نشریه نامه آموزش عالی
پیاپی 7 (پاییز 1388)

Taking into account the importance of revision and reform in the structure and content of doctorial programs, this article investigates the experiments of holding doctoral courses in universities in 23 countries, and compares that with ranian higher educationexperiments. This investigation was carried out in three areas: 1. governance, structure and content, 2. supervision, guiding, monitoring and evaluation in doctoral programs, 3. executing shared doctoral courses with a comparative approach. Suggestions for PhDcourses in Iran are: taking a flexible approach based on the nature of the fields, emphasizing international courses, and taking a supportive approach rather than a controlling one in the process of evaluating the courses.

The purpose of this research is reassessing and reconstructing the “Principles of Educational Administration” course, as one of the main courses of post-graduate studies in the major of educational administration. This study aims at finding answers to two essential questions: 1. what is the current status of the curriculum of the “Principles of Educational Administration” course, in universities of Iran and other countries? 2. What should be the main concepts of this course according to the present status and needs of students and managers? For this purpose, the status of two aspects of constructand content of the curriculum in question, were evaluated through searching for answers to 7 questions regarding the construct and 3 regarding the content. First, a series of theoretical researches (document studies and internet searches) was conducted in thesyllabus pertinent to the “Principles of Educational Administration” courses that are currently being taught in the universities of Iran and other countries. Then, the results were used to conduct another series of field researches in a sample of 16 professors and 181 students chosen randomly out of 16 different universities throughout the country. Participants filled two different types of questionnaires. The results showed that the current status of the two aspects of construct and content in the curriculum in question is not sufficient to meet the present needs of the students. Consequently, making some changes in the main concepts of this course is necessary according to the modelsuggested by the outcome of this research.

The purpose of this descriptive-correlational study was to explore trends and predictors of academic achievement among college of agriculture students. In the first part of the study, trends in academic achievement of students in the years 2003-2005 in College ofAgriculture at Razi University (N=159) were investigated. Results revealed an increasing trend in academic achievement for all students. However, there was a significant difference in academic achievement across traditional and non-traditional students except for those registering in 2003. Moreover, there was no significant difference in academic achievement across students of different years. In the second part of the study, predictors of academic achievement across census of traditional and non-traditionalagricultural extension and education students (N=107) were analyzed. Step-wise regression analysis showed that students’ place of sitting in class, economic status of their families, exam stress, being native or non-native, interest and motivation towards college, self-efficacy, students’ family size, interest towards advisor, job prospects, and students’ parents’ educational level accounted for %76 of the variance in academic achievement. If students in college of agriculture are to excel academically, they should be provided with more interactive mode of sitting, more time in student advising, and exposure to more experiential learning strategies in teaching and learning.

Total quality management is a managerial system that is basic for continuous and gradual improvement of an organization; therefore, all of the members of this system try to satisfy whatever their customers want.The fundamental goal of this research is clarifying the readiness of university managers for situational zing total quality management. The vital principles of this research are commitment, customer focus, fact-based decision making, employee involvement, training and continuous improvement. The population of this research is firstlevel, middle-level and top-level managers and the sampling method is stratified random sampling.In order to analyze the data, the SPSS software is used. The data is analyzed in two levels of inferential and descriptive statistics. The results show that the readiness of university managers for situational zing total quality management is not appropriate. Out ofall of the principles, just commitment for situational zing total quality management is at an appropriate level. For the rest of the principles which were not appropriate, the interview was done with managers.

This article focuses on the evaluation and comparison of motivation and educational improvement of BA students admitted through comprehensive plan (Faragir) and general exam in Payam-e Noor University. BA students of Sari Payam-e Noor University form thestatistical population of this research. The instrument used was a standard questionnaire of motivation which had been prepared by Dr. Ramezan Hassanzadeh and was used in different researches. Average scores of BA students was used (1st and 2nd semester of 2006-7) for evaluating educational development. For data analysis, t-test was used. The results indicate that there is no significant relationship between students admitted through comprehensive exam (Faragir) and those admitted through general exam with regard to motivation and educational improvement. But the amount of motivation andeducational improvement in students who were admitted through general exam in the field of basic sciences is more than students who were admitted through comprehensive plan (Faragir). The other finding is that motivation and educational improvement amongfemale were more than males.

This study aims to investigate the relationship between educational fields of study, especially those classified as humanities and social sciences in comparison to other subjects with regard to access to job in Yazd Province, during the Third Development Plan (2000-2004). The statistical population of this study consists of 68096 people out of 100628 that have registered as job seekers in the Department of Labor and Social Affairs in Yazd branch. The final sample is categorized as those with higher education and this includes 10773 people. The result of this study shows that access to job is not affected by the subject of education. On the other word, there is no significant difference between access to job for those with or without humanities and social sciences education. This is not the case for different fields within the humanities and social sciences group.

The purpose of the present study is to investigate the indications of effective teaching from the viewpoints of Islamic Azad University students in Uremia Branch in the academic year 2008-2009. The instrument was a questionnaire and the validity was examined bycollecting the ideas of experts and its reliability was estimated (77%). 403 students were chosen randomly from different fields. The first part of the questionnaire is related to the students’ demographic features and the next is related to teaching elements from theviewpoints of students. The main effective elements of teaching according to the students are professors’ personality and appearance, academic and technical skills and content. From the perspective of professors’ personality and appearance, features of clothing, interest in teaching, respectful behavior towards students are consideredimportant. From the academic skills point of view, being up-to-date; from technical skills point of view, being clear and using understandable expressions along with preparing the class for thinking and discussions and finally, from the content point of view, using understandable resources are the most important features of effective teaching.