The study explored misconceptions in electrostatics and their origins amongst learners at entry point in a South African University. Available literature showed misconceptions in electrostatics amongst High School learners and confirmed textbooks as one of the sources of misconceptions. It was therefore important to look for misconceptions in electrostatics amongst first year Bachelor of Science (B.Sc 1) learners in physics courses and their origins at the start of the academic year. The study also explored educators' misconceptions in the topic to check whether they could also be a source of learners' misconceptions. The results were intended to give guidance on how to eliminate learners' misconceptions at school rather than carrying them to higher education institutions. The study used the ex-post facto research design and was a case-study. The ex-post facto research design enabled the researcher to investigate whether one or more pre-existing conditions have possibly caused the existing problem of misconceptions. The sample consisted of 198 learners from B.Sc 1 physics course and 28 educators from 15 High Schools in one education district in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. The data were collected through questionnaires, analysis of textbooks, and interviews. The Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 17 was used for quantitative analysis whereas categorization and coding were used for qualitative analysis. The study revealed that learners had misconceptions in electrostatics. The origins of misconceptions were traced to educators, textbooks, intuition, daily language and lack of hands-on activities. It emerged from the study that educators also had misconceptions and the cause of their misconceptions were textbooks, websites and gaps in content knowledge. The recommendations from the study were the following: identify preliminary knowledge of learners during introduction of the lesson; introduce the iii constructivist approach to teaching in the teacher training curriculum so that learners at school can be taught using the same approach; frequent upgrading of educators through inservice workshops to reduce educators' misconceptions which, in turn, will help to reduce the misconceptions among learners; introduction of conceptual change textbooks.

D.Phil.

The subject of the diploma thesis titled Analysis of approaches to strategic management in tertiary education is the analysis of approaches from the point of view of national and international strategies and also from the point of view of universities themselves. The thesis contains theoretical background, theoretical resources of the issue concerned focusing on strategic management in general and in concept of tertiary education. The theoretical part also presents the history of tertiary education from the first Czechoslovak Republic to the present form of tertiary education in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The bases for the researched issue, ie. the approach to strategic management in the field of tertiary education, are represented by conceptual documents focusing on the strategy and development of tertiary education in the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic, the attention is also focused on the tendencies within Bologna process. The outputs of the IPN KREDO project were used, which dealt with the strategy of the development of tertiary education until 2030 in connection with the elaboration of strategic plans for the development of universities for the given period. Development documents at the level of selected universities in the Czech and Slovak Republics also constitute the resources...

The thesis should prove the necessity of this reform and at the same time to support the opinion of MŠMT which indicates the clear target why even be interested in the reform. The content of the thesis is also the focus on the necessity of study diversification which should be one of the main pillars of the future reform. I try to explain the diversification from the point of view of its meaning and need for the whole reform and its contribution for the tertiary education including the analysis of the attitudes of the universities. The aim of the thesis is to give the integrate view on the reform of tertiary education, to evaluate the meaning and usefulness of reform, to answer the questions, if these essential changes leaf to improving the quality and competitiveness of Czech universities and students. In the frame of objective evaluation I will reveal the possible lacks and risks coming from the implementation of reform steps.

This qualitative, ethnographic case study explores the professional development opportunities for teachers of adults in Pakistan in order to understand how these are currently experienced and what changes can be made to make them more effective. / This study took place mainly in Lahore, Pakistan. The study engaged six practitioners from different colleges, universities and government education departments: three teachers of adults, two professional development providers, and a professional development designer. Their perspectives were gathered in their indigenous languages - Urdu and Punjabi - using semi-structured interviews. The data collected was analysed using a Miles and Huberman (1994) style matrix which revealed five themes: unhappiness, school-based provision, social learning as the pedagogy, personalised generic teaching skill formation, and evaluation. These themes were explored to produce results which were used to generate a model of effective professional development. The results of this study indicated that teachers of adults, in Pakistan, wanting for change in their professional development practices, believe in school-based provision of professional development with social and reflective learning as the pedagogy. / Accordingly, this study contributes to the understanding of teachers of adults’ professional development needs, the types of professional support that they need, and how these should function within their own workplaces in Pakistan.

This thesis is focused on the development of private higher education systems in the Czech and the Slovak Republic. By the study of literature, legislation and by processing public and non-public statistical data, this thesis analyses the development of the private higher education system in the Czech and the Slovak Republic including their comparison and summarizes current terms that private universities must meet. Furthermore, this thesis is focused on processing the gathered statistical data of the number of private universities, their students and graduates. An integral part of the thesis is also the analysis of the study programs which are taught at private universities. The method of processing the statistical data is mainly the quantitative analysis of the data provided by the statistical offices in the Czech and Slovak Republic and by the ministries of education in both countries. The trend analysis was used for the outputs which display tendencies of phenomena in a specific period of time and comparative analysis comparing established indicators.

The thesis "Specific features of financing tertiary education in Czech Republic" is focused on the problem of university tuition in the Czech Republic. The aim of the work is to illustrate whether investment in tertiary education will be profitable for humans and recoverable in the future, even if they had to pay tuition for college. The theoretical part deals with the basic concepts of economic theory and methods of calculating return on investment in education. The practical part deals with the analysis of the survey that people recognize the importance of investment in human capital, and even with the introduction of tuition fees are willing to invest in tertiary education. The conclusion contains a summary of the proposed funding opportunities in higher education.

Questa tesi riflette l’attuale interesse per il dibattito educativo sul ruolo e sull’uso dell’inglese come lingua veicolare in ambiente accademico. I programmi che utilizzano l’inglese come Medium of Instruction (EMI) sono al centro dell’attenzione di questo studio, che si compone di una parte quantitativa e una parte qualitativa. Attraverso un’analisi aggiornata dei dati raccolti da Costa e Coleman nel 2012, la prima parte descrive i risultati di un questionario spedito a tutte le università italiane; la parte qualitativa descrive l’utilizzo dei marcatori metadiscorsivi impiegati da quattro docenti dell’Università Cattolica di Milano. A tale scopo, è stata adottata una versione semplificata del modello di Ädel (2003), proposto da Nobles (2010), e applicato in questa sede al discorso accademico orale. L’aumento del numero di corsi di EMI in Italia registrato da Costa e Coleman nel 2012 è rimasto stabile. Il confronto tra l’uso di marcatori metadiscorsivi personali e impersonali mostra un maggior utilizzo dei primi, in particolare del pronome personale “we”. Infine, lo studio vuole fornire dati e riflessioni a docenti, istituzioni universitarie e legislatori, utili anche alla progettazione di corsi di formazione per insegnanti. / This thesis reflects the shared current interest in the ongoing educational debate on the role and use of English as a medium of instruction in academic settings. English as a Medium of Instruction (EMI) programs are the main focus of this study which includes a quantitative and a qualitative part. Through an up-to-date analysis of the data on EMI courses in Italy collected by Costa and Coleman in 2012, the first part shows the results of a questionnaire that was sent to all Italian universities; the qualitative part describes the use of metadiscourse markers by four Italian lecturers at the Università Cattolica of Milan. The simplified and restricted classification model of metadiscourse markers proposed by Nobles (2010), adapted from Ädel (2003), was here applied to the academic spoken discourse. The increase in the number of EMI courses in Italy registered by Costa and Coleman in 2012 has remained stable. The comparison of the use of personal and impersonal metadiscourse shows that personal metadiscourse tokens surpass the impersonal counterpart, with the pronoun “we” as the most frequent self-mention marker in the corpus. Finally, the present study can be of great interest both for lecturers and university policymakers or teacher-training designers.