This paper offers a reflection on educational discourse with particular focus on pedagogical discourse about youth. It begins with terminological and methodological assertions. Making a distinction between the discourse of educational practice and pedagogical discourse, I attempted to identify some types of discourse about youth which have become prominent in pedagogical research. To grasp the characteristics of the discourse I referred to quite a wide selection of pedagogical texts which provide data about the ways of problematisation of the theme of youth. They included monographs devoted to youth, research reports and articles from pedagogical periodicals, published in the last decade. My research tools in the qualitative analysis of the texts were two basic analytical categories: ideological dominants (the concept of youth, dominant values attributed to young age and youth) and interrogative dominants (fundamental practices of formulating questions about youth, problematisation, and typical conceptual categories). The typology of discourses about youth derived from empirical studies was used to construct a theoretical model of the analysis of integration of knowledge about youth. The concluding section poses several questions pointing at some potentially interesting areas for future research into heterogeneous sources of knowledge about youth.

The elderly are currently becoming one of the subjects of a global culture. As a consequence of a substantial increase in the number of individuals belonging to this age-group, the social status of the elderly is constantly growing. This change has resulted in science “re-accustoming” with the issue of the old age, and the culture has been promoting its new and medially attractive quality. This article analyzes the relevance of the stereotypes and prejudices conditioning the quality of life among the elderly. The authors discuss the new challenges resulting from the demographic revolution that is taking place right now. The examples employed here are to facilitate turning the theory of active aging in a friendly environment into practice. Nevertheless, the authors are aware that this change will not be an easy or a swift process.

In article author takes advantage of sociological theory of German thinker – Ulrich Beck – to analysis of contemporary football. He assumes that idea of cosmopolitanization developed by Beck instances interesting analytical tool to the scrutiny of that sport. The concept of cosmopolitanization emphasising on interpenetration of global flows and local environment appears as adequate to such examination. From one perspective some actors in global football field (eg. FIFA) put a lot of pressure on the rest actors (expelling national teams from countries with unstable political situations), but on the other hand football field constitutes a mixture of various influences, different kinds of “cosmopolitanization” (“coerced”, “latent”, “non-deformed”) and local dimensions of modernity. In the case of football fans it is justified to cover every day experiences with football by notion of “banal cosmopolitanization”. The author considers necessity to create the new units of analysis in exploration of contemporary football. Units from classical sociology, derived from world of first modernity need to be replaced (or enriched at least) by ones prepared in result of cosmopolitan turn in social sciences. Simultaneously, like other spectrums of social life (science, politics, identities and so on), football is found under influences of conditions of global manufactured uncertainty and risk. In article there are a few instances of risks connected to football.

It was a daunting task before the Nehru-led government to frame a suitable policy of governance for secluded North-Eastern states which were completely separated from the mainstream British India. Due to the historical background as well as the geographical location of the region the government of India has long been tried to integrate the North-Eastern states with mainland India keeping social and cultural institutions of that region unaltered. With the continuous pursuance of protective and proactive role by the government growth scenario of the North-Eastern states has turned out to be satisfactory. Per-capita income has also been growing at a moderate rate and poverty both in absolute and relative term and inequality are declining. However, the worrying factor is that growth is pronounced where government is acting as principal economic actor. In addition, most of the North-Eastern states have demonstrated very poor fiscal condition and solely relying on central assistance. Economic integration sought under a decentralised development model on the failed promise of bringing equitable development across the North-Eastern states has acted as an incentive to raise the demand for special constitutional arrangements, separate state or country based on ethnicity or identity. Finally, occasional use of coercive forces, doling out of funds, and providing autonomy without accountability are the adhoc measures often used by the state to settle the unsettled culturo-social and politicoeconomic issues rooted in the Indian soil based on the notion of the abortive post-colonial Indian nationhood. Resultantly, the grand Indian nation state would certainly suffer from hyper-paranoia and a dreamer for “welfare state” will continue to be interrogated amidst the quagmire of movements based on identity and ethnicity.

The number of articles, books, and film documentaries reporting on lessons taught using a multimedia whiteboard is growing year by year. Numerous photographs and recordings show happy faces of children and their teachers. Also, test reports leave no doubt as to the attractiveness of activities supported by this modern media tool. But do all learners approve of learning with an interactive whiteboard? What determines the level of acceptance? I tried to obtain the answer to these questions in the course of research conducted in primary education classrooms as part of grant 495-NP.

This article presents the results of research conducted on the research sample of N=388 teachers in rural secondary schools. The aim of the research was to answer the problems concerning knowledge and activities undertaken by teachers in rural secondary schools in the prevention of the phenomenon of cyberbullying. The method used in this study was diagnostic survey. The research technique was individual, categorized interview, based on the author’s interview questionnaire. The collected data shows that educational classes are the most popular preventive actions organized in secondary schools in rural areas on the safety of children and young people in the Web. As part of preventive actions, the majority of teachers take the conversations with students to raise their awareness in the area of the dangers associated with the use of the Web. Analyses flow requests that the level of knowledge of the actions and initiatives organized by the institutions, especially the local environment, as well as the level of knowledge of websites and telephone hotlines among teachers in rural secondary schools is low. Such a low level of knowledge will translate into the quality of preventive measures implemented by teachers, especially in the aspect of information strategy.

The purpose of this article is to analyse a northern Norwegian legend. Working with legends will provide a cultural insight and can thus be a gateway to establish knowledge structures. The main purpose of this paper is to reveal some of the diversity that a legend contains, and show that an analysis of this type of text can be a tool for dissemination and discovery learning. The analysis in this article is made from a multi-perspective approach: a literary perspective, religion, historical, mythical and folkloric perspective. The word legend is characterized in Norway as religious texts. The proper Norwegian term for the text being analysed here is actually “sagn”. However, I choose here in the English language to use the word legend instead.

Results of some research performed in Poland have evidenced a relation between the aggressive behaviour of adolescents and the parental attitude perceived by them as improper. According to the results of the earlier studies of authors, significant differences were observed between the levels of aggression manifested by girls and boys and in certain dimensions the aggression of adolescent girls was higher than that of boys. Recently study was undertaken to check the stability of differences related to the sex and aggressive behaviour of adolescents. The research was conducted twice. First in the year 2002 (stage I) and again after 10 years in 2013 (stage II). The data for analysis were collected in the Questionnaire of Perception of Parental Attitudes composed by Plopa and the Questionnaire on Aggressive Behaviour prepared by Wójcik. At the stage I the subjects were 86 young people (56 girls and 30 boys) aged 17 – 19, and in stage II, in 2013, the subjects of the study were 80 adolescents (40 girls and 40 boys) aged 17 – 19. The comparative analysis of the results from 2002 and 2013 has shown a limited stability of relation between the perception of parental attitudes as improper and aggressive behavior of adolescents as well as sexual differentiations of aggressive behavior.

This paper addresses some issues that I consider to be particularly important in order to better understand and possibly countervail the phenomenon of violence. It especially focuses on the following points: a) the concept of violence; b) the Seville Statement on Violence and the possibility of revisiting and updating it; c) emotional and cultural factors as causes of violence; d) a proposal of a new perspective on the study of the relations between ingroup and outgroup; e) the possible role of the awareness of the existence of death in the context of human violence; f) the necessity of including violence against animals in the study of human violence.

Children’s individual experience gained within families may lead to the development of both prosocial and aggressive behaviours. The aim of the paper is to analyse the phenomenon of aggression in the family environment. Extensive specialist literature indicates that there are often many co-occurring factors that determine child aggression. Children live in a dysfunctional family, in conditions of poverty and parental pathology, experience parental hostility and violence, are neglected, their vital biological and psychological needs are not met, they undergo inadequate upbringing training. They also experience aggression in sibling relations. Thus, the family provides them with comprehensive aggressive education for years. An important issue is to prevent and control aggression in the family. It is not easy and requires actions at three levels: social, individual and family. The article also presents an interesting intervention model in a sibling aggression situation.

The Seville Statement on Violence (SSV) was originated by a launched UN-Committee of the International Society for Research on Aggression (ISRA) in the late seventies of the past century. Its final product, elaborated by more than twenty scholars from different scientific disciplines and from all continents, was presented in 1986 at the VI Coloquio Internacional sobre Cerebro y Agresión (CICA) in Seville. Three years later, it was endorsed by the 25th General Conference of UNESCO in Paris. Its main message was that violence, and consequently war too, are avoidable and aggressiveness can be tamed. The present article comments what were the main reasons which urged to elaborate it, and some difficulties found on the way.

In the domain of interpersonal relations empathy has been widely regarded as a valuable tool for peacebuilding. Past research has shown that if enough empathy is extended to a victim of violence, insight into the victim’s plight tends to give pause to the aggressor and also prompt bystanders to help. While the victim is the sole recipient of empathy in an interpersonal conflict, elevating the concept of empathy from an individual level analysis to a group level analysis encounters further complications. In intergroup conflicts, both parties in the conflict stand to receive empathy. In light of this, one theoretical question is whether both kinds of empathy, those directed to the ingroup members and the outgroup members, have similar utilities in peacebuilding. We reference the literature on intergroup contact and intergroup threats, to scrutinize the role of empathy in intergroup conflicts. We argue that ingroup and outgroup empathy have the opposite effects on group violence – directing empathy to the outgroup results in the denouncement of aggression, whereas directing empathy to the ingroup may lead to a desire to counterattack. Thus, rather than boosting the overall amplitude of empathy, striking the right balance is the key of leveraging empathy towards peace.

The aim of the study was to evaluate the contribution of self-esteem and locus of control in generating in the youth an aggressive coping strategy in a social conflict situation. The study made use of a proprietary questionnaire to study the coping strategy of youth in a social conflict situation (KSMK), the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (SES), and the questionnaire to Study the Locus of Control (KBPK) created by G. Krasowicz and A. Kurzyp-Wojnarska. Empirical studies were carried out in junior high schools [Polish: gimnazjum] in Wroclaw and the surrounding area. They involved 811 adolescents (414 girls and 397 boys) aged 13 – 15. In the light of the performed studies it was stated that low general selfesteem in youth and strong belief in the influence of others on positive or negative effects of events play a particular role in the choice of aggressive strategy of young people to cope in a social confl ictsituation.