Tiltai

The affiliation of the family with the land, ownership rights as necessary for a sufficient means of existence on one hand, and God’s blessings on the other, is a founding triangle constituting the basic principles of every ancient society. The triangle is also described in the Old Testament, the first part of the Bible. For many centuries, the ‘nation-land-God’ triangle has been an undisputed foundation for the sustainability of every society. The ancient intuition foresaw the inalienable constituents of society as still being worth remembering for modern man. However, in the 21st century, all three constituents could be described and named differently. Our reflections go far beyond the ancient book (or rather, collection of 39 books) composed more than 2,000 years ago for the needs of society in Ancient Israel. The house, the household, was the key concept for both the family, posterity and economics in Biblical times, and so it is today. We tend to think that family ties and economic relationships are separate concepts, but they are made by affiliation with the land, and changes in relations between the three elements have a deep impact on the stability of the nation, with far-reaching consequences.

The Swedish Social Democratic Party has held power in Sweden most years for a whole century. For many years, it held it in coalition with other left-wing parties, proposing the general course of democratic functional socialist ideology, regular measures to strengthen the welfare state, a benevolent immigration policy, and a peaceful foreign policy, by mediating between west and east, and also north and south. Social Democrat activities were often carried out clearly and with predictability, with great hopes of counteracting future economic, social, political and cultural challenges. When too many of these challenges appeared in public and foreign policy, the ‘social democratic arsenal’ vanished, and less preventive measures appeared to counteract the cataclysms. The radical Sweden Democrats Party rushed into the political arena, and became the third party after the 2018 Riksdag election, and the second party after the 2022 Riksdag election. The Sweden Democrats proposed not only widening and deepening the welfare state’s programmes, and strengthening punishments for crime, but also a strict anti-immigration policy, primarily a racist anti-immigration policy towards newcomers from the Middle East and Africa. Other right-wing parties viewed the programme and the activities of the Sweden Democrats with reservation, but they had to form a coalition with four right-wing parties in order to win the Riksdag elections. After a right-wing victory in the 2022 election, Ulf Kristersson, the leader of the Moderates, attained the right to form a government on behalf of a coalition between the Moderates, the Sweden Democrats, the Christian Democrats and the Liberals. The political situation in Sweden before and after the 2018 and 2022 Riksdag elections is presented in the article, together with the political crisis between these two elections, as well as the results of the 2018 and 2022 elections. In the article, the author uses the descriptive analytical method, together with synthesis and some evaluations of the Riksdag elections.

Scientific journal Tiltai / Bridges / Brücken published by Klaipėda University (established in 1991) is devoted to the issues of social sciences, and seeking academic dialogue, also to other human and society functioning-related humanities and biomedical sciences, with expand and interpret different social phenomena and current issues from an interdisciplinary perspective. The publications attempts at analysing and solving actual problems of economy, management, demography, social geography, geopolitics, political sciences, history, education, religious, regional planning and land use, other social problems. Science has no borders. Therefore scientific cooperation is one of the most important elements in the progress of world’s community. Scientists from different countries of the world are kindly invited to write for and contribute to the journal.

This paper aims to reflect on internationalisation in social work education in a collaborative context. The research question addressed is how collaborative online international learning (COIL) supports the concept of Internationalisation at Home (IaH) to promote glocal knowledge in innovative social work education. The study is case-based, in which a thematic webinar on human rights issues connected students of social work from various countries in an international classroom. It discusses how the concept of Internationalisation at Home can be used effectively in practice through participatory design and participant feedback. The main conclusion of this case-based paper is that social work education should promote innovative learning scenarios that support the glocal approach, so that students are able to ‘act locally and think globally’, supported by a blended learning design.

This article reviews the problem of global citizenship education and foreign language teaching at pre-primary school level. The education of pre-primary school children is inseparable from knowledge of the world, communication in the mother tongue and in a foreign language, and the formation of values and patterns of social behaviour that are relevant to humanity. The pre-primary school age is the right age to encourage children to learn about their immediate environment, and to broaden their knowledge of other countries and natural and social phenomena in them. Global citizenship education should start at this age, enabling children to learn about, talk about and contribute to global issues at a local, national and global level, to engage children in social citizenship activities, and to contribute to a safe and sustainable environment. In the education of pre-primary school children, a foreign language has the function of building a social identity. The development of children’s foreign language skills in an educational institution also creates conditions for the development of children’s global citizenship. The article presents the partial results of an ethnographic study on the development of global citizenship and foreign language learning at pre-primary school level. The information obtained from the study confirms the usefulness of a foreign language for the global citizenship education of pre-primary school children. It shows that learning a foreign language helps not only to learn about world phenomena and to communicate, but also to develop global citizenship competences. Learning and using a foreign language help to share information not only about the immediate and distant environment, but also about countries and cultures of the world, it broadens the world-view of the pupils, forms positive attitudes towards other people, and strengthens the sense of community, encouraging people to work together to create a safe and sustainable environment.

The article presents the discourse of folk medicine concepts in contexts of historicity, the social environment, and scientificity category interfaces. One of the essential features of folk medicine is its intra-disciplinary nature, necessitating basing the already-mentioned categories on a context analysis of theoretical and practical approaches to folk medicine. The article consists of four parts, which correspond to the approaches of discourse analysis on the concept of folk medicine. The first part presents the anthropological evaluation of folk medicine approaches to the social environment, historicity and scientificity. The second part highlights the context of the historicity of folk medicine, which raises the question whether folk medicine is an endangered legacy or a changing tradition? The third part analyses the expression of folk medicine in approaches to the coverage of the social environment: from village to city, from nation to humanity. The fourth part leads to an evaluation of the interfaces between folk medicine and scientificity as a problem of rationality/irrationality. In conclusion, it is emphasised that by presenting the discourse of folk medicine concepts in the already-mentioned segments (social environment, historicity, scientificity), folk medicine’s theoretical and practical expression is evaluated in contexts of today’s and past experiences.

This article analyzes the family policy in Lithuania in the light of the concept of subsidiarity. Family policy in Lithuania is not subsidiary but the last decade have seen some examples of the application of subsidiarity through the activities of the non-governmental sector as well as communities’ and families‘ participation in development of the family policy. According to the analysis of literature, law, documents and experts’ interviews insights, the article delineates the assumptions of the development and entrenchment of the principle of subsidiarity in Lithuania. The analysis shows how the principle of subsidarity provides opportunities to revitalize the civil sector develop and implement human-centered and empowerment strategies and reduce the public authorities control mechanisms and operation costs.

The greatest achievement of technology, the Internet, not only changed the lifestyles of the world population, but also created unheard of before opportunities for learning and teaching foreign languages. The development of digital technology provided the important shift from the informational Web 1.0 to the social Web 2.0, which allows involving users in active communication and collaboration with each other. The number of social media websites keeps constantly increasing, which makes them available to learners all over the world. The estimated number of social network users worldwide is 1.79 bn. Students’ familiarity with online social media has been reported in this article. The opportunities for applying the Internet websites in active learning / teaching of languages depend to a great extent on what sites learners are accustomed to using and how often. The findings on the use of social media websites are obtained from the survey completed by two samples of students of Klaipeda University. The research reveals that learners use (constantly or often) Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Google, and Wikipedia. However collaborative editing, social bookmarking, weblogs and conversational sites are never used or even not familiar. The data imply that it is essential to increase learners’ training in application of social sites. Some statistical correlations between the data for both samples have been found by using the Software Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). There is either 99 % or 95 % probability that an observed Pearson’s correlation coefficients are not a chance finding. It means that the findings might be applied beyond the studied samples.

The article discloses main types of children’s interaction (“I”, “You”, “We”) and its meanings, emerging in natural environment as well as the type of pedagogical reconstructions, corresponding or not corresponding to these meanings. Using the method of conventionality and correspondence, it is orientated to the idea of respective education, defending the right of the child as a person and individual to remain unique in education. It is demonstrated how the educator can give a sense to this children’s opportunity, constantly communicating with the children’s world, interpreting education on the basis of suggestive egalitarianism ideas and implementing it as a child-adult dialogue.

The article seeks to reveal the importance of critical evaluation of authority of social workers. The problem of authority and different meanings attached to the role of a social worker are discussed and the practical and theoretical value of the research study is revealed. The article presents the theoretical explanations of the concept of authority and its ethical implications for social work practice at a children day care center. It also discusses the empirical findings of the qualitative case study conducted at the day care center X. The perceptions of its practitioners, what authority of a social worker means and consists of and how to gain it, are peresented. The article includes a detailed description of the specific context of the case study and indicates the selected research methods. The degree of reliability and validity of research study are also discussed. The empirical data of the case study is analyzed and discussed and conclusions are presented.