Radio România Internațional

Tag: Babes-Bolyai University

  • Teenagers and School

    Teenagers and School

    Schools are no longer seen as just places
    where students go to learn facts. The focus has started to turn to schools’
    capacity to stimulate certain skills and abilities in students. Even the school’s
    role in developing emotional intelligence has been tackled in recent years.
    Emotional intelligence is manifested in connection with certain non-cognitive
    abilities, which are worth having a place of their own in the school curricula.
    This is the conclusion of a survey conducted by the Babes-Bolyai University in
    Cluj-Napoca, western Romania, jointly with ROI Association and the Institute of
    Education Sciences, with UNICEF sponsorship.

    Here is Eduard Petrescu, member of the UNICEF office in Romania with more
    on these non-cognitive abilities.


    In
    short, these are abilities that cannot be quantified by means of any standard
    IQ or knowledge tests. Relevant for the education system are those concerning a
    personal dimension. I am referring to the way in which, as a person, you manage
    to get a certain type of insight, the way in which you can control or improve
    certain types of behaviour, find motivation or use creativity. There is also a
    social and community dimension: those abilities related to the capacity to
    establish relationships or the sense of belonging to a group. There are also
    civic abilities, those that allow you to join projects and the decision-making
    process.


    Given their individual and social dimension,
    non-cognitive abilities are essential for the harmonious development of a
    person and therefore they must be encouraged, especially in adolescence, when
    personalities and characters are formed. For this reason, the survey on these
    abilities covered teenagers, as the ROI Association Representative Simona
    David-CrisbasaN told us.


    During adolescence, physical and mental abilities are developing just
    like in adults, whereas the emotional side lags a bit behind. And that’s why
    teenagers tend to make all sorts of risky decisions in this period. These
    social-emotional abilities have several dimensions: some of them are about
    personal development, discipline, perseverance, self-confidence, initiative.
    Others are about communicating with the others, establishing relations, about
    resilience, stress resistance, about how they understand and express emotions.
    There is also the civic-engagement component, more specifically the involvement
    in various community projects and the sense of belonging to a community.


    Experts have pointed out that, in
    Romania, non-cognitive abilities are being developed only through
    extra-curricular activities or activities held in schools as part of a week-long
    programme entitled A Different Kind of School. In fact teenagers are more
    comfortable when involved in volunteer programs than when carrying out the
    standard school curricula activities. Researchers say this could be explained
    by the fact that the Romanian educational system still focuses exclusively on
    passing knowledge from teachers to pupils. How could teachers in schools
    stimulate non-cognitive abilities and how could these, in their turn, help
    pupils improve their school performance?

    Simona David-Crisbăşan attempts an
    answer:


    It would be better if schools laid emphasis on these abilities, too, and not
    only on the cognitive ones and on school performance, as it happens nowadays in
    the educational system. Little importance is attached to communication,
    personal relations and motivation, although paradoxically, everybody notices
    that adolescents are not highly motivated or genuinely interested in school.
    This could be explained by the fact that they do not feel like they are really
    involved, and it is very important for adolescents to feel involved and to take
    part in the educational process. In primary school, special emphasis is laid on
    relationships and the way pupils relate to each other, as there is only one
    teacher who takes care of the children for four years. More recently, school
    curricula have been changed and started to take into account personal
    development, too, but only to a certain extent. In higher secondary education,
    as of the fifth grade, children feel they are somehow left aside. There is not
    enough time for them to get involved in the process and that’s why they start
    losing interest and motivation.


    Non-cognitive abilities are important not
    only to enhance pupils’ motivation to study but also to help them develop in
    the future, and schools should also contribute to the pupils’ personal
    development, says the UNICEF representative,Eduard Petrescu:


    The classic education system, which is still used in Romania, was designed
    to serve the purposes specific to a certain period of time. But such a system
    should also take into consideration the fact that society has been developing
    at a faster pace, both with regard to information, communication, establishing
    relations, as well as all the other aspects that have an impact on the labour
    market. Actually, the main aim of the
    youngsters’ school training should be to improve their capacity to get
    integrated into social and professional life. We should see how we can help
    young people better adapt to and face current challenges, by stimulating their
    non-cognitive abilities.


    First of all, teachers themselves should
    be trained and learn how to stimulate their students’ abilities and skills.
    Then, school curricula should be redefined to include this component, too. As
    the new curriculum for secondary schools is now under debate, experts say
    non-cognitive abilities can be developed mostly by using certain teaching
    methods and by encouraging teamwork.



  • Romanians’ Psychological Profile in Post-Communism

    Romanians’ Psychological Profile in Post-Communism

    In 2005, the American magazine ‘Science’ published a comparative survey, covering 49 cultures around the globe, on the differences between how peoples perceive themselves and the way they really are. The Romanians were not included in this research and that motivated the scientists with the Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy Department of the Babes-Bolyai University in western Romania to conduct their own research. Therefore they conducted a comprehensive 10-year long study, using the same methodology as the American researchers.



    The outcome has been a set of comprehensive domestic studies and dedicated tests, contouring a generic profile of the Romanians, meant to also either confirm or contradict two older similar studies by Romanian pioneers in psychology: ‘From The Psychology of the Romanian People’, written by Dumitru Draghicescu and published in 1907 and Constantin Radulescu-Motru’s book ‘The Psychology of the Romanian People’ published in 1937. Many of the conclusions drawn by scientists in the past have been largely confirmed by the present survey, many of them getting improved and developed. Interesting and surprising are the differences between the so-called surface profile of the Romanians and their basic profile. The first has more to do with their present-day behaviour and mindset, while the second one focuses on potential traits, which could manifest themselves in certain circumstances. Here is professor Daniel David with the Babes-Bolyai University in Cluj Napoca, western Romania.



    “Concerning the basic profile, which deals with the potential we have in terms of cognitive intelligence, creativity, learning style, emotional intelligence, we’ve learnt that Romanians aren’t different from other peoples in modern Europe. But if we look at the surface-profile, our actual way of being — we see that we don’t quite make the most out of our potential. For instance, if we compare various educational tests we see that our results aren’t that good. We have also noticed that we don’t fare very well in what concerns innovation, although the creativity potential is on par with that of the Americans or the British. So, there is a huge difference between what we could do and what we have actually done.”



    The lack of trust, one of the Romanians’ specific traits, has also highlighted the fundamental differences between them and other peoples. Here is Daniel David again.



    “A major issue we still have to work on is the lack of trust in people. Unfortunately, Romanians score high at this. We’ve been dealing with this issue in another research, which is to be completed shortly, in which we’ve compared 53 world cultures. What we’ve noticed was that an American or a Brit is more willing to accept a foreigner in their personal environments; they tend to give foreigners the benefit of the doubt more easily. As compared to them, when Romanians meet foreigners, they tend to place them into a social context. That foreigner must win their trust, before they are given access to a Romanian’s private space.”



    In fact, family is fundamental for Romanians; that is why they aren’t very concerned with notions like ‘common good’ looking rather family-centered and selfish. This type of individualism, says professor Daniel David, is different from the individualism that has shaped the western world.



    “Individualism is in fact a concept referring to the fact that individuals come together on a voluntary basis, creating generous and strong communities. Individualism is not necessarily selfishness. It is the basic concept of the peoples in the EU, with the exception of Portugal, Greece, Bulgaria and Romania. But when we speak about Romanians and use this concept it may become a little bit confusing. Our individualism, as Radulescu-Motru noticed, is autarchic and selfish and that doesn’t help us associate or build mutual trust. For this reason we cannot create strong communities. Our gregariousness stems from collectivism, but this collectivism is not big enough to also include neighbours or colleagues. It is all about family, which means one can only trust family members, and if friends want to become part of this circle, they must pass a test of confidence. We’ve made out of family some sort of a safety net, which offers us protection.”



    But given this psychological profile, how does hospitality fit in, as ‘hospitality’ is one of the traditional stereotypes that Romanians use to define themselves?Daniel David has an answer.



    “The concept of hospitality is a bit more complicated here. Again, we must see the difference between what we think we are and what we actually are. Like other peoples, Romanians have their own self-admiring stereotypes, meaning that they perceive themselves as being warm and competent. But, I repeat, all peoples share these stereotypes. We consider ourselves as being more friendly than trustworthy. So we are assessing this concept of trust not only objectively, but also subjectively, and the same goes for competence. Competence has two components, discipline and effectiveness. We believe about ourselves to be effective, but less disciplined, which is a matter of objective evaluation.”



    In order to assess the Romanians’ professional competence we first must have a look into the relation they have with their jobs, which also emphasizes the difference between their surface and basic profiles.



    “Work is seen by Romanians as some sort of vehicle for social emancipation. If your job allows you to make enough money so as to climb up the social ladder, it’s OK. In this case Romanians can become very committed, hard-working individuals. On the other hand, a low income, which cannot improve your social status, is being perceived as a setback and oftentimes you can hear phrases like ‘I work for the money I get, no more’. Particularly employers in Romania, where people aren’t well paid, are currently facing this phenomenon. However, once they have left Romania for better-paid jobs abroad the same demotivated employee suddenly turns into an example of hard-working, committed individual.”



    In other words, the basic profile of a certain people, with all its hidden potential, cannot surface unless the social institutions are providing the right conditions.