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Článek prezentuje výsledky kvalitativního výzkumu realizovaného mezi českými organizacemi nabízejícími programy environmentální výchovy a orgány veřejné správy, které tyto programy finančně podporují. V rámci výzkumu byly řešeny tři základní výzkumné otázky: jaké evaluační strategie organizace používají? Jak tyto strategie souvisí s metodikou realizovaných programů, resp. do jaké míry odpovídají programy hodnocených organizací požadavkům na efektivní environmentální výchovu? Do jaké míry vycházejí orgány veřejné správy při finanční podpoře těchto programů z jejich skutečné efektivity? Výzkum prokázal poměrně malé zastoupení evaluačních strategií přinášejících relevantní informace o efektivitě programu, metodické nedostatky ve většině hodnocených programů a nedostatečnou schopnost orgánů veřejné správy formulovat a vyhodnocovat požadavky na efektivitu podporovaných programů. ; The article presents the results of qualitative research that has been undertaken among Czech environmental education centres, and regional and municipal government institutions providing financial support in this area. Three research questions were discussed: what evaluation strategies are used by the organisations? How are the strategies connected with the methodology of the programmes, or how do the programmes correspond with the standards for effective environmental education? How important is the real effectiveness of the programmes for a local government's decision regarding their financial support? The research proved that few organisations use evaluation strategies that provide relevant information about programme effectiveness, there are methodological weaknesses in the majority of analysed programmes, and local government institutions do not have and do not demand relevant information about the effectiveness of supported programmes.

The aim of this article is to explain educational reproduction in the Czech Lands between 1906 and 2003 from the perspective of educational mobility. Mobility trends in the intergenerational transmission of educational status identified in an analysis are presented in the context of findings on odds ratios in education and in a historical context. The analysis is based on observations of the intergenerational transmission of educational status, i.e. educational mobility, in two educational transitions between three educational levels (lower secondary, upper secondary, and higher education). Mobility tables and their log-linear analysis are used to help explain what mobility processes shape the educational inequalities that have proved stable over the long term and also odds ratios between the main levels of education. The article helps fill in the gap in knowledge about the long-term development of the educational structure in the historical Czech Lands and Czechoslovakia and provides information about typical mobility trajectories and varying mobility patterns in periods before 1948, between 1948 and 1989, and after 1989. An understanding of these structural contexts helps clarify what occurred in the past and what is occurring now in the area of unequal access to education and to explain one of the main findings from the analysis – that in Czech society the transmission of a family's educational status from one generation to the next continuously follows the same patterns.

The study evaluates the potential impact of alternative models of university entrance exams – a model based on field-specific knowledge and a model relying on general aptitude tests – in the context of the Czech education system since 1998, a system that can be described as highly stratified and suffering from a notable excess of demand for higher education over supply. Using the dataset Sonda Maturant 1998, the authors show that entrance exams based on general aptitude tests may outperform the field-specific knowledge model in terms of providing access to talented students from a lower socioeconomic background. The simulations show that under the general aptitude regime the relative chances of an applicant with a university-educated father are only one-quarter higher than the relative chances of a student with a less educated father, compared to more than a one-third difference in the case of the regime emphasising field-specific knowledge. For mother's education, the respective odds ratios differ by the even larger margin of 28 percentage points.

This article considers the position of sociology in a nonsociological context, that is, the Czech Agricultural U in Prague. The substance of the paper is a consideration of the role of sociology in relation to rural issues, including their practical dimension as relates to rural development. The background of the paper is constituted by both discussions in the Czech lands & abroad, which address the role & position of sociology & its relation to the lay public, & the question of how (& also if) it is possible to cope with the skepticism of lay people (a skepticism that the authors have experienced in the exercise of their professional activities) in relation to the findings & information provided by sociology. The authors suggest that the possibility exists of presenting non-trivial findings & information for lay people. Sociologists have at their disposal many instruments for mapping the actions & ideas of specific people when investigating such issues. If the results of sociological research are embedded within specific practical measures addressing rural issues, then the chance for social acceptance increases & the project is more likely to be sustainable. In such a situation, sociology is both related to concrete practices & circumstances (the doubts of lay persons about its meaninglessness disappear), yet it also retains its academic discourse, as a part of sociology, as a science. As a reflection of the latter, the article demonstrates the interconnections between general sociology & rural sociology, because of the centrality of the countryside & agriculture in contemporary society.

This article focuses on the connection between fi nancial aid systems in higher education and the development of inequalities in access to higher education. Although the student financial aid system is just one of a number of factors that infl uence a person's chances of studying in higher education, its role in a person's decision to pursue higher education may be of fundamental significance for those with lower socio-economic status. Therefore, the authors of this article focus on the effect of the fi nancial conditions of study on the chances that individuals from families with low socio-economic status have obtained higher education. The analysis looks at developments in the Czech Republic and the Netherlands, because Czech and Dutch student financial aid systems have been evolving in very different directions over the last two decades, while their secondary school systems continue to share very similar features. The analysis reveals that student financial aid based primarily on direct financial support (as in the Netherlands) was accompanied by a decline in inequalities in access to education, even though students had to pay tuition, while a system of financial aid primarily involving indirect support (as in the Czech Republic) applied over the same period did not inhibit increasing inequalities, despite the fact that during the period under observation students were not required to pay tuition.

The objective of this article is to contribute to the analysis of the factors that influence the educational aspirations of boys & girls in the Czech Republic & vertical inequality in the Czech education system. Drawing on Mateju & Strakova's monograph Unequal Chances in Education, the authors enhance the discussion with a look at the gender aspect of choices of educational trajectory. The authors review existing theories to present the main arguments from research on educational aspirations by gender. They point out the ambiguity of studies to date on the effect of gender in the education system, as they have often arrived at contradictory findings. The authors look at the theories in which the differences in educational aspirations are related to gender & the theoretical & empirical arguments that reject gender as a category for distinguishing educational aspirations. The authors summarize the research to date on gender segregation in the education system, & then offer their own conclusions, based on a secondary analysis of data from the PISA-L in 2003. Their results reveal, in conformity with the analysis by Mateju & Strakova, that while according to these analyses gender does not have an effect on differences in the educational aspirations of boys & girls, it does have an effect on some aspects of the resulting segregation of the education system & thus on a student's choice of secondary school.

This special issue of FormAkademisk is a product of the lighthouse project Didaktikk for teknologi, design og innovasjon (2016–2020) (Education for technology, design and innovation), which is funded by the Faculty of Technology, Art and Design (TKD) at Oslo Metropolitan University (OsloMet) and lead by Liv Merete Nielsen. The project is a contribution to the realisation of the government's long-term (2019–2028) plan for research and higher education (Kunnskapsdepartementet, 2018). The government's plans include renewing, restructuring and boosting the technology of the business community and improving quality in higher education, and the lighthouse project helps to achieve these goals, because the key to new practice lies in education. ; Dette temanummeret av FormAkademisk er et resultat av fyrtårnsprosjektet Didaktikk for teknologi, design og innovasjon (2016-2020) som er finansiert av Fakultet for Teknologi, kunst og design (TKD) ved OsloMet–storbyuniversitetet og ledet av Liv Merete Nielsen. Prosjektet er et bidrag til realiseringen av regjeringens langtidsplan for forskning og høyere utdanning 2019–2028 (Kunnskapsdepartementet, 2018). Regjeringens opp­trappings­­planer inkluderer et teknologiløft, fornyelse og omstilling av nærings­livet og styrking av kvalitet i høyere utdanning. Fyrtårns­­prosjektet har som mål å bidra til å nå disse målene, fordi nøkkelen til ny praksis ligger i utdanning.

Analyzes the historical variation of secondary school tracking in formerly socialist Czechoslovakia, using multinomial logistic regression & focusing on the effects of family background on the odds of making the transition to vocational, technical, or academic secondary schools. I also test various hypotheses regarding trends in educational reproduction, socioeconomic inequality in access to secondary education, & the impact of political status of parents on access to secondary education. Educational expansion, unlike 'communist affirmative action,' dramatically reduced educational reproduction at the secondary level. Positive & negative discrimination on the basis of parental occupation, however, considerably diminished the advantage of higher status children in the transition to vocational & technical schools in the early 1950s & 1970s, but never affected access to academic secondary schools. The consequences of parental political status for their children's education display remarkable variation, which is unmistakably responsive to historical events. The multinomial transition model also reveals the cross-temporal dynamics of tracking in Czechoslovakia. The postwar expansion of the educational system brought about double benefits. While larger numbers of lower-class, rural, & female students enrolled in secondary schools, their higher enrollments were confined to vocational schools. Though a large number of higher status children were enrolled throughout the 1948-1989 period, their enrollments in vocational schools dropped as they began to fill positions in the growing technical & academic schools.