Overview of Journalism education in Ukraine: what are the main Tendencies?
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Date
2013-02-15T14:53:16Z
Authors
Kutovenko, Olena
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Abstract
The profession of journalism is changing rapidly, and this sets a challenge for Ukrainian journalism education to be examined and improved according to new transformations. With Ukraine as a participant in the Bologna Process (European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education, 2005), our country has made a promise to implement innovations and democratic transformations within our educational system. Yet, there have not been many changes, especially in journalism education, since 2005. This research presents the results of an analysis based upon 6 focus-groups and 4 in-depth interviews which demonstrate present-day tendencies in Ukrainian journalism education. For research purposes, two distinctions of journalism education are used: formal and non-formal. By formal journalism education bachelor and/or master programs of journalism at universities, which are either totally regulated by Ukrainian Ministry of Education, or have some autonomy, are meant. Non-formal journalism education refers here to various journalism educational programs usually conducted within non-institutionalized environment and supported mostly by international NGOs. Ukrainian universities are not autonomous and they generally remain under political pressure (Kvit, 2006). Moreover, Ukrainian educational system in journalism often demonstrates resistance to innovations and does not properly react to different requests or trends in our society (Fedchenko, 2011; Kvit, 2008). For example, only two out of the 10 leading Ukrainian universities with journalism departments have enough technical support to teach their students how to use new technologies in their future profession. Therefore, non-formal journalism education becomes a promising alternative of formal journalism education in Ukraine. As a result, specialized training programs in journalism organized by NGOs are becoming increasingly popular in our country.
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Keywords
journalism, education, Ukraine, журналістика, освіта, Україна