Journal of Iranian Higher Education
Year:2011 | Volume:3 | Issue:4|Papers Count:8

The present study, based on an ethnological approach in sociology, studies the mentalities of researchers in regards to the scientific community in Iran. The theoretical section of the paper presents the sociological views concerning social system and social action and institutionalist and ethnological standpoints about the scientific communities. This study used a qualitative approach through semi-structured interviews with 69 leading researchers, mainly in basic sciences, who had published large amounts of papers in refereed journals indexed in ISI. In the findings section of the paper, researchers’ mentalities are classified. These mentalities include categories of existence or notexistence of scientific communities in Iran, their characteristics and their definitions by researchers. In the concluding section, different viewpoints are compared with each other and the study results are reviewed against Merton’s ideas as a leading figure of institutionalist theorist of sociology.

This paper aims to study the views of Shiraz University’s Faculty members on the research obstacles and challenges. In order to describe possible affecting obstacles, 227 out of 550 faculties working at the university, were selected based on the cluster sampling technique and were asked to complete a questionnaire which consisted 75 questions on the bases of 4 items’ Liker Scale. The questionnaire covers ten possible areas of obstacles but in addition to the closed items, the questionnaire included three open ended questions about the relevant agendas. The findings revealed that all predicted obstacles have a negative role on staffs’ research performance. The results also showed while the financial obstacles were considered as the most dominant factor affecting on the research but political obstacles perceived as a factor which has the less important impact respectively.

The study aims to develop a native pattern for intellectual capital indicators aimed to measure these indicators in the Ahwaz University of Shahid Chamran. Therefore, the current study was done in a process including four phases which could lead to domestication of intellectual capital indicators. For this, initially and in order to identify a preliminary list of indicators, relevant references and documents were reviewed. Towards identifying appropriate indicators which can be suited to the Ahwaz University of Shahid Chamran, in the next step the views of the field experts were analyzed. Accordingly taking into consideration of the university’s goals, the process was followed by selecting relevant indicators and identifying the most important indicators based on the university’s senior managers. As a result, 77 indicators were selected as the final draft of intellectual capital indicators. At last the status of these indicators in the university was measured during 2004 to 2008. The findings showed that although about 71.88 percent of the all indicators were matched to the university’s goals, about 28.12 percent of them were not matched to the goals. Additionally finding revealed that in compare to the university’ human capital, the university’s structural capital had a better condition.

One of the ways to increase efficiency and effectiveness of universities is performance evaluation of its various dimensions. In the past decade, with the reduction of social demand for higher education affected by quantitative expansion of universities, educational planners have been focused on analysis and evaluation of higher education quality. Considering students’ opinions, as main customers of this system, about university lecturers’ performances could be a good point of reference for understanding the conditions governing the quality of universities. The main purpose of the present study is to determine the relationship between faculty members’ social popularity with their evaluation by students at the University of Lorestan. A sample of 500 students from all colleges of University of Lorestan was selected by Stratified Random Sampling Method. Data was gathered by a researcher-made questionnaire with 30 questions and a ready questionnaire with 15 questions using a five-point Likert Scale. Content validity of the questionnaires was determined by university faculty members and their reliabilities by Cronbach’s alpha. The first findings of the study confirmed that there is a positive and significant correlation between the two variables of social popularity of university lecturers and their scientific evaluation by students. Other research findings confirm that academic ability in comparison with teaching ability can vary and be explained by changes to the social popularity of faculty members. Furthermore, among different components of social popularity, relational and managerial validity have more impact on university lecturers’ popularity.

Scientific associations are Non monitorial organizations, which accepted as centers of thinking, policy making and doing all over the world. So their effectiveness in the society is important for development of sociatical, economical, political and scientifical issues. At first in this article, we try to select an appropriate approach to assessment of technology management association then by interview with theirs managers and analysis the result of these interviews by the shanon entropy we find out ineffective sections. This association is ethics in science and technology, information and communication technology, technology management, foresight and expert association of research and development centers of industries and mines.Results of these interviews show that technology management associations are not effective about these goals.Analysis the universities, educational centers and governmental or private research institute.Determine the productivity increase share of work force, goals of productivity increase about work force, sections and subsections capital.Development of entrepreneurship, advertising the culture of giving services and development of official health and obvious.Play part in and supervise in dynamic development of the country.Sociological dialog between government and social cooperates for increasing social and human capital.After we found the ineffective sections, with study the literature of technology management associations and interview with the experts of science and technology policy makers we found strategies for solve this ineffectiveness’s. At the end each of this strategies were more analyzing by the science society of Iran.

The main purpose of this research was the determining of teaching.The research was conducted in three different steps: 1) recognizing the effective factors using existing literatures.2) The basic factors were determined using Delphi method.3) Using analytic hierarchy process model (A.H.P), pair wise comparison, ratio and final weight of effective factors were calculated.The main findings are:1- The degree of priority given to teacher, student and instructional environment were 55%, 24% and 21% respectively. The inconsistency rate was (0.07).2- Among the factors related to teacher quality, the highest priority is given to teacher’s professional skills with 39/1% and the lowest priority is given to teacher’s demographic characteristics with 8.1%. The inconsistency rate was (0.04).3- Among information resources related to quality of teaching were student rating, teacher self evaluation; teaching portfolio, peer and educational expert evaluation with 27%; 20%; 18%; 18% and 17% respectively. The inconsistency rate was (0.02).4- Among strategies and resources of data gathering about teaching quality, teaching portfolio is the most effective means for documentation of teaching activities.

The goal of this study is the analysis of learning styles and stages of Faculties of Agriculture and Natural Resources students based on the theory of experiential learning cycle. This research is correlated to the quantitative paradigm in terms of the functional and descriptive aspects of data collection. The survey sample consisted of Faculty of Agriculture students of Razi University, Kermanshah and they were selected with relative multistage sampling (N=324). The tool of the study was a questionnaire which included demographic characteristics and Kolb Learning Styles Inventory (KLSI). First, the level and learning styles of participants were determined and then software SPSS17.0 was used for analysis. In this study the frequency, mean square, Chi-square, F, Kruskal Wallis and Cramer’ V tests were used. There were no statistically significant differences in terms of student learning styles and stages, however, the best stages of learning were “Active Experimentation” and “Abstract Conceptualizations” and the best learning style was “converge”. Furthermore, personal characteristicsof these stages and styles did not show a significant relationship. Finally, recommendations for effective teaching based on the findings are presented.