Reform of School Education in Russia

Reforma školního vzdělávání v Rusku

Author(s): Věra Ježková / Language(s): Czech / Issue: 1/2012

Keywords: Russia; education; educational policy; reform

The essay focuses on the main areas of Russian educational system reform such as management and financing of the education, changes in the teacher training and their professional development and their allowances, curriculum, student assesment and national and language policy. These areas are set into the context of the educational system and the main features of the educational policy.

History Teachers: Modern History, Historical Consciousness and a Challenge of Legitimization of History Teaching

Učitelé dějepisu: výuka nejnovějších dějin, historické vědomí a legitimizace školní výuky dějepisu

Author(s): Karel Černý / Language(s): Czech / Issue: 1/2012

Keywords: historical consciousness; teaching history; school curricula; modern history; history teachers

Paper focuses on historical consciousness of primary and secondary school history teachers. In this respect, the study focuses on latent weaknesses or challenges rela¬ted to legitimization of history as a school subject, self-perception of history teachers, taboos and especially the problem of teaching modern history. Study is based on empirical data collected during five focus group interviews which were analyzed using qualitative methodology.

Factors Influencing Decision-making of Potential Applicants for University Education in Context of Current Postmodern Society

Faktory ovlivňující rozhodování potencionálch uchazečů o vysokoškolské vzdělávání v kontextu soudobé znalostní společnost

Author(s): Jakub Husák,Markéta Volkánová / Language(s): Czech / Issue: 1/2012

Keywords: education; knowledge; learning economy; postmodern society; preferences; university

In the current postmodern society, knowledge is still more important. Knowledge, learning process and education become an integral part of personality development and also the development of the whole of society. In this context, the paper is focused on the identifica¬tion of the main factors which are preferred by potential applicants for university education within the process of the choice of universities. The main factors which influence the decision-making process of potential applicants for university education are examined by using quantitative empiri¬cal research. Considering the main findings of the paper is possible to claim that among the most preferred factors are the field of study, the possibility of obtaining a Master’s degree at the same university and a similarity between the field of study and job field. Also low awareness of costs of university education between the potential applicants belongs to one of the main results.

Pre-school education in the structure of European educational systems on the example of German-speaking countries

Předškolní výchova ve struktuře evropských vzdělávacích systémů na příkladu německy mluvících zemí

Author(s): Barbora Loudová Stralczynská / Language(s): Czech / Issue: 1/2012

Keywords: pre-primary education; integration of the educational system; innovations; Germany; Austria; Switzerland; Belgium; Liechtenstein; Luxembourg

The last decade has shown increasing trend towards integrating early childhood education into the education systems in Europe. Although the education systems are characterized by significant diversity, the growing convergence in the organization and content of preschool education in European countries can be noticed. This study outlines and compares national specifics in the preschool education in German-speaking countries in Europe and deals especially with current developments in the organization of early childhood education and new requirements on the teacher training. The paper illustrates the similarities and differences in objectives and functions of preschool education. Based on these characteristics, the tendency to include pre-school education in the educational systems is verified in the area of German-speaking countries in Europe.

Editorial

Editorial

Author(s): Eliška Walterová / Language(s): Czech / Issue: 1/2012

Anchoring Vignettets Method and Possibilities of its Use in Educational Science

Metoda ukotvujících vinět a možnosti využití v pedagogice

Author(s): Hana Voňková / Language(s): Czech / Issue: 1/2012

Keywords: survey research; self-assessment questions; incomparability of respondents’ answers; anchoring vignettes method; nonparametric approach; parametric model CHOPIT; response consistency; vignette equivalence; education; health; policy

Self-assessment questions are used often in survey research. A direct comparison of countries or different socioeconomic groups based on answers to such questions may lead to an incorrect conclusion about the respondents’ actual situation. One of the reasons may be that respondents from different groups use the response scale in different ways, for example Americans may evaluate a situation as “excellent” more often compared to other nationalities. The anchoring vignette method solves the problem by letting respondents evaluate both their situation and hypothetical situations of other people (anchoring vignettes). Since the hypothetical situation is invariant over respondents, the differences in their evaluations of the hypothetical situation may be intrepreted as the differences in their use of response scale. This is then used to adjust (anchor) their self-assessments. The anchoring vignettes method has not yet been discussed in Czech lan¬guage academic literature. This paper introduces the basic idea of the method both intuitively and using mathematics and presents several applications of the method in social sciences. Least but not last, it suggests how to use this method in educational science.

Stereotype Threat: Impact on School Achievements

Fenomén stereotype threat a jeho vliv na školní výkony

Author(s): Irena Smetáčková / Language(s): Czech / Issue: 1/2012

Keywords: stereotype threat; inequalities in education; school achievements; school failure

The article presents a concept of stereotype threat which is used from 90’s for an explanation why certain groups of students achieve low educational results, mainly in high-stakes situations. If there exists the stereotype assuming that members of some group haven’t abilities for a special field, and if this stereotype is emphasized just before the performance, then it leads to an achievement’s inhibition of person who accounts his/herself as a member of this group. The concept of stereotype threat is quite unfamiliar in Czech scientific background.

Odešel Ladislav Čerych

Odešel Ladislav Čerych

Author(s): Jan Koucký / Language(s): Czech / Issue: 1/2012

Table of Contents

Obsah

Author(s): Author Not Specified / Language(s): Czech / Issue: 1/2012

Reports

Zprávy

Author(s): Author Not Specified / Language(s): Czech / Issue: 1/2012

Text – Suture – Subjectivity: Suture And Subject Formation in Margaret Drabble’s “The Waterfall”

Text – Suture – Subjectivity: Suture And Subject Formation in Margaret Drabble’s “The Waterfall”

Author(s): Annamária Csatári / Language(s): English / Issue: 03/2004

Why do we need suture? What wounds do we have that need suture? What are the cuts that require sewing up? Are there certain cuts that we all share? Are there certain cuts that women have? In the following paper I seek the answers to these questions by attempting to interpret Margaret Drabble’s novel The Waterfall (1969) along the lines of Kaja Silverman’s suture theory as she synthesizes it in The Subject of Semiotics (1983).

“I Love A Manly Liberty”. A Postsocialist Approach To Gender Studies In Romania

“I Love A Manly Liberty”. A Postsocialist Approach To Gender Studies In Romania

Author(s): Reghina Dascăl / Language(s): English / Issue: 03/2004

The Romanian situation is marked by general and specific traits when compared to other East- and Central European contexts.

Daytime Utopias: If You Lived in Pine Valley, You’d Be Home

Daytime Utopias: If You Lived in Pine Valley, You’d Be Home

Author(s): Elayne Rapping / Language(s): English / Issue: 03/2004

Keywords: feminist theories; soaps; soap operas; AIDS;

A Midsummer Night’s Dream: The Cultural Anomaly of the Elizabethan Sex/Gender System

A Midsummer Night’s Dream: The Cultural Anomaly of the Elizabethan Sex/Gender System

Author(s): Eleonora Olivia Bălănescu / Language(s): English / Issue: 03/2004

The return of history in literary criticism over the last years accounts for a revival of interest in Renaissance study. But why Renaissance?

The Woman Artist as Viewed by the Woman Novelist: George Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Doris Lessing

The Woman Artist as Viewed by the Woman Novelist: George Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Doris Lessing

Author(s): Vesela Katsarova / Language(s): English / Issue: 03/2004

"I find it relevant to begin my paper with a famous quotation: “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.” As you know, in her famous essay "A Room of One’s Own" (1929) Virginia Woolf emphasizes the connection between art and economics. When she accounts for the scarcity of literary masterpieces by women novelists she says that such books are “not spun in midair by incorporeal creatures, but are the work of suffering human beings, and are attached to grossly material things, like health and money and the houses we live in”....."

The Critical Points of the Hungarian Prostitution Law: Organized Crime, Morality and the Invisibility of the Client

The Critical Points of the Hungarian Prostitution Law: Organized Crime, Morality and the Invisibility of the Client

Author(s): Zita Farkas / Language(s): English / Issue: 03/2004

In 1999 the issue of prostitution became a hot topic, widely discussed and debated in the Hungarian public discourse, as a new prostitution law was to be formulated that year. As one would expect, the new legislation on prostitution was supposed to achieve some kind of solution by allowing prostitution to be practiced in certain places under certain conditions. However, this is far from what actually happened to Hungarian prostitution.

Consciousness Raising, Identity Politics, and the Public / Private Divide

Consciousness Raising, Identity Politics, and the Public / Private Divide

Author(s): Voichita Nachescu / Language(s): English / Issue: 03/2004

My paper inquires into the formation of intersubjectivity within consciousness raising groups. It begins by outlining the debate over the meanings of experience and their implication for feminism. I contend that, while experience needs to be adequately theorized and understood as discursively constructed, the context of the narration of experience matters too. Then I proceed to explore the specifics of this context in the case of consciousness raising groups, understood as alternative public spheres and using poststructuralist feminist theories of the public / private divide. I contend that it is issues, not identities, that are politicised and traded within the public sphere, and I plead for disentangling consciousness raising from identity politics. At the same time, I call for a more historically contextual and less monolithical understanding of identity politics; I claim that the exploration of political issues as stemming from historically specific discursive contexts can allow for a more imaginative and future oriented activism.

Detection and Palimpsest in Margaret Atwood’s “Surfacing”

Detection and Palimpsest in Margaret Atwood’s “Surfacing”

Author(s): Klaudia Papp / Language(s): English / Issue: 03/2004

In the following essay, I intend to read Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing within the generic framework of the anti-detective story and trace how the anti-detective plot can be co-ordinated with an interrelated psychoanalytic approach to the novel.

The Innsmouth “Thing”: Monstrous Androgyny in H. P. Lovecraft’s “The Thing on the Doorstep”

The Innsmouth “Thing”: Monstrous Androgyny in H. P. Lovecraft’s “The Thing on the Doorstep”

Author(s): Kálmán Matolcsy / Language(s): English / Issue: 03/2004

Criticism on Howard Phillips Lovecraft, the inventor of the modern American horror tale, has “now reached titanic proportions,” as S. T. Joshi points out (1982:288). Yet some issues raised by Lovecraftian fiction are quite off the beaten track of most critics. Gender is one neglected area, although in some Lovecraft stories the reader is confronted with heavily gendered characters in shocking and often repellent relationships, the examination of which is very likely to unearth further knowledge pertaining to Lovecraft’s work, his “cosmic” philosophy, and his rendition of epistemology.

Through The Window As Looking Glass - Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window

Through The Window As Looking Glass - Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window

Author(s): Nóra Séllei / Language(s): English / Issue: 03/2004

Undeniably, Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window is a classic narrative film. Is it, however, an unambiguously classic narrative film as Laura Mulvey (1989) or Kaja Silverman (1983) would understand it?