Welcome

Our first issue of the year, in English, will be published at the end of March, as initially planned. We are now past last year's IT platform change and the renewal of editorial processes, and it is precisely thanks to the foreign-language issue that it is evident that, in the interest of the international recognition of Opus et Educatio, we are also trying to provide a framework for Hungarian authors to publish their work in foreign languages. As part of the modernization of the formal framework, we are expanding the column system and presenting the Online First column for the second time. In our new column, Tibor Bors Borbély-Pecze deals with the complex problem of building a career path, providing an outlook on the processes taking place in the world and which are characteristic of the continents in different ways. The highlight of his study is the validation of community aspects during career building, the definition of individual career goals, and the impact of community culture on the process.

The first article in the Studies column directly relates to global and regional analyses. The study by Klára Antesberger, Emese Schiller, and Helga Dorner analyzes the implementation of the European Union's Action Plan since 2016 from the perspective of integration and social inclusion. Analyzing the process of integration of migrants, the authors conclude that the success of the process of social integration can be significantly influenced by knowledge of the host country's language. The following study, by Fatma Hamdi, Khefacha Ahlem, Míra Makai, and Beatrix Séllei, partly related to the previous topic, also considers the possibility of success in higher education. Based on empirical research, the research examines the emotional intelligence of first-year students studying economics and social sciences, engineering, and natural sciences in 2020-2021, analyzing the correlations between student dropout and success in different faculties.

The dropout analysis is related to the study by Katalin Torkos and Anikó Kálmán, which deals with dropout in higher education, focusing on the processes in disadvantaged regions. The first part of the article explores the methodological background of the statistics of the decrease in the number of higher education students and dropouts, then presents the main educational policy concepts related to the number of higher education students and dropouts, analyzing these processes from the perspective of disadvantaged, mentored students. As a special highlight of this issue, the first article in our Awareness column is a study related to a doctoral dissertation, which analyzes the philosophical background of the increasingly central topic of talent management. Emese Berzsenyi, in connection with Max Weber's epochal work "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism" undertook a historical study of the topic of talent research and talent management in Hungary from the end of the 19th century to the middle of the 20th century. A doctoral student and his supervisors published Khalid Mohammed Idris and Anikó Kálmán's article on professional learning. This new approach deals with thematic analyses conducted on self-reflective and interactive data sets, demonstrating the importance of practice development in higher education. The exciting study by Gábor Bomba and Tamás Csányi uses quantitative methods to examine students' physical activity from an international perspective, using the PACES scale. The authors conclude that positive physical and mental health related to physical activity significantly impacts the development of young people's motivational systems.

In our Projects section, Cz. János Horváth article is about the international development underway for years under the coordination of the Institute of Continuing Engineering Education of BME, the work related to applying open badges in higher education. The DISCO SMS Erasmus project provides the background for the application of micro certificates, which is currently in the introduction phase in higher education worldwide. The European cooperation aims to develop education and training by recognizing and making soft skills visible - Urmonienė Daiva, Oleskeviciene Indre, Rimanté Čepauskien and Arenas M. Begoña, as well as Dénes Zarka - by developing the methodology presented by the international team of authors, in which the use of digital open badges is a key factor.

In our first issue this year, it is clear that 2025 will be particularly rich in terms of professional conferences and events. Our editorial team is receiving more and more articles reporting on upcoming significant international conferences and recently held meetings dealing with exciting topics. One such article is Looking Ahead, also a new column compiled by István Simonics, which places the internationally outstanding world conference on interactive-collaborative learning (ICL2025), which will take place at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics in early October 2025, in a broader context. We can refer to the professional-scientific system of connections linked to the technological and methodological modernization of education and training for more than half a century. The following article in the Conference column reports on an already implemented event. The efficiency of the activities of those involved in human resource management, which shows the connection between higher education and the economy in a new and increasingly perceptible way, was analyzed by the conference that took place recently, in February 2025, at the Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest. The demanding summary written by Nóra Hegyi-Halmos, Zsuzsa Kovács, Szilvia Lakner, Anna Orsolya Pongor-Juhász, Tünde Tóth-Téglás demonstrates that HR consultants play a critical role in improving the competitiveness of business organizations in the process of digital transformation.

Finally, by its traditions, our Review column appears in this issue with writing, drawing attention to another relevant work. Lilla Pető provides thought-provoking information about the book "The Nordic Secret" which is presumably also influential on the public thinking of our decade. This intention is characteristic of the entire collection of writings by nearly a quarter of a hundred authors "coming" from many countries in the first issue of Opus et Educatio in 2025. I trust our selection will be colorful and interesting, and I wish you a good read!

Budapest, March 2025

András Benedek

Editor-in-Chief of Opus et Educatio