Tiltai

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 article offers an analysis of soft skills acquisition in children through animal training programmes within the framework of a two-year Erasmus+ project. The article overviews important aspects of shaping and introducing new approaches towards the acquisition of soft skills in children through animal training programmes. In this context, children participated in research in three countries (Lithuania, Belgium and Bulgaria), in three animal-assisted educational programmes: dolphin-assisted therapy, hippotherapy, and canine therapy. The results of the narrative analysis show a significant improvement in the skills of children, improving the quality of their relationships with themselves, with others, with animals, and with the environment. This reaffirms that exposing students to authentic, hands-on experience can significantly enhance their cognitive, social and emotional development. Moreover, the article shows that the process also increased the soft skills of teachers and of external actors involved in the process, reinforcing the importance of an open schooling approach as a way of improving all society. The article contributes to empirical evidence to support the integration of experiential learning into the pedagogical realm.

Within this article the need and possibilities of supervision to medical staff for their professional well-being are analysed. Case of supervision to medical staff in Lithuania is discussed using critical reflection. In health care professions, same as in other helping professions, burnouts, tensions, incertitude and existential anxiety may arise among the staff. Thus, conflicts may arise over social interactions at work. Critical reflection methodology, used in this research, revealed that medical staff does not yet identify the supervision as a potential mean of their professional support. Notwithstanding, the open dialogue, enabled by the process of supervision, demonstrated the lack of collaborative culture and culture of silence in healthcare work environments. Medical staff may be anchored to the long-established attitudes and beliefs of their organization, also they may face frustrations with regard to an open dialogue on the matters of their work, since they may feel rather disempowered for making substantial changes in their work. Medical staff may also face frustrations of leaving the so-called comfort zone and helpless when facing healthcare system barriers. Within this article, the need for support to medical staff through professional supervision is highlighted. The experience of the supervision in which an equal and dialogical relation is promoted, may be extrapolated to collegial relation in the organization. Supervision may also encourage the participants to leave the victim role and to acquire a constructive voice in professional relation. Thus, the supervision, in providing room for dialogue and reflection on professional relation, may be a great an opportunity for roles’ transformation of participants for constructive dialogues and organizational culture. Supervision contains the great potential to develop health system transformations through promoting dialogical professional relation and enrichment of professional identity of medical staff. Supervision might be a powerful support to medical staff in particularly critical situations such as engendered by COVID-19. The inter-institutional collaboration between associations of supervisors and medical staff is recommended, with the participation of representatives of health care institutions and universities.

Having acknowledged the importance of leadership, it seems there is lack of research in the field of developing the leadership skills of healthcare workers. Therefore, this article aims to answer the problem question: what leadership abilities of healthcare workers are important, and what are the opportunities to develop them in healthcare institutions? Theoretical insights and quantitative research have been used to answer this question. The questionnaire survey of healthcare workers conducted confirms that the expression of leadership is inseparable from motivation, being an example, help and cooperation, the ability to mobilise the team to act in one direction and achieve the set goals. The study shows that the development of leadership skills is achieved through personal development, the formation of positive attitudes towards changes, the dissemination of leadership competence, independent activity, and mutual interaction. The study is significant in that it can help understand factors for the improvement of the subject under consideration, and make a targeted intervention in ongoing processes of the development of leadership skills, improving them and achieving better results in the development of the leadership skills of healthcare workers.

The significance and novelty of this article is in the fact that the study has explored the consumption of alcohol among vocational pupils, in order to connect the phenomenon with social and cognitive factors. The article analyses the period of adolescence, changes during the period of adolescence, and factors that determine the problem of alcohol consumption in adolescence: parents, peers, individual personality characteristics, behavioural and emotional problems, etc. The study confirmed the characteristics of alcohol consumption by adolescents, their parents and peers, adolescents’ resistance to alcohol, their strengths and difficulties, and the interrelationships between these factors. Although the parents of adolescents play an important role in the process of developing an adolescent’s resistance to alcohol, the study highlighted the importance of the attitude of the adolescent’s mother. The study confirmed that the expression of adolescents’ resistance to alcohol is directly influenced by the alcohol consumption of parents and friends, their attitude towards alcohol consumption by adolescents, and the adolescent’s strengths (sociality scale, meaning social skills) and difficulties.

Employers currently emphasise primarily the importance of the personal and social characteristics of employees, and focus less on their professional and business skills. Contrarily, employees often consider deep professional knowledge and skills to be their key strengths, and pay little attention to personal growth and the development of personal characteristics. The aim of the research is to compare the soft skills most frequently required by potential employers in job advertisements for the position of administrator to the employee soft skills predominantly identified by the students on the Tourism Administration course. A study designed to identify employer expectations was conducted in 2019 and 2021. In order to determine the opinions of students in 2021, a written questionnaire survey of higher education students on the Tourism Administration course was conducted. The analysis of the opinions of students, and an examination of employer expectations, demonstrate that employer expectations regarding the skills of potential employees, especially personal or soft skills, and student opinions, do not always match. The impact of the pandemic created a paradoxical situation in the labour market: before the pandemic, progressively more attention was being paid to employees’ soft skills; in the post-pandemic world and working in a hybrid way in the labour market, not all personal skills remain important.

The problem of quality of governance is one of the most important issues raised nowadays by international and local organisations. In order to adapt to the rapid processes of globalisation and glocalisation, various methods are being sought to optimise forms of democratic governance in Western countries or among countries which are leaning towards the West. The aim of the article is to increase government accountability and responsibility, promote citizen involvement, and strengthen government-societal relations and trust. In order to achieve this goal, the European Union proposes to give more powers to local government institutions, because they are closest to the citizens, can more effectively assess their needs, and attain them more effectively. To achieve this goal, the 12 principles of Good Governance, recommended by the Council of Europe, are used, and ELoGE (European Label of Governance Excellence) is used as a tool to assess the existence of these principles in local government. The purpose of this article is to identify factors that determine the implementation of the principles in local government, and to ascertain the most important characteristics that would influence the implementation of Good Governance in local government, taking into account the ELoGE evaluation methodology.

The debate on gastronomic culture and identity, the national heritage, national products and gastronomic nationalism, is one of the most active and popular in the contemporary public discourse. The increased importance of different identities in contemporary networked society drives the popularity of these topics. As a form of the intangible heritage, gastronomic culture is an evolving system that easily links past and present societies. In this way, the gastronomic heritage and the history of gastronomy are easily transferred to contemporary culture, and become the basis for various identities. Given that the intangible heritage operates in society through tangible representations, and that in gastronomic culture one of the most visible representations is dishes, this study analyses the communication of one of them, šaltibarščiai (cold soup), on the social network Facebook. The study aims to determine how the representation of a specific intangible element of the heritage is used to construct the Lithuanian national identity. The research has identified the most important topics of discussion, the discourses involved, and elements of the reality that are important for constructing the national identity and their interrelationships.

Change in the paradigm of the documentary heritage also leads to a change in the concept of memory institutions, whereby the most important function of a memory institution becomes active participation in the process of creating the collective memory. Audience engagement is important in this process. Evaluating the reception of documentary heritage communication allows us to assess the involvement of cultural users in cultural communication. Data from a study of the reception of visitors to an exhibition of one of the most important documents to the country’s statehood, the Act of 16 February, conducted using quantitative methods, showed that visitors to the museum where the Act of 16 February was on show rate the exhibition very highly and contribute to its communication in social networks and by oral communication.

The article examines the expression and dynamics of the phenomenon of murder in the city of Klaipėda between 2004 and 2014. This period, which began with the accession of Lithuania to the European Union, has a very important context of societal changes, which provided the authors of the article with theoretical and practical access to an analysis of the causality and expression of the phenomenon of murder. The sociological approach reveals a socio-demographic portrait of the victim and the person who committed a murder, in the context of segments of the structural expression of the phenomenon of murder (age, gender, social status). The article presents statistical data from murders registered in the Official Register of Criminal Acts (ORCA). For the analysis of these data, the authors purposefully chose the positivist theories of external restraint and subculture of violence, which have practical access to reveal segments of the structural expression of the phenomenon of murder in a changing society. This presupposes access to the continuity of research on the resolution of the phenomenon of murder in the next decade (2015 to 2023). The research results presented in the article focus on the development of murder prevention strategies for all structural platforms of society, especially in the fields of education, law and social policy.