Problems of Education in the 21st Century

10-20

Authors: Sergejs Čapulis

A great opportunity of humanistic approach implementation is found in spiritual and physical education of students during the lessons of martial arts. Three main constituents are necessary to acquire the mastery level in martial arts: [1] moral qualities, mental power and willpower; [2] physical condition, strength and endurance; [3] technical mastery. It is assumed, that karate takes an important place in the system of spiritual and physical education of a personality, ensuring not only versatile physical but also moral education. Thus, the priority is given to the spiritual aspect of karate, but the fighting technique is of a minor importance. In Latvia, not so many methods of karate teaching have been developed, which are based on didactic sport teaching principles worked out according to humanistic approach. That is why the aim of this research is investigation of humanistic approach implementation at the lessons of karate with adolescents according to specially developed teaching methods. Eighty 14-15-year-old students, who were divided into experimental and control groups, participated in the research. The following methods have been used: a test “Achievement motivation and Fear of failures”, a test “Feelings – Activity – Mood”; to define the development level of physical qualities control tests of sport standards of Ministry for Education of the Latvian Republic have been carried out. The results have been subjected to mathematical processing applying analysis of variation and Tukey HSD test. The results of the research have confirmed, that humanistic approach implementation at the lessons of karate promotes positive dynamics of students’ achievements motivation, improvement of mood and feelings. All the results have been analyzed and interpreted.

29-42

Authors: Gladys Ngao, Maiyo K. Julius, Mulwa M. David

It is estimated that about 250 million children aged between 5-14 years were working world wide by the year 2006, at least 120 million were working full time and close to 80 million in hazardous work. These are children who either have no education at all or have had very little education. The study was geared to investigate the efficacy of free primary education in withdrawing children from child labour and maintaining them in primary schools. The study was conducted Kiambu district. The study used descriptive survey research design, the sample size was 70 respondents comprising of: 32 pupils, four head teachers, 16 teachers, and 16 parents, Kiambu District Quality Assurance and Standards Officer (DQASO)and the Secretary of Kiambu District Child Labour Committee (SDCLC).The study employed purposive and simple random sampling design to pick the respondents. Data was collected by use of questionnaires and focused group discussion. The study employed descriptive survey statistics to analyze data obtained. The major findings were that most schools did not have any orientation programmes for children withdrawn from child labour (CWCLs), and guidance and counseling programmes were not effective mainly because of the understaffing in the schools. The study established that most schools had various limitations in maintaining CWCLs and did not have any mechanism through which they could reach out to the children who dropped out of school. The study recommended among others that the government in conjunction with NGOs working against child labour should establish feeding programmes in the affected schools.

58-66

Authors: Renata Holubová

The most important goal of education is improving the quality of teaching. There are several modern teaching methods that can be used in teaching and learning. These methods are focused on students´ active work. In our project we studied some of these methods, for example problem – based learning, didactic games, methods “how to express the idea with a pencil“(mind maps, tasks), discussion (brainstorming, Philips 66, Hobo), brainstormig, heuristic method. The effectiveness, motivation and problems of these methods were tested during high school physics lessons in Olomouc and Skuteč. The methods were used in various classes by in-service teachers and by pre-graduated teachers. Outcomes of this reasearch are discussed in this paper.

77-86

Authors: Agneta Ljung-Djärf, Charlotte Tullgren

The aim of this research is to study knowledge utilization and discursive patterns during pre-school planning meetings fronstage. The study is designed as a qualitative case study based on tape recordings of five planning meetings and three video documented activities. Three pre-school teachers and three researchers participated. In the analysis, Foucault’s work on discursive practices is used as theoretical framework. The study highlights knowledge used and cited in the local negotiations. The conclusions are that the knowledge used is based on both professional knowledge related to children's learning and development, and local knowledge of children and their abilities, conditions and personalities. The professional knowledge appears as rather implicit and it is primarily the local knowledge of children and their individual needs and circumstances that is most clearly expressed. Dominant discursive patterns are formulated as the staff make themselves responsible for making the pre-school activity not school-like for the maturing child. On the front stage arena the teachers' tasks primarily appears as a desire to maintain the pre-school content in accordance with pre-school ideology that also controls how they see the children’s learning in pre-school in another perspective than student learning in a school context.

99-108

Authors: Sirje Piht, Eve Eisenschmidt

Estonian pupils achieved good results in international tests like TIMSS and PISA (IEA’s TIMSS 2003 International Report on Achievement in the Mathematics Cognitive Domains, 2005; Assessing Scientific, Reading and Mathematical Literacy, 2006). Despite the high results of Estonian pupils, annual official tests showed that there were problems in subtraction, multiplication and time calculations at primary school level (The National Examinations and Qualifications Centre, 2009). The key question this research poses is what kind of mental arithmetic skills do children in the first three forms of primary school possess? The aim is to analyze what kind of changes should be implemented in the national curriculum in order to improve the maths studies of Estonian pupils. Mental arithmetic tests were carried out in late April and early May 2006 both in Estonia and in Finland. Two groups of pupils participated in the tests, one of which consisted of pupils from seven Estonian schools from different parts of Estonia, and the other consisted of the first, second and third form pupils at Turku University Practice School which is the training school for teacher trainees studying at the Turku University, Finland. In this research, mental arithmetic is studied among children attending the first, second and third forms of primary school. Differences between the sexes are studied and, in addition, differences between Finnish and Estonian pupils are examined by comparing the Estonian results with those of the Finnish group. On the basis of the test, Estonian pupils received higher results in mental arithmetic exercises. Both Estonian and Finnish boys performed better than girls in mental arithmetic exercises in the second and third forms. The results confirm a good level of skills amongst the Estonian pupils, but also show in which tasks the most mistakes occurred. The exercises which acquired the use of working memory caused more mistakes. Further, the results indicate a difference between the mastery of boys and girls in mental arithmetic which highlights a need for the differentiation of teaching strategies according the sex of pupils.

122-137

Authors: Salomea A. Popoviciu, Ioan Popoviciu, Ioan G. Pop, Daria Sass

Pupil’s level of achievement is enhanced by bridging the gap between learning spaces and facilitating the transfer of knowledge, behaviours, skills, values, preferences and understandings from one context to another. An important part in this process is the exchange of information between home and school through an improved parent-pupil-teacher communication assisted by the school’s social worker. The research focus of this paper is to identify the challenges pupils face in relation to their learning spaces and to establish the role of the school social worker in improving pupil’s achievement through a contextual communication model of maintaining the collaboration between family, school and community. The research methodology included (1) a questionnaire applied to 110 pupils from one Romanian high-school with ages between 12-15 years; (2) semi-structured interviews with social workers, school teachers, a school psychologist, educational experts and parents and (3) synthesis and comparisons of the psychological and didactical relations between pupils and the context studied. Using the results of the survey and the interviews, this research identified the areas of discrepancy between pupils and their learning spaces, and mapped the role of the social worker in improving pupils’ level of achievement and school adaptation. This mediator role is exemplified through an innovative synergistic model of parent-pupil-teacher contextual communication.

151-161

Authors: Olga Logashenko, Lyudmila Lomakina

In the given work the problem of the vocational training of a psychologist, a teacher of psychology at the psychological faculty at the Institute of Economics and Management in Medicine and Social Sphere (Krasnodar) is investigated. The complexity of the given problem consists in the fact that a young expert being a teacher of psychology must be equally prepared both to the vocational psychological and the vocational pedagogical activity. The basic emphasis is made on the development of the creative personal potential of students which promotes efficiency of the future advisory, scientific and pedagogical activity of an expert. The longitudinal experimental psychological research of the professionally significant characteristics of students-psychologists and future teachers of psychology has been made. The indicators of dynamics of the creative personal potential of students from the 2nd to the 4th course at higher school have been studied. The innovative pedagogical technology of psycho-pedagogical support (PPS) of scientific practical activities (SPA) at the stage of introductory educational and pedagogical practice developed at the chair of psychology and pedagogics have been used as the influence tool. It is revealed and statistically confirmed that indicators for developing the creative potential level in the course of the professional formation of a student-psychologist at a stage of higher school education have positive dynamics connected with some features of psycho-pedagogical support of the training process.