Welcome to the Institute of Behavioural Sciences and Communication Theory
The Institute of Behavioural Sciences and Communication Theory (IBSCT; formerly: Department of Pedagogy) at Corvinus University of Budapest have been continuously operating, developing, and updating the profile of Hungary’s only Teacher of Economics degree programme for over three decades. Our key priority has been to ensure that the programme fits in with both the undergraduate education at the university and the requirements of teacher training.
Heads of Department/Institute:
- 1972–1980: Ferenc Juhász
- 1981–1992: Dr. Endre Ballér
- 1992–1993: Dr. István Magyari Beck
- 1993–1999: Dr. András T. Hegedűs
- 2000–2005: Dr. Zoltán Kovács
- 2005–: Dr. István Perjés
The year 1996 was a landmark in the process of renewal of teacher training: the Senate approved the department’s proposal that an independent, five-year teacher training programme be relaunched in the academic year 1997/1998. Breaking with earlier practice, the students have since gained admission directly to our Teacher Training Degree Programme offering degrees in both Teaching Business Administration and Teaching Economics. The qualification requirements of the two programmes are described in the Government Decree 4/1996 (18 Jan). These qualification requirements also specify that in addition to a teacher’s degree the students also obtain a Degree in Economics. Accordingly, the instruction of students in our teacher training programme has become a multi-faceted task involving a number of organizational units, departments at various faculties, external institutions, and training schools.
We have continuously been adapting our teacher training programme to the new qualification requirements since the adoption of Government Decree 111/1997 (27 Apr). After the turn of the millennium, dynamic developments took place in the life of the department under the direction of Dr. Zoltán Kovács, Head of Department. In April 2000, the competent authorities approved a new curriculum of all subjects, which became operative in the first three years of training in the academic year 2000/2001. The department managed to extend its offer of courses to other areas of university education, which is an important indicator of the innovations in our teacher training. In the undergraduate economics programme, 200–300 students per semester attended our courses in Communication and Economic Psychology. The Department of Psychology and Pedagogy also taught courses in the Social Sciences Programme including Technical Communication, Psychological Theories, and Social Psychology. Since the academic year 2003/2004, the department has offered students of economics a new module called Social and Economic Psychology, which may be taken as a minor and – upon successful completion – grants a supplementary certificate.
As of 10 July 2000, the Department of Pedagogy was reorganized and continued its operation as the Department of Psychology and Pedagogy. The department’s key role in teacher training was to provide courses in psychology and pedagogy. The scope of the department’s activities expanded considerably with our participation in the economics programme at both the undergraduate and graduate level. We also contributed significantly to the expansion of the university’s degree programmes in the social sciences (e.g. the International Relations Programme and the Sociology Programme).
The Public Education Committee of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences operated between 2002 and 2005. The committee’s task was to draw up a long-term development programme which would suit the requirements of the new millennium’s ideal of education through the involvement of experts and scientific sections of the Academy. The President of the Academy requested our department to organize the work of the committee and operate the coordination office and the documentation centre.
The year 2005 saw another major change as the departments at the Faculty of Social Sciences were reorganized into institutes. It was then that the Department of Psychology and Pedagogy was transformed into the Centre for Psychology Studies and the Centre for Educational Science and these units were in turn joined by the Centre for Behavioural Research, the Centre for Distance Education Research, the Centre for Postgraduate Teacher Training, the Centre for Training in Foreign Languages, and Centre for Communication Theory and Cross-Cultural Communication. These centres together form the Institute of Behavioural Sciences and Communication Theory.
Our institute is responsible for:
- the full-time and supplementary teacher training programmes in economics/engineering teaching,
- the full-time and correspondence programmes in communication,
- the organization of communication trainings at the university,
- the psychology courses offered to students outside our teacher training programmes,
- the Social and Economic Psychology minor,
- the Business Communication – Cross-Cultural Communication minor,
- the In-service Preparatory Training Programme for Teacher’s Post-Graduate Professional Examination,
- the In-service Training Programme in Public Education Management,
- the In-service Training Programme in Adult Education, and
- the Teaching English/German for Business and Economics minor.
In addition, the institute runs a doctoral training programme under the direction of Dr. Zoltán Kovács. The Applied Psychology Programme was launched jointly by the Department of Psychology and Pedagogy at the University of Economic Sciences and Public Administration (now Corvinus University of Budapest) and the Doctoral School of Psychology at the University of Pécs in 2001. The programme focuses on the exploration and analysis of psychological and pedagogical factors in institutional socialization and the development of procedures increasing the efficiency of the socialization process. The programme seeks an answer to an acute psychological and pedagogical dilemma of the globalizing world: how can we preserve the socialization role of institutions in our age, including the psychological and pedagogical function of schools? Through empirical identification of the key variables affecting institutional socialization, novel methods and procedures are developed and presented, which strengthen the socialization environment of institutions and improve the learning environment of schools.