This article will present two basic concepts of culture which both have a long tradition and both are currently used in discussing cultural diversity. I call them the container concept and the network concept. The container concept was widely criticised and the criticism led to the development of new models. These models are basically compatible with the network concept, but take it further in several aspects, especially with regard to the question of how cultural ascriptions lead to differences in power allocation in society. If we have new models of intercultural competence, this should be reflected in curricula and classroom practice. So the last section of the article takes a closer look at two curricular documents and presents a practical example of dealing with cultural diversity in a more inclusive manner.

On the pedagogical strategy of Florian Znaniecki eliminating intercultural antagonisms for the civilization of the future

The author presents the pedagogical strategy of F. Znaniecki, discovered by himself, which ramains important for intercultural pedagogy, and which was expressed by the philosophically thinking sociologist only in 1929. It is a controversial pedagogical idea, treated as a condition for overcoming intercultural antagonisms in the mode of a new quality of support for subjective development of children and different than usual in upbringing. This is connected with the simultaneous indication of the importance of educationally critical attitude towards the cultural condition of adults, which requires correction by wise people. The text uses new readings of the writings of the classic sociology, although read differently than shown by its common philosophical, pedagogical and sociological interpretations. This thread is more fully discussed and documented in the author’s book, entitled “Claims and transactuality in the humanities. Florian Znaniecki: the legacy of ideas and its cracks”. Znaniecki’s key pedagogical postulate, important interculturally, is the suggestion of the need to move from raising children in the mode of intra-group socialization to supporting their self-education open to recognizing their own passions, to cultural diversity and stimulating the ability to use the encounter with otherness, in recognition of the naturalness of diversity, in recognition of the naturalness of differentiation, albeit without antagonisms. At the same time, education (bringing-up) in this approach is paradoxically to concern mainly adults, with the correction of their claims, including against the absolutization of their own aggressive prejudices, taken over under the influence of socialization dichotomizations. An attempt is made to evaluate the intercultural pedagogical strategy outlined in this way, which from the very beginning has not met with the sufficient recognition of pedagogy, nor has it been properly evaluated. Znaniecki’s strategy is confronted mainly with the approach of R. Rorty, J. Habermas, as well as M. Buber, H. Gadamer, A. Maslow and M. Kundera. The author points to the traces of the legitimacy of inscribed the attitude of T. Lewowicki in the not sufficiently well recognized aspirations of F. Znaniecki himself, following the reflections in the Jubilee Book dedicated to the former for his 80th anniversary.

Stress management strategies, a sense of perceived stress and assessment of depression risk in a group of students of the “Borderland University”

The purpose of this study was to analyze the relationship between coping strategies, perceived stress and depression risk assessment in a group of students in the Polish-Czech borderland. 173 students from the University of Silesia participated in the study. The participants completed the Perceived Stress Scale, the Kutcher Adolescent Depression Scale and the Multidimensional Inventory for Measuring Coping with Stress. The correlation analysis showed that strategies described as adaptive (e.g., active coping, positive reappraisal and development) are negatively related to the perceived stress and severity of depressive symptoms. In contrast, strategies that can be described as non-adaptive (e.g., disengagement, denial) presented opposite (i.e., positive) relationship effects with the perceived stress and depressiveness. In the light of the obtained data, it seems that the repertoire of coping methods presented by individuals to deal with stress may be reflected in their perception of situations as aggravating and in their assessment of the risk of depression. Thus, future psychopedagogical interventions should focus on building personal resources by shaping adaptive (and minimizing those nonadaptive) coping strategies to improve mental health among borderland students.