Creative teaching of creativity teachers: Polish perspective

The article presents basic information on the strand of psycho-pedagogy of creativity—a unique perspective on creativity teachers’ education in Europe and the world. Psycho-pedagogy of creativity is a major in pedagogy studies, run in Poland, at the Warsaw Academy of Special Education. Our aim is to educate specialists who are open, sensitive and well prepared content-wise in identifying and developing children's and youth's creative potential. We also aim at introducing the studies that function in a wider social context, and presenting the situation of Poland after systemic transformation. It seems that information of this type may prove interesting to researchers and practitioners that deal with education of creativity.     

On mathematics teaching for future engineers—in the digital era

Current changes, especially the wide application of information technology, in all fields of our life, mean that mathematical knowledge becomes necessary in almost every domain. It implies new expectations for mathematical education. An urgent need of a new mathematical literacy for all—also a new mathematical literacy for engineers—is evident. It is necessary to consider a process of mathematics learning at tertiary level from the epistemological perspective and to investigate students’ ways of mathematical thinking. This epistemological knowledge is especially indispensable when students use information technology. In this article current requirements regarding mathematical education are discussed, especially those for future engineers. Analysis of examples of learning elementary statistics, using graphing calculators as supporting tools, leads to the formulation of essential aims for mathematics educators concerning mathematics teaching for future engineers.     

Whose ‘voice’ is it anyway? The paradoxes of the participatory narrative

This study discusses some of the paradoxes found in the rhetoric of participatory research. Research-with-children views them as competent and agentic and as social actors, as citizens with opinions that must be listened to and given due weight. This image of the child as a social actor fails to acknowledge the structural, contextual and relational conditions that can afford or restrict opportunities for children’s agentic action. It conceals the multi-faceted, multi-dimensional properties of power that shape children’s (and adults’) contributions and ‘voices’. Our research took place in a primary school and aimed at training Year 6 children to carry out their own research on their chosen topic of interest. The participatory research ‘space’ was informed by the participants’ different intentionalities and agendas. The children were invited to take initiatives and make decisions, to be agentic. However, their agency, or what counts as ‘proper’ agency, was framed and defined in our adult terms. Tensions arose when the children’s agendas conflicted with and threatened ours. As we argue here, this participatory space should rather be seen as a political arena, where different and often competing agendas are at play, where the roles and relationships between children and adults are far from fixed, and where the capacity for agentic action is always socially mediated and shaped by social structure.     

Effects of animation's speed of presentation on perceptual processing and learning

Animations presented at different speed are assumed to differentially interact with learners’ perception and cognition due to the constraints imposed by learners’ limited sensitivity to incoming dynamic information. To investigate the effects of high and low presentation speed of animation, two studies were conducted. In Study 1, participants were 55 students who learned about the functioning of a four-stroke engine from an animation with user-controlled presentation speed. In Study 2, eye movements of 19 students were analysed for different system-controlled presentation speeds of animation. Results indicated that high presentation speeds accentuated global events (i.e., macro-events), whereas low speeds accentuated local events (i.e., micro-events). However, eye movements were primarily affected by the content rather than the presentation speed of animation.     

Disposable parallel poly(dimethylsiloxane) microbioreactor with integrated readout grid for germination screening of Aspergillus ochraceus

In this work a disposable, parallel microbioreactor (MBR) suitable for screening in batch or continuous mode is presented. The reactor consists of five parallel microchambers made of poly(dimethylsiloxane) bonded to a glass substrate. A grid structure is engraved on each chamber, allowing subsequent morphology imaging. Measurements are recorded over the entire cultivation period with constant parameters, namely, position and focus in the z-axis. The microdevice may be used for either parallel, uni- or multiparametric screening, and overcomes the drawback of gridless microwell plates which require expensive equipment such as an inverted microscope with an automatic stage. To validate the scalability from laboratory scale to microscale, and thus the cultivation protocol in the MBR, the germination of fungal spores (A. ochraceus) is evaluated for two different key magnitudes (pH and temperature) and compared to the results obtained from conventional laboratory scale systems (flasks and agar plates). Information on germination capacity with regard to interspecies' variability allows for optimization of industrial processes as optimal pH and temperature matched to the mesoscopic cultivation systems. The germination conditions therefore remain unaffected inside the MBR, while providing the following advantages: (i) dramatic reduction of medium consumption, (ii) submerged cultivation with constant oxygen supply, (iii) assured low cost and disposability, and (iv) possibility of a continuous cultivation mode.     

CREATIVE THINKING AS A PREDICTOR OF ACHIEVEMENT IN MUSIC

127 students at a musical high school in Cracow completed the Test of Creative Thinking of Necka and Rychlicka and filled out a questionnaire on their musical achievements. They were also rated by their music teachers. The level of creative thinking increased with the age of subjects, but correlations between creative thinking and achievement in music were not significant. Further research on this apparent lack of relationship between musical and verbal creativity is important for music education and counselling of music students.     

Pride and Challenges for Information Management Through the Centuries: The Online Version of the Jagiellonian Library Old Catalog (Up to 1949)

The article discusses the Jagiellonian Library's scanned version of its catalog of books published up to 1949. This case study analyzes the issue of information management in light of the history of the catalog from 1802 onwards and the process of making the catalog accessible via the Internet. It examines the consequences of the decision to scan the catalog on the various library departments' current procedures, as well as on library users.