Cojocariu Venera-Mihaela

• Philosophy, professor, PhD in education sciences
• Professor at "Vasile Alecsandri" University of Bacau

Following the COVID-19 pandemic, Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) have been increasingly confronted with significant challenges at the international, national, and regional levels, such as the difficulty of switching back from online to face-to-face education, the major trend towards digitalisation and its integration into the academic educatio...

Inclusive education is a key aspect of quality assurance in higher education, closely linked to equity and diversity issues. The attitudes of higher education teachers play a crucial role at the decision-making and policy levels, as well as in their practical teaching approaches. This study aims to explore teachers’ attitudes towards inclusive educ...

Our study is rooted in a theoretical analysis of the concepts of personal self-efficacy and career choice, which are deeply interconnected. In response to the question, “What is the relationship between self-efficacy and career decision-making?” we have synthesised various insights from the literature with potential applications in career counselli...

This study explores the psychological impact of AI technology on students' recognition of educational benefits from AI integration, mediated by variation of the psychological influence of AI technology, benefits of rapid feedback provided by AI in the learning process, and perception of AI involvement in career and education. Conducted across six R...

The university and the labour market can no longer be considered as separate entities because they are deeply interconnected, and their relationship is characterised by mutual influence. In order to ensure this relationship is functional and beneficial for all parties involved, it is highly important not only to listen to employers’ voice (which is...

The factors influencing university dropout are varied, complex, and not easily identifiable. The aim of this study is to assess students’ perceptions of these dropout factors. A total of 36 students from “Vasile Alecsandri” University of Bacău participated in the research, which included a focus group to identify the main factors contributing to dr...

The present study relies on the assumption that in today’s knowledge society and the use of online knowledge, learning, and communication mechanisms, pre-university and university teachers, students of all ages, those preparing for teaching careers or other careers, parents, managers, and administrators have become increasingly interested in acquir...

Virtual environments allow teachers to approach the teaching process inclusively and creatively, to facilitate the effective transfer of learning and to support student learning with new technologies regardless of various barriers. The hereby study evaluates the students’ views concerning the virtual delivery of courses during their learning proces...

The concept of social inclusion is about accepting diversity and acknowledging the need to find solutions and mechanisms to meet the specific particularities of all types of people. The issue of social inclusion was particularly relevant in the past century context and it has maintained its topicality in the social-economic and political context of...

The role of kindergarten is to efficiently prepare preschoolers for their encounter with the real world. This includes developing their skills, competencies, problem-solving abilities, as well as acquiring knowledge about themselves and their surroundings. STEM education can be a reliable ally in this process. The STEM perspective integrates four a...

Preschool is a defining stage in children’s development, serving as the initial level of formal education for children between the ages of 3 and 6. The primary goal of preschool education is to foster the child’s overall growth, addressing cognitive, emotional, social, and physical development through a mix of educational and recreational activitie...

Inclusive education is one of the components of today’s education defined by its inter- and trans-disciplinary features. Observing the implicit demand to train teachers for inclusive education in Romania, this study aims to raise awareness of this need and verify its intensity in teachers. The general hypothesisof the observational study states tha...

The main scope of the paper is identifying some categories of challenges in career decision process for teenagers from disadvantaged areas. The study purposes are as follows: 1. identifying the decisive factors influencing the career decision and their power in students’ choices; 2. establishing the information resources considered by the students...

The proposed study is based on a double causality, such as: the need to improve the counselling tools for high school students for the appropriate choice of a career development path; the existence of the category of disadvantaged students from an economic perspective, whose difficulties in choosing a training path for their career have been augmen...

This chapter aims to explore academic integrity and how we can relate to it in the technology-driven education era. To this end, we aim to systematize some of the current challenges of academic integrity from the perspective of the digital age; to list the most common forms of academic dishonesty; to highlight a series of specific and general measu...

Our study aims to identify students’ attitudes towards the use of mobile technologies (MT) during learning activities in higher education. Data were collected using the Mobile Technologies Questionnaire/MTQ, a ten-item brief questionnaire that was designed to determine attitudes towards the use of mobile technologies in the learning process among u...

The volume generously provided by Cambridge Scholars Publishing in 2020 and edited by Christine E. Poteau entitled Pedagogical Approaches to Intercultural Competence Development is organized into seven chapters. Beyond the generic theme of interest under which they come together (Pedagogical Approaches to Intercultural Competence Development) and w...

The educational area is a social sector where the COVID-19 pandemic impact involves making many exponential changes. In many countries, the transition from face-to-face education to on-line education implies a revolution in the hierarchy of job domains/jobs offer. Young people’s career plans may be different under the impact of internal and externa...

Access to education, equal opportunities in education represent attractive needs which unfortunately can encounter many obstacles in real life (economic, social, cultural), causing disadvantaged students to have limited access to secondary education and increasingly restricted access to university studies. Moreover, given the context of the current...

Our paper presents the results of a questionnaire-based inquiry aimed to investigate the level of intercultural sensitivity concerning respondents’ workplace background, namely urban versus rural. The main purpose of our research is to highlight possible differences in intercultural sensitivity levels at teachers working in urban and rural schools,...

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication reflects only the views of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

Personal development is NOT one of the main purposes for which students choose to attend the courses of an academic program. However, this process is achieved in the period of university studies and the complete preparation of graduates, from a European perspective, includes both professional and transversal competences. Their cumulative training i...

There is ample specialized literature on CV related issues (content, structure, format, steps in elaboration, modalities of correct elaboration, frequent types of errors). However, there are fewer studies regarding some specific ways of connecting the CV related issues with the new information and communication technologies and with their use in th...

The theoretical/practical interest in identifying significant ways to perform formative evaluation in education is highly topical. Researchers/practitioners are constantly looking for new ways to achieve it, while also identifying and/or structuring appropriate tools. The present study proposes a quantitative-qualitative analysis of a set of pedago...

The study aims to illustrate the way in which the pedagogical essay can be used as part of a summative assessment test in higher education at master level. A quantitative-qualitative analysis was applied to 35 essays. The essay semi-structured elements were: teacher's arguments to use student-centred strategies, opportunities and threats of this ap...

The pedagogical diary may show a versatile utility in the initial teacher training process. Our study aims to highlight the results obtained by capitalizing the pedagogical diary during a semesters activity, the discipline of History of Pedagogy, academic year 2016-2017. The sample consisted of 70 1st-year students from the Pedagogy of Primary and...

The axiological dimension of the teacher’s professional profile in pre-university education has not been investigated in relation to its formative impact. The problem: the knowledge of the set of values on which this class of teachers build their activity. The aim: to develop an axiological model of the universe of values in which the Romanian pre-...

The values in which teachers believe express the philosophy of education to which they adhere. Our study is based on two related dimensions: the study of the specialised literature and the conclusions of some studies that we have conducted in the last 5 years regarding the values in which the teachers at different stages of the Romanian education s...

In a contemporary society characterized by the erosion of fundamental values, the over sizing of individualism and economic-financial values, there is required a serious investigation on some of the most important value foundations of (Western) culture that have lost their power, influence and effectiveness. Our analysis focuses on some of these: r...

This book gathers and presents some of the best practices that have emerged during the two year period of the DiDeSu Erasmus project (2015-2017) and reflects the hard work that was carried out by all partners, towards the realization of its objectives. It includes case studies, good practices and methodological guidelines that derived from the impl...

(Foreword) This is an exciting time for computer science (informatics), computer scientists, and computer science students. In just over a half century, the field has risen from infancy to assume a significant role in almost all disciplines, not only science and engineering but also social sciences, medicine, and law. It is the engine of growth in...

The Lake Bacau I, located in Bacau City, Romania was built in 1966 with a double purpose: as reservoir belonging to the energy system of the Bistrita River and to provide the water needed for the industrial units located in the area. Also, for more than 40 years, the lake was used by the same plants to discharge the wastewater, more or less treated...

The contemporary trend of the globalization does not cancel the cultural differences among the various human entities: states, nations, individuals. It currently constitutes the economic, financial, political frame, able to facilitate interactions and connections. Under these circumstances intercultural education represents a opportunity. Our study...

The identification and analysis of the values on which teachers found their teaching process is an aspect of utmost relevance in a society like the Romanian one, affected by a global, system, as well as moral crisis. It is essential to know: Do teachers still believe in values? If yes, what values do they treasure? What is the hierarchy of the valu...

This study aims at comparing the value systems of the two generations of professors, from 2 Romanian universities, in order to identify the shared nucleus of values guiding their present activity. These would be incorporated into the initial and continuous teacher training curriculum. The qualitative research involved the application of an open-end...

In the current context of career services' development in Romania, the need to counsel students is real and rising. The specific objective of our study aims at identifying the relation between the need for counselling, active involvement in the career counselling process and the profile of the faculty attended by the students. The tool used in our...

Today, raising and educating children is becoming increasingly difficult, not just from a material point of view. In this context, it is vital that the axiological universe of primary-school teachers is able to contribute significantly to building the moral benchmarks of the young pupils. The study aims to identify the set of values that define the...

The issue of identifying the values which define the axiological universe of preschool teachers is even more stringent in the context of the global society's moral crisis. The study aims to identify the set of values that define the professional profile of a preschool teacher. The main method we have used was the questionnaire-based inquiry. We inv...

The study aims at achieving a radiography of the set of values that students regard as essential for their future activity. The results of the study have materialized into two sets of values which are defining for the students who are training for a future preschool and primary teaching career, as well as the identification of the values' dynamics...

In the last 10 years, career-counselling services for students have experienced a real growth in the Romanian universities. Generated by the real needs of the clients, these services were not certified, from the beginning, in their own system of tested and validated good practices. Our study relies on a model of counselling designed and implemented...

Nowadays there is an increasing need for teachers to help learners engage with learning and keep them motivated, as well as a need to familiarize teachers – adults who have not been familiar with computers and hence regard their use in education with a greater or smaller degree of anxiety – with the use of the new technologies in education. We beli...

The issue of identifying and hierarchizing the categories of factors which determine the degree of the family's involvement in the education of students is extremely topical. All the more so as we are referring to primary school students, challenged by their first authentic school experience at an early age. The aim of our study is to draw the radi...

There is an increasing trend towards internationalization of the Romanian universities, as an expression of the possibilities arisen by globalization. In this context and within the framework of a project developed together with Università della Svizzera italiana from Lugano, " Vasile Alecsandri " University of Bacău aims to improve its study progr...

The study aims at highlighting the way in which the theories of critical thinking from the last 25 years may be exploited in the school practice from primary education. By exploiting the didactic experience and practice from the psycho-pedagogic experiment conducted, we shall illustrate a way of formative intervention in the direction of building c...

The study aims at fathoming some aspects of didactic communication and their effects upon building communication skills at first graders. By their graduation from the first cycle, students should be able to use these skills in different learning situations and interpersonal relationships. The research approached this issue from a less applied persp...

The purpose of this analysis is to identify, based on current literature analysis, the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats specific to e-learning educational services. The objectives are: 1. identifying, structuring and prioritizing in a " mirror " system the strenghts and weaknesses, respectively the opportunities and threats; 2. comp...

By applying a questionnaire-based inquiry we have investigated a group of 40 subjects, students in the 1 st year at Pedagogy of Primary and Preschool Education, Faculty of Sciences, " Vasile Alecsandri " University of Bacău. The values that students believe in have not constituted, so far, the object of a direct research in Romanian higher educatio...

Design and implementation of a new package of interactive didactic strategies for teaching, learning and assessment for the subjects in "Technology" curriculum area, is in progress, in order to improve the quality of pre and university education in Romania. In this context, lessons from the specified curricular area, are designed in a new format an...

Petre Ţuţea remains the brilliant sage model in oral formulation. After a life of extremes, “his memorable words” may be regarded as axiological anchors, worthy of generating serious reflections and a return to Romanian specific values. Our study aims at a problematizing reading and text analysis from the perspective of the need to identify and at...

Expedited requests and controversial contemporary time flow toward academics. Caught between higher education and specific quantitative and qualitative margins, ever rising research, economic and quality standards, professors are often forced to rebate axiological reflection which should guide all the work. The study, in its preliminary stage, atte...

The study aims at identifying the young university professors' values, which support the relationships with students. The method, the questionnaire-based inquiry, was applied to 56 subjects (less than 15 years experience in education) from " Vasile Alecsandri " University of Bacău and " Petrol şi Gaze " University of Ploieşti, Romania. The study he...

The importance and significance of the career plan is no longer a novelty for the activity of counsellors and career centres. Nevertheless, we are still looking for new concrete and efficient ways of performing such activities with the students. Our intention is that of designing and organizing such activities that may be integrated into a course t...

The aim of the study is to present the authors' proposals with a personal view to procedures for obtaining the degree of excellence in the Romanian educational system. The main methods applied are the study of the literature correlated with a comparative analysis of the documents on Romanian educational policy concerning the issue. Based on these,...

Nowadays we see that the value of a university professor is given mainly by the amount of money that he is able to bring to the institution's budget and by the financial value of the projects he initiates and coordinates (Vlăsceanu, 2006). In this context, the quality of teaching carried out daily with the students and the human intrinsic value of...

In post-1990 Romania the scientific problem of professional counseling has been gradually rediscovered. After the establishment of departments playing a part in professional counseling and orientation in Romanian academic education each separate structure tried to configure itself and to act in a customized manner. The aim of our study is to highli...

The university is a field of professional and human training and development for all those involved in the process, and its quality is closely correlated with the new learning technologies. Initially regarded only as mere auxiliaries of the didactic process, as levers for streamlining the instructive-educational process from all perspectives, they...

Although specific studies devoted to emotional intelligence are increasingly numerous and documented, the Romanian school seems to keep moving forward ignoring the pupils’ emotional needs. Aspects such as self-confidence, emotional self-control, empathy, motivation and socialization rarely constitute the object of the teachers’ systematic, long-ter...

Meditating upon the relation between what there is and what there should be in a human perspective, remaking the climb of existence towards being as it is on an educational tract in the context of the contemporary society, I have identified a series of aspects which have to be re-thought. Considering that the axiological foundation of the society a...