JOURNAL OF RESEARCH AND PLANNING IN HIGHER EDUCATION
Year:2010 | Volume:16 | Issue:1 (55)|Papers Count:8

The purpose of the study was to identify effective factors on students’ behavioral crisis and presenting strategies for reducing them. The study used the descriptive (survey) method of data collection. The participants in this study were 382 students (female=165, male=217) at Islamic Azad University Branches (district 10). A self- designed questionnaire with 39 items and with the overall reliability, degree of 0.80 was used to collect data required. The data were analyzed by using the factorial analyze, T test and ANOVA. The results of research indicates that effective factors on students behavioral crisis are as follows: political factor, Collegiate structure, social factor, expensive and employment, life aim & plan, educational factors, cultural factors, personal development & growth needs, physiologic needs, roles conflict and dissatisfy of education condition. Finally, some strategies have been presented for reducing the crises.

Current trends in higher education suggests the importance of investigation of the quality of students' adaptation to college. Although there has been increased attention on personal differences among adolescents in their level of college adjustment, family variables have not received extensive investigation. The current research investigated whether family variables as well as personal variables are associated with college adjustment in a sample of college students. 292 electric engineering students (77 females, 215 males) from Sharif. Uni, Khaje Nasire. Uni, and Science & Technology Uni (mean age: 19.57, standard deviation 0.85) filled out the SACQ questionnaire Univariate analysis of variance was carried out to determine the effects of personal and family variables on adjustment. The results revealed that by increasing intimacy between parents, parental support, parents educational level and socio-economic status, students interest, ability, tendency to take personal responsibility, and adjustments to college will improve. Implications of the results are, also, discussed in the paper.

While reviewing the challenges and issues facing Iranian Universities, the current article sorts these problems and issues based on their outmost presence in the academic environment, in terms of 26 major categories according to the responses of 260 PhD students and investigates their effect on academic socialization of university students. Academic socialization was measured using four scales including 1) student's adhere to academic norms 2) perception of the students on the extent that these norms are observed within the academic environment 3) Extent that the students adhere to academic counter norms 4) perception of the students on the extent that these counter norms are observed within the academic environment. The results shows that challenges facing academic environment are the most important hindering factors in successful academic socialization of the students. These hindering factors are mainly institutional and structural and the individual factors are secondary. Results also indicates that these factors are not directly related to academic socialization but are mediated through student's perception of the extent that these norms and counter norms are observed within the academic environment.

One of the most important issues that universities confront is using the suitable methods for educational evaluation of faculty members. Using the evaluation system is an obvious need for assessing faculty members performance, but establishing such system cannot be easily done in practice. Several methods and approaches exist for educational evaluation of faculty members. Most researches show some common informational sources for educational evaluation like: students, peer, administrators and self evaluations. Based on the review of literature, there are eight components which are common in teaching-learning process and four informational sources on each of teaching-learning components. This research is designed to find out faculty members opinion to share of informational sources in educational evaluation of faculty members. By stratified random sampling method, 180 samples were selected from Shahid Beheshti university faculty members. In this paper, based on research. Results the following question was answered: How much do the faculty members agree with different sources of evaluation?Based on the research results, the faculty members strongly agree with eight identified components of teaching-learning process like content expertise-course design-Instructional delivery skills-course management-advising and guiding-relationship skills-evaluation of learning-ethics in teaching. Among four informational sources, the students have more weighted average.

Think Tank centers in regard to fundamental studies, are deeply involved in pivotal planning and initiating strategically national security activates. These centers are mainly academic and play important roles in policy marking through providing procedures. Since planning in think tank centers should cope with those of other sectors and to avoid any contradictions among different planning activities throughout the country, the Ministry of Sciences, Researches & Technology is solely responsorial to keep co-ordination, support Think Tank centers and also supervise various activities to achieve the specified goals. In this paper the roles of the authorized Think Thank centers based on Q Methodology have been surveyed. The Method is a combined system in which both descriptive and analytical statistics will be utilized. The adaptation of Pierson correlation which is the characteristic of the Q Methodology gives this method an upper-hand in dealing with the subjects being investigated compared to other survey system. Based on The gains achieved by applying analytical Q Methodology, the concepts of the academic members and other participants who play roles on policy making on 9 groups of factors have been examined. The result will signify the interpretation of types of thoughts and the weaknesses that the Think Tank centers expose. Analyzing the concepts of the people instead of the factors, the similarity of roles have been categorized which will have a significant effect on the enhancement of the quality of policy and procedures and at the same time will reduce the unnecessary cost relating, misjudgment in segment of public policy making process.

With development of knowledge and technology, and growth of work and earning, economic firms have developed, and business environment transformed into a competitive environment with new challenges that caused new paradigms to emerge. Therefore, those organizations will be successful that their learning speed is faster than environmental changes. Besides, organizational trust has a significant role in increasing participation in organizations and provide an opportunity for cooperation between organization and employees in order to increase their investment. In this research, two questionnaires of organizational learning and organizational trust were distributed among 240 employees and faculty members as statistical sample who were selected randomly among Southeast public universities. Reliability of questionnaires were calculated 0.73 and 0.82 respectively through chronback alfa coefficient. Shapiro test, pearson correlation coefficient, linear and curvical regression, and analysis of variance were used to analyze the collected data. Moreover, path method analysis was used to assess the research model. Findings showed a significant relation between horizontal trust (r=0.242), and vertical trust and institutional trust (r=0.272) with organizational learning. Regression analysis also, showed a significant relation between vertical trust, and institutional trust with organizational learning (P=0.021). Furthermore, relation among vertical, institutional, and horizontal trust indices is significant(P=0.001). However, relation between horizontal organizational trust and organizational learning was not significant, hence, it was omitted from the final research model.

The purpose of this research paper was to investigate what level of guidance Iranian EFL instructors and students deem as optimal. For this purpose a theoretical framework which positions teaching styles on a continuum from the one which provides maximal guidance to the one which provides minimal guidance was employed. The participants in this study were 306 college students and 36 faculty members. The results showed that whereas the students consistently preferred teaching styles that provided moderate guidance, the instructors preferred different teaching styles with varying degrees of guidance depending on the nature of the course they taught.