Changing the Health Behaviour of Students During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Poland

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused unprecedented changes in educational, professional, and leisure activities around the world. Protecting health against the virus has become the most important task in the social and individual dimension. The aim of the study was to diagnose changes in the behaviour and health beliefs of students. The WHO definition of health and the Health Belief Model (HBM) were adopted as the theoretical basis for defining variables. The study was of diagnostic and verification nature, and a quantitative strategy was used in it. The general population comprised students of Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun. The study was conducted electronically in 2020, during the first lockdown in Poland. The Likert scale was used as a tool to assess the degree of change. The respondents declared the greatest changes in terms of caring about physical and relational health. The declared behavioural changes concerned the most conservative, trained forms of pro-health activity. Despite the declared beliefs about the importance of maintaining health and the personal risk of viral infection, the respondents declared undertaking more advanced pro-health activities only to a small extent.

Educational Support of a Student with ADHD. An Analysis of Parents’ Biographical Experiences

The aim of this paper is to present the results of a study on the subjective interpretation and the construction of biographies by parents of children with ADHD. The research was driven by insufficient knowledge regarding the definition of the support offered at school to a child with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder among parents and to determine what is important and unique from a parental perspective. The presented studies were constructivist, interpretative studies using the biographical method. Narrative interviews were conducted with parents of children with ADHD living in Poland. Reconstruction of their parental experiences allowed an understanding of their individual feelings and experiences, which showed “the truth” about the educational support provided to a child. The aim of the studies was a reconstruction of the narrative and an analysis of the subjective meanings which parents give to the educational support that is offered to their children at school. The central thesis took the form of a question: How did parents interpret their own experiences related to educational support given at school to a child with ADHD? The analysis of the narration shows different parental experiences regarding the educational support received. The reality reconstructed by examined parents is complex and consists of hope and expectations, but also doubts, powerlessness and helplessness. Some parts of the narration are poignant, sorrowful and rife with feelings of loneliness, which is a consequence of misunderstanding a specific child’s needs. The other parts of the narrative are dominated by happiness and joy caused by the support that a student received and its effects. By speaking about the help which was received at school, the parents expose their personal feelings towards that event, and they show their individual interpretation of the reality that they experienced. They give subjective meaning to a narrative that they feel is significant.

Is Mindfulness and Compassion Training Advisable in Alleviating Professional Burnout Among Physicians? Dilemmas and Possibilities in Healthcare System

The profession of a physician is a profession of social responsibility, in which medical competence should go hand in hand with non-medical competences. Mental strain, physical fatigue and entanglement in the administrative system can result in chronic stress and contribute to professional burnout, affecting both the well-being of medical staff and the quality of medical care provided. The Author’s intention is to promote mindfulness and compassion training that are considered to be protective and promoting the well-being of physicians resources in conditions of exposure to occupational stress. The analysis was based on 197 documents retrieved from the PubMed/Medline, Science Direct/Scopus databases in years 2008–2017, referring to the impact of mindfulness and compassion training on professional burnout among physicians. Only 21 papers retrieved from the scientific bases met inclusion criteria, referring to the impact of mindfulness and compassion training on professional burnout among physicians. Increasing concentration, improving memory, reducing the level of stress, anxiety and depression and strengthening kindness attitude are the basis for mindfulness and compassion training, which also supports the ability of unreactive responses to difficult situations, develops communication between the physician and the patient.

Parental Teleological Awareness Based on Research Conducted in Central Poland

The research problem discussed in this text concerns the specificity of parental teleological awareness, the components of which, in accordance with a constructed theoretical framework, are parental attitudes towards the child-rearing goals, types of their teleological awareness and the content of the child-rearing goals. The considerations are based on the results of the surveys that were conducted in central Poland. The research sample consisted of 212 parents who have filled the survey questionnaire that consisted of both open-ended and closedended questions. The results show that within the study group of parents, the child-rearing activity is usually deliberate, and that one can identify 4 types of parental teleological awareness (passive and active, as well as primary and secondary), with active and secondary being the dominant ones. Regardless of the fact that the content of the child-rearing goals within the said group is characterised by diversity, they usually form internally coherent system. In terms of preferred goals, one can observe the tendency among the parents to declare the intentions to pursue the objectives related to universal values, having a negotiable meaning, more often than not with individualistic rather than social qualities, and those assuming the child’s subjectivity in the process of achieving them. The stated (verbalized) goals usually refer to postulated vision of a human being or his/her features.

Student Well-Being in the Context of Erik Allardt’s Theory of Welfare and Urie Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory of Development

Samopoczucie ucznia w szkole decyduje o jego sukcesie edukacyjnym oraz funkcjonowaniu w grupie rówieśników w przestrzeni szkoły. Celem niniejszego artykułu stało się wskazanie na możliwość wykorzystania koncepcji dobrobytu Erika Allardta dla określenia wymiarów samopoczucia ucznia w szkole przy uwzględnieniu kontekstów środowiskowych. Wyodrębniono wskaźniki samopoczucia ucznia, umocowane w systemie ekologicznym Bronfenbrennera, które pozwolą na określenie interesującego badawczo przedmiotu. Nie można pominąć osobistej oceny sytuacji szkolnej w kontekście indywidualnych preferencji, skoro samopoczucie rzutuje na realizację wyzwań związanych z różnorodnymi zadaniami edukacyjnymi. Właściwe rozpoznanie trudności pozwala na wkroczenie z działaniem interwencyjnym w te miejsca, które wymagają naprawy. Zaproponowane wskaźniki samopoczucia mogą służyć jako itemy zastosowane w badaniach kwestionariuszowych. Pozwalają na wielopłaszczyznowy ogląd uwarunkowań, wpływających na odczucie dobrostanu ucznia. Właściwe rozpoznanie problemu daje szansę podjęcia działań korekcyjnych.

The (un)presence of emotions in teacher education. A critical analysis of the academic curriculum discourse in Poland

Emotions are an important aspect of teachers’ professional work, and therefore, developing their emotional competences is an important element of teacher training. The aim of the article is to answer the question whether, in the process of preparing teachers to perform their professional role, attention is paid to issues related to the emotions. The theoretical perspective of our research is provided by the socio-constructivist concepts of emotions and emotional competences. We refer primarily to the theories of Steven Gordon and Carolyn Saarni. The research problem focuses on the question: how are the emotional competences of teachers constructed/presented in the academic education curriculum in Poland? We searched for an answer to the problem by means of critical discourse analysis (CDA), which is one of the most useful research perspectives for studying the relationship between socio-cultural and discursive changes. The source of discursive data is the document that constitutes the legal basis regulating the teacher education process in Poland, i.e. Regulation of the Minister of Science and Higher Education. Our research revealed that in Polish academic education there is a technical-instrumental discourse in force, which is related to the traditional model of teacher training. This has a decisive impact on both the structure of the teacher training curriculum in Poland and the marginal importance of the role of emotions in teachers’ work. The performed analysis may contribute to the improvement of educational practice and, consequently, to the improvement of the quality of academic education.

Questioning the Phenomenological Foundations of Marton’s Research Approach

The purpose of this article is to try to answer the question: is phenomenographic research underlying (in a broad sense) phenomenological assumptions? It is an important question because opinions on this topic are divided. Some researchers argue that phenomenography derive from philosophical phenomenology. Phenomenology is even treated as a philosophical foundation of phenomenographic research. In this article I argue that the statement on similarities and connections between the two approaches and especially the claim that phenomenography has phenomenological roots are based on mistaken interpretation of the method created by Ference Marton.

Men’s Experiences in Feminized Occupations on the Example of Selected Professions

The issues raised in this article concern the functioning of men in feminized professions. The aim of the study was to gather experiences of men working in jobs dominated by women. The research included twenty men and was conducted between February and April 2020 in Poland, using a narrative interview. Research problems were focused on men’s attitudes toward their jobs, the assessment of career advancement opportunities, advantages and disadvantages resulting from working in a feminine environment, relations with colleagues and employers, and reactions of their environment. The interviews revealed a relatively positive image of men’s experiences relating to working with women. The respondents did not notice any specific difficulties in their professions caused by gender stereotypes. They expressed a view that working among women was like any other job. Few difficulties mentioned by the respondents were related mostly to the issue of assistance in activities requiring strength or technical knowledge rather than competences related to a specific profession. Moreover, the interviewees treated their professions as an opportunity for self-development and for gaining experience that they would not have been able to gain in a typically male environment.

Digital Natives Disconnected. The Qualitative Research on Mediatized Life of Polish and International Students in Rzeszow and Warsaw, Poland

Studies on the mediatization of everyday life are becoming more and more important in the area of media and communication studies in the Western scientific literature. The main questions of these analyses concern the range of this phenomenon and the possible consequences for the social, cultural and psychological life of societies and individuals. Using this approach, the authors of this paper present the results of a qualitative study based on the social experiment #NoWeb (#BezSieci), conducted on the population of 184 students of two Polish universities. For 7 days, the participants of the experiment tried to live offline, which means not using the Internet at all, and writing down their experiences in paper diaries. Only 8 of them were able to live offline until the last day of the project. The main research results of the study show that almost all areas of living are dependant and supported by online access, which has a strong influence on the capability to act offline among young adults. Lacking access to the Internet, the participants of the study were very often unable to deal with simple tasks. At the same time, the experiences of staying offline enabled them to discover new possibilities of everyday functioning and effective use of additional free time with benefits for their well-being and interpersonal relations.

Social Image of Autism and the Need for Educational Research

In this paper, we present the results of an online survey concerning the social perception of people with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). The analysis of the online survey conducted in Poland from March to May 2020, in which 355 Polish speaking respondents took part and which consisted of two parts: closed-ended questions and open-ended statements – shows that there is a cognitively interesting discrepancy between the relatively high level of knowledge declared by respondents and the more negative and stereotypical attitude towards people with ASD visible in the open-ended responses. Particularly noteworthy is the fact that relations between the respondents and neurotypical people are lined with fear, anxiety and insecurity. The survey results seem to unequivocally indicate the necessity for further educational projects that deepen knowledge and raise awareness of people with ASD.