Problems of Education in the 21st Century

3

Authors: Editorial Board

Contents, Vol. 45, PEC, 2012

10-18

Authors: Petr Emanovský, Bronislava Štěpánková

The quality of science education is a very contemporary didactic topic at present. Improving the quality of this education is unthinkable without a quality science teacher training at universities and other educational institutions. Some innovation of contents and organization of the study programme for future science teachers was realized within the ESF project "Professional science teacher training for careers in a competitive environment" at Faculty of Science of Palacký University in Olomouc, Czech Republic. The project focuses on improving the training of teachers of all science branches in connection with the growing needs of the current competitive labour market. One of the main aims of the project leading to this improvement was the creation of new and innovated subjects oriented to teaching practice. A research focused on finding benefits of the new subjects for students was realized within the project. The objective of the research was to investigate the difference between students’ expectations and real benefits of the subjects. The research results were very useful as a feedback for a subsequent modification of the study programs. Some particular examples of the process and results of the research are described in the paper.

27-39

Authors: Vincentas Lamanauskas, Violeta Šlekienė, Loreta Ragulienė

Over the latter decade a rapid development of information communication technologies has been going on in various directions. Technological possibilities have increased very significantly (Lamanauskas, 2011). The development of internet and technologies related with it has been extremely fast. A lot of internet service providers have appeared in the market, their number still continues to grow. The internet connection methods are changing - from the ordinary usage of phone line modems (dial - up) to broadband internet technology (DSL) and cable TV internet nets. It can be asserted, that over the mentioned period Web 1.0 internet (static, used for getting information) has been changed to Web 2.0 internet (social). The internet diaries, social portals, technologies allowing live communication on the internet (Internet Relay Chat, IRC), talk programme Windows Live Messenger (MSN), ICQ forums and other have occurred and are spreading. With the appearance of “Skype”, the internet telephony has acquired a qualitatively new characteristic and practically has become a daily routine. Thus, today a consumer can create his profile on the internet, can make friends, communicate in the interest groups and so on. It can be stated, that every human being contributes in his own way to the internet and at the same time to ICT development, in general. It is obvious, that together with technological problems also arise social internet problems. Social networking websites are closely related with economical, psychological, educational, paleological and other aspects. There is a shortage of researches grounding socio-educational social network aspects. It is important to know not only how much time the consumers spend surfing the net, but how much of this time is allotted for communicating in social networking websites, which of them are the most popular and why, how the respondents evaluate social networking website functions, what in general they know about them, what advantages, disadvantages and threats they discern. Finally, it is important to find out whether the usage of social networking websites improves information – communication abilities in some way.

51-62

Authors: Iheanyi N. Okwakpam, Ikechi O. Okwakpam

The study was a case study design aimed at determining the causes and levels of truancy among secondary school students, using Rivers State, Nigeria. The research sample consisted of 105 teachers and was purposefully sampled. Four research questions and one hypothesis were posed, formulated and tested respectively. A structured questionnaire was developed, validated and administered to the respondents selected for the study. T-test, standard deviation and mean were used to analyze the data collected. The results indicated that there is a significant difference between family background and student factor. The implication of this is that the student’s family background contributes greatly to the student’s level of truancy. Hence, the null hypothesis was rejected. Based on the findings, some recommendations were made towards the reducing the level of truancy among secondary school students.

73-80

Authors: Edmond Rapti, Theodhori Karaj

The purpose of this descriptive-correlation study was to describe the overall level of job satisfaction, also relationships among job satisfaction, demographic characteristics and school characteristics for teachers in the basic education system in Albania. For this purpose a survey was conducted for 1000 basic education teachers randomly selected in 40 schools representing different regions in Albania. The questionnaire was composed of items which measured demographic and school characteristics. Job Satisfaction Index (Bayfield and Roth’s, 1951) was used to measure the overall job satisfaction. The reliability coefficient of this scale was 0.85. The research data was analyzed by Correlation and descriptive analysis, Kruskall – Wallis Test and Mann-Whitney Test. The findings indicated that the basic education teachers in Albania were moderately satisfied with their job and some of the demographic and school characteristics (age, tenure, teacher level of education and school size) were negligibly related to overall teacher’s job satisfaction.