PSYCHOLOGICAL COUNSELLING IN MUSIC SCHOOLS IN POLAND

The development of psychological counselling for students of music schools in Poland is presented. The author's counselling experience has shown that crises in music school students can be analyzed in terms of values, technology and socio‐emotional factors. An important feature of psychological diagnosis is the analysis of musical achievement motivation (short, medium and longterm).     

Developmental patterns of school students' motivational‐ and cognitive‐metacognitive competencies

This study examined the metacognitive developmental patterns of Hong Kong school students. Students rated their own metacognitive competencies by responding to an inventory of six motivational‐ and cognitive‐metacognitive subscales. Results showed that students' metacognitive competencies decreased with age—from primary 4 (age 9) to secondary 5 (age 17)—with a sharp decline noticeable at the primary/secondary school transition. Age had a more powerful effect than gender on students' perception of their metacognitive competencies. This decreasing pattern of Hong Kong students' metacognitive competencies is contrary to the developmental trends found in Western countries. However, the comparatively high academic performance of Hong Kong students also suggests some different recommendations about student learning.     

Nationalism and globalism in the junior secondary history curricula of Hong Kong and Shanghai

Facing the trend and pressure of globalisation, the history curricula of Hong Kong and Shanghai have been undergoing reforms in order to better equip the youth for coping with rapid contextual changes. At the same time, there have been attempts to reposition nationalism in the changing contexts. This paper aims to compare and contrast how the forces of nationalism and globalisation affect, and are re‐presented in, the contents of the junior secondary history curricula of the two cities, with a view to exploring the convergent and divergent trends of development in the two systems (capitalist and socialist) within one country. It is expected that the findings will shed light on the continuities and changes in the junior secondary history curricula of the two cities, and explore possible alternatives for the improvement of history education.     

Distance Teaching Universities as Promoters of Social Equality and Social Accountability

The autonomous fully‐fledged distance teaching universities (DTU's) that have been established since the early 1970 ‘s in Europe and in other parts of the world, and have been shaped to a great extent on the leading model of the Open University of the United Kingdom, were by their very nature designed to promote social equality and to enhance social accountability in higher education. The major goals on their agendas were to widen access to higher education, to reach out to potential students wherever and whenever they wished to study, to provide high quality learning experiences, to reduce the costs of university education, and to be responsive both to societal demands and to market trends. This article briefly describes the main policies, mechanisms, and measures that the DTU's adopted in order to achieve their goals and concludes with the implications and lessons that might be derived from the experience of the DTU's as to the planning and policy formation of higher education systems in the future.