Identity as a theoretical concept in social sciences has evolved from a status of derivative importance into an essential and autonomous notion performing at present an important role that explains some processes of the contemporary world. According to Renata Dopierała, generally identity can be defined as a reflective attitude of an individual to himself, created by the necessity of self-characteristic building a system of ideas, opinions, convictions, etc., that corresponds with the given social context. However, the answer to the question: What is identity?, is not so obvious as some can expect. The relationship between identity, interests, preferences, and loyalty is also not so clear. Shortly speaking, identity can be also perceived as a self-conception rooted in the society, our attitude and relation to others. Its integral parts are two main components: individual and social.

In a dynamically developing scientific environment, there is a tendency toward creating mechanisms that objectively evaluate the output of individual scientific units. Selected indicators can be applied, inter alia, to work out specific criteria for awarding funds for scientific research activities. One of the most important indicators used is the impact of researchers’ publications, which today determines the overall outcome of the evaluation of a research unit. The key question in this context is whether any socio-demographic factors are correlated with the impact of the scholarship work of individual researchers and, if yes, what those indicators are, specifically. The purpose of this study was to determine the existence and, if confirmed, the nature of correlation between the impact of researchers’ publications and selected socio-demographic factors such as: age, gender and family status. The study sample included all the academic employees of the Faculty of Political Sciences and International Studies, Nicolaus Copernicus University, in Toruń (Poland). The results demonstrated that the socio-demographic factors considered showed little correlation with publications’ impactfulness as measured in the Polish evaluation system of research units.

Artykuł stanowi krótkie omówienie zagadnienia złożoności w naukach społecznych i politycznych. Zawiera refleksję dotyczącą paradygmatycznych wyzwań, przed jakimi stoi dyscyplina nauk społecznych, które zostały zaprezentowane w Raporcie Komisji Gulbenkiana na rzecz restrukturyzacji nauk społecznych. Postuluje on przełamanie przestarzałego podziału pomiędzy naukami przyrodniczymi i społecznymi oraz wprowadzenie bardziej holistycznego, interdyscyplinarnego podejścia do badanych zjawisk, struktur i procesów. W artykule staram się dowieść, że jest to możliwe do osiągnięcia dzięki szerszej adaptacji paradygmatu złożoności. Zostały przedstawione podstawowe założenia teorii złożoności, zwłaszcza w kontekście jej relacji z teorią chaosu, oraz cechy węzłowe systemów złożonych. Ponadto zarysowano także pewne wątki złożoności obecne w badaniach politologicznych.

The presented study aims at increasing positive attitude of students as good citizens through the integration of character education in social studies with CTL approach. This research was classroom action research and the subjects of this research were 38 fifth-grade pupils of Elementary School SD Negeri 07 Panreng Sinjai. The study involved collaborators that were fifth-grade teachers who acted as the implementing action. Data were obtained through a test scale of attitude as the main data and supporting data were collected through observation and self-report. The research showed some findings. First, the integration of character education in teaching social studies is conducted by instilling the values of character education in learning with the social studies content and applying some of the components in the CTL. Second, there is continuous improvement of the integration of character education in social studies with the CTL approach from the first cycle to the third cycle. Based on the results of attitude tests on the citizenship subject in the first cycle, there was no student classified as very positive (0%), 44.73% of students were classified as positive, 39.47% negative, and 15.76% very negative. In the second cycle, there were 23.68% of students classified as very positive, 44.73% positive, 26.31% negative, and 5.26% very negative. In the third cycle, there were 18.42% of students classified as very positive, 78.94% positive, 2.63% negative and 0% very negative. Thus, the integrated character education in social studies can improve the attitude of a good citizen in fifth-grade pupils of SD Negeri 07 Panreng Sinjai.

The text addresses the key competencies of the future relevant to the labour market from the perspective of students of the humanities and social sciences. It is based on the research carried out in three universities: in Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia (a total of 603 students were surveyed) in 2022 as part of the Erasmus+ project grant KA220-HED. Research results indicate that students perceive critical thinking, problem-solving, and interpersonal communication skills as the most important for future work, given that creativity is ranked in the middle of the three universities by students. Students ranked low emotion management, time management skills and digital competencies in the labor market. In terms of gender in the 4Cs, there are differences – for men, critical thinking is more important than for women, while communication and cooperation are more important for women. There are no differences in assessing the importance of creativity – this reflects the stereotypical image of differences between occupations perceived as more male and female.