Tiltai

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.

The article highlights that a modern society focuses on exclusive body care along with appearance of individuals and especially adolescents. Physical exterior of a person seems to be receiving an increasingly growing attention in everyday life situations, as beauty ideals shift in social environments along with requirements to comply with and pursue them. Research, analyzing body dissatisfaction, has received wide attention in a scholarly environment. Body related dissatisfaction has become a highly relevant issue, as it links to eating disorders, such as anorexia nervosa or bulimia nervosa and others, however there is a gap in research analyzing the pedagogical side of such issue. It is highly relevant to be aware of and understand body and body weight related problems because difficulties emerged during the early adolescence might persist during adulthood as well. Research aim – to reveal how adolescents perceive their physique and individual parts of their body and compare these self-assessments based on a gender. In 2012, using a research method of an anonymous survey a total of 1347 adolescents from 8th grades were surveyed. The research uses a questionnaire to study physique related self-assessment, designed by the author. Results obtained from the conducted research allow to conclude that research participants feel more dissatisfied with individual phenotype-dependent morphological and functional features of a body, which can be altered through well-chosen physical exercising. It was identified that research participants are more satisfied with individual morphological and functional features of a body, inherited from parents, i.e. genotype-dependent, which cannot be altered through exercising. Findings also reveal that respondents are mostly dissatisfied with shape, largeness and size of individual body parts as well as muscle weakness. Results also allow to conclude that significance attributed to certain elements of physique is gender-dependent.

Š. m. balandžio 24 d. Klaipėdos universiteto Pedagogikos fakultete Aida Norvilienė apgynė disertaciją ,,Kryptingas tarpkultūrinis studentų ugdymas, kaip tarpkultūrinės kompetencijos tobulinimo veiksnys (mokytojų rengimo universitete atvejis)“ (darbo vadovė – prof. dr. Vaiva Zuzevičiūtė). Disertacija atitinka LMT keliamus reikalavimus. Ją sudaro: įvadas, trys skyriai, diskusija-rekomendacijos, išvados, naudotos literatūros sąrašas, priedai; iš viso darbas apima 187 puslapius. Darbas vientisas, tyrimo problema ištirta.

This article presents findings and discussions generated on the basis of the Danish-Swedish development project CareSam. The article will on the one hand focus on how work in groups consisting of representatives from different levels in the elderly care sector at one time served as learning spaces and cultural encounters in which established notions of older people and elderly care were challenged and discussed. Inspired by action research these challenges were brought forth through discussions of and through insight in practical experiences. On the other hand it will focus on the tendencies to narrow the diversity of perceptions of elderly people and their care, which were also seen in the project and led to stories in which the meaningfulness of care work were honored. Departing from the interviews presented in the CareSam film and parts of the empirical material produced in connection to the work in the project-groups this paper will ask whether it is possible to represent care work for elderly people with all the ambiguities it holds: How can we as researchers represent both meaningfulness and straining dimensions of care work? Can we avoid either supporting Florence Nightingale-ideals or cementing negative cultural perceptions of help-needing elderly and the people who support them in everyday life? In answering these questions and thereby reflecting on our own work process we apply a caring, a learning and a political perspective. Hereby the article wishes to formulate a methodological point: The CareSam cross sector collaboration produced important experience near knowledge, but also lead to present somewhat one-sided understandings of elderly care. Applying theoretical perspectives to analyze the empirical material and the working process, nuances the understanding and makes it possible to maintain immediately conflicting dimensions in this kind of work.

This paper analyses the spatial distribution of graffiti in Klaipėda city. The main focus is concentrated on causes and spatial distribution of graffiti, similarities and differences between graffiti drawings in Klaipėda city. The analysis of graffiti drawings spatial distribution in Klaipėda city is based on few area researches. In this work all graffiti drawings are grouped into 5 graffiti style groups and are studied their spatial distribution. Different styles of graffiti drawings reveal not only drawers artistic skills, but also their motives and goals. In the end of the work, based on examples of foreign countries, suggestions about the possibilities of the usage of graffiti drawings in Klaipėda city are presented.