JOURNAL OF RESEARCH AND PLANNING IN HIGHER EDUCATION
Year:2003 | Volume:9 | Issue:3(29)|Papers Count:10

Assessing quality of higher education systems has been considered as a major issue in many countries during the past two decades. Accreditation model, which includes internal quality assurance and external quality assessment, has been applied to assess and improve the quality in higher education systems. Application of internal quality assessment started in 1996 in Iran. The exercise indicated the need for an instrument to measure institutional and departmental mission and objectives. This research project was undertaken to respond to the above need. In doing so, based on the experience from Institutional Goals Inventory (IGI) instrument a draft version of a questionnaire was prepared in Persian language. It was validated among sample of faculty members of Tehran University. The Persian version of the IGI is applied to clarify university mission and goals. Using this questionnaire as a base, another questionnaire was developed to delineate departmental missions and objectives. The technical characteristics of this instrument are reported in this article. The results indicated that the PIGI is valid and reliable instrument to measure university goals and develop departmental objectives for self–evaluation.

One of the critical issues in higher education, in general and in agricultural higher education in particular, is continuous assessment of research and education quality. During the past two decades many countries have made special efforts to improve quality of their higher education. In doing so, they have applied different evaluation approaches. Among these approaches internal evaluation has holistic systematic characteristics that would lead to continuous quality improvement. Through internal evaluation the faculty members examine their past activities and find out their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats to their department to better plan the future development of their department. The main purpose of this study was the application of internal evaluation in Agricultural Extension and Education Department for its quality improvement. It used descriptive survey research methodology and descriptive statistics to analyze data. In accordance with internal evaluation model, the five domains of context (degree objectives), inputs, processes, outputs and outcomes were considered for evaluation. These included: students, graduates, management and structure, learning process and degree program. The survey included total of 24 students, 65 graduates 65 employers, 4 faculty members and dean of the department. The results indicated that departmental objectives and missions, and context were satisfactory and inputs including (student, learning resources, and curriculum), process (teaching, learning) and outputs (graduates, publications of faculty) were relatively satisfactory. Finally, based on results of the assessment recommendations were made for improvement of the quality of the department.

One of the most important function, of higher education functions is training of human recourse for economic sectors. Thus, coordination in demand and supply of university graduates in labor market is necessary. The potentials of higher education training and economic activities are not distributed evenly throughout the country. In this paper, relative advantage of higher education and economics activities in Isfahen are estimated and compared. For this purpose, index of relative comparative advantage (R.C.A)of higher education in Isfahan was computed. Number of graduates in different fields in Isfahan University were compared to those who graduated in similar fields in other Iranian universities. To determine the R.C.A of economic activities, values added in different sectors in Isfahan, were compared to values added in the same sector in other parts of Iran.

Recent years, Iranian higher education has witnessed a sharp increase in number of women enrolment. In fact the enrolment ratio for women has surpassed the 50% mark with respect to men. Such increase which has its roots in significant internal and external processes influential in formation of Islamic Republic, will have significant political, cultural and economic consequences for Iranian women in the future. In this essay, the trend of increase in enrolment of women in higher education is studied and is compared with previous decades in Iran. A close examination of causes and consequences of this great achievement, indicate that despite such sharp increase in number of women in higher education, their role has not increased in managerial, executive, and legislative branches of the society in national and local levels. However the evidence clearly shows a clear demand for bigger share a women in managerial, executive, and legislative fields in the future.

Central aim of the present research is to provide an effective leadership model for public universities on the basis of organizational climate and the administrators personality traits. A total of 100 university administrators and 300 of their colleagues of public universities in 16 Iranian provinces were chosen at random for the research. Gordon,s personality profile and list was used for the administrators and Litwin & Stringer,s organizational climate questionnaires, as well as Romsden,s effective educational leadership questionnaire were given to their colleagues. The responses of 80 administrators and 213 of their colleagues were analyzed. The effective educational leadership questionnaires used criterias such as focus on goals, encouragement, work, transformation, understanding, and the human element. Descriptive observations indicate the administrators exhibited highest degree of accountability and lowest degree of sociability among the profile traits. Among the Gordon qualities, innovative thought was imperceptibly weaker than the other three traits among the administrators. Multiple regression and correlation analyses were used to study the relationship among factors conducive to personality traits, organizational climate, and effective educational leadership and to find the best model to show their variances.

Curriculum integration is defined as linking and combining content areas in order to facilitate coherent learning experiences for students. Integrated curriculum is an educational approach, which motivates learners for lifelong learning and develops the required capabilities for living in the twenty first century. The review of the literature shows that curriculum integration hasnt always followed a single approach and has been designed using different methods. Numerousness and variety of integration concept in the curriculum has been the source of some confusions about this concept and has led to some problems and challenges in this area. This article presents and describes more than twenty types of classifications for the integration approaches. These approaches are then categorized under three axes showing the fundamental features of different integrated curriculum approaches.