BULGARIAN JOURNAL OF SCIENCE AND EDUCATION POLICY

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Authors: D. Michalopoulos

Short Notice

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Authors: E. Pavlov

The article considers the binomial – medicine/art. Medical treatment of body should be combined with the medical treatment of soul. ‘A sound mind in a sound body’ can be achieved when art supports medicine. Semiotic aspects of medicine are discussed. The introduction of such ideas to medical education is recommended.

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Authors: D. Michalopoulos

Was he Romanian? Was he Greek? A prestigious physician? A Freud forerunner? A Balkan statesman? The main 19th century theoretical adversary of Marx and Marxism? A great reformer of educational systems? Truth to tell, Apostol Arsaki was all these: a famous oculist (the first one in the Balkans to have the relevant university degree) but a right-wing Romanian statesman, who granted large sums of money to Greece, in order to set up girls’ schools working along the lines he regarded as being morally (and spiritually) the right ones. The study of his life and achievements is a daunting task; nevertheless is a righteous mission; so let us proceed.

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Authors: A. Vongalis-Macrow

The relationship between education and globalization stands largely unexamined from teachers’ perspectives. By focusing on the teachers, as axiomatic to educational and pedagogical change, teachers feature in education policy and through their plight, the paper explores and challenges ideas that displacing teachers from input into educational reforms facilitates progressive implementation of new education. Demonstrating teachers' displacement from the policy making process becomes evident through the use of computer assisted qualitative research examining and drawing inference from textual evidence. Using text analysis focuses on teachers' work and how it is shaped and represented. On a policy continuum beginning from the policy makers and leading towards the policy takers, the way that teachers are represented in education policy demonstrates their limited capacity to influence policy making. By examining how teachers and their work are thus defined in macro policies, the intension is to raise concerns about the uncontested way that globalization driven educational reforms have entered the discourse of educational policy and the implications for educators. Educational policy advocates teachers’ critical role yet blurs teachers' participative capacity and leads towards the conclusion that policy obscures teachers’ agency in order to ensure that teachers are objects of policy rather than integral to policy making.

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Authors: B.V. Toshev

The paper describes the world system of indexing, abstracting and evaluation of the primary scholarly journals. The international standards of academic publishing are listed and commented. The particularities of the Bulgarian publication practice are discussed. The harmonization of both systems, Bulgarian and international, will facilitate the process of inclusion of Bulgaria in the common European research and education area.

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Authors: Z. Kostova, B. Radoynovska

The paper presents the use of a free word association test for revealing the scientific conceptual structures of teachers and students, concerning two stimulus words – living cell and biodiversity. The stimulus words retrieve a cluster of associations most of which are based on science education and are studied as connected. Associations with the stimulus words are analyzed and classified according to predetermined criteria. The stimulus word ‘living cell’ was quantitatively assessed in order to find out the balance between the associations with its components and to make inferences about curricula and textbooks. The stimulus word ‘biodiversity’ was comparatively assessed using four target groups and the results analyzed in order to find out the effect of biology education on the development of attitudes to this global environmental problem. The data is used to make inferences about the word association test combined with concept map construction as an assessment technique and to make some recommendations for teaching and for improvements of curricula and textbooks.

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Authors: B.V. Toshev

Science advances as a sustainable process. The academic journals mark the new scientific results. The system of scholarly journals is developed in two levels: the first level includes the primary research journals; the secondary journals where the papers of the primary research journals are indexed and abstracted build the second level. The world system of indexing, abstracting and evaluation consists of about 75 000 primary research journals; about 10 % of them are under the control of the Thomson Scientific, f. Institute for Scientific Information. The journals that do not belong to that system are to be considered as marginal editions. Thomson Scientific gives annually several scientometric parameters of its journals. Likely the most important amongst them is the Impact Factor (IF), introduced by Garfield. IF is an intensive property of the academic journal. However the scientific creativity is cumulative and, therefore, a proper extensive quantity should characterize it. Such quantity may be the efficiency factor e=nk with n – factor of productivity (number of publications of a given author) and k – factor of utility (number of citations of author’s publications). From macroscopic point of view such an organization of the scientific process provides its sustainability and stability. However, the microscopic consideration exhibits disturbances that appear continuously. They are in the relationships between authors, referees and editors. They appear when the rules of scientific publishing and/or science ethics are violated by some of the participants in the scientific process. The most common cases of such offences are listed and commented.

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Authors: B.V. Toshev

The Higher Attestation Commission (VAK) is responsible for the promotion and career development of the Bulgarian scientists. There are two scientific degrees (Doctor and Doctor of Science) and two academic ranks (Associate Professor/Senior Research Fellow II Degree) and Professor/Senior Research Fellow I Degree). VAK’s activity is based on the “Classification of Scientific Areas and Topics” (1990). However this document does not take into account the new processes and changes in the world science. For instance the old pedagogical disciplines have recently amalgamated in a new science – the Science of Education with interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary character. Generally in the science, strong processes of subjects’ integration replaced the previous trends to subjects’ diversification. These new phenomena are not rendered in the Bulgarian Classification of Scientific Areas and Topics. Therefore, difficulties arise when attempting to shape in an adequate manner the new Bulgarian researchers community.

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Authors: C. Katansky

Lifelong learning, life-wide learning, continuing education, vocational education, professional education of adults, formal education, informal education, permanent education, etc. – the author of the present article seeks the relationships between these widely used terms and traces through the history of their introduction in the modern educational theory and practice.

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Authors: C. Katansky

Quality and effectiveness are categories which have content and meaning of their own but they belong together. In educational practice, e.g. in vocational training for adults, the quality and effectiveness are interrelated. The effectively functioning organization delivers training of good quality. The article presents a socio-pedagogical (andragogical) interpretation of the training quality and effectiveness. Their presence or absence can be judged by the indicators which are grouped as follows: training outcome; state of the process; training organization; innovation of training. With a view to these characteristics the delivery of high-quality and effective training is a complex activity. This actually means achieving and maintaining a balance between the above mentioned indicators.