TABLE OF CONTENTS

SPIS TREŚCI

The upcoming transformations of today’s societies into sustainable societies pose numerous problems. To avoid the destruction of the foundations of life in the Anthropocene, a profound social and cultural transformation encompassing all areas of life is required. To know how this can be accomplished requires extensive research and knowledge, the reliability of which plays an important role. The more open and diverse the global world becomes, the more difficult it is to determine which facts are important and what consequences can be drawn from them for human action. Instead of a reflexive approach to the results of scientific research, today one often encounters a populist approach to science. Its results are used to support preconceived opinions. One is not interested in new findings but aims at the disparagement of people of other opinions and their hateful insult. A destructive division of society is the result of the debates that are so important for the future of humanity.

There is a growing academic tradition of employing strategies of reflective skills in social work education. Social professions are often dealing with the problems of vulnerability and complexity that exist when encountering clients’ needs. This article arises from the experiences of the author in providing reflective learning to health and social work students in Sweden. This study opens with evoking the concept of knowing and learning. It explores and discusses the epistemological basis of reflective learning to facilitate students’ knowledge creation, clinical reasoning and reflective learning in front-on planning interventions. Further, the study present an example of a reflection scheme matrix applied in the social work and social pedagogy bachelor educational programs at Malmö University to support student’s reflective learning and information gathering while planning social interventions for service receivers. During their reflective reasoning, students are supported in their process of reflection to gain control of the unsorted information and shape a base for their own internal experience while analysing the client’s situation. This article concludes with commentary about reflective learning potential including making sense of real professional situations, meaningful engagements and how to prepare students for professional operationalisation in complex, unpredictable situations.

The study analyzes student, school and district level inequalities of Albanian education system as evidenced in two large-scale assessments. Two main datasets were used for this study, PISA 2018 and the Albanian State Matura Exam 2017. Due to the limited availability of data, the study could only consider a small number of dependent variables at the individual, school, and district level. Utilizing a multilevel analysis, the study observes considerable differences among schools and districts in all three PISA domains and the State Matura Exam. The results were inconclusive regarding shortages of resources at the school and district level. Staff shortage was associated with academic performance in the PISA 2018 dataset, but no statistical association could be identified with the lack of school resources. The analysis of the district financial resources did not show any significant relationship between spending and school performance in the Albanian State Matura Exam. Gender disparities were present in both datasets. Socioeconomic factors, which were measured only in the PISA dataset, had an effect on the student’ achievement.

The article presents the results of empirical research, conducted according to quantitative strategy, on the significance for the level of school helplessness of the conditions of psychosocial development created for pupils in their fifth year of learning in primary school in relationships with teachers and peers and in relation to the grades received in Polish language and math classes throughout the school year. The regression analysis indicated that relationships with teachers exert the stronger impact on the level of helplessness, followed by school grades, and relationships with peers. The teacher can influence each of these factors. This means that the chances that pupils have of fulfilling the developmental task for the age of 7 to 12, in accordance with Erik H. Erikson’s stages of psychosocial development, are largely dependent on the teacher. Not only the successes in subsequent life stages but also the motivation to learn, creativity, flexibility of thinking and acting, persistence, and the emotions accompanying pupils while learning are dependent on a sense of competence. The care and attention of teachers given to ensure that every pupil can develop their competences and sense of agency according to their potential is in the interests of pupils, teachers, and society alike.

In the article, I search for the connection between emotions culture and education by examining the affective reproduction of culture. Building on the tradition of Émile Durkheim, in the works by Arlie Russell Hochschild and Steven Gordon the concept of emotional culture is (re)constructed. Emotional culture is understood as the specific complex of emotion vocabularies, feeling rules, and beliefs about emotions. Emotions and their meaning provide a socio-psychological mechanism that controls/develops individuals and groups. In the text, it is argued that the concept of emotional culture adds a distinctive conceptual tool for studying different educational contexts and environments. To examine this argument, the article is divided into three parts. First, an overview of the concepts and theories that underlie the term of emotional culture is given. In the second part, the concept is analyzed in the light of modern cultural studies. The article closes by pointing out pedagogical implications, especially those connected with emotional education.

Heteronormativity refers to a rigorous social gender order in which the only assumed and accepted gender division is between male and female. Non-heteronormativity implies a loosening of the social gender dichotomy. Both the concepts of heteronormativity and non-heteronormativity in relation to children are rarely used, probably because of prevailing notions of an essentially asexual and unproblematically heteronormative, ‘natural’ process of gender identity acquisition in childhood. In this paper, I address the issue of gender and sexuality in childhood in academic discourses and analyse the construction of non-heteronormativity in selected children’s books. Impulses for the research are provided by critical readings of classical psychological and sociological developmental theories, as well as theories and research on the construction of gender identities in children rooted in the paradigm of social constructivism. The presentation of books created with children in mind, in which the authors point to a way of “taming” non-heteronormativity in the children’s world, may strengthen inclusive tendencies in educational activities and change the existing social gender order.

Assuming the statement, according to which video games (or the entire culture related to them) can serve as a valuable teaching material, is true, it is reasonable and justified to question the still-existing opposition and dispute that digital games must face in school environments. This fact is all the more astonishing as it is the representatives of educational environment that are currently providing particularly didactically inspiring evidence, and thus also strong arguments for this claim. At the same time, the fact that computer games have always dealt with the cultural industry, or at least as much as with culture, means that the “distrustfulness” towards digital games present in the educational space does not only have to be an expression of prejudices and moral panic. Acting from the position of a philosopher involved in the educational potential of computer games, in this text I take up to formulate a possible answer/possible answers explaining the reasons for this conjuncture. Relying on the hermeneutic method, I also suggest possible ways of reading a computer game, pointing to its didactic importance. This text is therefore directed primarily to teachers and educators interested in searching for innovative and practical educational strategies.

A positive perspective in social sciences is one of the key directions in contemporary youth studies and an important point of reflection on education. In recent decades, the Positive Youth Development concept (PYD) has been a particularly clear and significant perspective for studying adolescence on a global scale. This perspective is crucial for many theoretical assumptions and educational projects. The aim of this article is to analyse the concepts and theories (directly and indirectly) related to this concept in youth studies. In this paper, significant changes in the reflection on adolescence have been analysed, which turned the vision of a developmental stage full of tensions and conflicts into a period of great opportunities for the personal development and also gave new meaning to youth’s good life. The PYD key concepts and theories plus practical education have been presented. Additionally, critical remarks on positive concepts in youth studies have been analysed.

This study is an attempt to look at university education as an important developmental task and an element of young adults’ life project. Both the expert literature and the results of empirical research make it possible to treat higher education as an important element of entering adulthood and undertaking mature social and professional roles. Fulfilling those roles enables the young to collect life experience and to crystallize their mature life project. That project comprises many tasks the fulfilment of which allows young people to become adults and to build a mature identity. Becoming an adult occurs very individually, with the use of one’s own experience, resources, and competences. Therefore, the final developmental task can be viewed as the pursuit of adulthood and as undertaking mature obligations. In the case of young adults studying at university, that task involves the fulfilment of many social and (pro-)professional roles. Moreover, university students are provided with the possibility of verifying their current choices and investments in their own future before undertaking permanent obligations. In this context, it seems worth to raise questions of how students perceive this psychological period, how they find their place and what importance education has in their life project.

The subject of the article covers issues related to the presence of neoliberal educational messages in school practice. The study contains an analysis of the teacher’s narrative, the purpose of which was to identify and describe elements that fit into neoliberal assumptions of education. The reconstruction of everyday school life (micro level) enabled the manifestations of instrumentalisation of education, rivalry and competitive aspects in the teacher’s work and the practice of forming homo oeconomicus at school. Commodification of an individual in free market conditions is reflected in a profit-maximizing school, i.e., achieving high results in external examinations owing to an educational process organized effectively, and minimizing costs by, for example, selecting students and by eliminating the “maladjusted” from schools. In the text, I outline a portrait of a teacher functioning professionally, who builds his profession on the foundation of neoliberal assumptions about education. I analyze the teacher’s understanding of school education, which is present in the teacher’s narratives, as a space for a specific market game and competition, defining the effectiveness of school work by high level of students’ examination results and the original concept of working with a supervised class reduced to the implementation of a business project.

The COVID-19 pandemic is recognized as one of the most dramatic global health, social, and economic crises of the last decades, and maybe the whole century. Therefore, it is obvious that there is a need to examine the constructs of new thinking, new ways of life, and new behavior, which will help people not only to overcome the pandemic but also to build a future after it. The words isolation, quarantine, social distancing, lockdown, masks, antibodies, and zoom meeting quickly became the keywords of the COVID-19 pandemic. In this article, which is based on an analysis of the scientific literature and interviews, we ask whether new behavioral patterns such as social distancing, mask-wearing, online communication, and others might become the “new normal”. However, what might be perceived as the “new normal” to some, may seem like social absurdity to others. Thus, with an open-minded approach, we analyze the “new normal” as a complex, controversial, and evolving concept.

This paper presents the results of a study that explored the experiences of adult educators during the COVID-19 pandemic. This online survey was conducted in June 2020 and included directors and teachers in adult education from various institutions in Slovenia. Tutors at Slovenian Third-Age Universities and other associations that provided adult education were also included. The aim of our study was to examine how distance education was implemented during the pandemic, using the concept of ‘emergency remote teaching’ (Hodges, 2020). The study sample included 30 directors of adult education institutions and 124 teachers or tutors. The results showed that organisations providing adult education responded during the lockdown by providing adults with the opportunity to continue their education through distance learning. However, this was not the case for all of adult education programmes. Mostly language courses and formal education were offered. The results show that most adult educators quickly adapted to the new working conditions, but that teaching approaches were rather static and asynchronous teaching solutions. An analysis of the problems teachers faced and the support they needed has shown that action is needed to remove the obstacles to the future provision of adult education as much as possible.

The COVID-19 pandemic forced the university education system in Albania to operate in distance through information and communication technologies. The purpose of this study is to explore students’ perceptions about accessibility, learner intentions, social and lecturer issues in online learning. In order to achieve the aim of the study, the quantitative method is used. The data are collected online through the completion of a survey which contains closed questions. The sample included in this study are students of bachelor and master degree (N = 236) who belong to the teaching programs from the University of Tirana and “Aleksander Moisiu” University of Durrës. The study points out some challenges faced by students during online learning which are related to online accessibility, lack of motivation of students and the barrier of their involvement in online group work activities. It was also noted that the online environment presents challenges for lecturers, which require a better mastery of digital competence by the academic staff. The findings of this study are designed to help policymakers, education executives and academic staff to have a clearer view and make the necessary interventions to overcome these challenges faced by students during online learning.

The aim of the paper is to present the specificity of work of young volunteers in the service of children in the pandemic (types of activities they undertake, problems and benefits they and their pupils experience). The first part of the text presents theoretical assumptions of social and educational support for children. Volunteering in the pandemic in Poland in the third sector has been covered based on the latest research results and the activities of the Dialog Foundation in Białystok. The second part of the text shows methodological assumptions of qualitative research, which was conducted using the method of individual cases in March 2021 among volunteers of the Dialog Foundation. Chosen research results concerning the social and educational support provided to children during the pandemic by young volunteers have been showed. In the light of the results of my research, social and educational support provided to Foundation’s pupils by volunteers is of great importance in their daily functioning during the pandemic, prevents school failures and reduces the feeling of loneliness. The results of the research may hopefully contribute to the development of educational research in regard to the functioning of volunteering in aid of children with educational and social deficits.

This text contributes to the debate on the change in the way of teaching mathematics as it responds to the shifts caused by the transition to distance learning during the pandemic. The author analyses the conclusions of contemporary publications and international research alongside teaching experiences related to various aspects of the functioning of mathematics teachers, the efficacy and quality of their work as well as the issue of their education and improvement. In the course of literature research, probing questions on the pandemic-era school failures occurring in mathematics have clearly highlighted inequalities in the education system. The author analyses the application of ICT in distance learning, which has significantly stimulated processes and phenomena linked to the functioning of an individual in schooling. The time of the pandemic has exposed the shortcomings of the Polish education system and necessitated reflection on the future of Polish schooling. When the magnitude of failures in mathematics does not decrease but remains constant, it is imperative that the reason why it is the leading subject of school failures is determined. Therefore, it is important to establish the new role of the mathematics teacher in the process of changes prompted by distance learning.

Research Paradigm Considerations for Emerging Scholars (2021), edited by Anja Pabel, Josephine Pryce, and Allison Anderson, published by Channel View Publication (DOI: 10.21832/9781845418281), is notable among methodological publications for its scientific openness and permission to experimentation in the research process. The book’s target audience is postgraduate HDRs, emerging scholars and higher-degree supervisors, lecturers in methodology seeking to enhance their reflexivity. According to the authors, it is the reflexive approach that differentiates this book from other methodological books, especially those intended for researchers who are in the process of development regardless of their academic status. Among Polish methodological books there is no publication which as clearly as the book Research Paradigm Considerations… encourages the development of cognitive research curiosity by applying and developing already known paradigms but also by modifying them depending on the socio-cultural context of the research. I recommend this book to anyone who is looking for practical applications of paradigms, but the subject of their research cannot be clearly categorized.