Krytyczna refleksja o stanie współczesnej edukacji wczesnoszkolnej – ujęcie porównawcze

In an attempt taken to reconstruct the current issues in the field of early childhood education, what becomes particularly important are the questions related to the way of organizing education in Poland and around the globe, i.e. in diverse cultural environments. The current problems diagnosed can contribute to redefining the goals of the school. Without a recognition of the difficulties, it is impossible to determine the direction of research or an action plan towards an actual, substantial reform of education. In an effort to rebuild schools, it is therefore necessary to create a debate about development trends of education in the twenty-first century in Poland and in the world. The comparative perspective adopted can facilitate outlining a broad and multi-dimensional context decisive for the value of the educational discourse.

Polityka oświatowa i edukacyjna jako element polityki historycznej (1989-2014). Dynamika zmian treści dotyczącej Polski Ludowej

Wydział Nauk Politycznych i Dziennikarstwa

Antoni Prochaska i jego wkład w rozwój historiografii polskiej

Wydział Historyczny

A disputa entre a Rússia e a Ucrânia pela região da Crimeia

O presente trabalho tem como objetivo analisar a tensão criada entre os países da União Europeia, Estados Unidos da América e Ucrânia relativamente à Rússia após a incorporação da península da Crimeia na Federação Russa em 2014, região que pertencia ao território ucraniano desde 1954. Procura descrever os indicadores que confiram ou não a esta crise características de uma nova Guerra Fria. Com este objetivo, analisou-se primeiramente a Guerra Fria que cessou em 1991, com base nas teorias das Relações Internacionais e de poder, na análise de crise e conflito e as características relevantes desta conflitualidade, como o conceito de dissuasão e guerras por procuração. Com base na contextualização histórica da região da Crimeia e os fatores geopolíticos e geoestratégicos dos intervenientes, fundamentaram-se os interesses dos intervenientes nesta questão. Por fim foram analisados a legalidade da intervenção, o posicionamento das partes envolvidas, bem como os mecanismos desenvolvidos para a resolução da situação. O objetivo será responder à discussão se atualmente o Mundo se encontra ou não numa nova Guerra Fria e compreender como será a relação da Rússia com a Ucrânia com os EUA e os países europeus após a incorporação da península.

Occurrence of plastic debris in the stomach of the invasive crab Eriocheir sinensis

The Chinese mitten crab is known as a pest causing damage to fishing gears and fish. On the other hand, this highly invasive species is considered a delicacy by Asian migrants and therefore commercially fished and sold in many countries. The ingestion of plastic by the Chinese mitten crab Eriocheir sinensis from the Baltic coastal waters (Poland) and the Tagus Estuary (Portugal) was studied based on stomach content analysis. As many as 13% of the 302 analysed males and females (38.07–89.07 mm carapace width) from both regions, contained microplastic in the form of strands and balls. Most of them were transparent. Ingested plastic particles were identified as fragments of fishing gears. Contamination with plastic may have a negative impact on this species as well as on higher trophic levels feeding on crabs.

Minority Rights and Humanitarianism: The international campaign for the Ukrainians in Poland, 1930-31

In October 1930, violent action of the Polish security forces against the Ukrainian population in Eastern Galicia resulted in an international campaign for the Ukrainians in Poland. Its central claim was the condemnation of these incidents as a violation of the Minorities Treaty of the League of Nations. The article focuses on the involved British extra-parliamentary groups and their international federations as well as leftist intellectuals, socialist parties and the Labour and Socialist International. In most cases, the commitment of the activists was motivated by the desire to expose a humanitarian scandal while the implementation of minority rights played a minor role. When it turned out that the first reports had presented an exaggerated version of the events, they shifted their focus to the Polish opposition whose persecution started in November 1930.

All Alone, Without Money, No Language--Just Yiddish": An Immigrant's Letters from Missouri to Galicia

In June 1891, Shimshon Gerye, a Jewish immigrant from Galicia (a region that now falls across the border of Ukraine and Poland) living in Sedalia, Missouri, received a letter from a cousin back home. The content of the letter was probably rather mundane (a request to send money, inquiries about health), but its timing was somewhat unusual: in the thirty-five years that Shimshon had been living in America, this was apparently the first he had heard from his family in Europe. What survives of the ensuing correspondence, written in Yiddish and spanning a one-year period, provides an interesting view of the situation of the immigrant and the pressures of assimilation, as well as the Yiddish language in America at the end of the nineteenth century.

The Western Borderlands: The place of eastern Galicia and Volhynia in the Ukrainian State. OSW Study 43/2013

The regions of Ukraine are strongly diversified. These differences are subject to historical conditions and attempts at unification which have been made over the past seventy years have proven that these differences will be impossible to reduce in the foreseeable future and will continue to bear an impact on Ukraine’s domestic policy. Western Ukraine (Eastern Galicia and Volhynia) is a peripheral region in economic, political and cultural terms. Although it accounts for approximately 14% of Ukraine’s territory and 15% of the country’s population live there, the region generates only around 10% of the country’s GDP. Its metropolis, Lviv, Ukraine’s seventh largest city, was traditionally among the key centres in the nation’s history. However, its role in an independent Ukraine has been marginalised partly due to the fact that a significant part of its elite moved to Kyiv. This is also the most ethnically homogeneous region, where Russian speakers make up rather a small part of the population.

Poland's power and influence in the European Union:the case of its eastern policy

This paper seeks to assess the degree to which Poland exercises power and influence in the European Union. It employs Poland's policy towards its eastern neighbours as a case study, and, in doing so, contributes to two wider scholarly debates on how EU policy towards Russia, Ukraine and Belarus is made, and also the broader question of the evolving nature of the relationship between the European Union and its Member States. In doing so, it employs a synthetic framework that brings together the approaches for studying the power and influence of a given Member State that were developed by Wallace et al (2005), Tallberg (2008) and Moravcsik (1991, 1993, 1998). It concludes that Polish influence has been low. © 2010 Macmillan Publishers Ltd.

Poland's power and influence in the European union:the case of its Eastern policy

This paper seeks to assess the degree to which Poland exercises power and influence in the European Union. It employs Poland's policy towards its eastern neighbours as a case study, and, in doing so, contributes to two wider scholarly debates on how EU policy towards Russia, Ukraine and Belarus is made, and also the broader question of the evolving nature of the relationship between the European Union and its member states. In doing so, it employs a synthetic framework that brings together the approaches for studying the power and influence of a given member state that were developed by Wallace et al. (2005), Tallberg (2008) and Moravcsik (1991, 1993, 1998). It concludes that Polish influence has been low.

The Cyndi Lauper affect: Bodies, girlhood and popular culture through the collective biography process

Using a collective biography method informed by a Deleuzian theoretical approach (Davies & Gannon, 2009), this paper analyses embodied memories of girlhood becomings through affective engagements with resonating images in media and popular culture.

Turning the Kaleidoscope - (E)FL Educational Experience and Inquiry as Auto/biography

This book is a study on learning, teaching/counselling, and research on the two. My quest has been to find a pedagogically-motivated way of researching learning and teaching interaction, and in particular counselling, in an autonomous language-learning environment. I have tried to develop a method that would make room for lived experience, meaning-making and narrating, because in my view these all characterise learning encounters between language learners and counsellors, and learners and their peers. Lived experience as a source of meaning, telling and co-telling becomes especially significant when we try to listen to the diverse personal and academic voices of the past as expressed in autobiographical narratives. I have aimed at researching various ALMS dialogues (Autonomous Learning Modules, University of Helsinki Language Centre English course and programme), and autobiographical narratives within them, in a way that shows respect for the participants, and that is relevant, reflective and, most importantly, self-reflexive. My interest has been in autobiographical telling in (E)FL [(English as a) foreign language], both in students first-person written texts on their language- learning histories and in the sharing of stories between learners and a counsellor. I have turned to narrative inquiry in my quest and have written the thesis as an experiential narrative. In particular, I have studied learners and counsellors in one and the same story, as characters in one narrative, in an attempt to avoid the impression that I am telling yet another separate, anecdotal story, retrospectively. Through narrative, I have shed light on the subjective dimensions of language learning and experience, and have come closer to understanding the emotional aspects of learning encounters. I have questioned and rejected a distanced and objective approach to describing learning and teaching/counselling. I have argued for a holistic and experiential approach to (E)FL encounters in which there is a need to see emotion and cognition as intertwined, and thus to appreciate learners and counsellors emotionally-charged experiences as integral to their identities. I have also argued for a way of describing such encounters as they are situated in history, time, autobiography, and the learning context. I have turned my gaze on various constellations of lived experience: the data was collected on various occasions and in various settings during one course and consists of videotaped group sessions, individual counselling sessions between students and their group counsellor, biographic narrative interviews with myself, open-ended personally-inspired reflection texts written by the students about their language-learning histories, and student logs and diaries. I do not consider data collection an unproblematic occasion, or innocent practice, and I defend the integrity of the research process. Research writing cannot be separated from narrative field work and analysing and interpreting the data. The foci in my work have turned to be the following: 1) describing ALMS encounters and specifying their narrative aspects; 2) reconceptualising learner and teacher autonomy in ALMS and in (E)FL; 2) developing (E)FL methodologically through a teacher-researcher s identity work; 4) research writing as a dialogical narrative process, and the thesis as an experiential narrative. Identity and writing as inquiry, and the deeply narrative and autobiographical nature of the (E)FL teaching/counselling/researching have come to the fore in this research. Research writing as a relational activity and its implications for situated ways of knowing and knowledge turned out to be important foci. I have also focussed on the context-bound and local teacher knowledge and ways of knowing about being a teacher, and I have argued for personal ways of knowing about, and learning and studying foreign languages. I discuss research as auto/biography: as a practising counsellor I use my own life and (E)FL experience to understand and interpret the stories of the research participants even though I was not involved in their course work. The supposedly static binaries of learner/teacher, and also learner autonomy/teacher autonomy, are thus brought into the discussion. I have highlighted the infinite variability and ever-changing nature of learning and teaching English, but the book is also of relevance to foreign language education in general.

William Niclas (far left) next to Herr Richards and an unidentified man and woman; Ratibor, Poland Portraits Men

Handwritten on verso: Mormons, Ratibor

The Gift of a Sage. Life and Wisdom of Rabbi Dr. Friedrich Hillel 1892- 1974

Manuscript by Erwin Tramer: "The Gift of a Sage. Life and Wisdom of Rabbi Dr. Friedrich Hillel". Biography of an orthodox rabbi (1865-1928), born in Wisnitz, Austrian Galicia, and who served in Leipnik, Czechoslovakia.