The purpose of the presented study was to recognise mutual relations between students’ self-education activity and their sense of the meaning of life. The answer to the question: What is the sense of the meaning of life among students of high, average and low levels of self-education activity? was sought. In the study, the estimation method was used. Students’ level of self-education activity was measured on the basis of the Self-education Activity Scale (SAS), created by the author, whereas in order to define the level of the sense of the meaning of life, J.C.Crumbagh and L.T.Macholicka’s Meaning of Life Sense Scale, adapted to the Polish reality by Z. Płużek, was used. Analysis showed a relationship between the above-mentioned variables, in particular in terms of one’s sense of life and assessment of its value. As for the other components of the sense of the meaning of life level: self-esteem and approach towards death and suicide, no significant dependencies were observed.

Artykuł przedstawia powstanie i działalność Koła Naukowego Edukacji Międzykulturowej, organizacji studenckiej istniejącej od dziewięciu lat na cieszyńskim Wydziale Etnologii i Nauk o Edukacji Uniwersytetu Śląskiego w Katowicach. Udział studentów w konferencjach naukowych, projektach międzynarodowych i podejmowane przez nich inicjatywy pozwalają poszerzać wiedzę i zdobywać umiejętności społeczne (w tym międzykulturowe), organizacyjne, menedżerskie, a także naukowe. Okazują się one przydatne w dalszej pracy zawodowej, przez co wielu członków KNEM po studiach zostaje cenionymi przez pracodawców specjalistami.

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.

The article presents the results of research on the relationship between the way in which students of pedagogy understand self-education and perform their social roles. In the research, the social roles of a worker, a parent and a student (duration of studying) were taken into account. The analysis used was three-way ANOVA.

Profound transformations of civilization create new needs for the generating, processing, storing and transmitting of knowledge. New objectives arise due to these needs in various areas of social life. One of the important aspects of the undergoing transformations is the increasing significance of non-institutional processes of education, including the process of self-education, which still does not have the right position in the teaching theory and practice. There is a need to analyse the process from different perspectives, diverse contexts and on the grounds of various theories. The present article emphasizes the concept of the analysis of student self-education from the perspective of the subject undertaking the process in the context of the effects of university and the changes of reality. The presentation of the proposed analysis is of a teaching character based on cognitive theories of the development of personality.