Although providing support to underachievers has always been an important domain of activities of school counselors in school, there are almost no studies in our country that focus on the opinion of school counselors on the problem of underachievement. The aim of our research was to get acquainted with the meanings that school counselors ascribe to underachievement. The points of our interest were how school counselors define this phenomenon, how they describe an underachiever and what their experiences in working with these students are. The research sample was convenient and included 34 school counselors from 24 secondary schools in Serbia. We used a semi-structured interview, and qualitative thematic analysis was performed on the collected material. Research findings indicate that the majority of school counselors define underachievement as the lack of ability or readiness of individuals to respond to the demands set by school. When describing an underachiever a number of school counselors speak only about his/her behaviour, while a small number also mention the mechanisms underlying such behaviour. When it comes to their experience in working with underachievers, a considerable number of school counselors pointed to the complexity and delicacy of their own role in the process of selection of adequate support strategies. The obtained findings, among other things, suggest that it is necessary that school counselors re-examine those personal beliefs about underachieve?ment which can be a serious impediment to solving this problem. [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. 47008: Unapredjivanje kvaliteta i dostupnosti obrazovanja u procesima modernizacije Srbije i br. 179034: Od podsticanja inicijative, saradnje i stvaralastva u obrazovanju do novih uloga i identiteta u drustvu]

Институт за педагошка истраживања, Београд, Србија Љубомир Стојановић ОШ "Војвода Степа", Београд, Србија Радмила Симијоновић Друга економска школа, Београд, СрбијаАпстракт. Упркос бројним иницијативама за промовисање предузетништва у Србији и настојању да се млади кроз образовање подстакну на предузетничко размишљање и покретање сопственог посла, у нашој психолошкој и педагошкој литератури готово и да нема радова који се баве овом проблематиком. Полазећи од Ајзенове теорије о предузетничком понашању као планираном и намерном, спровели смо истраживање чији је циљ да утврдимо који фактори одређују намеру младих у Србији да изаберу предузетништво као каријерну могућност. У фокусу нашег истраживања били су следећи фактори: лична иницијатива, предузетничко искуство (блиске особе као предузетнички узори) и предузетничко образовање. Поред тога испитивана је улога пола, школског успеха и образовања родитеља, као и улога опажања друштвено-економског контекста у коме млади живе. Узорак је пригодан и чини га 222 ученика четвртог разреда, из две економске школе и три гимназије у Србији. За мерење личне иницијативе примењена је скала Робичекове (PGISS-II), док су остали инструменти конструисани за потребе истраживања. Од статистичких поступака коришћена је дескриптивна статистика, хи-квадрат, т-тест, Пирсонов коефицијент линеарне корелације, као и стандардна вишеструка регресиона анализа. Резултати показују да су иницијатива за лични развој, предузетничко искуство (посебно родитељи предузетници) и опажање контекста у коме млади живе * Напомена. Чланак представља резултат рада на пројектима Од подстицања иницијативе, сарадње, стваралаштва у образовању до нових улога и идентитета у друштву (бр. 179034) и Унапређивање квалитета и доступности образовања у процесима модернизације Србије (бр. 47008) чију реализацију финансира Министарство просвете и науке Републике Србије

This paper discusses the cognitive possibilities and limitations of case study, as a qualitative research approach, and the fields of its application in studying pedagogical problems. Special attention is paid to different ways of defining and usual criticism pointed at this strategy in methodological literature of recent date: (1) general, theoretical (context independent) knowledge is much more valuable from actual, practical (context dependent) knowledge; (2) one cannot perform generalizations based on an individual case and therefore case study cannot contribute to the development of science; (3) case study is the most useful in generating hypotheses, that is, for the first phase of research process, while other methods are more suitable for testing hypotheses and building a theory; (4) case study tends to be partial towards verification, that is, the tendency of a researcher to confirm his/her previously established concepts; (5) it is often very difficult to present in brief the specific case study, and especially difficult to deduce general suggestions and theories on the basis of a specific case study. The objections, therefore, regard the possibility of theory development, reliability and validity of the approach, or doubt in its scientific status. The author of this paper discusses the justifiability of these objections and points out to different methodological procedures of arranging and analyzing the data collected for studying the case, which contribute to the reliability of this research approach. As a general conclusion, it is stated that the case method contains all the features relevant for studying pedagogical phenomena: preservation of the integrality of the phenomenon, appreciation of its context, developmental dimension and complementariness of different data sources

The goal of this research is to gain insight into the classroom climate in schools in Serbia from the perspective of teachers. To realize this goal, we set up two research questions: (1) How do teachers assess the importance of certain aspects of the classroom climate and their own engagement in creating favourable climate, and (2) which factors determine the quality of classroom climate. We considered four dimensions of classroom climate: equality in communication, social relationships between students, respect for students? feelings and the organizing group work. The sample consisted of primary school teachers in Serbia (N=1441), who completed a questionnaire made for our research needs. The results of factor analysis confirmed the initial assumption that the selected dimensions are related in terms of their belonging to the same construct and sufficiently different to be considered as selfcontained. The obtained results show that teachers in Serbia highly value the importance of all researched aspects of the classroom climate and believe that they are engaged to a large extent in creating a positive classroom climate. Also, it was shown that teachers? gender and the teaching level are the most important determinants of classroom climate quality. Bearing in mind the limitations of the applied instrument it is concluded that the results should be considered with caution and that future research should include students? perspective, direct class observation and qualitative methods to gain a more objective and more comprehensive understanding of the classroom climate. [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. 179034: From encouraging initiative, cooperation and creativity in education to new roles and identities in society i br. 47008: Improving the quality and accessibility of education in modernization processes in Serbia]

In the humanities, in the last two decades, there has been an evident increase of research combining quantitative and qualitative methods, techniques, approaches, concepts or language. This paper discusses the arguments for and against these research drafts, which most often appear in literature under the title mixed methods research. While some authors consider this type of research as the announcement of the third paradigm in studying social phenomena and the approach that shifts the war between the two paradigms into the past, other authors claim that the paradigms underlying the two basic research orientations are incompatible because they study essentially different phenomena, and therefore the methods from two research traditions cannot be combined in any way. The third viewpoint, which we advocate as well, argues that qualitative and quantitative methods cannot be applied together in one draft for the purposes of triangulation or cross-validation, but that they can be combined for complementary objectives. This paper describes the example of mixed methods draft of complementary objectives in pedagogy, which refers to evaluation of mathematics curriculum. The example shows that combining qualitative and quantitative methods is not only possible, but that it creates the conditions for arriving at data which would not be possible to obtain using only one or the other approach