The article is a reflection on selected trends that can significantly affect the education and functioning of a child in a family and school environment. The presented examples of alternative ideas and challenges that modern families are coping with are: high-tech parenting vs low-tech parenting, fast life and slow life, as well as elements of global and local ideas. These phenomena are perceived as opposed to each other at two extremes of the axis – contradictory or complementary. In addition, the author mentions aspects of changes in the learning and teaching process caused by the use of the media and new technologies.

In the work, the spaces of functioning of a contemporary child are characterised, and among them the educational and media space. Next, the interactions of a child with digital media – treated as the culture tools – are presented; finally, the effective use of the interactive media in early school education is described.

The article presents the results of a study conducted by the author in 2017 on the development of the “touch screen generation” based on the example of a mother’s description of a two-year-old child’s activity. The qualitative study shows that in family upbringing, a smartphone is the most widely used medium by the two-year-old child. Although very appealing and attractive to the child, this medium is not excessively used in the child’s play. In addition, the results of the research show that the smartphone may perform an educational function in the upbringing of a two-year-old child and that it is a medium the use of which quickly becomes a habit for a child.

Parents are active users of electronic media. The problem emerges when they do so at the expense of the time spent with the child. They not only give their children smartphones or tablets to play with, but also are happy and praise the children when they perform certain actions properly on the device. When deciding to provide their children with electronic media, the parents should control the time of use as well as all the actions performed on and with such devices. Nevertheless, problems arising from the use of these media by children should not be the basis for a ban to use them, as they can effectively support, for example, the cognitive and social development of children. The study contains results of observations of adult guardians who use mobile devices during childcare on the playground.

In the last two decades, we have seen dramatic changes in the concept of fame – from a worldwide star, through a celebrity understood as person who is famous for being famous, to the phenomenon of a microcelebrity. Therefore, the aim of this article is to outline changes in celebrity culture oc casioned by the dissemination of digital media platforms such YouTube. This video-sharing platform has profoundly changed the celebrity construction as it has disturbed the balance between the ordinary and the private, and thus contributed to the emergence of many microcelebrities. In this paper, the phenomenon of sharing videos on YouTube in which the characters are children is also highlighted.

Another reform of education forces all the education system employees to learn new ministerial regulations, a new syllabus, changes in terms of the education content, and new books. However, it is worth to consider whether these changes are actual or apparent ones, how to educate teachers of the youngest pupils in the face of continuous reforms in higher education, and from which perspectives to show the priorities of education. This paper is an attempt to both reference the academic knowledge on the functioning of the human brain to the ways of working proposed during classes with the youngest pupils within the framework of the Polish philology education, and prepare teachers to teach in the school of tomorrow. These reflections will be supported by the postulates of neurodidactics, which indicate the need of different learning by children called digital indigenes or digital immigrants, and the theory of five minds by Howard Gardner.

The aim of the paper is to present preschool children’s aural skills. The skills’ scope and difficulty in a certain range of a child’s aural perception gives a reader the knowledge about a child’s ability to learn in particular parts of his or her life. The development of aural perception is the foundation for preschool children to learn how to speak and prepare to read and write; it also provides the right emotional development. Well-developed aural perception makes it possible for a child to fully participate in social life. The article presents a part of broader research, conducted by the author among preschool children.

The article is devoted to the study of mathematical education and school readiness of children at the beginning of the first grade. The conducted research focused on searching for dependence between school readiness of a child at the beginning of school learning and their mathematical abilities after the first grade. The study encompassed first-grade students. During the studies the authors undertook an in-depth analysis of documentation concerning the diagnosis of school readiness and conducted a test of mathematical abilities at the end of the first grade. All assumptions made in the article have been set in a suitable theoretical framework which introduces the research problem and enables its interpretation in respect of the present situation of the educational system.

Learning mathematics focuses on task solving. Biggest didactic merits are achieved through solving exercises of a problem type. They develop mathematical thinking, arouse cognitive curiosity, and increase students’ independence. Teaching mathematics with the use of such tasks is an inherent part in the current of the constructivist perspective of education. In the article, the author presents the opinions of the first educational stage teachers on the topic of problem tasks. Moreover, the information concerning the mathematical task solving has been collected, with a special emphasis put on the tasks of the problematic type.

The article discusses the issue of social competences from the perspective of a student at early school age. In this case, the author made use of a questionnaire to gauge and determine the level of the sense of social competences of students. The author used a percentage perspective of each of the questions, which allowed for a general look onto the level of the sense of social competences in the surveyed group of third-graders and which helped determine the frequency of selecting particular answers. Finally, the gathered data was thoroughly analysed on account of the number of points scored after summing up each student’s points.

One of the methods of cognising a broader natural environment, but also the method of developing other competencies (social, organisational, or cultural ones), is the outdoor education camp. During a longer stay, in a structured manner, children have the opportunity to learn the beauty of even the remotest parts of the country, the diversified landscapes, the history of the place, the characteristic ecosystems with their plants and animals, the architecture, the folklore and folk art of other regions of Poland, as well as to develop numerous different skills such as: cooperating and interacting with others, making use of different ways of studying, developing outdoor orientation, behaving properly in different places and situations, coping with emotions, being self-reliant, etc. This study presents the analysis of possibilities of making use of a stay of younger students at an outdoor education camp.

This article refers to the issue of the crisis in the human–nature relationship. Referring to the findings of other authors’ research, it reveals the dangers of alienating the human being from the environment, as well as the positive results of the human being’s contact with nature. It proves there is a need for implementing environmental training as early as in preschool education. The article puts forward the idea and functioning of forest kindergartens in Poland. The empirical material which inspired the reflections presented therein has been gathered during a study visit to “Puszczyk” forest kindergarten in Białystok. The visit included a participant observation and some interviews with a teacher who works with children. In the article, there is also a reference to the survey on the respondents’ opinion on the idea of forest kindergartens.

An article examines early childhood music education viewed through the lens of the transformation the pedagogical field is currently undergoing. Our approach addresses both positive and negative aspects of the observed changes, as well as their potential future outcomes. The investigation principally explores children in preschool and primary grade stages, and the role of the childhood education professional both in providing music instruction and in utilising music as a tool for facilitating other aspects of education. The chief objective of early childhood music education, however, remains aimed at fostering the child’s joy in music making.

This article endeavours to answer the question of how early school education pupils perceive teachers. The choice of such a young research group is by no means random, as children who start their studies enter a new environment for themselves, make new relationships, and find a new role model in the teacher. The theoretical part of the text deals with the issues relating to the teacher, including his or her personality, the functions he or she performs, as well as the social perception of the children in the younger school age and the questions of authority, including its definition and division. The practical part is an analysis of the survey results based on the survey technique and conducted in grades 1–3 of primary schools in the town and commune of Czerwionka- Leszczyny in the school year 2016/2017.

The aim of the present research is to identify the role of parental attitudes in creating ways of pursuing professional careers by young people. The family is particularly important for career decisions made by children growing up in it. We tested the relationship between one’s parental perception of mothers and fathers, and one’s declared readiness to begin international careers in the following dimensions: acceptance of costs, readiness for effort, determination to achieve goals, and fascination with challenges. The results showed different roles of mothers and fathers in relation to the declared openness to international career among young men and women.

Average lifespans in developed countries have been increasing steadily. As a result, the population of the elderly has been growing, which leads to social and cultural changes. The subject of this qualitative and quantitative questionnaire-based research is the image of old age and the elderly among young adults. The aim of the paper is to establish the boundaries, nature, and essence of old age from the perspective of young people. The research results lead to interesting conclusions: the image of old age is negative, whereas the image of the elderly is positive. This observation may prove a fruitful inspiration for local initiatives, as well as media message creators who are responsible for shaping the image of old age, especially among young people.

Complexity of the phenomenon of sexuality causes difficulties in performing unambiguous operationalisation of this concept both in the social and in the natural sciences. When discussing sexuality, it must be borne in mind that gender is a border category – it touches both private and public spheres, and is present at biological and socio-cultural levels simultaneously. The article is focused on the nature and importance of sexuality analysed in the context of contemporary educational reality. This attempt is to make sexuality “a map of varieties of ways of thinking about education” (J. Rutkowiak), that is, to treat it as a construct, through the prism of which the problems of education, upbringing, and socialisation can be stated, discussed, and solved (Z. Kwieciński). Such a procedure will allow for distinguishing new areas of analysis related to the pedagogy of the body and sexual pedagogy. Pedagogical considerations related to sexuality will be embedded in the personalistic concept of man, in particular in the context of the holistic understanding of human nature.