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Aims. In view of the diminishing demand for the humanities in Israel, we explore the profiles of current students of humanities in one high school and one university in Israel. Method. This study reviews the changes in the demand for and status of academic humanities studies and maps the profile of students of the humanities, both high school students and high school graduates over the age of 18. In total, 136 students (73 males and 60 females) participated in this survey-based study Results and Conclusion. The results show a positive and significant correlation between attitudes regarding the humanities and motivation to study these subjects in the future. In addition, a positive correlation was found between values of honesty, helping others, and contribution to the country, and motivation to study the humanities. Contribution. The findings of this study contribute by daring to challenge the perception concerning the insignificant status of the humanities in our day and age – aimed at eliminating them and rendering them irrelevant.

Aim. The aim of the paper is to reflect on role of urban wastelands in context of legal and social construction of urban public spaces. This reflexion is based on analysis of what ecological values are connected with urban wastelands and how those values manifested during pandemic. Methods. Paper is based on observatory research put in the context of theoretical reflection on urban research, especially applying to ecology and urban management. Results. Spontaneous social animation of urban wastelands related to restrictions placed upon using green areas by Polish government in order to stop the spread of COVID-19 in April 2020 revealed potential of such places to trace regulations introduced in public spaces resulting in transfer of some social practices to less ordered and supervised areas. Conclusions. Nowadays urban wastelands gained appreciation as areas of specific high biodiversity and ecological value. However they can also be useful as a measure of social practices excluded from planned and highly organised urban places. They can be used to trace them and rethink legal and social circumstances that led to that exclusion.

Aim. The aim of this work is to present a qualitative analysis of the creative educational materials prepared by preservice teachers in the context of an educational experience around a museum exhibition about Science and Literature, described in a previous work (Authors, 2020). The responses to a final questionnaire about interdisciplinarity, integration of Sciences and Arts or the use of museums for children’s education are also analysed. Methods. The participants were 121 alumni of two different subjects “Natural Sciences for teachers” and “Literary training for teachers” at a Spanish university. Preservice teachers had to select an item of the museum exhibition and, as a group, prepare a catalogue intended for children, where they had to write a short text related to the object and activities for children in an exercise of didactic transposition. The students generated teaching materials with a high component of creativity and a multimodal approach, with a mixture of linguistic and non-linguistic codes. The qualitative analysis of these creative teaching materials was carried out with Atlas.ti v8. To assess the experience a questionnaire about different aspects of the proposal was completed by the students at the end of the semester. Results and conclusion. The analysis of the teaching materials demonstrates differences between the alumni attending both subjects in the type of items selected, the literary genre of the short text and the prepared activities. The responses to the final questionnaire give us an insight on the reasons for the item selection and show how most of the students considered the experience as very interesting and formative. We can conclude that the educational experience here described served as an exercise to internalise the benefits of this method and, at the same time, adapt it for their future students in Primary Education.

Aim. Research to date acknowledges the learning, instructional and assessment advantages of self-assessment used in different fields of study in higher education contexts, yet little known research has focused on its use for learning and raising learner awareness while studying English for Specific Purposes (ESP). To this end, the present small-scale study examines the use of self-assessment of philology students’ ESP oral performance at a university in Lithuania. Method. The data for this research was collected from undergraduate students’ written reports on their project presentations on the chosen ESP topics. To analyse the data, qualitative methodology of inductive content analysis was used. Results. The study resulted in the identification of five major dimensions covering problem areas in the students’ ESP oral performance. The findings indicate that self-assessment enabled the students not only to identify some gaps and difficulties in their ESP oral performance that call for action but also to establish the reasons which caused them, foresee how the gaps can be closed or the difficulties coped with. Furthermore, it allowed the students to make decisions that reached far beyond the self-assessment task. The results also demonstrate that self-assessment raised the students’ awareness of themselves as learners by giving them direction on how to perform better in the future. Conclusion. Self-assessment, as used in the present research, proves to be a valuable tool both for the students of ESP and their teachers as it reveals areas in the students’ performance that call for improvement, which enables ESP teachers to support their students to achieve better results in the future.

Aim/Thesis. In this inquiry, the author examines the 12th chapter of the 2nd letter of Paul to the Corinthians in a hermeneutical way, highlighting its relevance for a Christian's spiritual autobiography and emphasizing the influence it has had on the later development of the genre. Concept/Methods. Using patristic exegesis (like that of Saint Chrysostom)t and also that of more recent authors dedicated to this theme, he tries not only to present and explain the event, but also to offer new interpretive keys for reading it. Results and conclusion. The approach focuses on keywords and phrases like "the rapture", "glimpse" or "thorn in the flesh" and it tries to presents Paul's understanding of the link between the spiritual experience of encountering God and the suffering that follows it, as a useful means of humbling a person. The research also highlights some important examples that show how the Apostle influenced the style and the way of thinking of later authors like Saint Augustine or Saint Silouan from Mount Athos. Originality/Cognitive value. The relevance of showing why Saint Paul's second letter to Corinthians (12, 2-) represents the beginning of the spiritual autobiography in the Christian space is a very big one due to the fact it can helps the reader to have a deeper understanding of latter spiritual autobiographies like the one of Saint Siluan, father John of Kronstadt, Teresa of Calcutta or Maria Faustina Kowalska.

Aim: The paper aims at highlighting philosophical roots of the relation issue between nature and education in the process of socialization. Method: For the purpose of the research critical philosophical analysis and comparison of Thomas Hobbes’ and Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s texts has been used. Concept: The first part of the paper clarifies the concept of nature and explains changes in understanding of this concept thorough the history of philosophy, with the special emphasis on transformation that happened in transition from medieval to modern period. Since both Hobbes and Rousseau are representatives of modern philosophy, the second section of the paper shows how modern concept of nature manifests in the works of the two philosophers and compares, in a more detailed way, their understanding of human nature or natural state of mankind, focusing on comparison of their concepts of human natural unsociability. The third part examines more closely the role of education in transformation of human individuals into social beings. Results: Research shows that, for the two philosophers, the role of education in the process of socialization consists in denaturalization of human beings. Conclusion: Hobbes’ and Rousseau’s idea of the relation of education and nature in the process of socialization constitutes a basis for justification of manipulations of education for political ends. To avoid such manipulations and find the adequate concept of education, paper suggests to search for the adequate concept of human nature first. Key Words: education, human nature, sociability, Thomas Hobbes, Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

Aim. The main goal of the article is to generalise and describe the aspects revealed during the ethnographic research conducted in 2018 that are related to the gender of Roma girls, as representatives of ethnic group, which have influence on the process of education in the context of school community. Concept. During the ethnographic research conducted in one of the schools in Lithuania in 2018, the fragments of Romani customary law were revealed, which are directly related to the female gender and show how belonging to a certain gender can have impact on the process of education at school. The Roma students were observed in their daily learning and communication environment, i.e. at school. The ethnographic research helped to reveal the ways a Roma school student thinks (interview method) and behaves (observation method) in a basic school. The present research was based on anthropological methodology (Okely, 2002; Bhopal & Myers, 2008; Durst, 2010) and mainly focused on one case-study. Conclusion. The Roma girls in the research acknowledged that life of Roma men is easier and that a heavy burden is placed on the shoulders of girls, what often hinders their successful learning. The burden mentioned by the Roma girls is related to responsibilities in housework and family. She is accompanied by the pressure of community to start a family early: to get married and to give birth to children and, thus, to emphasise and confirm own belonging to this ethnic group and continuation of traditions. The situation is exacerbated by the stereotypes in society and the Roma community, which in most cases are ruthless towards Roma girls and women. Cognitive value. The patriarchate, as the basis of Romani culture, and the unwritten customary law accompanying it frequently become a source of ambiguity. The Roma people, as an ethic group, draw a very distinct boundary between the understanding of "we" and "they", i.e. "the Roma people" and "gadje". Being a non-Roma researcher, i.e. gadje, one faces a difficult challenge - not to make mistakes interpreting various aspects of Romani culture, especially such sensitive ones as gender, gender roles and inequality. However, it becomes easier evaluating indisputable facts: the Romani customary law has influence on the process of their children's education. Roma children (girls in particular) still abandon the system of education too early (from our, gadje, perspective). EU documents (European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights [FRA], 2014) indicate that more Roma girls than boys indicate the fact of marriage or pregnancy to be the reason for early school leaving. The academic discourse, feminist anthropology allows for particularly critical evaluation of processes.

Aim. The aim of this paper is to present and exemplify a number of basic uses of corpus-based text analysis tools that can supplement and provide additional insight for an otherwise qualitative analysis of a text. I attempt to show that nowadays certain corpus tools are easily accessible to any researcher and can be used to enrich the results of studies concerned with texts. Methods. This paper comprises the basics of corpus building, the main types of data that can be drawn from a simple corpus and a detailed description of four methods that can aid text analysis: wordlists, concordances, dispersion plots and keywords. Each of those four methods is thoroughly described, including a number of examples of its applications and indicates its possible limitations. Results. The examples provided suggest that even performing a very simple corpus analysis of a text might unveil certain trends and phenomena not noticeable through the classic qualitative text analysis methods (e.g. close reading). The paper argues that corpus research can hence work as an extension of a quantitative analysis (or be its starting point) by examining themes and keywords present in a given text and enrich the results of a qualitative study with a fresh perspective. Finally, the paper claims that basic corpus analysis can, in fact, be successfully employed by researchers who do not have any prior experience with statistics or corpora.

This article relates to the process of adaptation of Czech citizens to Turkish culture. The article explores the perception of Turkish culture by Czech citizens, problems they encounter in the Turkish society and the ways of their adjustment to the host culture. The empirical research on 10 Czech citizens was conducted using the method of semi-structured interviews. The article addresses the most important issues connected with the process of cultural adaptation.