Culture of giving in the sphere of education: social, institutional and personality dimensions
Project Leader:
Prof. DSc. Pepka Boyadjieva
Summary
The project is a fundamental study which aims to outline a new interdisciplinary scientific field – gifts and giving in the sphere of education – and elaborate a multidimensional theoretical framework to explain it. To achieve this objective the project will:
- Analyse the culture of giving in the sphere of education as a synthetic expression of the characteristics of the social environment at a national and institutional level.
- Explore philanthropic practices in the sphere of education in different periods of Bulgarian history and reveal the factors that influence the formation of a culture of giving.
- Examine the readiness for philanthropic action in the sphere of education within different social groups by applying the theory of planned behaviour.
- Reveal the mobilizing resources of the cultural and historical heritage that help form a culture of giving in Bulgarian society.
The theoretical framework and the methodology of the project are innovative and interdisciplinary. The methodology comprises two original components: 1) application of software developed especially for the content analysis of historical documents; 2) application of the theory of planned behavior to the study of philanthropy.
The main results which will be published in peer-reviewed journals and a book, are: a) a new interdisciplinary theoretical framework for the analysis of the culture of giving in education; b) clarification of the dependency between philanthropic activities and the characteristics of society and personality; c) revealing the heuristic potential of the theory of planned behavior to analyse philanthropy in the field of education; d) original software to perform content analysis of historical documents and elicit concepts from them; e) free access to scholars of an information database of materials from a Bulgarian cultural and historical heritage related to the culture of giving.
The project will be carried out by a team of scholars from different scientific organizations and disciplines and in collaboration with other research groups both in Bulgaria and abroad.