The main topic of issue 1 of “Chowanna” from 2009 is special education, where the starting point is the scope and content of the concept of “pedagogical therapy” defined by Otto Lipkowski. According to him, pedagogical therapy can include “all pedagogical activities aimed at eliminating or limiting developmental disorders and enabling or facilitating the most beneficial development of individuals with deviations from the norm”.

The text is an attempt of synthetic grasp of problems connected with pedagogical therapy. The reflection leads from presenting the theoretical background of pedagogical therapy, through the analysis of its functions and tasks, illustration of methods and forms used to help a child with partial disorders, to the reconstruction of dependences and conditions of therapeutic process in contemporary realities of institutional upbringing.

In work with children with special educational needs a teacher's attitude should give support and motivate pupils to struggle on. Equally important are empathy and understanding of a child. Such an environment creates favourable conditions for a pupil's development in different areas.

The aim of the article is to show the relation between text interpretation and student's personality formation in the contemporary school. The choice of the text material (fairy-tale) was determined by characteristics of the kind, which carries universal values. The sample exercises presented in the article are meant to form desirable values such as: tolerance, sensitivity etc. Above all, they are meant to open students to a dialogue, which is the base of literary education during Polish language course.

Aggressive behavior by children and adolescents continues to be a serious and increasing problem in our schools, on the streets, and in our communities Aggression Replacement Training (ART) is a multimodal psychoeducational intervention designed to alter the behavior of chronically aggressive adolescents and young children.

Boredom as an emotional state is hardly often described in pedagogical or psychological literature. Nevertheless, it is the undesirable condition and every so often even dangerous for a boring person. The article consists of reflections on and proposals of boredom prevention through the use of situational humour as a therapy factor.

Animal Therapy is a wonderful mode of bringing pets and people together for healthy interaction. Animal therapy consists of taking docile and trained animals to hospices, medical centers, children's hospitals, retirement centers, and even homebound patients to encourage memories and social interaction.

Chromotherapy or its elements can be held during nursery classes, at school, during therapeutic and rehabilitation classes in hospital, sanatorium, old people's home. Its main aim is to support and enhance health, it can be carried out individually or in groups. The article contains the description of the method along with the interpretation of the meanings of colours most often used in chromotherapy.

The article deals with the problem of including the wishes and expectation of intellectually disabled people in the programs supporting their independence achievement. An observation and analysis of documents was used to present the outcomes of three conferences conducted in the workshops and group homes for youth and adults with intellectual disability. The article concludes that a conference is a useful and efficient form of independence training for youth and adults. It gives also an opportunity to exchange information among professionals, parents, disable people and observers. The author discussed issues regarding the need of educational and rehabilitation process improvement.

The purpose of the article is the analysis of selected aspects playing a vital role in the process of coping with difficult situations, as well as in the process of shaping individual perception of quality of life (QOL): dispositional optimism, social suport and sense of coherence. The test instrument was multiple regression analysis which, based on the study of people with physical and sensory disabilities, identified significant correlations between those variables and QOL. The analysis demonstrates, among others, that the surveyed youth exhibits strong pessimistic tendencies. The analysis confirms also the differentiating significance of pessimism to the subjective perception of social support. It does not, however, validate the importance of this variable in QOL perception and sense of coherence of the disabled youth.

This study resulting from a threat to the feeling of safety subjectively felt by the citizens, constitutes an attempt to identify key trends of the phenomenon of aggressive behaviour of children and teenagers during a system transformation in Poland after the year 1989. They include among others: dynamics of an increase in brutal behaviours of the minors, decrease in the age of crime initiation, committing crimes with a special cruelty, increase in brutal behaviours towards adults, including teachers, exclusion of the adults' partnership and influence on the children's and teenagers' attitude, increase in aggression and violent tendencies among girls, popularization of the phenomenon of teenage and criminal prostitution, paying by the minors, the weakest social group, in a specific way the costs of necessary system transformations. The author of this publication (a former form master, pedagogue and a director of rehabilitation unit), on the basis of gained experience supported by an analysis of literature, presents motives of crimes committed by the minors, a new specification of modern criminality of the Polish teenagers, selected symptoms, forms and examples of reevaluation of the minors' attitudes and behaviours. He draws attention to negative general-civilization and sociocultural sources of an increase in the brutalization of the minors' behaviours as defectively adapted potential wards of corrective educational and reformatory-rehabilitation institutions.

Necessity of children's psychic need cognition seems to be one of the basic conditions for correct process of the disabled children's integration with school community. Disabled child often feels uncomfortable at school He or she may be plagued by feeling of inferiority and alienation. There is also lack of acceptation and liking for disabled child in the classroom. Doubtless, disabled learner feels hidden desire to contact with other classmates. In order to take care about their correct development and functioning in society, we should observe this special need of contact that those children with different dysfunctions have. The matter is not the same for different children. Disabled learners with intellectual norm desire contact with other children differently than learners with intellectual deficit and learners with emotional disorders. Some of them contact easily and willingly with healthy children but the others, for many reasons, limit this contact with healthy children and they choose their disabled peers.

The literature of the subject and the research conducted by the author prove that a ADHD child may have problems with adapting to a peer group and all the same may have learning difficulties. The article contains the detailed description of the conducted research and the indications concerning working out the suitable strategies for work with a child and the rest of a class team in order to improve social behaviour of a schoolchild with ADHD and a general social condition in a school class.

The text is a report on research on the quality of speech therapy offered, within the framework of Polish educational system and medical section, to children with speech disorders. Brief introduction illustrates contemporary system of speech therapy in Poland, successive parts comprise a presentation of evaluations of examined teachers, speech therapists and parents, regarding the quality and range of speech therapy. Within the last part conclusions have been drawn form the research and an attempt to delineate necessary changes has been made.

The text constitutes a report from the research on the classes of the systems of values regulating a voluntarist help.

The article aims at comparing the systems of education of special pedagogy in higher schools. The comparison that was made involved the curricula al within the scope of special pedagogy in the countries in question from the point of view of the elements of the contents in teaching plans. Also the differences between an organization and the profile of an education system were pointed out — the system, nature and type of studies in a selected Polish and Slovak higher education institution.

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