Res Humanitariae

The aim of this study is to investigate the ICT use by pre-service preschool teachers and pre-service speech and language therapists in developing their digital case of a storytelling. Students were stimulated to use various multimedia editing and authoring tools. The research questions concern the students’ accomplishments on integrating technology in digital storytelling and the effectiveness of that learning environment they created. The results revealed a difference by implying that not only the learning theory and the teaching practices but also the content, the structure and the nature of the course together with the social interactions play an important role on how people learn and develop their skills.The results revealed that students of both departments overall accomplished very good project outcomes in digital storytelling meeting technical and pedagogical criteria. Finally similarities and differences of the students’ approaches in the digital storytelling development are discussed and concluded in the demands of modern information society.

Lithuania has been placed 35th out of 187 countries in the UNO Human Development Report 2014, which measures a Human Social Development Index. This is the best result in the history of the country. According to this indicator, since 2010, Lithuania has joined the club of 49 most developed countries in the planet. Despite the fact, poverty, which expresses the essential consequences of social differentiation, has deeply rooted in the social discourse of Lithuania. To understand the controversy of the official statistics and the reality of life, we can no longer think of poverty, deprivation and social exclusion stereotypically. These social phenomena are taking new shapes in the postmodern existence. Therefore, the article presents a philosophical explanation of the change in the perception of two social categories – time and work, which illustrate a dramatic shift of our social life towards the postmodern existence, based on the works of J. Habermas and Z. Bauman. Social categories of time and work are among the elements of social-existential change, which reflect clear differences of philosophical discourses and social consciousness of modernity and postmodernity from the earlier traditions of philosophical thought development. Today these categories acquire the power to reveal new forms of social inequality.

The ability to measure public sector performance is a necessity for policymakers as well as academics and citizens of a country. This article aims to identify ways of measuring public sector performance using the measurement applicable to all countries and outlining opportunities for comparability among them. Thus, the authors highlight opportunities for performance measurement and public sector efficiency using various methods of non-parametric and parametric analysis. The starting point of the analysis considers the concept of performance, encompasses the proposed terms of productivity, efficiency and effectiveness; therefore, the measurement of public sector performance requires an exhaustive analysis in multidimensional terms, covering all core areas of a country. Moreover, understanding and developing robust international comparison possibilities will give in practice a structural framework for measuring the performance of particular relevance. Study findings indicate that performance measurement and implicitly public sector efficiency is a complex and difficult task that goes beyond simply measuring of productivity and efficiency, and requires aggregation of several key areas related to the results of a state. In summary, the analysis framework of the performance and efficiency of public sector is outlined both in terms of relevance of indicators and the methodology used. It demonstrates that methods of non-parametric analysis work at their best when all aspects of the production process can be captured in a limited number of input and output dimensions.

In this article the efforts of social workers to promote inclusive practices in children day care centres is analysed. Changes in education based on life-long learning culture require active and conscious participation of parents in child’s education process. However, this participation becomes overburden if family is socially excluded because of the deviant lifestyle or poverty. Indeed, practical observations together with results of the studies reveal that the collaboration between social professions, which aim to implement child welfare and parents is insufficient. In order to help these families children day care centres were established. The aim of the article is to reveal how social workers construct professional help with parents on the purpose to help overcoming child’s issues at school. The study is based on hermeneutical methodology. During Soviet period development of child’s skills belonged to the educational institutions outside the family. Research participants still struggles for the ownership of these developments, pushing neglectful parents aside. The research revealed that within transformation process social workers adapts the forms of professional posture, however, the content of their performance is inherited from the past experiences and historical development.

Abundance of horse graves and very expressive horse-offering rituals are well known in the Central region of Lithuania. But principally the new material has been obtained after the investigations of burial ground in Marvelė. Horse graves are usually found separate from human graves, composing special parts of “horse graveyards” in the cemeteries. Arrangement of these parts with horse graves are related to local micro-landscape. The natural and cultural elements with memory signs embody the environmental cosmology and are involved into the mythology. The horse burial places suggest the ceremonies of public displays. The horse becomes a contributor which helps to cross the border between mythological spaces.