Search

Bishop Strossmayer left a significant mark in the preservation of Croatian culture, especially by promoting the spiritual and educational dimension of art. Therefore, the paper presents the results of internal research conducted using Google Form among 54 first and fifth-year students of History and Croatian Language and Literature at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences and students of Fine Arts at the Academy of Arts and Culture of the J.J. Strossmayer University of Osijek. They confirmed the initial hypothesis that students are most familiar with data related to their specific field of study and lack broader knowledge of the bishop's work, especially his vision of art. It is surprising, however, that some questions were answered better by first-year students than by fifth-year students, which leads to the conclusion that a greater cross-curricular correlation is needed for today's students to better understand the work of Bishop Strossmayer. At the same time, this also leads to the conclusion that students acquire greater knowledge about the person and work of Bishop Strossmayer during their secondary education and that they do not expand it enough during their studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public sector salary policy aims at making the salary system more transparent and keeping it at the same level in different public authorities and services. In practice, governing bodies use salary policy to demonstrate their priorities in managing the entire public sector. Such an approach frequently carries particular discriminatory features. The paper aims at presenting the system of determining the salaries of employees in public authorities and public services and giving an overview of the currently applicable legal framework in this regard. Considering the size of the public sector, a salary analysis was made on a sample of the salaries of university teaching personnel, doctors and judges. The criteria for selecting the jobs in question in the sample are the features common to each profession: independence in decision-making and work as set by the legal framework, a clear hierarchy of advancement in the profession, budget financed salaries and external evaluation related to potential advancement within the system. For each group of the aforesaid categories of employees, the similarities and differences in the salary determination system are shown. Accordingly, the extent to which the principle of equal pay for equal work is respected as stipulated by the provisions of the Labour Law, as well as potentially discriminatory elements in the determining salaries system within the public sector are established. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although there is a wide consensus on theoretical concepts and the pragmatic focus of IL, specifically in academic librarianship, many initial premises in the field have lately been discussed and questioned. The re-examination of wide-held assumptions in information literacy, the critique of its proclaimed purpose and practical manifestations led to the shift towards critical information literacy. The aim of this paper is to determine whether critical information literacy provides a distinctive theoretical contribution to the contemporary discourse in information literacy. Based on qualitative literature analysis the authors will examine some basic ideas and conceptual assumptions of critical information literacy and contrast and compare the dominant instrumentally-focused approach to information literacy with critical approaches. Specifically, the authors will try to determine to what extent core concepts of critical information literacy reflect on questions, dilemmas and problems identified in information literacy theory and praxis in the last decades, and whether critical information literacy offers a viable framework for perceived weaknesses, with an explicit outlook to the context of higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an overview of the theoretical and empirical framework of the debate on widening participation in higher education and explores to what extent the lessons learnt in this field have been applied in the field of public policy. Widening participation is based on the assumption that the probability of entering and successfully completing higher education is contingent on a complex range of social, economic and cultural characteristics of potential students, and that the measures aimed at widening participation must acknowledge the multi-faceted nature of inequities in education. In this context, this paper analyses the extent to which international stakeholders in higher education acknowledge widening participation as a priority. Special attention is given to the question of whether their policy documents take into account the results and implications of empirical research in this field. Finally, the paper assesses the potential impact of these documents on the debate on this topic in Croatia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study was to determine the sources of stress in the work of university teachers working in Croatia and to construct a questionnaire that would enable quantitative studies in this area. A qualitative study, aimed to determine the sources of stress at work, was conducted on a convenience sample of 34 higher education teachers in different academic ranks (assistants and professors), working in twelve faculties of the University of Zagreb and University in Split. Using the method of guided group discussions, we identified 125 characteristic sources of stress in the work that are logically categorized into nine content groups. Based on a qualitative study, we have constructed Questionnaire of Exposure to Stress in the Work for University Teachers and apply it on a sample of teachers (N=388) from three Croatian universities. After the implementation of confirmatory factor analysis procedures, the final questionnaire contains 68 items, which define the seven latent dimensions of sources of stress: Teaching and students, Consequences of the Bologna reform, Scientific-research work, Role-conflict, Remuneration and recognition, and Interpersonal relationships. The paper presents data on the metric characteristics of the structured questionnaire, and descriptive results of the pilot application. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to establish if the Higher Education reforms, so-called Bologna process, have led to changes in attiude towards learning. Research was carried out on a total sample of 216 students, male and female, from the University of Juraj Dobrila in Pula, 93 of whom had studied under the pre-Bologna process and 123 students who were studying under the new Higher Education program based on the principles of the Bologna Declaration. A questionnaire with sub-scales assessing organisation, fl exibility in learning, manner of processing information, use of aids, active participation in class, motivation and anxiety, was employed in order to examine their learning strategies. The results of the analysis point to the existence of statistically signifi cant differences between the groups in favour of students following the new system of studying: students who are studying under the Bologna system use aids significnatly more often, process the subject matter more thoroughly, are more flexible in learning, more active and more motivated than their predecessors. The differences obtained are examined in the context of modified conditions of studying and the new system of Higher Education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The need for the higher education process to be economically efficient, together with the need for equity and equality in access to higher education services for everyone represents the starting point of this paper. The analysis was conducted using data from a survey on a random sample of young people who recently finished their education using three criterion variables: completion of the study, study success, and the speed of study completion. These variables were chosen because all three individually and in total indicate the efficiency of the process of higher education, but taken together with the data about students and their form of study, other costs of study, family socio-economic background, and eligibility for indirect state financial assistance, also indicate the problems of equality in access to public higher education in Croatia. The obtained results show that the chances for completion of the study are primarily related to the socio-economic status of students. Completion is especially low for students from lower socio-economic strata who do not pay tuition fee, which suggests that the existing instruments of financial aid for non-academic costs are not sufficient for this group. The speed of study completion is primarily influenced by the costs students have to pay for tuition, lower socio-economic status of the students, and eligibility for financial aid conditioned by the dynamics of the study (scholarships). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyses the connection between the civic mission of the university, higher education teaching (as one of the basic academic activities) and the education of socially responsible and active citizens. It presents one of the most current models of experiential learning at the university level, originally called service-learning. The model in question relies on the integration of the curriculum and active involvement of the students in the community with the aims of ensuring their better understanding of the academic discipline, the needs and problems of the community and encouraging their (further) civic involvement. The international academic community is increasingly regarding this model as a mechanism that successfully contributes to the realisation of certain aspects of the civic mission of the university. With the purpose of contributing to the conceptual analysis, the concepts and approaches to the definition and theoretical origins are presented. Opening the area of the discussion about the challenges of the integration of this model into higher education curriculum at our universities, the Croatian equivalent of the term service learning is offered and explained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Factual evidence is a necessary precondition for efficient creation of any public policy, and education policies are not an exception. This paper portrays changes in participation, completion, duration and structure of fee regimes in Croatian tertiary education system, based upon the data collected by Croatian Central Bureau of Statistics. During the past two decades Croatian higher education system went through the greatest transformation in last fifty years. Considerable massification and commercialization of tertiary education ensued. Both processes reached their full pace well before adoption of the Bologna process, and are most visible in professional studies, and academic courses in business, economics and law faculties. Despite expansion of system and prolongation of average study duration, completion rate has somewhat increased during the past decade. Taken together, this was reflected as considerable increase in number of students and proportion of cohort that successfully completes tertiary education. Though, with about 40% of students failing to graduate, Croatia still lags behind majority of EU and OECD countries, both with regard to proportion of cohort which graduates and number of students who drop out of tertiary education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]