This paper focuses on the relationship between agency and knowledge within the context of rising nationalism and populism. The case is the Czech debate over the reintroduction of civil defence education (CDE). It was abandoned in 1989 but recently, many new and contradictory calls for its return have appeared. We aim to gain an understanding of…

The article deals with the concept of religion in the laws which regulate access of religious organisations to public education in the Czech Republic. The analysis of the laws reveals that the World Religions Paradigm (WRP) is applied here. Religious organisations representing 'important world religions' have a privileged position in accessing…

The current criticism of higher education is that the education offered does not match the needs of practice. In terms of competitiveness, Germany is about the forefront in Europe, and logically the question of whether higher education is the source from which leads to this result. The objective of this paper is to compare the corresponding study…

Writing is often considered secondary to the spoken language, as it is only coded sound-by-sound. But other scholars have demonstrated that writing is similar to "arithmetic": a cognitive structuring, a shift to the meta-level ("for the eye"). "Handwriting" (referred to here as the cursive writing in the sense of…

This article reports on an action research project in which the value of critical friendship for students doing research and writing their dissertations within an international master's course has been explored. This course is run jointly by Roehampton University (London, UK), Charles University (Prague, Czech Republic) together with Fontys OSO…

Do some forms of student (and school) assessment hinder the introduction of innovative educational practices and the development of innovation skills in education systems? This report focuses on the impact of high-stake summative assessment on innovation and argues that it is possible to reconcile high-stakes assessments and examinations through…

This volume contains the following papers: "Texas Czech of Texas Czechs: An Ethnolinguistic Perspective on Language Use in a Dying Language Community" (Lida Dutkova); "Language Variation in an Immigrant Community: Language and Community Maintenance" (Eva Eckert); "Some Special Problems of Imperfective Derivation in…

The following papers are included: "Responses to the Literature Papers" (Malynne M. Sternstein); "Kitsch and Irony in Kundera: 'The Joke' and 'The Unbearable Lightness of Being'" (Aaron Beaver); "Daniela Fischerova's 'The Message Table': (Lauren McConnell); "Rethinking the Grotesque in Hrabal's Fiction" Carnival…