The social functioning of people with dysfunctions is an essential part of any training programme for future special education teachers. Special Education Studies involve two large class modules dedicated, among other things, to the methodology of teaching and the social functioning of children, youth and adults with disabilities. With respect to deaf and hard of hearing persons (DHH), one can speak about focusing on rehabilitation and integration of DHH students into the whole of hearing society in the broad sense of the terms: this approach is specific to Polish surdopedagogy which is one of the fields of Special Education. Consequently, Polish surdopedagogy devotes relatively little attention to deaf people’s manual communication, in particular the Polish Sign Language (PJM) or to deafness from the cultural perspective. These two dominant features of Polish surdopedagogy, i.e., the affirmation of special therapy and the ignorance of the communication aspect, will be subject to an analysis that is necessary in view of the emancipation of Deaf Studies, or of an interdisciplinary approach to the problems of deafness from the DHH community’s perspective. Deaf Studies cover the same issues as surdopedagogy. However, while surdopedagogy is based on the medical definition of deafness (inability to hear) and its effect on the functioning of people with hearing loss, the foundation for Deaf Studies is the social functioning of DHH persons among d/Deaf people, which reflects the developmental dynamics of their cultural identity within the linguistic minority, with all the consequential implications.

In 1989 – 1991, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, it was an auspicious moment for structural changes in education systems in the new independent countries, which had been under control of the Soviet government for a long time. About three decades have passed since the beginning of the education reforms in the post-Soviet countries and several generations who studied within the framework of the reformed systems starting from the first grade have already grown up. Therefore, it is relevant to estimate the results of the reforms. One of the possible measures for estimating the results of the education system or education reform is the change in population literacy within certain education systems. The purpose of the article is to compare the results of education reforms of the post-Soviet countries based on the population literacy considered as a result of former learning. The data of the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) organised by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) are used for literacy comparison. The OECD PIAAC survey databases of Lithuania, Estonia, Russia, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Slovenia were used for comparison of the results of the reforms implemented in the post-Soviet countries. Data analysis showed that at the lower and upper secondary education levels, the most positive results of the education reform were observed in Lithuania, while in Russia, the results were negative.

Literacy skills of Roma children throughout Europe are shown to be significantly lower compared with their non-Roma peers. This fact is frequently attributed to the substandard socio-economic status (SES) of the Roma population. However, there is little empirical substantiation for the extent to which the SES of Roma children can be associated with poor literacy skills, as well as the extent to which remedial programs aimed to enhance those skills can be effective after school starts. The presented study aimed to analyze comparatively the relationship between SES and one of the literacy predictors, phonemic awareness (PA), of 171 Roma (n = 42) and non-Roma (n = 129) first-graders, and the effectiveness of a classroom intervention program aimed to enhance this skill. Results showed that a) PA of Roma 1st graders is significantly lower than that of their non-Roma peers coming from the same community, but the difference is significantly reduced after accounting for SES, b) there are important inter-ethnical differences between Roma and non-Roma when PA is correlated with socio-economic indicators, c) intervention programs aimed to increase the PA of Roma children should begin earlier than 1st grade, if expected to produce significant effects above and beyond those generated by regular classroom activities and d) the development of the PA of Roma and non-Roma children has a similar growth rate once they start receiving formal education.

This article aims at reconstruction of crucial for pedagogy of emancipation notions associated with colonisation and decolonisation. This objective includes both literally and metaphor meanings of colonisation and decolonisation used by P. Freire in his philosophy of education. Thus I will present modified by P. Freire conception of closed society as a relic of colonial society and I will also present his notion of colonisation and decolonisation of minds as an objective action for basic literacy during decolonisation processes in Africa in the seventies. The main reason of such purpose of this text is that colonisation is the crucial point and the main cause of emancipation in Freire’s conception of social movements in general and popular education in particular. On the other hand decolonisation is an archetypal form of emancipation, thus taking into account present social inequalities theory of P. Freire is still totally valid.

The article attempts to explore the problem of functional illiteracy in the rich countries of the West. The author presents situations of adult illiterate people living in the world of Western culture who-deprived of the ability to read and write -surpass social and symbolic barriers in everyday life, struggling for survival and human dignity. The idiomatic phrase “the torture of Tantalus” symbolizes a person’s pain resulting from the desire of owning things which are close but remain unobtainable. Through their complex biographies, the author indicates crucial moments in their lives: the decision to acquire reading and writing skills, and the pivotal point directly after the accomplished literacy course. If one deprives these people of professional assistance, it reduces their chances to materialise the expectations connected with reading and writing skills. The aim of the article is to draw attention to the phenomenon of adult illiteracy, which became a major task in educational policy and adult education also in many highly developed countries.

W artykule zaprezentowano wyniki dwóch projektów z udziałem dorosłych Romów z Bułgarii i Szwecji. Romowie posiadali umiejętność czytania i pisania w ich języku ojczystym – romskim, a w procesie alfabetyzacji użyto podejścia ekologicznego. Proces ten zakłada, że tło kulturowe i kulturowe środowiska uczących się powinny zostać użyte jako główne narzędzie w procesie alfabetyzacji. Rezultatem obu projektów było nie tylko osiągnięcie przez biorących w nich udział Romów umiejętności piśmienniczych w języku romskim, ale także zdobycie wiedzy na temat ich historii i kwestii tożsamościowych.

The study presents the results of PIAAC measurements and focuses on teachers as mediators of education and their achievements in literacy and skills in reading and writing at home and at work. Multiple regression analysis is used in the research to examine the influence of independent variables - earnings, age, gender and reading index - on the level of teachers’ literacy. Values of the coefficient of determination vary from 0.05 (Poland) to 0.23 (Belgium). The results are compared at the country level and show the position of Slovak teachers in these measurements. Also, they highlight the most successful countries and point to the countries with positions similar to Slovakia. Based on the research findings, it can be stated that the higher level of literacy is associated with a higher level of writing and reading activities at work more than at home. An important finding is also the result that in all countries, the literacy level declines with age.

The article points out the need of educational research on the illiteracy phenomenon in the societies, where compulsory education is enforced. The scale of illiteracy and lack of knowledge about functional illitera cy in the present time poses a number of challenges for science. The most important are: identification of groups with reading and writing deficits and etiology of illiteracy phenomenon, reflection on the essence of functionally illiterate adults learning, the role of school and other agents of socialization in reading and writing development, literacy opportunities in the workplace or the contribution of the arts to popularize adult literacy and breaking social taboo, which is inability to read and write in highly developed countries.

Transformation and informatisation of society contribute to introducing social media and information and communication technologies (ICT) as an integral part of society. The article is devoted to studying forming such a key competence of modern personality as media literacy through social media. The analysis of recent research and publications shows that the use of social media is controversial and has already been studied by scholars in various aspects. The use of social media today can be perceived as a pedagogical tool and a lever of information and political influence on society. Taking into consideration the imposition of martial law in Ukraine, we experience a special need to create own platforms of proven and quality information presented to the audience on social media as well as experts and influencers that will support the image and spirit of the country and ensure the dissemination of verified and reliable information. Education is considered the main counteraction to propaganda, manipulation and bias, and educators have been the headliners of the educational process. When conducting the research, the following tasks were set: 1) to find out the peculiarities of social media functioning (especially in martial law); 2) to test the feasibility of using social media as a tool for forming media literacy (based on findings of the educators in Dnipropetrovsk region). To conduct a comprehensive study of the use of social media as a tool for forming media literacy, we used a mixed research design based on quantitative and qualitative methods. The information overload that occurred at the beginning of the Russian military aggression against Ukraine negatively affected Ukrainian citizens’ ability to perceive information critically. However, by adapting to life in new conditions and restoring the ability to think critically, citizens continued their professional activities at a qualitatively new level. Exploring the potential of using social media for political manipulation and propaganda requires further in-depth study and analysis and can serve as a basis for political or psychological research in modern society.

Media change our culture. Complete and creative participation in culture requires at present new forms of knowledge, skills, and competencies. The aim of the paper is to present a possible direction for teaching about media. The considerations start with a discussion about the various approaches to media literacy. On the basis of the concepts of selected authors (Innis, Havelock, McLuhan, Flusser, Kittler, Ulmer), an attempt is made to describe the media dominated change in the culture that poses new educational goals before the system and enforces the application of new methods and tools. The category of metaliteracy performs here a heuristic function, which allows for the description of the problem in a new way, enabling fruitful analysis. Hence, it is shown that the ability to read and write is not sufficient for complete participation in culture at present. New forms of literacy, taking into account the domination of new media, have to be elaborated. The focus on electronic, information, or digital literacy, highlighted in the background literature, replaces old limitations by the new ones. The paper suggests that a new teaching strategy, based on the patterns of multiliteracy and metaliteracy, should be introduced. Only such a wellfounded strategy will allow the shaping of people capable of compete and creative functioning in the contemporary world.