How an Academic Teacher Sees Personal Growth in the Age of Global Changes

The author presents her reflection on the issue of personal growth in times of globalization from the perspective of her own research results. An overview of the contemporary dynamics of globalization is given, with a particular focus on its driving mechanism and two most prominent aspects – the informational and the cultural ones. The effects of technological development are discussed from the standpoint offered by Herbert Marshall McLuhan’s taxonomy, particularly the effects of elimination and obsolescence.
The framework for the description is taken from the concept of information metabolism and its disorders leading to difficulties in the development of personal knowledge – resulting from both teaching and learning – conceptualized as one of the elements of personality responsible for the dynamics of development. Those disorders are viewed in the author’s own theoretical term of information stress and are linked – empirically as well – to individual correlates such as dysfunctional control.
While the author recognizes the threats to development and growth stemming from globalization, she vehemently opposes technological determinism as contradictory to the subjectivity of human being characteristic to psychological approaches. The efforts to harmonize the technological and cultural avenues of development are therefore seen as an opportunity for a new quality of personal growth, especially when attached to self-reflection.
 

Student School Engagement as a Multidimensional Construct

The article describes selected theoretical perspectives on student school engagement. School engagement is a meta-construct including a wide spectrum of mental attitudes such as: the sense of belonging to a school, acceptance of the goals of schooling, psychological investment in an effort directed toward learning, understanding, or mastering the knowledge, skills, or crafts that academic work is intended to promote, as well as emotional involvement with school, including the student’s motivation to learn. Specific dimensions of student engagement were described as cognitive, affective and behavioral. School disengagement is a predictor of risk behavior, delinquency, proactive aggression, substance abuse, school drop-out syndrome and school burnout.
 

Parenting Style and Feedback in Communication between Parents and Adolescents

The article presents the results of research related to feedback from parents with various parenting styles, divided according to Diana Baumrind’s conception into authoritative, authoritarian or permissive. The aim of the study was to determine what kind of positive and negative feedback is characteristic of each style. The study was conducted among adolescents, aged 16–19, N = 226. Both the parenting styles and feedback were studied from the adolescent’s perspective. The following methods were applied: Parental Authority Questionnaire (Buri, 1991) and our own method: Questionnaire of Feedback in Parent-Child Relations. The results show that the most significant correlations occurred between feedback and the authoritative style. The stronger the authoritative style of the parent was (both for mothers and fathers), the more often the adolescent experienced positive feedback (general, specific and trait-related) and constructive criticism from the parent, and the less often there was a lack of reaction from the parent. The authoritarian parenting style was connected with less effective communication, in which negative feedback predominated. There was no clear pattern between feedback and the permissive style.
 

Body Image in First-time Pregnant Women in Connection with Their Perceived Relationship with the Parent, the Partner and the Child

The aim of this study was to examine the relationship between the body image in first-time pregnant women and the perceived relationship with the parent, the partner and the child. David Krueger’s theory on the development of body self and Murray Bowen’s theory on family systems were the theoretical background of the research problem. The participants were 144 women in the third trimester of first pregnancy. The subjects were administered a documentation sheet, the Body Esteem Scale, Dresden Body Image Inventory, Questionnaire of Relationship, and a ‘Naked Person’ Drawing Test. The application of the statistical method of data clustering enabled to distinguish three groups of pregnant women, who differed in terms of their body image. These groups obtained various results concerning the differentiation of the self and the perceived relationship with the parents, the partner and the unborn child

Depression and Personal Integration – the post-Eriksonian Approach

The present article deals with the problem of accumulation of psychosocial resources which adults who currently undergo the depression episodes have at their disposal. Such resources as trust, autonomy, initiative, sense of industry, sense of identity, intimacy, generativity and ontic integrity are all considered as manifestations of personal integrity. The theoretical purpose of this article is to identify the resources which become weakened during an ongoing depression episode. Some hypotheses referring to intergroup differences have been formulated as far as the intensification of psychosocial resources is concerned. The research included 60 people, aged between 25 and 66, and within this group 30 subjects were undergoing the depression episode (F32.1, F32.2, F33.1, F33.2). In the research, the Questionnaire of Personal Integration by Zagórska, Migut and Jelińska (2014) was used. The Questionnaire in question is an operationalization of the authorial conception of personal integration falling within the ambit of post-Eriksonian approach. Ontic integrity (Cronbach’s α < .7) was excluded from the analysis. The presence of a depressive episode or the lack of it explained 50 percent of the dispersion of the analyzed structure of traits. The variables with the most considerable input to the differentiation of the result profiles in two groups were trust, as the axial role in the model, and generativity. The variables defining the similarities of the groups in question were the sense of identity and intimacy. The variables such as autonomy, initiative and sense of industry had little impact on differences between the groups. Defining the fields of individual restrictions and strengths might be helpful in the prophylaxis and therapy of depression.

The Children Loneliness Scale (SBS-C) – a Preliminary Report

The article focuses on the problem of loneliness among school children. In our approach this phenomenon is multi-faceted. The concept involves three aspects. The first one is the sense of loneliness as social non-acceptance, neglect and social exclusion. The second is emotional loneliness, which, in turn, means a negative assessment of oneself as a partner in relationships with people of special emotional significance. It is also associated with low mood and other not very intense negative emotions. Finally, the third one is existential loneliness, which involves a feeling of disorientation, uncertainty and helplessness in the face of a perceived chronically insufficient integration with the world. The tripartite concept of loneliness was tested during the construction of a Scale of Loneliness for school children (SBS-C) based on a previously developed Scale of Loneliness (SBS) for young people (Dołęga 2013b; students aged 12–19 years). The adaptation of SBS to children was carried out in several stages involving teachers and a group of approx. 120 students of elementary school. Factor analyzes essentially confirmed the correctness of the theoretical model of the three factors of loneliness in children aged 8–13 years. The psychometric properties of SBS-C were also confirmed. The coefficients of internal consistency proved to be satisfactory: Cronbach’s alpha = .92 for the whole scale (SBS-C_TOTAL) and from .84 to .87 for the three subscales: social (SBS_SP), emotional (SBS_SE) and existential loneliness (SBS_SEG). The article discusses some of the issues concerning the construct validity, the payload, and the diagnostic criterion. A further research direction is set out.