In Search of Social Justice: Current Developments in Higher Education and the Labour Market in Bulgaria

The discussions about social justice date from ancient times, but despite the enduring interest in the topic and the progress made, we are still witnessing injustices throughout the world. Thus, the search for social justice, under some form, is an inseparable part of our lives. In general, social justice may be considered as a critical idea that challenges us to reform our institutions and practices in the name of greater fairness (Miller 1999, p. x). In political and policy debates, social justice is often related to fair access (Brown, 2013) but at the same time its meanings seem to vary when we consider different definitions, perspectives and social theories (Zajda, Majhanovich, & Rust, 2006). When seen in the context of higher education, social justice appears in relevant literature as a buzzword (Patton, Shahjahan, Riyad, & Osei-Kofi, 2010). Within the recent studies of higher education and public debates related to the development of higher education, more emphasis is placed on the link between higher education and the economic growth and how higher education could be more responsive to the labour market demands, and little emphasis has been put on social justice. Given this, the present study attempts to at least partially fill the gap with regard to this apparently very topical issue, especially in the context of the unprecedented worldwide expansion of higher education in the last century (Schofer & Meyer, 2005), an expansion that is expected to continue in the next decades. More specifically, the expansion of higher education intensified in the second part of the 20th century, especially after World War II. It was seen as a result of the intertwined dynamics related to demographic, economic and political pressures (Goastellec, 2008a). This trend undoubtedly contributed to the increase of the size of the student body. To illustrate this trend, we may point out that in the period between 2000 and 2007, the number of tertiary students in the world increased from 98,303,539 to 150,656,459 (UNESCO, 2009, p. 205). This growth occurred in all regions of the world, including Central and Eastern Europe, North America and Western Europe, and contributed to raising the number of tertiary graduates. Thus, in the period between 2000 and 2008, the total number of tertiary graduates in the European Union (EU) 27 increased by a total of 35 percent (or 4.5 percent per year). However, this growth was very uneven, ranging from 21.1 percent in Romania to 0.7 percent in Hungary (European Commission working staff document, 2011). The increase of the number of students and graduates was seen as enhancing the social justice in higher education, since it is assumed that expansion “extends a valued good to a broader spectrum of the population” (Arum, Gamoran, & Shavit, 2007, p. 29). However, concerns for a deep contradiction for 21st-century higher education also emerged with regard to its expansion.

Student’s sleep in higher education: sleep quality among students of the IPB

Sleep represents a basic human need, embodying several crucial functions in the young adult phase. Objective: To evaluate the sleep quality of higher education students. A descriptive-transversal study with a quantitative approach. Nonprobabilistic convenience sample of 358 students from Instituto Politécnico de Bragança (IPB). Data collection tools used: Socio-demographic record and the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI).

Self-regulated learning in higher education : strategies adopted by computer programming students

Trabalho apresentado em PAEE/ALE’2016, 8th International Symposium on Project Approaches in Engineering Education (PAEE) and 14th Active Learning in Engineering Education Workshop (ALE)

A Soft Computing Approach to Quality Evaluation of General Chemistry Learning in Higher Education

In contemporary societies higher education must shape individuals able to solve problems in a workable and simpler manner and, therefore, a multidisciplinary view of the problems, with insights in disciplines like psychology, mathematics or computer science becomes mandatory. Undeniably, the great challenge for teachers is to provide a comprehensive training in General Chemistry with high standards of quality, and aiming not only at the promotion of the student’s academic success, but also at the understanding of the competences/skills required to their future doings. Thus, this work will be focused on the development of an intelligent system to assess the Quality-of-General-Chemistry-Learning, based on factors related with subject, teachers and students.

Drivers of revenues and expenses in higher-education non-profit institutions

Double Degree

Assessing the Role of General Chemistry Learning in Higher Education

The inclusion of General Chemistry (GC) in the curricula of higher education courses in science and technology aims, on the one hand, to develop students' skills necessary for further studies and, on the other hand, to respond to the need of endowing future professionals of knowledge to analyze and solve multidisciplinary problems in a sustainable way. The participation of students in the evaluation of the role played by the GC in their training is crucial, and the analysis of the results can be an essential tool to increase success in the education of students and improving practices in various professions. Undeniably, this work will be focused on the development of an intelligent system to assess the role of GC. The computational framework is built on top of a Logic Programming approach to Knowledge Representation and Reasoning, complemented with a problem solving methodology moored on Artificial Neural Networks. The results so far obtained show that the proposed model stands for a good start, being its overall accuracy higher than 95%.

Trust and Leadership in Higher Education in the Downturn

This Leadership Academy Workshop presentation focused on 'Trust and Leadership in the Downturn', with particular reference to the public sector and to education. The presentation discussed a range of definitions of trust, including the view of Mayer, Davis and Schoorman (1995) that trust can be described as 'the willingness of a person to be vulnerable to the actions of another, based on the expectation that the other will perform a particular action important to the trustor, irrespective of the ability to monitor or control that action'. The presentation then focused on the reasons why this relational psychological state is important,particularly in an economic recession when people were facing job cuts and economic uncertainty in a wider political and social environment characterised by cynicism and a downturn in trust. If trust is defined in part as a belief in the honesty, competence and benevolence of others, it tends to act like 'social glue', cushioning difficult situations and enabling actions to take place easily that otherwise would not be permissible. A worrying state of affairs has recently been developing across the world, however, in the economic downturn, as reported in the Edelman Trust Barometer for 2009, in which there was a marked diminuition of trust in corporations, businesses and government, as a result of the credit crunch. While the US and parts of Europe was showing recovery from a generalised loss of trust by mid-year 2009, the UK had not. It seems that social attitudes in Britain may be hardening - it seems that from being a nation of sceptics we may be becoming a nation of cynics: for example, 69% of the population surveyed by Edelman trust the government less than six months ago. In this situation, there is a need to promote positive measures to build trust, including the establishment of more transparent and honest business practices and practices to ensure that employees are treated well. Following the presentation, a workshop was held to discuss the nature of a possible loss of trust in the downturn in the UK and its implications for leadership practices and development.

Leading change in higher education. The role of transformational and stakeholder management

Summary…iii Samenvatting . iv Resumen . vii Acknowledgments ix Table of Contents. xi List of tables xiii List of figures . xiii CHAPTER I General Introduction 2 CHAPTER II Transformational leadership and stakeholder management in library change . 47 CHAPTER III Successful change: the role of transformational leadership and stakeholder management in universities ... 73 CHAPTER IV Transformational leadership and stakeholder management: A multiple case study in Latin American universities . 111 CHAPTER V General Discussion 149 APPENDIX . 169 REFERENCES . 179

Researching the Use of Communication Technologies in Higher Education Institutions in Portugal

This paper describes a research which main purpose was identifying and characterizing the use of Communication Technologies by Portuguese Public Higher Education Institutions to support learning activities. An analysis model was created and used to develop a nationwide online survey used to collect data from students, teachers and institutional managers. The results show that institutional policies and resources are in place and being used to support learning; learning management systems and interpersonal communication technologies are intensely used and widely adopted; and that there are gender differences as far as the students' use of Communication Technologies is concerned. The results of this project provide a useful insight on the use of Communication Technologies by Portuguese Public Higher Education Institutions and give valuable information for ongoing decision making processes regarding the institutional adoption and development of learning models that take advantage of these technologies.

Free software and free culture in Higher Education: pipelines and workflows for creative purposes

OpenLab ESEV is a project of the School of Education of the Polytechnic Institute of Viseu (ESEV), Portugal, that aims to promote, foster and support the use of Free/Libre Software and Open Source Software, Open Educational Resources, Free Culture, Free file formats and more flexible copyright licenses for creative and educational purposes in the ESEV's domains of activity (education, arts, media). Most of the OpenLab ESEV activities are related to the teacher education and arts and multimedia programs, with a special focus on the later. In this paper, the project and some activities are presented, starting with its origins and its conceptual framework. The presented overview is intended as background for the examination of the use of Free/Libre Software and Free Culture in educational settings, specially at the higher education level, and for creative purposes. The activities developed with students and professionals generated pipelines and workflows implemented for different creative purposes, software packages used for different tasks, choices for file formats and copyright licenses. Finished and ongoing multimedia and arts projects will be presented as real case scenarios.

To enhance employability in higher education - a real connection to labour market

School of Technology and Management of Lamego develops since 2009 a project to reinforce its connections to the real needs of labour market. in this way, we developed until now three areas: multidisciplinarity volunteering work teams, collaborative training of students and the cooperation with several organizations to improve their sutainability through strategic methodologies.with those methodologies we tried to improve our students' employability, as well as to dialogue permanently with companies and other organizations to understand what they need from their human resources to be more competitive. wuth this article we intend to present the results accomplished until now and to present the project for the next e years, as well as to find out other higher education institutions of different regions or coutries that are interested in this project.

Disabling and Enabling Technologies for Learning in Higher Education for All : Issues and Challenges for Whom?

Integration, inclusion, and equity constitute fundamental dimensions of democracy in post-World War II societies and their institutions. The study presented here reports upon the ways in which individuals and institutions both use and account for the roles that technologies, including ICT, play in disabling and enabling access for learning in higher education for all. Technological innovations during the 20th and 21st centuries, including ICT, have been heralded as holding significant promise for revolutionizing issues of access in societal institutions like schools, healthcare services, etc. (at least in the global North). Taking a socially oriented perspective, the study presented in this paper focuses on an ethnographically framed analysis of two datasets that critically explores the role that technologies, including ICT, play in higher education for individuals who are “differently abled” and who constitute a variation on a continuum of capabilities. Functionality as a dimension of everyday life in higher education in the 21st century is explored through the analysis of (i) case studies of two “differently abled” students in Sweden and (ii) current support services at universities in Sweden. The findings make visible the work that institutions and their members do through analyses of the organization of time and space and the use of technologies in institutional settings against the backdrop of individuals’ accountings and life trajectories. This study also highlights the relevance of multi-scale data analyses for revisiting the ways in which identity positions become framed or understood within higher education.

Actas da II International Conference «Learning and Teaching in Higher Education/ Learning Orchestration in Higher Education��

É ponto assente que o desenvolvimento social e económico de um país depende do conhecimento e do nível educativo dos seus cidadãos. Num momento de crise económica profunda em que a sustentabilidade do ensino superior se encontra ameaçada e a sua organização com rumo incerto, importa, mais do que nunca, criar um espaço de reflexão em que a ciência se pronuncie, aproximando e colocando em evidência os contributos que em vários domínios se vão produzindo. Nesta conferência, que se pretende em continuidade com a realizada em 2010, elegemos como tema central a qualidade do ensino e da aprendizagem e, tendo em conta a realidade em que nos inscrevemos, alargamos a discussão aos contextos e aos modelos de organização que os podem consubstanciar. Pode parecer um paradoxo centrar esta conferência na componente mais pedagógica do ensino superior quando toda a pressão de avaliação interna e externa das instituições e dos docentes incide particularmente sobre a produção científica. Mas talvez não. Assumimos que a reflexão de cariz pedagógico continua a não ser uma prática corrente no meio universitário português que, durante gerações, se habituou a um ensino universitário tradicional destinado apenas a uma pequena elite e se alheou dos desafios da massificação de que foi alvo. A ideia de que pedagogia apenas diz respeito à relação do professor com crianças ou jovens até ao ensino secundário permaneceu latente, tornando estéril qualquer discussão que, na perspectiva de alguns, seria desnecessária e até contraproducente no ensino superior. Um novo paradigma terá de ser assumido por um ensino universitário que busca o ideal da excelência, colocando no centro do debate o equilíbrio entre as dimensões pedagógica e investigativa e uma redobrada atenção à sociedade e às mudanças se, verdadeiramente, o que pretendemos é ganhar o desafio da qualidade.