French model of post-legislative scrutiny

The article deals with the subject of evaluation of legislation in the French parliament. The French model for the assessment of adopted legislation is highly original and – to some extent – unique. This is mainly determined by the increase of evaluation activities to the rank of constitutional decisions and a clear recognition that the so-called evaluation of public policies (évaluation des politiques publiques) is one of the functions of the parliament. French experience can not be treated as a model for the establishment of similar assessment procedures in the analytical work of the Polish Sejm. These are carried out on the basis of general scientific and expert advice, which, however, from a formal point of view, are not the proper parliamentary procedure (as is the case in France). However, one can reach for a general scheme of evaluation methodology, which regardless of whether the assessment of adopted laws is carried out by parliament bodies (eg committees) or entities that are part of the Sejm Chancellery (eg BAS) can be adopted. This is primarily about the introduction of two levels of such an assessment, i.e. the level of assessment of the legal degree of implementation of the Act (through the relevant implementing acts) and the level of proper impact assessment that the Act triggers (substantive evaluation). It seems that following the French solutions, one could also introduce, as a solution, optimal, temporal assumptions for such control, i.e. a period of six months to assess whether the law was correctly introduced by the government into the legal circulation and a period of three years to assess this whether the effects that the Act triggers correspond to what was expected at the time the bill was submitted.

When they steal our words…

The paper addresses issues related to the growing social phenomenon that has disturbing consequences for practice – in this case, everyday academic life in Poland. It consists of the critical categories of contemporary humanities; its “first words” are given content very distant from their original, traditional meanings. The meanings of these categories are often reversed, given secondary meanings or even made meaningless. As a result, many words are used as empty labels, fashionable words intended to add dignity to the speaker. The article’s author, referring to the metaphor of “stealing” words, raises three specific issues. Firstly, it presents a register of “stolen” words, three of which are the subject of detailed analysis – evaluation, quality, and dialogue. The second issue is a detailed analysis of the mechanisms governing changes in the meanings assigned to each of these categories and the effects associated with using “stolen” words in the everyday life of academies and dormitories. Finally, the issue of the “perpetrators of the theft” was raised. The author claims that one of them is the “seventh enemy from the seventh world of the field” – an entity that creates the everyday life of academic life, regardless of its place in the university’s social hierarchy.

The growing importance of evaluation in a dynamic socio-political reality

The article focuses on evaluation, which remains of unflagging popularity and interest in many scientific disciplines and areas of social life. The article is divided into three parts. Firstly, it attempts to outline the variety of theoretical contexts of the relationship between education, science, evaluation and state policy in this respect. The second part presents arguments for the need to practice educational (seflevaluation) – especially its dialogic forms in schools, resulting from the experience gained in connection with the COVID-19 pandemic, including the results of research carried out in primary schools in Szczecin. The third part covers issues related to the importance of developmental evaluations in education, consisting of democratizing organizational culture, opening social discourse and supporting patterns of institutional reflexivity. In literature this is described as “participatory research”, “interventional research” in which the researcher conducts the analysis at the same time also thinking about using its results to formulate the recommendations regarding public policy or for the purposes of creation and support of organizations acting in the best interest of the researched community. This article presents a fragment of results of a research – its subject being “Diagnosing needs and expectations of students and teachers in primary schools in Szczecin days before returning to school” – conducted in May 2021. Comfort-Stretch-Panic model, created by Karl Rohnke, has been used as a theoretical framework for said research.