Badania archeologiczne a obrazowanie wizualne przeszłości

One can say that our times are dominated by visual communication. Usually all day long we have been faced by various pictures, visual forms and symbols. According to the subject of the book 'Archaeology-Culture-Ideologies' I found it interesting to pay attention to the problem of visual representation, or better say visual symbols in nowadays communication and culture, their meaning and importance. From this point of view I would like to show the role of archaeologists who discover, interpret or even create some of them. The subject is not new of course, but the most often it is taken into consideration by the scholars who practice in social anthropology or philosophy and quite rarely it appear in studies of archaeologies, especially in Polish tradition. In my opinion the subject concerning visual symbols communication and archaeology arise several important questions that are also valid for the theme of book 'Archaeology-Culture-Ideologies'. The first is socio-cultural role of our discipline, next the danger of political and propaganda misuse of the results of archaeological research and then also commercialisation of the archaeological activities. The problem of visualisation and visual-communication can be the matter of various studies. In my paper from the beginning I would like to present the general view concerning visual symbols and figural motifs and the main ideas and approaches to study them from different humanistic perspectives. Then in my presentation I am going to discuss the question why in our culture the visual symbols and representations became so popular – compare to other ways of human expression, for example verbal symbol communication. I would like to see the problem in historical perspective as well. There are a lot of evidences, which support the statement about the power of visual symbols in history. In ancient times for example Horace in 'Ars Poetica' suggested that human mind usually is much more impressed by eyes than by ears. In my opinion that is quite often in human culture that visual impression is before mental one. Visual representations and symbols are very powerful, they can show and communicate various phenomena, they act immediately and quite often in easily way they can associate. So for archaeological research it could be very important to make some studies concerning the ancient symbols and general iconography and also it would be grateful to make some attempts for the study what kind of potential meaning could have visual symbols. In my paper I can only make some general statement about it. But the most important for the topic is reflection on prehistoric and ancient visual symbols and representation and their presence in contemporary culture. So after some general statements concerning the visual symbols examined from various perspectives finally I would like to point out with support of some examples how ancient and prehistoric visual symbols and images are still used and captured by contemporary culture and what is or should be the role of archaeologists activity concerning this matter.

Percepcja walorów turystycznych przez osoby niesłyszące na tle słyszącej części społeczeństwa w Polsce

The article aims at showing similarities and differences in the perception of tourist attractions among tourists with and without hearing impairment. The first part depicts perception problems from the theoretical point of view. Complexities of studies on the perception system have been described. The perception itself is channelled via senses, including mainly sight (reception of approximately 87% of outside factors), hearing (7%), smell (3–5%), touch (1–5%) and taste (1%) (Visual Landscape… 1994, after: Pietrzak 2008). The data suggests that people with hearing impairment, owing to dominative position of sight perception and to other senses (except hearing), should perceive outside factors similarly to people with no hearing impairment, also in terms of tourist attractions. Is this really a fact? The attempt to answer this question resulted in conducting questionnaire study among the tourists, both with and without hearing impairment. The data was collected, based on questionnaire study, conducted nationwide in years 2004–2010 among the 292 deaf (for whom Polish Sign Language is the main method of communication) and 1780 people without hearing impairment. The aim of this study was to reveal, if tourists with hearing dysfunction have different tourist preferences than those without any hearing disabilities and to indicate which tourist attractions are the most significant for tourists with hearing impairment. The percentage values and the level of signi-ficance (p), calculated on the basis of Pearson’s chi-square test (with border value of p ≤ 0.05), were used in the analysis It was determined, that in case of perception of natural tourist attractions, there is a major similarity (both, people with and without hearing impairment indicated such attractions as sea, lake, clean natural environment, natural landscape, climate and diversified land relief, including mountains). As far as cultural attractions are concerned, a similarity in perception of both studied groups can also be observed. The most popular attractions include those, which can be perceived with sight: monuments, historic landmarks, museums, open-air museums, places of worship and modern architecture. The biggest differences are related to culture and entertainment, which indicates a social aspect of the disability of people with hearing impairment (a discomfort of being in environ-ment, where sound is the main carrier of information). The conclusions from the conducted analyses are applicative in their nature. They contain hints for tour operators, involved in creating tourist offer for people using Polish Sign Language, taking into account their preferences, perception abilities and ensuring pleasant tourist experience.

Inkluzja szkolna uczniów z rodzin ubogich – iluzja czy rzeczywistość?

Poverty among children and young people turns out to be a significant social problem in Poland. The complexity and multi-dimensional consequences of the impoverishment of the young generation families calls not only for social help provided by the state but also for effective actions of the school environment. The following text attempts to answer the key question phrased in the title. It may be referred to as a source of information on significant problems of the school environment reality which demand further reflection and proper action. The research was carried out in 2014 among 146 urban and rural school teachers with the use of a diagnostic survey. The main tool which helped to gather information was a questionnaire survey as well as an open interview. The survey results helped to estimate the situation in a comparative perspective of the diagnosed schools with references to the best practices from other European countries.