Institutional Approaches to Entrepreneurialism at the University of Belgrade

This article focuses on the many requests for change which the University of Belgrade, as a university in a transition country, has been facing from its foundation to the present day. Over the last decade, the University of Belgrade has had to overcome a range of difficulties in an attempt to follow European trends in reforming higher education at the institutional level. Today, it is obvious that the outcome of higher education reform will depend entirely on the academic community, which must play an active role and enter the “knowledge business”, as a prerequisite for the success of future generations of university graduates.     

Automatic acquisition of inflectional lexica for morphological normalisation

Due to natural language morphology, words can take on various morphological forms. Morphological normalisation – often used in information retrieval and text mining systems – conflates morphological variants of a word to a single representative form. In this paper, we describe an approach to lexicon-based inflectional normalisation. This approach is in between stemming and lemmatisation, and is suitable for morphological normalisation of inflectionally complex languages. To eliminate the immense effort required to compile the lexicon by hand, we focus on the problem of acquiring automatically an inflectional morphological lexicon from raw corpora. We propose a convenient and highly expressive morphology representation formalism on which the acquisition procedure is based. Our approach is applied to the morphologically complex Croatian language, but it should be equally applicable to other languages of similar morphological complexity. Experimental results show that our approach can be used to acquire a lexicon whose linguistic quality allows for rather good normalisation performance.     

Verification policies in Croatian medical biochemistry laboratories: a survey of the practice

IntroductionThe aim of this study was to screen practices used in verification procedures for methods/analysers among medical biochemistry laboratories (MBLs) in Croatia. We hypothesized that these procedures differ widely from laboratory to laboratory and wanted to gather specific data on steps used in the verification workflow.Materials and methodsIn order to obtain data, an online survey was conducted. The survey, divided in two sections, contained 29 questions and statements addressing general characteristics and specific steps of the verification workflow of each individual MBL. The survey was disseminated among managers of all MBLs in Croatia.ResultsA total of 108/196 (55%) laboratories participated in the survey. Forty nine MBLs were excluded from the second part of the survey: 14 have not implemented verification procedures, and 35 MBLs due to the absence of answers. The most relevant results of the second part of the survey showed that: 18/59 (0.31) of the responding MBLs have difficulties when defining acceptance criteria, 27/59 (0.46) used the Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute protocol for precision estimation; the majority of MBLs used a median of 20 samples for method/analyser comparisons and estimated bias using internal quality control samples; reference intervals provided by external sources are mainly adopted; 60% of MBLs do not include linearity verification in their protocol and do not use the national document for the estimation of measurement uncertainty.ConclusionsHeterogeneous verification protocols are routinely utilized across Croatian MBLs which clearly confirms that a national document might help in the harmonization of verification procedures.     

Resourcing inclusion: Introducing finance perspectives to inclusive education policy rhetoric

Across the Central Eastern European region, inclusive education has become a policy aim. Europeanization, influence of United Nations agencies, and shifts away from Soviet models of education have led to new policy aspirations for the inclusion of children with special education needs (SEN). At the same time, policies in many countries often lack the infrastructure or internal mechanisms required for successful implementation (such as funding, professional capacity, and public will). In this article, we examine one of these challenges: funding. Through simulations based on data collected by the authors in the Republic of Serbia, we examine approaches for funding children with SEN in inclusive classrooms without losing the supports provided to them in segregated settings. Our findings illustrate the possible approaches to adequate costing of inclusive education policies and potentially serve as a methodological reference beyond specific national contexts. They are, therefore, potentially applicable across Eastern European countries.

     

Technology enhanced learning in programming courses – international perspective

Technology enhanced learning (TEL) is increasingly influencing university education, mainly in overcoming disadvantages of direct instruction teaching approaches, and encouraging creativity, problem solving and critical thinking in student-centered, interactive learning environments. In this paper, experiences from object-oriented programming (OOP) courses that are taught in three institutions from three different European countries are presented and compared. The courses are based on Java and are delivered in the second year of studies, after students have attended an introductory programming course. The emphasis is given on TEL approaches and accompanying tools and services, focusing mainly on Learning Management Systems (LMS). Our students completed an appropriate questionnaire to evaluate the importance and utilization of TEL services that are used or planned to be used at the programming courses. The results of statistical analysis of collected data show that students from all three institutional groups consider organizational services provided by TEL tools as much or very much important in their education, while communicational services are rarely used. Using non-parametric statistical tests we studied the similarities and differences in perceived importance of TEL services among students from different institutional groups.     

Local management of schools in England: Results after six years

This paper reviews the evidence on the impact of six years of local management of schools in England. Introduced into all parts of the UK except Scotland, as one of the key measures in the Education Reform Act (1988), local management of schools is a particular and limited version of the school‐based management (SBM) model. The paper starts by considering the theoretical basis for the links between SBM and local management on the one hand, and improved school performance in terms of educational outcomes on the other. It then reviews evidence on the impact of local management at the level of the school system, on school management, and against the criteria of efficiency, effectiveness and equity. The findings of research on the impact of local management, in particular the lack of firm evidence of consequential improved educational outcomes for pupils, is then interpreted in terms of the theoretical basis of local management.     

Direct and Indirect Effects of Parenting on the Academic Functioning of Young Homeless Children

Research Findings: Effects of parenting quality on the academic functioning of young homeless children were examined using data from 58 children ages 4 to 7 and their parents during their stay at an emergency homeless shelter. Parenting quality, child executive function, child intellectual functioning, and risk status were assessed in the shelter, and teacher reports of academic functioning were obtained when the children began kindergarten or 1st grade. As hypothesized, parenting quality was associated with children's academic success, and this effect was mediated by executive function skills in the child. Parenting quality also had a moderating effect on risk, consistent with a protective role of high-quality parenting among children with higher risk levels. Concomitantly, children with higher risk and lower parenting quality appeared to be more vulnerable to academic problems. Practice or Policy: In homeless families, parenting may play an especially important role in academic success through multiple pathways, including the development of executive function skills in their children. Policies and practices to support parents and foster the executive function skills of young children in homeless families may be important strategies to promote child academic success. Implications for intervention efforts with homeless parents and children are discussed.