Children’s literature plays a key role in the process of socialization. It is one of the crucial factors which help the young reader to understand the surrounding world, also in terms of what is one’s own and what is other, different. On the one hand, its task is reflecting the existing reality, on the other-shaping specific attitudes towards it, for example through strengthening existing stereotypes or calling them in question. In English-language literature on the subject one can find numerous analyses of both broadly understood intercultural literature and depictions of individual nationalities, cultures, and races. So far, Polish children’s literature has not attracted much scholarly attention in this respect. It might result from the fact that the Polish population is to a large extent a homogenous group as regards race and nationality. However, this state of affairs is gradually changing, as Poland starts to attract migrants from all over the world and national and ethnic minorities already inhabiting the country are being discovered. In this context, it seems particularly interesting to ask if and how these social changes have influenced Polish children’s literature of today. The goal of this paper is to outline the issue of cultural diversity, in particular the presence of the national and ethnic “other” in the newest Polish children’s literature, according to criteria developed on the basis of Short, Lynch-Brown and Tomlinson’s guidelines (2014). The paper is also an attempt at determining to what extent Polish children’s literature corresponds with the model of intercultural education. As the analysis shows, Polish literature on cultural diversity is scarce, involves non-representative depictions of minorities, and lacks the “insider” perspective, and thus fulfills the postulates of intercultural education only in a limited way.

The aim of the article is to point out how in contemporary Russian school history textbooks the collapse of the Soviet Union and its consequences for Russia, Europe and the whole world are shown. By combining this information with public opinion polls, aimed at analyzing Russian attitude to this controversial period in history, an attempt was made to find an answer to the question of how in the cultural memory of Russians, transmitting the experience of the older generations to the younger, this groundbreaking change in the political system operates nowadays. The conducted analysis has shown that many Russian history textbooks present a balanced, unemotional picture of the process the collapse of the Soviet Union. However, there are also such textbooks, which include emotional negative opinions about the collapse of the Soviet superpower, considering this event as one of the most tragic moments in the history of the 20th century. The article cites excerpts from history textbooks for history, juxtaposing them with public opinion surveys (regarding the evaluation of the last CPSU Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev; an opinion about the possibility of avoiding the collapse of the USSR, the factors that cause the greatest sorrow for the state union). This juxtaposition has revealed that despite the passage of time, there is lack of one, acceptable to the general public version of events that took place a quarter of a century ago. Just as Russians evaluate events focused around the collapse of the USSR and its consequences differently, so authors of textbooks offer students interpretations of groundbreaking events very diverging from each other. Therefore, the article shows that the historical education of young Russians in relation to this specific period will be the sum of the family stories, reading textbook recommended by the teacher and teacher comments. This leads to the conclusion that the collapse of the USSR is an event affecting the cultural memory of Russians, though the evaluation of this period are still evolving.

It can be striking for us today that when so little divides us there is still so much that separates us from each other. We observe the fragility of social cohesion and witness the degradation of social capital even though some say that our religious belief as well as material conditions or differences in political rights no longer divide us. In the light of critical observations, one can say that there is a need to reconcile people with each other, to establish bonds between us, that we need to establish civil society. When trying to establish a well-functioning civil society we have to ask ourselves a few crucial questions. These questions include: How can Western individualism be combined with the values of community and social solidarity? What are the necessary conditions for freedom and solidarity among people? To answer these questions it is worth reaching the philosophical thought of John Dewey and Roberto Unger. In his text Roberto Unger points out that today’s social and political order is not something solid and stable. Even our democratic order that I was referring to in this paper faces challenges that may undermine its base. Without the right preparation to face these challenges-through responsible and critical public participation and deliberation-it is possible that instead of us having some sort of possibility of steering the growth of our societies and having an impact on political and economic evolution, the evolving situations will steer us. If this happens, we will be left behind, being unable to grasp and handle the different new situations.

The text is focused on two relatively young yet rapidly developing disciplines: psychology of music and music therapy. The goal of the article was to outline the territories of both disciplines and consider relationships between them. The text includes characteristics, presented through clarification of the subjects of both areas, attempt to place them in the general classification of sciences and considerations regarding the methodology. It also indicates important aspect of artistic component, present especially in practical music therapy, and reaching beyond scientific inquiry. The author notices difficulties of integrating activities utilizing arts with systematic, research-oriented perspective. She shows relationships between disciplines, paying attention to the significant differences, but also complementary values. She concludes that despite of being separate, psychology of music and music therapy have common grounds.

The paper analyses categories of every-day reality and of a life-world, reaching also for a related notion of intersubjectivity. Whereas all of them have phenomenological background, only the category of every-day reality has made a career in sociology, breaking offthe connection with its philosophical roots. Its phenomenological interpretations are recurred to in the article, together with showing its relation to Lebenswelt. The main concern is the extent to which it is possible to find religious meanings in every-day life in contemporary societies of the broadly-understood West. A degree to which it is allowed to bring meanings deriving from other spheres into the scope of every-day reality, as well as a concrete symbolic domain to be privileged, are historically and culturally changeable. Secularization that affects a society in an institutional dimension and its common sense, makes religious interpretations being less and less intersubjectively supported and loosing their status of being taken for granted. This situation encourages further secularization of individual life-worlds, and at persons who still identify themselves as religious strengthens the separation of religious province from the other domains of meanings and ways of experiencing the world. There is also a number of people who, despite the decline of

This article aims to note the importance of non-formal education in the context of lifelong learning, especially in last phase. A secondary analysis of empirical research, conducted in Germany as part of a unique project “Competencies in Later Life” (CiLL), is the starting point for a reflection on the necessity of support of educational processes, enabling the development of qualifications after leaving formal education system. This study allowed to determine the level of competence of literacy, numeracy and problem solving in technology-rich environments of the population aged 66-80 years.The conclusions of the study are clear: in connection with a deficit of the core competencies of older people is needed educational offer. Participation in education can prevent exclusion from social life.

Looking at the marketing strategies applied by institutions selling culture and education, the main problem is not to forget the nature of the selling product. We are obliged to protect the shape and essence of what we sell much more than selling any other kind of product even if the product is totally uncommercial. That’s why numerous, cultural and educational institutions often aren’t able to find their own place on the still changing market. Some of them offer products intended only for a small group of customers, others support new directions and new forms of products that haven’t got their own type of clients definite yet. So there’s appearing new need to reconciltae what’s irreconcilable, extremly different opinions and need of working out the balance between spectators preferences and organizations ambitions. It looks like the developing product strategies of Polish Cultural and Educational Union in the Czech Republic presented in the paper prove that the balance is possible to reach.

The purpose of this article is to characterize gamification as an increasingly popular contemporary method of teaching, which is part of the StudentCentered Learning trend. The SCL philosophy, which promotes studentcentered approach as the central issue of the learning process, indicates gamification as one of the most effective and the most interesting method of motivating students to be put in the effort in gaining knowledge and derive satisfaction from their achievements in the scientific field. As indicated by the authors, finding the motivation and maintaining it at an adequate level in the process of teaching, is not an easy task, and the problem posed by its absence is becoming more common in Polish and European higher education system. This evaluation is confirmed by the studies of the authors within domestic and foreign literature. The most common causes of amotivation, presented in the article, could be gradually solved just through gamification — teaching methodology, which uses the game mechanics. Gamification, based on the teaching through activating students, encouraging them to a self-activity, a creative rivalry and a cooperation, is nowadays increasingly used in an academic field, where the authors have found numerous interesting examples. The authors of the text are outlining the principles and advantages of using gamification, the potential areas of application as well as interesting projects with its use. They also postulate to change the current paradigm of teaching by replacing the often inefficient ‘feeding’ teaching methods of transmitting knowledge with more active form, wherein gamification is fully applicable.

The objective of this article is to present the theoretical assumptions and psychometric properties of the Model of Inversed Death Questionnaire. The existential and educational consequences of the new cultural model of death which spreads in modern western civilization justify the need to create the tool to measure the extent to which the model of inversed death is present. Based on studies, involving 341 students from universities in Warsaw, reliability, construct and criterial validity of the tool were tested. It has been shown, that this tool has the correct psychometric properties and can be used in subsequent studies. The multidimensional internal structure of the Model of Inversed Death Questionnaire corresponds to the theoretical model of the studies whereby there is four typical phenomena of the model of inversed death: demetaphysication of death, trivialization of death, taboo of death, separation of death experiences.

The article is devoted to the content analysis of 19 broadcasts for children and teens in six leading television channels dedicated to minors recipients in Poland. The study has been conducted on the basis of 16 criteria reflecting the positive and negative attributes of the programmes. It has aimed to answer the question of how the world is depicted in these broadcasts, and furthermore what socio-cultural patterns are transmitted to children and adolescents watching their favourite fairy tales and film heroes. The research conducted has proved that it is possible to identify both the best, most valuable from the point of view of the child’s development and socialization channel (it is MiniMini+) and the most harmful, presenting negative values and negative patterns channel (which is Cartoon Network). The text presents the first in Polish media and sociological studies comparative analysis of such a large number of broadcasts for children and youth, and the analysis so widely verifying the content and formal elements of these broadcasts.

Television is now recognized as a key source of knowledge about the social and cultural reality. TV series is one of the genre with special role on this field. It’s norm-creating properties have been spotted already in the 70’s and used to construct the first, based on narrative, edutainment programs. The article is focused on the series about social workers “Into deep water”. This TV show was creating by Ministry of Labor and Social Policy and it’s first example of education series in Poland. The author analyzes pop culture text based on education-entertainment strategy and educational potential of series. The empirical basis for article are written expression and qualitative research interviews. The aim of the research was verification the educational extent of the “Into deep water” and what it is. The main conclusion that results from the analysis is that the show is more PR tool than educational.

The description and explanation of human behavior in behavioral psychology is conducted according to nonhuman animal model. This field of science is based on primary learning processes such as classical and operant conditioning, which were discovered due to research on animals. Therefore, many U.S. colleges and universities use animal laboratory experiments in teaching undergraduate and graduate courses of psychology. Decreasing public support for research on live animals, more strict regulations in animal laws and high laboratory maintaining costs caused that alternative ways to demonstrate students the rights of learning and shaping behavior were looked for. Due to the expand of personal computers, programs and virtual models simulating live animals behavior were developed. The most popular one and currently most accessible is „Sniffy, the virtual rat”. The paper discusses the possibility of using the program in teaching. Moreover, the results of two surveys on using live versus virtual animals in didactics of behavioral psychology, carried out among students, are presented and discussed.

Innovation of products is one of the most important factor of competition therefore supporting of creative actions of employers is one of the intentionally introduced changes in the organization. Historical analysis of development of management theories from one hand and projects of organization of work spaces form the other hand show co-evolution of them. That is main changes of management theories join with changes in design. In this paper we try to identify (using projects from web sites and specialist publication) a few trends relating to create work space supporting creativity. One of the important trends is imitation of the solutions implemented by companies that are considered innovative. Therefor you wonder if spatial solutions support changes in management practices or rather replace them. In other words, if in some cases the management is not replaced by the design.

The main object of the article is an attempt to answer the question about the limits of freedom and independence of professional designers. It seems to be important, especially now, when we can observe how creative industries provide to innovative development of society and to competitive advantage. Is it possible to have autonomy being a designer? Referring to B. Bourdieu’s field theory and idea of socially responsible design (Papanek, 2012) it will be shown the context of this profession as a balance of power between the individual actors (designers, client, users, society) in the field of design. Object of the present text is description of the designer’s profession in relation to the subjectively perceived degree of professional independence. The example used to analyze this issue are interviews conducted among British designers from Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design.

Global aging is one of the challenges for the concept of sustainable development. The particular importance have here the needs of designing the physical environment, especially urban green areas. They have the potential positive impact on the activity and activation of seniors. The tool, which is gaining on popularity is sustainable design, which helps to better meet user needs while taking care of the social and natural environment. The combination of these issues allows to try to specify the main features that should have urban green areas to be called age-friendly.

Nowadays we observe numerous changes in the field of employment. Possibility of flexible working hours, alternative job as being aligned to particular project, remote working and technology development results in a completely new perception of working time and space. More and more people adapt public spaces (third places) and private spaces (residences) to mobile professional activity, manifesting their freedom and ability to connect their responsibilities with leisure time. Interpretation of visual representations of mobile offices revealed by social media was the mode to find symptoms of consumption related to social status, people’ relationship with objects and ways of arranging space to transform it into offices. Analysis of photographs revealed outdating category of non-place by Marc Ague. Work is closely related to mobile devices (laptops, tablets, phones) what enhances adapting to it also spaces that in the past were considered as non-individual (public transport, airports, train stations, waiting rooms). Also the function of third places (cafes, pubs, restaurants) is changing nowadays what effects in new forms of arranging space dedicated to individual work.