Education In Greece Research Articles

Social dimensions of distance postgraduate education in Greece

Although distance learning has no less effectiveness than on campus education (Young J, 2000), is still unclear why Greek students adopt the HOU for their postgraduate studies. This research addresses the following questions: “What makes the Greek students to decide to pursue their postgraduate degree via the HOU instead of the on campus one? Which are the factors affecting their decision? Which are the most important of them?” This research followed the survey methodology with the use of email questionnaires which followed the snow ball technique, while the results were analysed by the Dedoose software. The findings indicated that reasons like financial needs, time, flexibility and job prospects are influencing students towards their decision, while factors like family and friends are the catalysts in that direction. Our analysis suggests that the results can help HOU understand that need to help students overcome their contemporary societal barriers towards a better future.

Socioeconomic Status and Its Effects on Higher Education Opportunity: The Case of Greece

Gaining access to higher education theoretically enables social mobility for students from lower socioeconomic classes but students from lower-income, working class families are much less likely to attend university. Data from a sample survey of over 2000 Greek university freshmen were analyzed using multiple linear regression analysis to identify factors influencing the affordability of a first-year university education in Greece. Results showed that family income is the strongest predictor of the affordability of higher education in Greece and that a university education is substantially more affordable for the upper socioeconomic or management classes in Greece compared to that for working class families. This finding partially explains why families from the upper socioeconomic strata in Greece invest the most in preparing their children for university admission. This also helps explain why approximately 80% of the first-year university slots are occupied by “management class” families. While the average Greek family invests almost half of their annual income to support a child’s university education, the families of working class families sacrifice almost 60% of their annual income to achieve the same goal, something they can much less afford to do. It should come as no surprise then that the children of working class families occupy only one in five classroom seats in the Greek system of higher education. More research is needed to understand the underlying causes of this disparity. Alternatively, more can be done from a social policy perspective to help promising low-income secondary students become better prepared academically for pursuing and applying to institutions of higher education in Greece.

Entrepreneurship education at school: a case study on secondary education in Greece

Secondary education has been recognised as an important lever of strengthening entrepreneurship and innovation systems. However, there are disappointing discoveries regarding the implementation and specialisation of the Greek national strategic priorities in entrepreneurship education, when examining at business level, the weight and importance attributed to the curriculum of the secondary education. The present paper sets out to investigate the necessity promoting entrepreneurship education in Greek schools of secondary education. Firstly, it presents the curriculum of the Greek lyceum related to the entrepreneurship education, including the very recent changes. Secondly, it examines, based on a field survey of 90 students that was conducted in spring 2014, the entrepreneurship educational needs of the Greek lyceum students. Finally, it proposes based on the survey results the design and implementation of a national strategy on entrepreneurship education.

The Impact of Social and Political Developments in the School books of the School Subject Social and Political Education in Greece (from 1956 to 2017)

The Impact of Social and Political Developments in the School books of the School Subject Social and Political Education in Greece (from 1956 to 2017)

The Positive Effect of Evaluation on Improving E-learning Courses Addressed to Adults: A Case Study on the Evolution of the GSLLLY Courses in Greece over a Decade

The General Secretariat for Lifelong Learning and Youth (GSLLLY), the strategic national entity for Adult Education in Greece, has designed and implemented various e-learning courses offering flexibility beyond time and space restrictions. The courses run in two consecutive periods, the first one from 2008 to 2011 and the second one from 2014 to 2016. This paper is focusing on key design and implementation features of the courses in both periods and is analyzing the ways and the level by which the evaluation of the courses of the first period affected positively the design of the courses in the second period by enhancing the strengths and rectifying the weaknesses. Further on the evaluation results of the second period courses clearly showed that the majority of the first period problems have been solved and provided useful material for further improvement.

Education For Sustainability - Experiences From Greece

One of the main issues involved is changing people's attitudes, values, behavior and consumption patterns. University education in Greece aims to educate engineers so that besides acquiring theoretical knowledge, they also learn to show competences and are motivated to act accordingly. Educating for sustainable development also entails the development of critical capacities and the necessary skills to be able to identify and formulate problems. This paper outlines the way in which an approach to teaching sustainability has been embodied in the Industrial Design, West Macedonia Greece. More specifically, it describes a course to develop comprehensive case studies and support material in order to aid, Industrial Design students in understanding the sustainability concepts and how solutions can be developed

Inmates’ Adult Education in Greece—A Case Study

<p class="apa">Correctional education in Greece has been implemented since 1980’s. Second Chance Schools (SCS) in prisons were established in 2004, aiming at combating social exclusion. This study’s aim is to look into the reasons of school dropout and to interpret why inmates take part in the educational program provided by SCS, registering the motives, expectations and barriers. According to the findings, inmates dropped out particularly due to financial problems. They engage in the educational process having strong motives, primarily the beneficial calculation of the days of their sentence as well as it is a way to get out of the pains of imprisonment. Their expectations have to do with education, improvement of their vocational status, personal development and social acceptance. There were no barriers mentioned.</p>

Native-immigrant wage differentials in Greece: discrimination and assimilation

ABSTRACTThis article applies the Blinder–Oaxaca methodology in order to dissect the average earnings differentials between Greek workers and three different groups of immigrants into a part attributed to differences in characteristics and a part due to discrimination. It also seeks to identify the effect of assimilation (i.e. postmigration human capital) on immigrants’ earnings. We use information about 8429 individuals, of which 1185 are immigrants. The data are drawn from the Greek Labour Force Survey (2009). Our results suggest that discrimination is significantly higher for immigrants originating from non-EU countries than it is for EU foreigners, while it is negative for those who terminated education in Greece. Also, there is evidence that (i) post-migration human capital is a significant determinant of immigrants earnings, (ii) there is limited transferability of skills between sending countries and Greece and (iii) education is the main determinant of the wage gap between natives and immigrants.

Bioscientists in Greece: To Be Or Not To Be A Teacher?

Career development is a significant part of a person’s life. For Bioscientists inGreecefinding a job is not easy, especially recently, due to a severe economic crisis the country goes through, which has negatively affected the labor market. Although their academic curricula during their graduate studies strongly urge them towards research, most of them make a living as teachers in high schools. This study is a quality research on Bioscientists’s career in Education inGreece. Data was collected through interviews and the sample includes 16 Greek Bioscientists –seven working in Education and nine in other areas. For the results, Content Analysis was used and it revealed that for those working in a high school, although it wasn’t always their first choice, it turned out to be a good job alternative. For those who didn’t choose Secondary Education to work in, Academia is considered as an excellent career option but the limitation of available positions makes them turn to other employment alternatives, like pharmaceutical companies or marketing. To conclude, Bioscientists’ career inGreeceseems to be a dynamic process, formed according to personal interests, values and one’s personality as well as to external, mainly economic, factors, leading them to realistic, personal pursuits.

Ontological modeling of educational resources: a proposed implementation for Greek schools

In eLearning context searching for suitable educational material is still a challenging issue. During the last two decades, various digital repositories, such as Learning Object Repositories, institutional repositories and latterly Open Educational Resources, have been developed to accommodate collections of learning material that can be used for instructive and research purposes. In order to make this learning material publicly available through internet searching mechanisms, it has to be enriched with metadata. Nowadays, emerging Web 3.0 applications necessitate further enhancing learning resources with semantic knowledge to facilitate conceptually searching. Adding semantic value to educational resources could be achieved by modeling ontologically the metadata profile which describes them. The purpose of this work is to demonstrate the process of enhancing semantically learning resources by developing a new ontology and a prototype system to accommodate them. The designed ontology is originated from a metadata profile which is build according to the guidelines posed by Singapore Framework for Dublin Core Application Profiles. We focus on educational material for teaching courses on Informatics in primary and secondary education in Greece but the methodology and mechanism introduced could be easily adapted in any domain-specific setting.

Stress Sources and Manifestations in a Nationwide Sample of Pre-Primary, Primary, and Secondary Educators in Greece.

Teachers experience high levels of stress as a result of their professional duties, and research has shown a growing interest in this phenomenon during the recent years. Aim of this study was to explore the associations of stress sources and manifestations with individual and job-related characteristics in educators of all levels. In a cross-sectional design, following an informative e-campaign on the study aims through the official and the main teachers' portals in Greece, respondents completed online the teachers stress inventory (TSI) and the 14-item Perceived Stress Scale. Nine hundred seventy-four male and 2473 female pre-primary, primary, and secondary educators with a mean age of 41.2 years responded. Women and younger teachers reported significantly higher levels of stress, mainly due to lack of time and other work-related stressors, and also more emotional and gastronomic manifestations. Increased age and working experience were associated with lower levels of several stress sources. Teachers of administrative positions had increased time management stressors, but less professional distress, professional investment, and discipline and motivation stressors. Additionally, working and residing far from family increased teachers' stress levels associated with control, motivation, and investment. Teachers of pre-primary education had reduced professional investment and motivation stress factors, while vocational lyceum teachers of secondary education reported less work-related stressors and manifestations and more discipline and motivation-related ones. Having students supported or in need of support from special educators and students with difficulties in speaking or comprehension was associated with most of the teachers' stress sources and manifestations (i.e., TSI subscales). Finally, colleagues' and mainly supervisors' support seemed to provide a strong and consistent protection against both stress sources and manifestations. Stress factors and manifestations vary among educators by gender, seniority, and teaching level. Training in coping and communication skills starting in teachers' undergraduate studies might have a major impact on their stress alleviation.

Social Change and Education in Greece: A Study in Class Struggle Dynamics by Spyros Themelis (review)

Social Change and Education in Greece: A Study in Class Struggle Dynamics by Spyros Themelis (review)

Η «κυβερνητική στρατηγική» για τη διά βίου εκπαίδευση στην Ευρώπη και την Ελλάδα

<p>Since the early 1990s lifelong education in Greece has been formulated according to the “governmental strategy”; the lifelong learning system has been expanded and privatized to a significant extent, while responsibility for<br />participation in lifelong learning programmes facilitating entrance in the labor market has been passed on to the individual. The two basic goals for the establishment of the knowledge society relate to the enhancement of economic competitiveness and safeguarding social cohesion. Vocational training centers<br />(mainly private ones) acquired the biggest share of EU funds aimed at combating unemployment induced social exclusion. Focus was put on continuous vocational training with a parallel weakening of the general education provided to adults. The adopted strategy, by moving away from public educational policy<br />(through privatization and individualization) has ultimately hindered the attainment of social goals such as social inclusion and social cohesion.</p>

Social work education in a time of national crisis in Greece: educating the workforce to combat inequalities

Since 2010, Greece has experienced an unprecedented economic and humanitarian crisis, which continues to have tremendous social impact. Austerity measures and policy cuts have included a dis-investment in social work and social care and more recently the abolition of one of the four national Social Work Departments providing qualifying social work education. In this context, this study addresses the following question: how does pre-qualifying social work education in Greece influence students' ability to manage value tensions in relation to anti-oppressive practice? Using a case study methodology, the research was based in one Social Work Department (subsequently abolished). Data were collected through semi-structured interviews from social work students at the beginning and the end of their professional education (n = 32) and once from academic staff/placement supervisors (n = 10). Data were analysed drawing on grounded theory techniques. In this paper only one particular dataset is considered in detail: the attitudes and experiences of final year students. The main findings indicate students' narrow understandings and individualistic approaches towards oppression, reflecting an urgent need to redefine social work education and practice in Greece according to current social justice concerns. Specifically, social work education needs to give greater weight to a structural perspective on the dynamics of oppression. Although focussed on Greece, the paper offers a critical debate of contemporary relevance for social work education in many European nation states.

The Results of a Qualitative Research regarding Accounting Education in Greece (2009-2016)

This paper brings together the fields of accounting education and accounting profession in Greece during the global financial crisis. The purpose of this study is to understand the role of accounting education in the efforts made to consider certain changes in the accounting curriculum with the purpose of preparing finest and ethical professionals, and further, of eliminating the symptoms of a similar financial crisis in Greece. For the purpose of the current study, the researcher followed a phenomenological descriptive approach, so to understand individuals' experiences of the phenomenon. Through this, the study explored the individual lived experiences of 10 accounting professional and 15 accounting professors in Greece. The paper reports the results of this survey, which showed that each participant’s individual experience as an accounting professor or as an accounting professional was unique.

A Literature Review in Accounting Higher Education in Greece (2009-2016)

The recent financial crisis in Greece and other Western economies combined with the conduct of serious malpractices in the finance sector, brought into light long time unresolved systemic issues. These facts undoubtedly contributed to massive unemployment, high poverty rate, crime and other social ills experienced in the country. Accounting and finance in higher education could not be left unaffected from these developments and calls for deep reforms have been made (Santouridis, et al., 2014). This paper presents a literature review on accounting Higher Education in Greece addressing the various aspects of the accounting education in regards to the needs of accounting profession during the global financial crisis.

Professional High School (EPA.L.) As A Means Of Configuration And Exercise Of Internal Educational Policy

This research is innovative in the field of organization and administration of education in Greece because the issue has not been scientifically researched in EPA.L. Purpose of the research is to determine the views and perceptions of teachers' while they exercise the educational policy of EPA.L. and to record their proposals and suggestions. The research was conducted with the use of semi-structured interview. Key findings of the research are that EPA.L. is necessary in the current difficult time, it need to stand on its own feet, it must find ways of saving resources and it should be supported by the local community.

Evaluating a learning management system for blended learning in Greek higher education.

This paper focuses on the usage of a learning management system in an educational institution for higher education in Greece. More specifically, the paper examines the literature on the use of different learning management systems for blended learning in higher education in Greek Universities and Technological Educational Institutions and reviews the advantages and disadvantages. Moreover, the paper describes the usage of the Open eClass platform in a Technological Educational Institution, TEI of Ionian Islands, and the effort to improve the educational material by organizing it and adding video-lectures. The platform has been evaluated by the students of the TEI of Ionian Islands based on six dimensions: namely student, teacher, course, technology, system design, and environmental dimension. The results of this evaluation revealed that Open eClass has been successfully used for blended learning in the TEI of Ionian Islands. Despite the instructors’ initial worries about students’ lack of participation in their courses if their educational material was made available online and especially in video lectures; blended learning did not reduce physical presence of the students in the classroom. Instead it was only used as a supplementary tool that helps students to study further, watch missed lectures, etc.

HelexKids: A word frequency database for Greek and Cypriot primary school children

In this article, we introduce HelexKids, an online written-word database for Greek-speaking children in primary education (Grades 1 to 6). The database is organized on a grade-by-grade basis, and on a cumulative basis by combining Grade 1 with Grades 2 to 6. It provides values for Zipf, frequency per million, dispersion, estimated word frequency per million, standard word frequency, contextual diversity, orthographic Levenshtein distance, and lemma frequency. These values are derived from 116 textbooks used in primary education in Greece and Cyprus, producing a total of 68,692 different word types. HelexKids was developed to assist researchers in studying language development, educators in selecting age-appropriate items for teaching, as well as writers and authors of educational books for Greek/Cypriot children. The database is open access and can be searched online at www.helexkids.org.

Aspects of Professional Dance Education in Greece

My PhD research focuses on public professional dance education in Greece. The two Greek schools that are free of tuition constitute the research field: the State School of Dance and the Professional Dance School of the Greek National Opera. The theoretical framework draws from the works of Pierre Bourdieu on the concepts of field, habitus, and capital, as well as from Bryan Turner, Steven Wainwright, and Clare Williams's adaption of them for the field of dance and also, the works of Michel Foucault on the concepts of discipline and the technologies of the self. The material has been collected through a combination of student/faculty interviews and field observation. The basic points of the research are the student selection process and possible inequalities that might take root throughout the three-year education, the aesthetic canon of each academy and the impact on teaching and identity formation, the disciplinary methods and the technologies that the students form, the role of gender, the shape of the dancer's body, and the relation between the educational and the market field. These aspects are considered through a critical perspective, in close relation to the historical configuration of the Greek and the international dance field.