The aim of the chapter is to realize an investigation of official documents of representative universities in Romania (taking into account the geographical dispersion, as well as their historical importance / prestige), but also of a European university which is considered to be milestones in the academic world, that is the University of Oxford. The analyzes, observations, comments will aim at offering suggestions for improvement of public documents in our country in order to configure a possible model that could be implemented for improving the academic life specific processes.
TopIntroduction
Activities taking place in a certain domain are directly conditioned by a system of principles, norms and rules specific to the field, in other words the normativity of that domain. The more serious these legal issues are published, known and respected by those involved in the educational process, the more effectively tasks and actions can be performed. University level education is not an exception in this regard, so at this level, principles, rules, and regulations governing the structure and actions taking place within universities are applied all over the world.
It is necessary to distinguish between the three basic normative concepts: principle, norm, and rule. The principle is the expression of the highest degree of generality, being applicable to a whole field and materialized in several norms. The norms, which have an intermediate degree of generality, apply to a range of specific activities within any university (for example, laboratory activities require prior training on labor protection). A norm in its turn, translates into more rules, which require a specific application framework. The analysis of educational norms concerning the higher education system can be done on two levels, the explicit and the implicit one.
At explicit level, the educational norm can be analyzed on two sublevels, namely:
- 1.
Institutional, which takes into consideration norms reflected by the educational legislation in force at a certain time
- 2.
Didactic, referring to the normativity which regulates the proper concrete educational activities, an aspect which is influenced and which influences the teaching process (Cucoş, 1999)
Given two sets of norms operating at explicit level, it can be stated that legislative normativity is constant and it should be respected permanently by all members of the academic environment, while the didactic one although constant generally speaking, should be addressed taking into account the characteristics and specificities of situational factors in various concrete educational settings. Thus, the degree of obligation is not the same for all didactic principles and norms, it differs depending on the particular concrete educational situation, age and individual peculiarities of students, or the teacher’s personality. This does not mean that didactic principles are subjective, on the contrary, they are formulated in an objective manner, independent of the teacher’s will or interest, being the result of exemplary educational situations, whose value has been proven over time. Therefore, the application of didactic principles varies depending on different variables of the concrete addressed educational situation.
Regarding the implicit level, it is envisaged customizing educational problems to the specificity of the students’ group. From this point of view, one can notice the double role of the norm within the educational group: internal organization and external evaluation by the group. Implicit norms are sets of rules produced by the common life of the group, being constituted using three sources: the internalization of explicit norms, “imported norms” from outside the school or group life and group interactions (Păun, 1994). According to the normative implicit dimension, factors favoring group cohesion in relation to the normative issue are: the extent to which the group is a space for satisfying emotional and intellectual needs, the attitude of other groups, techniques for motivating students for life group (Iucu, 2000).
Explicit norms, in most cases influence the emergence and consolidation of implicit ones, and in order to achieve an effective educational process a convergence of the two types of educational norms, explicit and implicit, is required.
Implicit norms are specific to the culture of students’ groups. Thus, implicit norms are accepted as expressions of a group climate, which is expressed through a system of rituals, ceremonies and habits which indicate the mood of the group members. In their turn, these norms can be classified into: