Švietimas: politika, vadyba, kokybė /Education Policy, Management and Quality

7-18

Authors: Vincentas Lamanauskas, Dalia Augienė, Rita Makarskaitė-Petkevičienė

The problems of higher university education are not only urgent but, it can be asserted, that due to many reasons they are getting sharper. The dynamism of labour market and always changing society require flexible, innovative and creative lifelong learning possibilities; higher education institutions do not limit themselves to primary preparation of specialists, the possibili-ties ought to be found for the development of specialists and professionals, for specialisation change, for the development of personal abilities and for expansion of high level professional competences. Continuing education at universities is becoming more and more urgent in the Strategic priorities of European education. It is necessary to seek for high scientific activity and high study level and for the results acknowledged on an international level. On the other hand, the competition among universities is evidently getting stronger both on national and internatio-nal levels. Very often blind orientation only to a consumer (a student), only to service provision to him, make the quality of studies and at the same time the quality of acquirable education worse. The solution of any problem requires reliable and adequate information. The researches, regarding university students’ opinions on higher education problems do not lose their urgency. On the contrary, in this way rather objective primary information about processes taking place in this sector is obtained. The empiric research (N=544), carried out in January-February 2012, showed that student opinions on higher university education are controversial, in fact. Having carried out content analysis on the respondents’ expressed positions, considerable advantages and disadvantages of university studies were discerned. Education acquisition and good study quality are pointed out as the most important uni-versity education advantages. These positions have relatively the biggest weight among all cate-gories defining the advantages. Self-realisation and career possibilities occupy the middle posi-tion in the advantage category scale. Their weight fluctuates in the interval of 10-20 percent. Communication possibilities and study management are not regarded as considerable advanta-ges. It has been stated, that a considerable shortage of university education is study quality. One third of the respondents gave the biggest weight to that category. It can be asserted, that study quality and conditions for practical ability formation in the study process worry the res-pondents most. Evaluating study quality, the respondents most often express dissatisfaction with the overloading of the study content: a lot of insignificant subjects must be studied, too many unnecessary lectures, inexpedient lectures, poor lectures, worthless; a lot of unnecessary study programmes and so on. A part of respondents accentuate dissatisfaction with the teachers’ work: poor competence of some teachers, unfair student evaluation, the requirements raised are too high. It can be asserted, that university studies are more often understood as experience pro-cess, during which theoretical and practical knowledge are integrated and on this basis profes-sional experience is acquired and professionalism is mastered.

26-34

Authors: Marat Akhmetov

Web education today is becoming increasingly popular. More and more students use the Web for searching information about substances and chemical reactions, but only little part of websites users is able to achieve success in learning chemistry. Free web education has both advantages and disadvantages. Students can study at their own pace and at a convenient time, but they need ability to do exercises without teachers’ support. Our research let us understand what a web teacher can do for students’ success in learning chemistry. It is hard to study chemistry for many students, because chemistry is a special part of human knowledge. For success in learning chemistry students must have amount of chemical knowledge. Students should understand chemical phenomenon, chemical formulas, and structures of substances. They should have ability to solve chemical problems. We studied educational materials on the most popular Russian-language chemical education websites. Results and discussion are presented in this paper. It has shown what educational websites should publish useful chemical information for students. They should have opportunity to answer any chemical questions and discuss chemical problems with other users. A Web teacher must put information on a website which can improve students’ interest in chemistry. Chemical information should relate life situations, a history of chemistry, mass-media and other sides of human life. Web teacher should put multimedia chemical information, not only formulas, equation, but pictures, audio and video on a website. This information is very interested for students and prepares their chemical knowledge and their success. As a result of useful and interested information they should want to visit a website again.

6-15

Authors: Vaiva Grabauskienė, Kristina Siminauskienė

The article analyzes the understanding of numerical expressions in primary and secon-dary schools. Algebraic education begins in primary school by numerical expressions calcula-tions and transformations tasks. Understanding of these tasks remains important later while doing any of expressions, equations and inequalities tasks. The numerical expressions errors made by students show learning difficulties and inadequate understanding of concepts. This article presents 120 I–VI classes students numerical expressions solutions mistakes qualitative continent analysis. It revealed such problems as misunderstanding ideas of positional decimal counting system, constructive learning of rules, the lack of practical experience in trans-formating numerical expressions. There are proposed possiblities to improve the situation by paying more attention to decimal structure and the positions of numbers in primary classes, mul-tipurpose numerical expressions analysis, the increasing of motivation to solving numerical ex-pressions.

39-46

Authors: Cláudia Valentina Assumpção Galian, Lucia Helena Sasseron, Maria Ligia Borba Florenzano, Agnaldo Arroio

This article reports the work carried out with a group of six students in two public schools in the State of São Paulo, within a project Pre-Iniciação Científica (Scientific Research Initiation) conducted at Faculty of Education, University of São Paulo, along the year 2011. These students conducted a survey in their schools in order to identify the relationship which their colleagues setting out with knowledge on the scientific disciplines. Thus it is assumed as objective for this study to drive a reflection concerning the views of students who complete basic education in public schools about the basic scientific knowledge who have had access throughout their school trajectories and drive some directions for police makers about natural science education policies.

54-55

Authors: Judita Stankutė

A short interview with the headmaster of Bubiai School of the Šiauliai Region, Lithuania. The article talks about the school life and some specific features in that school.

6-21

Authors: Vincentas Lamanauskas, Dalia Augienė, Rita Makarskaitė-Petkevičienė

Despite the fact, that quite a lot of empirical researches have been carried out, their shortage remains obvious. Constant situation observation, research and analysis are especially important seeking to perceive higher education’s state and change. The practice remains to carry out changes not preparing for this properly, not evaluating current situation. Basically, it can be claimed, that empiric researches is a perspective way seeking to improve higher education system’s functioning. On the other hand, it is wrong to refer to theoretical or/and empiric researches carried out only in other countries. It is necessary to evaluate concrete country’s context, carry out representative researches in Lithuanian university students’ population. Research University study problems is based on positivistic - quantitative approach. The aut-hors hold the position, that measuring causative links between variables is very important. The opi-nions of the respondents and positions about the investigated object undoubtedly help to reveal important links between variables. The research was carried out between January-March, 2012. Two university (Siauliai – SU and Lithuanian Educology – LEU) bachelor study students participated in the research. 600 questionnaires were prepared. On the whole, 544 questionnaires were acknowledged acceptable. It can be stated, that the majority of students are satisfied with the study quality. Study quality is important for students regardless their sex. It has been stated, that first year students are most satisfied with the study quality, and later the attitude significantly changes. It is understandable, because taking part directly in the study process, the estimation is different: you are faced with objective and subjective problems; you have to consider personal expectations newly. Students are interested in Lithuanian higher education problems. However, the interest in European higher education questions is quite low. It has been stated, that better career possibilities determined university study choice best. Personal initiative and parents’ advice are also important determining factors. However, teachers and friends didn’t have any influence, in fact, choosing university studies. The possible reason for this can be insufficient attention to professional information and career education in comprehensive schools. It is interesting that university study choice is not related with high prestige. Pragmatic-practical interests are obviously significantly important.

28-39

Authors: Olusegun Fatai Adebowale, Dare Naomi Olufunke

This study is designed to examine the level of awareness of primary and secondary school teachers invited for a capacity building workshop on ICT of Nigeria’s educational policy on ICT as well as its possible influence on the use of ICT for classroom teaching and learning. Two hundred volunteers (out of the 250 participants invited from all the Local Government Areas of the state) at an ICT training workshop organized for Oyo state (Nigeria) teachers participated in this study. Data was collected using a self-constructed and validated questionnaire titled “Teachers awareness of Nigeria’s educational policy on ICT” and the data were analyzed using simple percentage, t-test and ANOVA. The study found that only a small percentage of the respondents possess a high level of awareness of the country’s educational policy on ICT, in fact, a considerable proportion of the respondents (35.1%) of the respondents were either completely ignorant of the policy or possess poor levels of its awareness. Previous training in which some of these respondents attended had no significant influence on their awareness of the country’s educational policy on ICT. The study also presented some implications of this to ICTs use for teaching and learning purposes in the schools.