The Diploma Supplement and the professional competences as

Transkrypt

Marzena Sobczak*
Elblag University of Humanities and Economy, Nursing Department
Halina Nowakowska**
Medical University of Gdańsk, Nursing Department
The Diploma Supplement and the
professional competences as viewed
by a medical universities’ students
Abstract
For over ten years, the direction of the modernization of higher education in Europe has
been charted by the “Bologna Process”. The main purpose of the study was to learn the
opinions of the students from the Health Studies Department of the Gdańsk Medical University concerning the Diploma Supplement. Auditorium survey research was chosen
to reach intended goals. The collected research data was analyzed by statistics software
package SPSS 20. Statistically significant differences within all the tests carried out were
those, which p<0.05.
The total number of respondents is 658. The acquired data indicates that representatives
of practical profile studies express positive opinions concerning the Diploma Supplement
statistically significantly more often, as well as the bachelor students. Full-time studies
representatives express that the Diploma Supplement is an important document which
specifies professional competence, and they also statistically significantly more often oice
approving opinions.
QQ
Introduction
The process of significant changing in the higher education sector of individual countries was initiated by the Bologna Declaration, signed on June 19,
1999. At that time, 29 ministers of higher education from European countries
*
Correspondence address: Marzena Sobczak, Elblag University of Humanities and Economy, Nursing Department, 82-300 Elbląg, ul. Lotnicza 2, tel. +48 55 239 38 11, e-mail:
[email protected]; ** Halina Nowakowska, Medical University of Gdańsk, Nursing Department, Medical Pedagogy and Teaching Unit, 89-952 Gdańsk, ul. Dębinki 7,
tel. +48 58 349 19 83, e-mail: [email protected].
84
Halina Nowakowska, Marzena Sobczak
declared to join the initiative. This process, often called the “Bologna Process”,
aimed at creating European Higher Education Area by 2010. The principles
of the Declaration “fully take into account the cultural, language and national
educational systems diversity as well as universities’ autonomy” and determine cooperation within higher education policy coordination (The Bologna
Declaration 1999).
The intention of the reform is to meet the expectations of modern societies
– frequently called “knowledge-based societies” – in which the development
of science and access to information are the conditions of individual success
but they also guarantee a state’s competitiveness and the prosperity of its
inhabitants.
The Bologna Process goals considered to be fundamental are: European
cooperation in the scope of assuring education quality in universities, the promotion of the attractiveness of European Higher Education Area outside of
Europe, cooperation of the European Higher Education Area with European
Research Area, developing education ideas during a lifetime.
One of the goals of the Bologna Process is the necessity of creating the
European Higher Education Area. It was presumed to be common for higher
education institutions of European countries and also to enable the exchange
of experiences, wide cooperation and mobility of students and universities’
employees. To implement this idea to the academic practice it was necessary
to harmonize the education systems, which did not mean enforcing common
education system in all countries, but drawing up structures, procedures and
tools that would enable recognizing diplomas and qualifications from various
countries as well as comparing them.
The accomplishment of the Bologna Process ideas bases on six pillars:
1. Taking on an education system based on two/three levels of education;
2. A system of credit points (ECTS – European Credit Transfer System);
3. Taking on a system of clear and comparable degrees through implementing the effects of education and the Diploma Supplement;
4. The promotion of the mobility of students, academic teachers, scientists and administration employees;
5. Promoting European cooperation at increasing the level of higher education quality
6. Promoting constant professional development, integrated syllabuses
and researches (Kraśniewski A. 2006).
Introducing the Supplement to common practice made comparing documents easier and brought a system of “clear” diplomas and academic degrees.
The Diploma Supplement and the professional competences as viewed…
85
The introduction of this Bologna process idea has increased the amount of
information included in a diploma, which is a confirmation of the qualifications acquired during education. It should be acknowledged that currently,
since there’re many universities on the education market that offer education in the same fields of study, there’s a need to stand out and present actual
qualifications obtained during education. Therefore, the Diploma Supplement
becomes a potential advantage in the eyes of the future employer. It is also a
way to motivate universities to constantly increase their quality of education
and widen their educational offers. Such interpretation causes one to rethink
the rank of a university, which would no longer be a year-lasting, often historically conditioned tradition, but rather an interesting and competitive
educational offer (Michalski, 2008).
The Supplement was drawn up by the experts of European Commission,
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)
and Council of Europe and is a part of the graduation diploma. The document
is issued in the language of the country in which the studies take place and
in one or more other languages. It contains the information necessary to determine the level and nature of a university’s graduate’s degree, meaning the
syllabus’s specification, a description of student’s personal achievements (internships, traineeships, rewards, honorable mentions, student organizations
activities). It also contains an overall specification of higher education system
in a specific country (Kraśniewski, 2009).
In Poland, the Supplement is issued free of charge for each graduate since
2005 within the force of the ratification of the Lisbon Recognition Convention.
It is thought that this document helps future employers review the qualification of a specific university’s graduate objectively.
The structure of the Diploma Supplement is regulated by a certain legal
document in each country. An essential task for every country participating in
the Bologna Process on account of assuring the comparability of the diplomas
is defining the structure of academic degrees and professional titles. The comparability of the diplomas is crucial for the acknowledgement of education.
The Diploma Supplement is a tool supporting the idea of education based
on the effects of education. It’s a document containing information necessary
to specify the range of the education, meaning qualifications and competences
gained by the graduate in their university. It allows the employer to confront
the information included in the CV with the candidate’s real accomplishments, which are described in an objective and factual way by the university.
One issue remains: the automatic recognition of diplomas, which is currently
86
regulated by international agreements, though there’s few of them while the
issue mentioned requires numerous actions, also legislative ones (Drumlak,
2009, Suplement do dyplomu 2011).
Currently, studying is an investment in the professional career and the
market value of the diploma plays an undeniable part in applying for a job. It
is then profitable to choose a university wisely since it is a deposit for time,
imagination, energy and financial resources.
The necessity to reform academic education substantially is also triggered
by the need for quality changes in education. There’s been a transformation
in the image of a XXI century student, which changed from a person passively receiving knowledge to a person actively searching for it, a person that’s
curious and tolerant and set to independently discover the world. Therefore,
new tasks for students were defined, ones that allow independent searching,
exploration, questioning (Śmierciak, 2004).
According to the reformation of the higher education’s goals currently
held, the student is obliged to acquire the education effects, defined in the
stimuli, during their education. These effects were divided into three categories: knowledge, skills and social competences. Thus, the student receives
specific information about the range of the theoretical knowledge they should
obtain, as well as skills they’ll need after graduation and they also get clues
about what’s socially expected of them, of their value system and beliefs, all of
which they should represent after graduation (Martowska, 2010).
It’s safe to assume that such education process, which – in a way – is an
interaction between the teachers and the students who know what’s expected of them, takes part in shaping responsible and aware of their professional
competences graduates.
The start of the nursing stimulus modernization is dated back to 19941995. The basis and the goal of the reformation was the necessity of adjusting
educating nurses in Poland to the European Union standards as well as Bologna Process. Currently, the overall shape of this process is complete and
educating nurses and midwives is held in a three-level system. The first level
ends with obtaining a professional title of Bachelor of Nursing, the next is the
Master of Nursing and the third – a PhD in a discipline of a certain thesis.
A modern nurse is an autonomous practitioner responsible for the care
they provide. A nurse fulfills professional tasks and activities, which make
up their professional practice, self-reliantly, yet not always independently.
The self-reliance of such practitioner takes the form of individual initiative
concerning what to do, where, how and why, choosing a method to solve a
problem, taking full responsibility for their actions and for the quality of their
87
work. The range of a nurse’s professional tasks is conditioned by their degree
and by how professionally prepared are they, which is what triggers the intense care for the proper teaching of the right professional competences.
Currently, the basic requirements that nursing graduates must meet are
safety and providing the patients with the highest quality health care. Working
in tough environments, insufficient facilitations, lack of technical equipment
and conveniences as well as inadequate personnel number raises the risk of
errors.
Consequently, it seems necessary to provide the nursing students with
the ability to use safe medical procedures and form a mature personality,
which means responsibility and the urge of confirming knowledge according
to the development in science.
The already initiated reformation in the nursing education seems to be
righteous; it’s triggered not only by the economic or political changes, but
most of all by the change in the modern patients’/clients’ expectations. Neglecting patients’ specific needs posts a threat of losing a healthcare unit’s
reputation along with its employees. Currently, patients/clients shape present
service market by voicing their opinions and expectations. Attention should
be set on the following aspects: time devoted to the patient, patience, knowledge of the patient’s case history, respect of dignity and intimacy, attention to
standardization of the medical procedures (Małecka, Marcinkowski, 2007).
The Diploma Supplement is one of the elements promoted by the European Commission and approved by the Europass system’s European Parliament.
Europass is a standardized package of personal documents, including a wide
description of qualifications obtained in various ways and made to be a tool
for European citizens to use while searching for a job or the possibilities of
further education within Europe.
Automatic acknowledgment of one’s education for academic purposes
is guaranteed by international agreements, although their amount is small
– currently, the agreement is signed by 12 countries, 6 of which are English-speaking, and it concerns continuing one’s education in the technical
fields of study.
The Lisbon Recognition Convention does not concern the recognition of
the education from the practicing rights’ point of view. This aspect heavily
depends on the field of study and the profession attached to it. About some
professions, such as a doctor or a nurse, the European Union has drawn up
special directive which was followed by standardization of the educating process throughout Europe (Kraśniewski, 2010).
88
QQ
Methodology of the study and the results obtained.
Auditorium survey research was chosen and an original survey’s questionnaire was created to reach the research’s goals. Thanks to such research
method it was possible to question a relatively large amount of students simultaneously – 658 students filled in the questionnaire while maintaining their
anonymousness. The collected research data was analyzed by statistics software package SPSS 20 and spreadsheet application Microsoft Excel 2010. The
following statistics methods were used: Cronbach’s alpha consistency analysis, analysis of variance (ANOVA), Gabriel’s post hoc analysis, Mann-Whitney
U test. Statistically significant differences within all the tests carried out were
those which p<0.05.
The field stage of the research was held in January and February 2014.
Thanks to the chosen research method it was possible to get student representatives differing in the form of studies (full-time or extramural), the
studies’ rank (bachelor, master), the course (nursery, midwifery, public health,
physiotherapy, dietetics, environmental health). The main goal of the research
is to learn the students’ opinions about fulfilling one of the Bologna Declaration rulings, i.e. the Diploma Supplement. It seems interesting to attempt
to learn the academic youth’s opinions concerning the document offered by
their university, which may lead to a deeper thought about the real usefulness
of the document. Thus, the collected research data is a valuable source of information on the appraisal of the Supplement’s usefulness in the professional
recruitment process and the intensity of employers’ interest in the document
issued by the university.
Considering the following study’s needs, the following research hypotheses were taken into account:
1. The juniors, along with the master’s students, voice different opinions
on the Diploma Supplement compared to the freshmen and sophomores.
2. The general academic students have different views than the practical
courses students.
3. Full-time students voice different opinions than extramural students.
658 students from the Department of Health Studies, Gdansk Medical
University, took place in the research. The detail specification of the opinions
is presented in Table 1.
The respondents’ answers to the questions from the survey’s questionnaire concerning opinions on the Diploma Supplement were based on a
5-mark scale. The positive opinions were: definitely positive, rather positive;
89
the negative opinions were the opposite: definitely and rather negative and no
opinion (Table 2, Figure 1).
Table 1. The number of GUMed representatives, divided into courses, ranks, form, year
of studies and gender
Data
Frequency
Percentage
Gender: female
male
594
65
90,3
9,7
Gdańsk Medical University
658
100,0
Course: Dietetics
Physiotherapy
Nursery
Midwifery
Public Health
Environmental Health
Summary:
139
101
257
65
77
19
658
21,1
15,3
39,1
9,9
11,7
2,9
100,0
Education profile: general academic
practical
Summary:
97
561
658
14,7
85,3
100,0
Education rank: bachelor
master
Summary:
425
233
658
64,4
35,6
100,0
Form of studies: full-time
extramural
Summary:
576
82
658
87,5
12,5
100,0
The year of studying: 1
2
3
1/II°
2/II°
Summary:
179
79
167
119
114
658
27,2
12,0
25,4
18,1
17,3
100,0
Source: own research.
The analysis of the students’ opinions on the Diploma Supplement, which
was held while taking into account factors such as: education profile (practical, general academic), the year and rank of studies and their form (full-time,
extramural), presented differences on a statistical significant level. The freshmen statistically significantly more often form positive opinions about the
discussed issue, the data presented in the Tables 3, 4, 5, 6.
The data presented above shows that the students of practical studies
(courses: nursery, midwifery, dietetics, physiotherapy) statistically significantly more often voice positive opinions about the Diploma Supplement.
90
This document, in the views of the above students, describes their competences, which is important for the employer.
Table 2. The percentage distribution of the answers concerning the Diploma Supplement
Studies course/form (FT
– full-time, EX – extramural)
Education profile
The general academic
Public Health
profile
Environmental Health
The practical profile
Dietetics
Positively
Negatively
FT
37,92%
62,08%
FT
34,74%
65,26%
FT
28,25%
71,75%
EX
32,86%
67,15%
Physiotherapy
FT
33,46%
66,54%
Nursery
FT
35,32%
64,68%
EX
50,26%
49,74%
FT
32,30%
67,70%
Midwifery
Source: own research
Table 3. Students’ opinions about the Diploma Supplement referred to the education profile
(Ga – general academic, Pr – Practical).
Statement
Mann-Whitney
Average
U test
between profiles
The Diploma Supplement (which contains
Ga=2,30
the list of subjects, the number of hours and Z=1,92; p<0,05
Pr=2,47
ECTS points)
Result
Significant
Table 4. Students’ opinions about the Diploma Supplement referred to the year of studies.
ANOVA results
Average
among years
Results
F(4,653)=18,61;p<0,05
1=2,75
2=2,48
3=2,63
4=2,12
5=2,00
Significant
(1vs4,2vs4,3vs4
1vs5,2vs5,3vs5)
The Diploma Supplement has no
influence on the employment,
F(4,653)=10,48;p<0,05
the employers show no interest
in analyzing this document
1=2,84
2=2,91
3=3,11
4=3,39
5=3,46
Significant
(1vs4,1vs5,2vs4,
2vs5,3vs5)
Statement
The Diploma Supplement
(which contains the list of subjects, the number of hours and
ECTS points)
91
Figure 1. The percentage distribution of the answers concerning
the Diploma Supplement
80
70
60
50
40
71,75
65,26
67,15
66,54
62,08
37,92
34,74
30
67,7
64,68
49,74
50,26
28,25
32,86
33,46
35,32
32,3
20
Yes
10
No
0
Table 5. Students’ opinions about the Diploma Supplement referred to the studies rank.
Statement
Mann-Whitney U test
Average between
ranks
ECTS points)
Z=8,51;p<0,05
I°=2,65
II°=2,06
Significant
The Diploma Supplement paradoxically, due to its detail, may
limit the graduate’s possibilities on the employment market
Z=4,71;p<0,05
I°=3,02
II°=2,69
Significant
The Diploma Supplement has
no influence on the employment, the employers show
no interest in analyzing this
document
Z=5,71;p<0,05
I°=2,96
II°=3,43
Results
Significant
The analysis of the data shows that the students of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd
year of studies form positive opinions about the Supplement usefulness, while
those of the 4th and 5th year (master studies) statistically significantly more
often express that the Diploma Supplement has no influence on the employment, that the employers show no interest in analyzing the document.
92
Table 6. Students’ opinions about the Diploma Supplement referred
to the form of studies (FT – full-time, E – extramural).
Statement
Mann-Whitney U test
Average between
forms
Result
ECTS points)
Z=4,66;p<0,05
FT=2,51
E=2,00
Significant
The Diploma Supplement paradoxically, due to its detail, may
limit the graduate’s possibilities
on the employment market
Z=3,62;p<0,05
FT=2,95
E=2,52
Significant
Considering the fact that many of the respondents that had graduated from
the bachelor studies have started professional work, it’s safe to assume that
such opinions were based on the experiences with the employers. The analysis of the students’ answers differed by the studies rank (Table 5) may also be
a confirmation to this suggestion.
The analysis which takes the form of studies into account (full-time, extramural) shows bigger enthusiasm of the respondents from full-time studies,
regarding the discussed issue. The extramural students do not see such a great
meaning to the Diploma Supplement, which suggests that these are people
with a guaranteed employment and work-searching experience.
QQ
Conclusions
1. Students of the practical profile studies statistically significantly more
often voice positive opinions regarding the Diploma Supplement.
2. Full-time students view the Diploma Supplement higher compared to
the extramural students.
3. Freshmen, sophomores and juniors voice positive opinions about the
Diploma Supplement, whereas the students of 4th and 5th year (master’s
students) statistically significantly more often share views that the Diploma Supplement has no influence on the employment and that the employers
show no interest in analyzing this document.
QQ
93
References
Drumlak U. (2009). Europejski obszar szkolnictwa wyższego – realizacja postulatów
procesu bolońskiego. Folia Pomerane Universitatis Technologiae Stetin. Oeconomica 273 (56),35–52.
Kraśniewski A.(2006). Proces Boloński: dokąd zmierza europejskie szkolnictwo wyższe? Wydawnictwo Ministerstwa Nauki i Szkolnictwa Wyższego, Warszawa, 3.
Kraśniewski A.(2009). Proces Boloński to już 10 lat. Wydawnictwo Fundacji Rozwoju
Systemu Edukacji, Warszawa, 26, 48-54, 43.
Małecka B., Marcinkowski J.T. (2007). Satysfakcja pacjenta, czynnikiem kształtującym
współczesny rynek usług medycznych. Problemy Higieny i Epidemiologii, Wydawnictwo Polskiego Towarzystwa Higienicznego,88 (1), 17-19.
Martowska K. (2010). Kształtowanie postaw na studiach III stopnia – stan faktyczny i
możliwości, http://ekspercibolonscy.org.pl/sites/ekspercibolonscy.org.pl/files/
KM_postawy_na_III_stopniu_250610.pdf, dostęp z dnia 22.04.2014r
Michalski B. (2008). Konsekwencje procesu bolońskiego dla rozwoju gospodarczego i międzynarodowej konkurencyjności gospodarki. W: M.G. Woźniak (red.).
Nierówności społeczne a wzrost gospodarczy w kontekście spójności społeczno-ekonomicznej. Zeszyt nr 13, Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Rzeszowskiego, 85-96.
Suplement do Dyplomu. (2011). Wydawnictwo Fundacji Rozwoju Systemu Edukacji,
Krajowe Centrum Europass, Warszawa, 18.
Śmierciak M. (2004). Sylwetka aksjologiczna studenta W: K. Kloc, Chmielecka E.(red.).
Dobre obyczaje w kształceniu akademickim. Materiały z ogólnopolskiej konferencji naukowej, zorganizowanej w dniach 20-21 maja 2004 roku w Akademii
Ekonomicznej w Krakowie, Wydawnictwo Fundacji Promocji i Akredytacji Kierunków Ekonomicznych.
The European Higher Education Area (2001) Joint declaration of the European Ministers of Education convened in Bologna on the 19th of June 1999: [The Bologna
Declaration].
http://www.unige.ch/eua/. Tłumaczenie na język polski – Biuletyn: Ośrodek
Informacji Rady Europy, 2001 nr 2-3, 135-136.

The Diploma Supplement and the professional competences as

Transkrypt

Podobne dokumenty

the academy of hotel management and catering industry in poznań