Problems of Education in the 21st Century

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Authors: Editorial Board

Cover page, Vol. 72, 2016, PEC

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Authors: Vincentas Lamanauskas

Recently, in Lithuanian educational discourse there has been a lot of discussion about leadership. This has become so popular phenomenon that quite often one even does not go deep into the most important parameters of this phenomenon. Leadership phenomenon is not a very new thing, having started to be investigated more exhaustively as far back as the second half of the 20th century, however, over the last decade a lot of attention has been devoted to this in Lithuania. One can reasonably assert, that this is even a matter of fashion. During the aforementioned period, various questions such as teacher leadership, leadership development in schools (as if everyone has to be only a leader), leadership influence on organisation management and other have been investigated in one way or another. On the other hand, quite a lot of attention has been devoted to school managers, having in mind that they should not be just managers, but real managers – leaders. There is no intention to discuss various leadership concepts or to give any recipes how to turn teachers and managers to leaders. Moreover, there exists a vast diversity of concepts. It is obvious, that poor, ineffective and unsuitable management affects the teachers and the teaching learning process itself. It is logical, that this aspect has to be evaluated, and only people suitably prepared and ready for this should become managers of educational institutions. On the other hand, it wouldn’t be fair to identify managers and management with leadership.

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Authors: Milena Kerndl, Metka Kordigel Aberšek

In the last two decades a remarkable shift from conventional forms of teaching toward e-learning happened on all levels of education. This shift included also teachers’ permanent, lifelong education. The purpose of the study was to find and compare the effectiveness of conventional workshop and an e-learning module in teachers’ lifelong/permanent professional training. A study included 30 mother tongue teachers. The aim of the teachers training course curriculum was focused in their competence for developing students’/reader’s reception metacognition (RRM), a competence which is a prerequisite for differentiation/individualization in the process of implementation of literature curriculum in the frame of mother tongue education. Pre- intervention and post- intervention teaching practice of both groups of teachers were observed and compared to find out, which form of lifelong education influenced participants’ teaching practice in a more effective way. The qualitative and quantitative analysis of data, gained in e-module and compared with those, gained in the traditional workshop education, shows a significantly bigger effect of education on the case study participants teaching practice for the group of teachers, which participated in traditional educational form – a workshop.

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Authors: Anastasia Kitiashvili, Tamar Abashidze, Irine Zhvania

The aim of this research is to analyse the attitudes and perceptions by Georgian Azeri and Armenian ethnic minorities about the accessibility and barriers to acquire an education. The research includes three types of education: general, vocational education and training (VET), and higher education. The survey was carried out with 800 participants of both ethnic minorities in two regions of Georgia, Samtskhe-Javakheti and Kvemo Kartli . In-depth interviews were carried out with four experts working in the field of education for ethnic minorities. Respondents believe that they have more equal access to general education and VET while local Georgians have better access to higher education than ethnic minorities do. Attitudes of Ethnic Minorities correspond to their limited participation in Higher Education. The respondents identified poor knowledge of Georgian language (state language of Georgia) as the most significant barrier that excludes them from educational opportunities. This research provides evidence and a basis for formulating education policies for the Azeri and Armenian ethnic minorities living in Georgia.

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Authors: Zuzana Naštická

The present qualitative research is focused on bilingual mathematics education. The research presents findings of a case study of one bilingual Slovak and English mathematics 40-minute lesson within an after school elective bilingual mathematics course running weekly since October, 2015. The lesson took place in March, 2016, and was attended by nine learners aged 12-13, eight boys and one girl. The learners are cases of successive school additive bilingual education. The elective course as a whole is a case of immerse bilingual educational programme. In terms of sociolinguistic settings, the course lessons are cases of bilingual education with external second language. The researcher designed and realized the course lessons in terms of CLIL approach, i.e. Content and Language Integrated Learning. The main aim of the case study was to examine if bilingual mathematics instruction does or does not prevent learners from solving math word problems. Secondly, the analysis of transcription of the lesson audio-record served for identification of intercultural features which might hinder the learning process. The analysis of the transcribed audio-record indicates that the bilingual context did not prevent students from solving math word problems, although each of the students worked at their individual rate. On the other hand, some students were confused by the comma as a thousands-separator in multi-digit numbers, and this actually hindered their learning and problem solving process. This fact has been identified as an intercultural difference which had to be explicitly explained to the students. In order to lessen the possible negative influences of bilingual context on mathematics education, teachers need to predict students’ responses to various intercultural differences which students are unfamiliar with.

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Authors: Editorial Board

End page, Vol. 72, 2016, PEC