The paper presents the complex problems of preparation of pedagogy students to work as teachers in the context of their readiness to use ICT in the didactic process. The complexity of this subject matter has been proved by the current, ongoing, discussion about the direction of the expected transformations of contemporary schools and the prospective teachers education system in the age of prevalent digitization. Considering the complexity of conditions, the main research problem has been formulated as follows: Conditions of what type affect the preparation of prospective teachers Educ Inf Technol (2017) to use new media in learning and teaching process?. Thus, the empirical analysis conducted in the paper focuses on the following issues: the style of using new media by students, identification of students' attitudes towards media, subjective (from the students' point of view) assessment of how university level schools are prepared to shape modern media competences among their students and self-evaluation of media and IT competences in the group of prospective teachers. Czech and Polish students, despite being the so called digital natives, do not present homogeneous styles of using new media. They also reveal different attitudes toward applying digital solutions to the didactic process. Factors such as: low evaluation of one's own competences or lack of evaluation in this area, lack of creative approach to the use of new media, lack of education in the area of new applications, lack of skills necessary to handle basic digital tools (e.g. interactive board, e-learning platforms) negatively affect, in most cases, the attitude toward the active use of ICT tools in future didactic work. On the basis of the gathered empirical data and inductive qualitative analysis a typology of students attitudes toward new media was developed. It consists of four categories: technooptimist, techno-realist, techno-pessimist and techno-ignorant. The whole of analyses has the character of comparative research and involves two neighboring countries of the Visegrad Group: Poland (N = 466) and Czech Republic (N = 168).
This article presents the results of a qualitative research study on intergenerational messages of Polish female seniors. Letters from seniors to the younger generation were investigated. In their narratives, the seniors focused a lot on self-reflection about death and dying—this is due to the theme which was to inspire the letters: My life—my death. The messages exposed an affirmative attitude toward the old age, the significance of faith and religion along with the simultaneous awareness of the fragility of life, and the necessity to face one’s own finiteness. The seniors also pointed out to family and relationships with their loved ones as the key value.
The article aims at describing the relationship between the educational activity of the elderly and a more optimal way of experiencing their aging. That link can be justified by a higher measure of the overall level of satisfaction with their lives. The purpose of the study described in the paper was an in-depth analysis of the components of life satisfaction among actively learning seniors. A questionnaire survey was conducted with the voluntary participation of 405 third age university students (U3A). The authors collected data on the critical areas comprising individual well-being, illustrating the diversity in the experience of old age among active mature learners. Only 6.8% of the U3A learners are not satisfied with their life achievements. The study revealed that seniors with four or more children were most pleased, suggesting that self-actualization in the family and educational domains need not be competitive. The analysis of the health component of life satisfaction showed a clear overrepresentation of seniors with the good psychophysical condition. In general, successful ratings of the component measures of life satisfaction among the members of the researched group predominate.
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