Globalization of education and Eastern Europe

Specialized in the history and the philosophy of education on which he published many articles.     

Academic offences and e-learning: individual propensities in cheating

It has been argued that the use of Information and Communications Technologies has made academic dishonesty easier but this does not necessarily mean that it is more prevalent. The study presented here investigated the attitudes to, and extent of, self‐reported involvement in Internet supported dishonest academic practices. Multiple linear regression analyses showed that Internet experience, acceptability of cheating and assessment of risk predicted an individual student's acceptance of acts such as plagiarism as a legitimate way to achieve academic goals. There was a complex interrelationship among gender, frequency of Internet usage, and maturity of students. Academic offences tended to be more acceptable to males, but also to active Internet users, who were often female: that is females who joined the Internet culture were more prone to plagiarise than their non‐active peers. New undergraduates were more likely to err than students in later years of their degree. These results show that there are a number of interrelated factors impacting on individuals’ willingness to commit academic offences. The final discussion of this paper both recognises that Internet supported academic offences occur and briefly outlines some technical and non‐technical responses that should be considered by faculty to ameliorate this problem.     

Coaches' attitudes towards placebo interventions in sport

Placebo-induced performance enhancement is a new controversial issue in competitive sports. Coaches have control over the use of placebos, but their practices and attitudes were barely studied to date. In this survey 96 coaches from regional, national and international levels were asked about their practices and attitudes concerning placebo use in sports. Results revealed that 90% of the respondents were aware of placebo effects. Many (44%) coaches admitted to administering a placebo to their athletes. Those working at international level have administered placebos more often than the others (P = .02). Two thirds of the coaches agreed to the wider use of placebos in sport. Respondents who have used placebos in the past reported improved athletic performance. They also agreed more to the wider use of placebos than the coaches who previously did not use a placebo (P = .001). Team sport coaches use more often placebos than coaches working with individual athletes (P = .05). Only 10% of the sample thought that their athletes would refuse a hypothetical performance enhancer supplied by them. After a successful placebo intervention, only 15% of the coaches would administer it again without consulting the athlete. Overall, the coaches are optimistic about placebo use in sports. Close to half of them, especially those coaching at higher levels of competition, may use it regularly while achieving positive results.     

Reading research in Hungary

Much recent reading research in Hungary has focused on the formation of readers’attitudes and value judgements. This paper reports the results of a number of such studies, based on research with various groups, including library users, ‘killed-worker’ students, and children. A‘more books’programme has been found to be successful in developing a more discriminating approach to literature, but there is concern over national trends in reading. International studies have shown Hungarian students to be comparatively good at science but poor at reading. More books are being bought, and the proportion of women readers is increasing, but adults are spending less time on reading, and have a growing interest in non-fiction. The results of reading research in Hungary are not regarded as of purely theoretical interest. Such results are regularly used by librarians and by educational administrators.     

Tradition and modernization: Educational consequences of changes in Hungarian society

Summary The problem of preserving tradition and initiating modernization has caused headaches for educational policy makers and theorists in Hungary for centuries. The perennial problem has been joined by several new problems as the country tries to find its way from Stalinist totalitarianism to pluralist democracy. In education this change is marked by the shift from crude political indoctrination and from an officially-imposed value system to critical thinking and the plurality of values. The paper follows the major changes in educational philosophy and policy in the past forty years with a special focus on recent developments. A short summary is provided of the educational programs of different political forces and an outline of the basis of a possible new educational philosophy is given.

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Zusammenfassung Jahrhundertelang haben sich Entscheidungsträger und Theoretiker im Erziehungsbereich in Ungarn über das Problem der Erhaltung der Tradition bei gleichzeitiger Einführung von Modernisierungen den Kopf zerbrochen. Mehrere neue Probleme kamen zu diesem Dauerproblem hinzu, da das Land versucht, seinen Weg von stalinistischer totalitärer Staatsform zu pluralistischer Demokratie zu finden. Im Bereich der Erziehung macht sich diese Veränderung in einer Verlagerung von nackter politischer Indoktrination und offiziell auferzwungenem Wertesystem zu kritischem Denken und vielfältigen Wertvorstellungen bemerkbar. Der Artikel verfolgt die wichtigsten Veränderungen in Erziehungsphilosophie und-politik der letzten vierzig Jahre, besonders im Hinblick auf die jüngsten Entwicklungen. Eine kurze Zusammenfassung beinhaltet die Erziehungsprogramme verschiedener politischer Kräfte und gibt einen Überblick über die Grundsätze einer möglichen neuen Philosophie über die Erziehung.

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Résumé Pendant des siècles le problème de la préservation de la tradition et de l'introduction de la modernisation fut un casse-tête pour les responsables et les théoriciens de l'éducation en Hongrie. Plusieurs nouveaux problèmes sont venus se greffer à cette question pérenne depuis que la Hongrie s'efforce de passer du totalitarisme stalinien à une démocratie pluraliste. Dans le domaine de l'éducation, ce changement est marqué par le passage d'un rude endoctrinement politique et d'un système de valeurs, imposé officiellement à une penséc critique et à une pluralité de valeurs. Le présent article examine successivement les changements majeurs qui sont intervenus dans la philosophie et la politique éducatives au cours des quarante dernières années en mettant un accent particulier sur les événements récents. On donne un bref résumé des programmes éducatifs des diverses forces politiques ainsi qu'une esquisse de la base d'une nouvelle philosophie éducative envisageable.

     

Uncovering the Relationship Between Mathematical Ability and Problem Solving Performance of Swedish Upper Secondary School Students

In this paper, we examine the interactions of mathematical abilities when 6 high achieving Swedish upper-secondary students attempt unfamiliar non-routine mathematical problems. Analyses indicated a repeating cycle in which students typically exploited abilities relating to the ways they orientated themselves with respect to a problem, recalled mathematical facts, executed mathematical procedures, and regulated their activity. Also, while the nature of this cyclic sequence varied little across problems and students, the proportions of time afforded the different components varied across both, indicating that problem solving approaches are informed by previous experiences of the mathematics underlying the problem. Finally, students’ whose initial problem formulations were numerical typically failed to completed the problem, while those whose initial formulations were algebraic always succeeded.     

PF-BTS: A Privacy-Aware Fog-enhanced Blockchain-assisted task scheduling

In recent years, the deployment of Cloud Computing (CC) has become more popular both in research and industry applications, arising form various fields including e-health, manufacturing, logistics and social networking. This is due to the easiness of service deployment and data management, and the unlimited provision of virtual resources (VR). In simple scenarios, users/applications send computational or storage tasks to be executed in the cloud, by manually assigning those tasks to the available computational resources. In complex scenarios, such as a smart city applications, where there is a large number of tasks, VRs, or both, task scheduling is exposed as an NP-Hard problem. Consequently, it is preferred and more efficient in terms of time and effort, to use a task scheduling automation technique. As there are many automated scheduling solutions proposed, new possibilities arise with the advent of Fog Computing (FC) and Blockchain (BC) technologies. Accordingly, such automation techniques may help the quick, secure and efficient assignment of tasks to the available VRs. In this paper, we propose an Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) algorithm in a Fog-enabled Blockchain-assisted scheduling model, namely PF-BTS. The protocol and algorithms of PF-BTS exploit BC miners for generating efficient assignment of tasks to be performed in the cloud’s VRs using ACO, and award miner nodes for their contribution in generating the best schedule. In our proposal, PF-BTS further allows the fog to process, manage, and perform the tasks to enhance latency measures. While this processing and managing is taking place, the fog is enforced to respect the privacy of system components, and assure that data, location, identity, and usage information are not exposed. We evaluate and compare PF-BTS performance, with a recently proposed Blockchain-based task scheduling protocol, in a simulated environment. Our evaluation and experiments show high privacy awareness of PF-BTS, along with noticeable enhancement in execution time and network load.