Volumen 11 (2021): Edición 1 (April 2021)

Introduction: In order to build a quality inclusive environment (not only in education) it is not enough to have material and personal capacity. The students themselves also need to be included via quality assessment of this environment. Research focused on the attitudes of university students with special educational needs (SEN students) towards the inclusive environment quality at a specific educational institution in Slovak conditions has never been done before.

Methods: The research team aimed to identify SEN students’ attitude (N=20) to the quality of inclusive university environment. To maintain anonymity, university will not be specified; as for students, only their degree of study and gender will be listed instead of their age (65% were females). An attitudinal questionnaire developed by the authors was used to identify how the respondents perceived the quality of inclusion in the respective university environment.

Results: SEN students’ attitudes show the highest score in emotional components (AM=3.607; SD=0.602). Additionally, there is a statistically significant relation between their attitudes and the coordinator’s work quality. A statistically significant difference was measured between the attitudes of those SEN students who were satisfied with the work of their coordinator and those who were not (p-value 0.008). We noted a strong deviation in favour of the satisfied students.

Discussion: SEN students generally perceive the inclusive environment at the faculties at which they are currently studying as positive, which can result from the fact that coordinators are appointed specifically to cater to their needs. A distance course has also been created to improve the inclusive environment for students; it helps to improve the effectiveness of communications between coordinators and students, and quickly resolve any issues related to education.

Limitations: Both the size of the research sample and the fact that the survey was conducted at only a single university were limiting factors. Thus, we cannot generalize our findings to the entire university SEN student population nor to all Slovak universities.

Conclusions: In the conditions of the institution in question no research of this nature has ever been done before. In order to increase the internal quality of the school environment a reflection on the inclusive environment quality from SEN students is necessary. Looking forward, we recommend carrying out a more detailed observation of the inclusive environment quality in relation to the coordinator for students with special educational needs (hereinafter SSEN coordinator), their work quality and expertise.

Introduction: Parent involvement, which is defined as the attitudes, values and behaviors of parents supporting their children’s learning and education outcomes, has an important place in the education process of children. Many researchers acknowledge the important role that the strong positive link between home and school plays in children's development and education. However, many factors affect the participation of parents. School climate is one of these factors. Parent support and participation are considered important in a positive school climate. Thus, in schools with a healthy and open climate, school members can express their views more easily and contribute more actively to the educational process. Based on these thoughts, in this study, the extent to which parents’ participation in their children’s education is predicted by their perceptions of school climate.

Methods: The research participants comprised 513 parents in Turkey, 413 women (80%) and 102 men (20%). Parental Participation Scale and Parents’ Perception of School Climate Scale were used in the study. Descriptive statistics, correlation and multiple regression (stepwise) analysis were used to analyze the data.

Results: Findings obtained from the study showed that the level of parents’ participation in the educational processes of their children and their perception of school climate is high. As a result of the correlation analysis, it was found that only the Parent Participation Scale's “supporting child's socio-cultural development sub-dimension”, and School Climate Scale's “safety climate and academic climate” sub-dimensions had a significant and moderate relationship. In addition, as a result of the stepwise regression analysis, it was found that the safety climate and academic climate sub-dimensions significantly predicted the sub-dimension of supporting the socio-cultural development of the child. It was found that there were significant but low level relationships among the other sub-dimensions of the scales.

Discussion: School climate refers to the social, physical and academic environments of the school, and in terms of school climate, activities in the school encourage students to feel comfortable and realize the learning process. In this respect, it is important that safety, and academic climate sub-dimensions are a significant predictor of the child's socio-cultural development support dimension.

Limitations: The data in this study were collected from parents whose children are studying in primary schools in Pendik district of Istanbul/Turkey. In addition, variables with medium and higher correlation values were included in the regression analysis.

Conclusion: School administrators and teachers should organize activities that will involve the parents in the education process in order to get the support of the parents during the education process. School administrators should create an open and healthy school climate while administrating the school, and should never ignore the impact of this climate on stakeholders.

Introduction: Despite studies on workplace deviance globally and in an emerging country like Nigeria, the role of socio-demographic factors on dimensions and overall workplace deviance have been largely neglected in the literature. This lacuna hopes to be filled by this present study through examining the role of socio-demographic factors (gender, staff category and university type) on dimensions and overall deviance among university workers in Southwest, Nigeria.

Methods: The study adopted a cross-sectional survey design and a sample size of 384 university workers whose ages range from 22 to 63 years with a mean of 46.88 (SD=9.36) were conveniently selected from four universities. Data were sourced through the Workplace Deviant Behaviour scale and selected demographics which was analyzed using t-test for independent samples.

Results: The results found that there was no gender difference in workplace deviance among university staff [t(382)=-0.37, p>.05]. The study also found that academic workers have a higher tendency to engage in workplace deviance than their non-academic counterparts [t(382)=2.38, p<.05]. Finally, workers from private institutions reported significantly higher workplace deviance than workers from public universities [t(382)= -2.20, p<.05].

Discussion: We can deduce from the study that gender did not have any influence on work deviance as reported by previous study. Also academic staff has higher work deviance than non-academic staff which could be as a result of academic autonomy. Also, staff from private university has higher work deviance than public university which could be as result of the poor job security of private university in Nigeria.

Limitations: One limitation of the study is that some respondents might fake their responses and not disclose their true feeling about the subject matter.

Conclusion: Based on these findings, we concluded that there was no gender difference on work deviance, also there was staff category difference on work deviance and finally, employee from private universities exhibited higher work deviance than their counterpart from public universities.

Introduction: This study analysed Turkish instructors’ metaphors identifying learners in terms of learner autonomy.

Methods: In the present study we proposed a mixed methods approach to the investigation of the images created by the participants.

Results: The metaphors produced by the participants showed that instructors see both themselves and learners as active agents in teaching and learning process.

Discussion: The variety of metaphors grouped into eight categories reflected the broad range of perception of instructors have for learners.

Limitations: 80 non-native English-speaking Turkish instructors were the participants of the study. Their qualifications were varied from graduate degree to doctoral degree on ELL or ELT and their teaching experience varied from recent graduates with one year of experience to considerable veteran instructors with 27 years of experience in teaching English.

Conclusion: We observed that instructors perceive learner autonomy in many perspectives while they assign themselves some main roles in teaching and learning process. The findings also revealed a variety of teacher conceptualization of learner metaphors such as sponge, tree, traveller, puppet, cone, and empty canvas most of which are positive. The information may shed light on the attempts to promote learner autonomy, to understand teachers in practice better and to support teacher development.

Introduction: This article examines the first level of the European higher education system, namely the short-cycle higher education trainings related to the ISCED 5 whose Hungarian characteristics, and its historical changes were described.

Methods: We examined participation rates among OECD countries. As there are large differences in the short-cycle higher education trainings in Europe, we have relied on data that makes the different systems comparable.

Results and discussion: The interpretation, definition and practical orientation of the trainings varies from country to country, we presented the Hungarian form in connection with the results of international comparative studies and data. To understand the role of trainings, it is essential to get to know their history, especially because short-term higher educational trainings were transformed in several European countries.

Conclusions: Prioritising or effacing the social-political role of short-cycle higher education trainings depending on the political orientation of the government and as a part of this, prioritising the disadvantaged regions instead of the disadvantaged students.

Introduction: The current school is strongly focused on student performance. Each student faces a large number of learning tasks, which place considerable demands on them, arouse in them a different degree of interest, evoke a different degree of commitment to work, are associated with different expectations or have a different degree of attractiveness. Performance situations are associated with pleasant experiences but also with experiences of failure, which in their essence affect the activity or passivity of the student, and thereby affect the prioritization of the necessity to excel or the need to avoid failure. These needs are the basis of performance orientation, which is analysed in the paper. The aim is to verify whether the motivational orientation of students is related to their beneficial outcomes.

Methods: The quantitative nature of the paper made it possible to use both indicators of descriptive statistics (mean, median, mode, standard deviation) and inductive statistics (Mann-Whitney U test, Pearson's Chi-square test, Shapiro-Wilk normality test). The surveyed sample of 363 respondents consisted of an available selection of students from 14 primary schools in five regions of the Czech Republic in 2019. The data were collected physically at schools using a standardized questionnaire. Students were acquainted with its purpose and content. Statistical analysis of the data was carried out electronically, both in terms of methodology in accordance with the research design of Hrabal and Pavelková (2011).

Results: The analysis of the data of the sample of respondents revealed that the performance orientation of problem students differs statistically significantly from that of the performance motivation of non-problem students in two cases: 1) the need for successful performance, where differences were verified using hypothesis H1 and 2) in the ratio of performance needs, where the differences were verified using hypothesis H4. In other cases, no statistically significant difference was found between the two groups.

Discussion: The presented findings correspond to current domestic (Krykorková & Váňová, 2010) and foreign research (Weiner, 2000). They draw attention to the importance of a positive motivation of the student in terms of his degree of involvement in the development of his own dispositions, which affects the benefit of the student. Positively motivated students achieve better results with a comparable intellect than non-motivated students (Man & Mareš, 2005). The role of the teacher and his knowledge of motivational types of students is of paramount importance in this respect.

Limitations: The sample under examination of respondents does not bring a representative sample in terms of the representation of students according to school years, regions of the Czech Republic or according to the representation of so-called problem or non-problem students. The outcomes of the survey can thus be applied only to a given sample of respondents.

Conclusion: The benefitting for students in the sample showed lower positive motivation than their intellectually comparable non-problem classmates. It is a question of reserves, the use of which is a challenge not only for themselves, but also for the school and parents. The largest differences between the two groups were recorded in the specific ratio of positive and negative motivation 4: 2 within the T1 type and in the ratio 1: 3 within the T6 type. The attempt to determine the causes of this fact, especially proposing a remedy, is a topic for further research in this area.

Introduction: In the related literature, knowledge of vocabulary is mentioned to be crucial as one of the crucial parts of language learning. Measuring learners’ vocabulary knowledge is regarded to be essential in that it provides both teachers and learners knowledge of the problematic areas and suggests some practical ways to improve the vocabulary learning process. It could be said that an autonomous learner is a leading actor in his own language learning process because, as stated by Nation (1998), learning is performed by the individual learner. Little (1995) asserts that learner autonomy should be set as an explicit goal in language learning contexts in that autonomy on the part of the learners plays a vital role in student success. So, we hypothesize that vocabulary learning autonomy has a significant influence on the learners’ vocabulary size.

Methods: This study aims to investigate Turkish ELT student teachers’ vocabulary learning autonomy, vocabulary size, and the potential relationships between these two variables. Ninety-five student teachers in an ELT teacher education program at a university in Turkey participated in the study. The data were collected via two quantitative data collection instruments: Vocabulary Learning Autonomy (VLA) questionnaire and The Vocabulary Size Test (VST). The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and correlations. As for the VST, the correct answers were counted, and an overall score was found. The participants’ scores were multiplied by 100 to get their total vocabulary size up to the 14th 1000 word-family level. As for the questionnaire, descriptive statistics (mean, frequency, standard deviation) were conducted.

Results: The findings revealed that student teachers held a moderate level of vocabulary learning autonomy. The vocabulary size mean score was 77.14, which means that the participants had approximately enough vocabulary to deal with unsimplified written texts, and enough vocabulary to deal with unsimplified spoken texts. Additionally, there were significant and positive relationships between the responsibility and ability dimensions of the VLA scale. However, the findings revealed non-significant correlations among all the VLA’s dimensions and the vocabulary size.

Discussion: The findings regarding the participants’ vocabulary learning autonomy showed that the participants held a moderate level of vocabulary learning autonomy. This finding is essential in that one of the most important goals of education is encouraging learners to work more independently both in and out of the classroom (Moir & Nation, 2002). There were significant and positive relationships between the responsibility and ability dimensions of the VLA scale. This finding, which is in line with Koller (2015), suggests that the participants feel capable of learning vocabulary items when they perceive themselves as responsible people instead of a teacher. Based on the results regarding vocabulary size, it is reasonable to conclude that the participants had approximately enough vocabulary for comprehension of unsimplified written texts and enough vocabulary for spoken texts based on Nation’s (2006) research reporting that learners need 8000 to 9000 word-family vocabulary for comprehension of unsimplified written texts and 6000 to 7000 word-family vocabulary for unsimplified spoken texts.

Limitations: The research is limited to only first-year student teachers of English and the data consist of only quantitative data.

Conclusion: The findings of the present study imply the need to foster vocabulary learning autonomy of learners in teacher education programs. Student teachers hold two identities as learners and teachers of the future. It is crucial to examine their readiness because there is a bulk of evidence in the literature that teachers’ readiness for autonomy affects their ability to foster their students’ autonomy. The findings of the present study imply the need to foster vocabulary learning autonomy and utilizing some strategies to improve vocabulary size.

Introduction: Issues of urgency in learning include interest in reading and social skills in primary schools. Interest in reading and social skills are some of the basic things that are always integrated into all learning. Therefore, learning requires appropriate media to overcome these problems, one of which is a sociocultural-based reflective picture storybook (SRPS) media.

Purpose: The purpose of this article is to know the importance of SRPS media to increase the reading interest and social skills of elementary school students.

Methods: In the paper, the method of a comparative literature review is applied.

Conclusion: This concludes that SRPS media is important to increase the reading interest and social skills of elementary school students. To improve social skills and reading fondness, a media that is suitable for the characteristics of students is needed. Students’ interest in pictorial stories can be used as a solution to overcome the problem of low social skills and students’ fondness of reading characters that need to be improved. SRPS media is important to be developed in future research.