The article addresses the issue of the concept of "human potential", which is understood in this monographic part of the journal as an internal possibility, resource, probable choice, eventuality, and also in the context of chance, prospects for future success. Recently, there has been a huge social demand for the use of human potential, especially in the area of abilities and talents possessed by individuals, which is closely related to technological progress, urbanization, internetization and modernization processes. Looking at human development through the prism of using, realizing and updating personal potentials of a person in order to strengthen them in their own existence, the authors in the articles included here write about various potentials: cognitive, emotional, social and creative.

The article deals with various concepts of creativity levels (poles), and attempts at illustrating different quality of expressions of human creativity in order to prevent dichotomous and simplified perception of this phenomenon (everyday creativity – eminent creativity By the way of synthesis, the author presents the reader with several less known concepts of creativity levels by I. Taylor, A. Cropley, J. Kaufman, R. Beghetto, and M. Karwowski. Afterwards the author proceeds to present his own theoretical model of the Five Stages of Creativity. Aside form that, Szmidt points to the role of a pedagogue who assists students in various stages of creative processes. Finally, the author puts strong emphasis on the potential expressions of children and teenagers creativity in terms of diagnosis and support, rather than only on the easily seen marks of their creativity (process-oriented rather than product-oriented).

The purpose of this paper is to review the literature in regard to the theoretical status and predictive validity of the creative potential, towards creative achievements. We discuss the results of classic and modern studies which allow us to conclude which components of creative potential are crucial for understanding of the effectiveness and success in various domains of creativity. Particular attention is paid to the construct of creative self-efficacy, which we consider to be important, and so far underestimated element of creative potential, as well as creative personal identity: treated as a moderator of the relationship between potential and achievement.

The article presents the author’s strategy of working with a child based on bodily activities, used for activating child’s potential creativity. The text introduces theoretical remarks along with a pilot empirical studies that were conducted among pre-school children.

According to Kazimierz Dąbrowski’s theory of positive disintegration, ability is related to the inborn developmental potential of an individual. Strong developmental potential includes extraordinary intelligence, specific abilities and five forms of overexcitability (OE): sensual, psychomotor, imaginational, intellectual and emotional. Overexcitability, intensity and emotionality of reactions and experiences which are typical for highly gifted individuals are considered by researchers as good indicators of abilities. Studies of gifted individuals conducted by means of OEQ and OEQ-II have shown differentiated profiles of overexcitabilities with one dominant specific form of OE, depending on the type of ability. Moreover, the results of studies between sexes have indicated the dominance of sensual and emotional OEs among females, and psychomotor and intellectual OEs among males.

The article is dedicated to support the development of gifted students according to the contemporary psychological concepts of wisdom (by P. Baltes, R. Sternberg and D. Kramer). The main aim is to discuss the assumptions of these theories in relation to the specific psychosocial functioning of gifted persons, and the unsatisfactory state of civil society in Poland. It will be possible based on this analysis to design innovative forms of working with gifted persons in the school environment. The inclusion of training of wisdom to gifted education system is not only used their integral development of personality (balance between analytical, practical and creative intelligence), but also will help to adopt a commitment to build the common good.

The subject of analysis are selected activities aimed at identification and development the students talents in generally accessible schools in Bulgaria. In particular – changes that are currently taking place under the impact of new legal regulations on the organization of extra-curricular activities and subject olympiads and innovation in preparing teachers to work with gifted and talented students. The objective of the article is analysis the issues of the development of human potential from the perspective of selected educational actions. International comparative studies show that, in the school systems of different countries, similar sets of methods, forms of work and care for talented students are used. The differences are the result of cultural dissimilarities, the dominant ideologies of education, educational traditions, capabilities of financing the activities, competencies and motivations of teachers.

The current paper addresses the issues concerned with the process of developing creative attitudes among children, from the perspective of the role and objectives of school education. The current author examines intensity of creative attitudes, and investigates their evolution in the course of school education (specifically, the first 3 years of early school teaching). Creative attitudes are commonly understood to mean a preference for the action plans and strategies which are aimed at coping with difficult situations requiring creative approach. They include divergent thinking, creative motivation, elaboration strategy, attitude toward failure, as well as strategies aimed at coping with intrapersonal and interpersonal issues. The data gathered as a result of this research point to a high level of creative attitudes among early school children with regard to all their characteristics, and indicate that the attitudes evolve positively in the course of school education, which seems to be the consequence of children’s natural development or educational activities. It is possible, however, to draw a conclusion that schools do not hinder children’s natural development. What is more, school education is likely to facilitate a developmental process, which is has been confirmed by the results of the present study.

The object of presented analysis is identity treated as an area of social agents’ emancipation and transgression. There are presented issues related to the chosen aspects of identity, emancipation and life politics. There is also indicated the specificity of identities’ status in the context of modern and postmodern matrix of disciplinary power.

Among the personality traits we can distinguish those that bring us closer to other people, and thus enable us to forge close and stable relationships, as well as those that favor self-centered and antisocial behavior. The notion of the dark triad is a collective term to denote three socially aversive and undesirable traits that here are read as an expression of the “normal” variability within personality – that is, Machiavellianism, subclinical narcissism and subclinical psychopathy. People manifesting high intensiveness of such traits lack empathy and treat others in an objective way, they tend to be heartless and self-centered, as well as tend to make use of interpersonal manipulation and exploitation of their partners. Research conducted on the dark triad bring a very interesting comparative results that allow for the analysis of similarities and differences in behavior of people who carry particular dark traits, and thus use three similar yet disparate at the same time interpersonal strategies.

The text develops interdisciplinary framework for conceptualizing emotional potential in education, drawing particularly on capabilities approach, cultural capital and on the other hand interaction theory of abilities or pedagogy of emotions. The practical case for consideration is that of widening participation of emotional potential in educational processes and pedagogical implications of developing emotional potential in education. Finally the argument is made for ‚bivalent’ thinking which integrates individual and social development and agents in social structures.

The article is the outcome of the analysis of the narratives provided by teachers/leaders of an educational project “School that supports skills” by way of free-form interviews. Thanks to such interviews the interlocutors were able to describe reality from their own perspective as they experienced it. The image of self-efficacy in developing skills and talents became exposed during discussions with the teachers. The results of the interviews were ordered according to the following criteria: one’s view of professional roles in the context of discussions about self-efficacy as well as areas of professional activity associated with self-efficacy.

The primary objective of this paper is to diagnose two types of nonconformists: constructive and apparent in three generations of Poles. Research shows that among non-conformists you can often find in generation 70 and 90 non-conformists constructive than apparent. In generation 80 can meet more often among men non-conformist constructive than women.

The article presents a thesis that only combining processes of formal education with informal and non-formal one is considered as an impulse to a full development of one’s potential. It has been posited that participation in the Erasmus programme, defined in the literature as “catalyst development”, is a unique opportunity for individually constructed combination of all three types of educational processes. The phenomenon of so common students’ mobility is basically regarded as the field for sociological and economical analyses, to the lesser extent it of interest of empirical psychology. The research has been undertaken in order to search for personality characteristics of the Erasmus programme participants. The obtained results show that students using the “catalyst development” have higher level of openness to experience and stronger volitional control (in terms of realization) while compared with non-mobile students.

The article aims at a comparative analysis of the assumptions of the National Qualifications Framework (NQF) for lifelong learning – spiral dynamics forwarded by C. Graves, and complimented by L. Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development (ZPD). The content of NQF has been analyzed in terms of social competences in relation to the descriptions of levels in development according to the spiral dynamics. The analyses show that NQF does not incorporate the rules of human development support to a satisfactory extent. Moreover, in NQF assumptions, an atomistic approach seems to preponderate the relational one. This may prove that according to the NQF, which barely entails post-conventional competences, education becomes inadequate to post-conventional Europe.

The author makes an attempt to prove that manifestation of a sense of the communal identity does not pose a threat to a nation-state. Conversely, it may enrich the nation-state provided that the real world becomes disenchanted, stereotypes and superstitions are abandoned, which is part of the translators of cultures task where pedagogues do belong to. The act of imposing identity with
no focus on the fact that one can become a carrier of multitude identities that coexist with one another on different levels, is a delimitation of opportunities and the profoundness of the potential whether of individuals or groups. Furthermore, it is a form of colonization that may lead to confrontation based on the dichotomy “we” – “they.”

In Poland, disputes on violence against children have not been made distinct until the political transformation in the 1990s. Over the years, Poland as a country participating in international structures has accepted liability for taking adequate action in terms of child protection against violence. Legislative reforms have been gradually introduced and regulations and formal solutions aiming at improvement of the realization of children’s rights (a right to protect against violence as stated in the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and sequential documents) have been effected. In Poland, on the one hand, there is a formal basis for protection of children from violence, including an absolute ban on corporal punishment in education and in family (since 2010), on the other hand, despite formal regulations there is high tolerance to violence against children, which is commonly regarded as part of the upbringing process. Relatively high indices of experiencing violence by children have been recorded. The article presents two faces of the phenomenon of violence against children in Poland, that is, formal regulations, as well as the use of various indices and research – the social reality of its occurrence.

The article presents the results of the partial research devoted to parental strategies to recognise and develop children’s interests and giftedness in the preschool age. It is assumed that mothers are those who primarily resolve and take actions relevant to children’s education as well as recognition and fulfilling their needs of perception. Consequently, the answer for the question “In what way does mothers’ education differentiate the ways of recognition and development of children’s interests and giftedness in the families?” is searched for in the article.

This thesis constitutes an attempt at a synthesis of issues concerning the presence of reflexivity in the process of adult development (individuation) from an interdisciplinary perspective (philosophy, psychology, pedagogy). I am interested in the phenomenon of reflexivity as a stimulus of individuation, i.e. the process of personal development that can be treated as learning through life, particularly in adulthood. The purpose of this article is to analyze the importance of reflection as well as its antinomy “non-reflexivity”, which is treated in this work as a positive phenomenon from a developmental perspective, as well as the relations in the field of reflections and emotions, in the subject and object order of the process of personal development.

The author outlines the concept of planetary (global) education in the context of current social and political situation. Planetary education might be set in the hierarchy of complementary categories: regional education – intercultural education – planetary education. Experience of the European Union convinces that building a wider community based on cooperation and agreement is possible. The article presents philosophical and cultural rudiments of planetary education, as well as potential favourable factors for creating global education: development of modern technologies and English as a global language. The author describes stubs of “pattern of postnational culture” and points out the barriers of planetary education.