This article develops an agentic approach to activist learning and analyzes the interplay between agency and learning. The agentic approach derives from Alheit's concept of biographical learning and Emirbayer and Mische's concept of agency. The article builds on the case study of an activist's narrative to show that the development of agency is…

This article aims to explore how the situation of unemployment and -- more generally -- early job insecurity affects young people's scope for exercising agency with regard to decisions about continuing and improving their education. Drawing on the theoretical underpinnings of the capability approach, the article develops the concept of patterns of…

This paper, based on 100 in-depth interviews conducted in Poland and another 40 in Slovakia, analyses life trajectories of foreign-born scholars who decided to pursue careers in Central Europe. Their narratives are very different from the regular "linear" careers reported in the studies focused on academic profession, which usually start…

This article presents a new method for encouraging clients to articulate and explore their narrative identities. The method combines the advantages of perception of art and of construction of narrative identity. It is inspired by McAdams 'Life Story Interview' and Hermans and Hermans-Jansen's Self-Confrontation Method. The material is a set of 100…

This paper discusses the interactional construction of personal trajectories of migrant children with a focus on its implications for the enhancement of children's agency. The discussion is supported by the analysis of three extracts transcripts of audio or video-recorded classroom activities that illustrate the main forms of facilitation of…

Inspired by the work of the social and cultural historian Tim Cole, Stuart Farley decided to look again at the way he teaches the Holocaust. He wanted to focus on the geographical concept of place as a way of enabling his Year 9 students to build far more diverse narratives, which took full account of the chronological diversity of people's…

The Scientific and Educational Department of the Jesuit Fathers in Khyriv (Zaklad Naukowo-Wychowawczy OO. Jezuitów w Chyrowie) existed for 53 years (1886-1939). Over 6,000 students studied in this elite male school. The alumni of the secondary school belonged to the elite of Polish society. There were among them people from different walks of…

The general aim of this paper is to present some insights into Polish senior immigrants in Sweden. In particular, it seeks to identify and illustrate the important contribution of previous generations of Polish senior immigrants in building on the diverse culture, traditions and values of the Polish community (Polonia) in Sweden. The paper…

One of the main goals of global education is to develop students as global citizens working for social change, equality and justice. However, the notion of the global citizen remains a subject of debate because of its various theoretical and ideological underpinnings, as well as diverse meanings associated with it. Non-critical ways of…

The purpose of this study was to explore how learners make meaning of their experiences at exhibits depicting narratives of the Polish Righteous Among the Nations of the World, free-choice learning contexts. The study focused on two exhibits at a university in the mid-Western United States. The conceptual framework of the study integrates…

The article is an (co)autoethnography story about a project that conducted as a teacher at the University of Szczecin in Poland. Technically, the project consisted in creating a (co)autoethnography text. The story in this article attempts to raise the question of the relationship between (co)autoethography, emancipation and resistance to the…

Teachers of English as a Second Language use curricula offered to them for their classroom instruction. Although there are many good materials to be used in the classroom, and many opportunities to develop themselves professionally, research shows that including students' backgrounds into the curriculum will engage the students and benefit them. …

Polish students learn about Platonic solids in the final year of secondary grammar school, but in such a way that few perceive the beauty of this branch of mathematics. An average student associates polyhedra with calculating lengths and angles in a cube, cuboid or pyramid. But for the author, 3-D geometry is the branch of mathematics that shows…

Recently the authors visited Poland for a few days. The purpose of their visit was to talk to some Polish teachers about using interactive whiteboards (IWBs) in the teaching of mathematics. They ran a workshop for primary teachers and secondary teachers and they found that these teachers were quite responsive in working with the mathematics…