUAL was redundant as a model to measure the effect of service quality in educational service.