Firewall demokracie

E-book

Milan Olejník

The history of ancient Greece and Rome represents the culmination of achievements made by ancient civilizations in political, economic, and social spheres, as well as in understanding humanity and the world, and in art. The Greeks were the first in human history to establish a system where a certain part of society—full-fledged citizens—had the opportunity to freely participate in political decisions. They could vote, be elected to offices within the political system, and discuss issues affecting community life.

A high level of education and the pursuit of rational explanations for natural phenomena enabled the Greeks to reach a level of knowledge that European nations only achieved in the modern era. Greek accomplishments in sculpture, architecture, and literature remain an inspiration to this day.

Despite a gap of more than two millennia, their thinking and actions are relatable; their victories and defeats resonate with us, offering lessons even today.

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Adriana Saboviková

The monograph deals with the post-millennial media discourse in the UK and aims to popularize the currently used methodological framework in the form of a case study.

The theoretical basis is provided by the introductory chapters, which deal with the topic of migration and newspaper discourse in the UK. The methodological framework represents an increasingly popular combination of corpus linguistics and critical discourse analysis, which is introduced not only theoretically but also practically used in the presented case study. The case study compares the language used in the British newspapers before and after the lifting of labor market restrictions in the UK for Bulgarians and Romanians, specifically in 2013 and 2014.

The research is based on the identification of special language patterns used in the compiled corpus to characterize Bulgarians and Romanians, specifically paying attention to nouns, verbs and numerals. By doing such research, scholars can identify the role of media discourse in depicting social reality.

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Štefan Šutaj - Jana Šutajová

The population exchange between Czechoslovakia and Hungary was carried out on the basis of the Agreement on the Exchange of Populations between Czechoslovakia and Hungary, which was signed on February 27, 1946. Its adoption was not only part of Czechoslovak solutions to the status of national minorities, but also part of the strategic concept of building a state of Czechs and Slovaks without Germans and Hungarians.

The agreement was part of the postwar resolution of mutual disputes and misunderstandings and was intended to be one of the solutions that, in the postwar period, would eliminate a factor which, according to Czechoslovak political leaders, had caused the war conflict.

The population exchange between Czechoslovakia and Hungary was therefore not an isolated historical event, but part of migratory movements that had begun in Europe already after the First World War, and can be seen as a continuation of previous developments as part of migration patterns in Europe.

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E-book

Marianna Sedláková a kol.

The textbook is intended for students of Slovak studies to study the subject of didactics of Slovak as a foreign language.

Its core consists of relevant knowledge gained from the didactics of Slovak as a foreign language, with references to other professional literature. The textbook also includes practical guides for teaching specific language phenomena in schools with Hungarian as the language of instruction or in schools where students predominantly have a mother tongue other than Slovak, such as Romani. Essentially, it involves transforming knowledge acquired and verified in teaching adult foreigners, mainly at universities, into a didactic context for the second level of elementary school and high school, with appropriate emphasis on teaching Slovak as a foreign language at the first level of elementary school as the starting point for the educational process.

The textbook builds on the findings of real research on the state of teaching Slovak as a foreign language in elementary and secondary schools in eastern Slovakia, conducted in projects (EXPERT and DiSaC) implemented at UPJŠ in Košice from 2012 to 2015.

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Tatiana Žiaková - Dušan Šlosár

The last decade marks not only the average life expectancy increase in healthy population, but also life expectancy increase in group of people with intellectual disorders/disabilities. Due to their diagnosis that defines and classifies them into specific categories, people with intellectual disability are finding themselves in a constant confrontation with obstacles negatively affecting the saturation of their existential needs. It creates mostly educational, social, cultural, psycho-social and economical disadvantage in the context of their lives. Consequently, their active potential is weakened, making it unable for them to influence public affairs in society from a position of an adult or elderly citizen. Building up on this condition, the focus of this monograph is on understanding and explanation of prevailing concept of social inclusion and related concepts of social exclusion. These concepts influence the way we tend to define and think about the character of society, as such.

Simultaneously, we are examining that the quality of coexistence between dominant population and people with intellectual disabilities is dependent on the development of attitudes and opinions of major population towards this specific minority. These attitudes reflect the extent of social tolerance and at the same time serve as a quantification of moral values and equity in the society, whether it concerns any type of small everyday help or professional and institutionalised long-term support.

This monograph focuses on presenting professional care for people with mental disability in form of social services as a dominant type of support in our local environment. We show that the quality of social services inevitably depends on degree of professional competences social workers possess. The significance of professional competences social workers are capable of using is reflected in the degree of the competence and adequacy of their performance. The primary aim, in relation to which professional competences should be accustomed, is to enhance meaningfulness and dignity in life of mentally disabled receivers of the social services.

Competences of social workers are a dynamic phenomenon that modifies along the development of society and also with the frequently altering needs of people with intellectual disability as receivers of the social service. For this reason we designed the presented research to reflect our goal to reappraise the scope of professional competences and define the required professional functions of social workers working with people with intellectual disability.

This monograph is dedicated not only to professionals working with this group of people but also aims at answering basic questions to practical issues that families with a intellectualy disabled member are coming into contact with.

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Lucia Tóthová - Katarína Šiňanská (eds.)

Proceedings of the scientific conference with international participation held on November 30, 2018, in Košice

Current social work addresses the serious development problems of society such as poverty, unemployment, chronic diseases, socially vulnerable groups and others. We must not forget that enough attention must be paid to the discovery of causes and a detailed analysis of these problems. The thing is that social problems have been around for a long time, they just changed their shape, old forms of social risks were replaced by the new ones that need to be explored and analyzed in order to be able to perform measures and remove the causes of social risks of the 21st century. Proceedings of the scientific conference with international participation entitled Social Risks in the Society of the XXI. Century is therefore devoted to various perspectives related to social risks of modern society in the variety of contributions, indicating the broad-spectrum not only of the proceedings, but also the social work itself.

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E-publication

Pavel Štekauer

The book is intended as an introduction to English linguistics for students entering on the study of the English language at Faculties of arts and Pedagogical faculties. It has been written with the purpose of filling the existing gap in the available literature on general linguistics, and in this way to help both students and teachers. However, since the scope of the book surpasses the immediate requirements of an introductory course, it may also be helpful to students within specialized disciplines. In addition, it may be used by undergraduates when preparing for the state-leaving examinations.

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Alexander Onufrák - Ján Ruman - Jana Šutajová - Peter Getlík

The presented textbook aims to introduce students to the issue of political extremism from various perspectives—namely, normative, historical, and discursive-empirical.

It addresses the significance and role of active citizenship, which, as one of several potential solutions, has the capacity to a certain extent to eliminate the rise of manifestations of political extremism in society by deepening democratic principles in practice.

The presented textbook is a direct output of the KEGA grant project "Innovative Model of Education Leading to Active Citizenship as a Prevention of the Rise of Political Extremism among Students" (014UPJŠ-4/2020). The principal investigator of the project is Assoc. Prof. Mgr. Gabriel Eštok, PhD. The project was carried out in the years 2020–2022.

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Mária Bačíková - Anna Janovská

The textbook "Foundations of Methodology in Pedagogical-Psychological Research" is primarily intended for students of teaching academic subjects, but it will enrich anyone who needs to familiarize themselves with research methodology focusing on psychological and pedagogical sciences. In the textbook, students become acquainted with the basic principles of conducting research, the process of research implementation, and the basic methods of quantitative or qualitative approaches. The examples used in the textbook are mostly focused on research conducted in a school environment.

By mastering the basic knowledge presented in the textbook, the reader will be able to conduct simple research in school conditions. At the same time, understanding the principles of research methodology helps with the critical evaluation of information from various sources. In preparing the textbook, we utilized our long-term experience with teaching the subject of research methodology, as well as with implementing many research projects. We believe that the simple language of the textbook and the abundance of practical examples will help students understand the basics of such complex issues as research methodology.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank the students of the Faculty of Arts and Natural Sciences at P. J. Šafárik University in Košice who attended the course "Foundations of Methodology in Pedagogical-Psychological Research" in the previous academic year for their inspiration, constructive comments on previous versions of the text, and ideas (or mistakes) that we drew upon in the textbook. We also thank other students who allowed us to use examples from their final theses in the textbook. The conclusion of the work is open because, as it turns out, we do not have a common denominator for both concepts that could decide on the correctness of one or the other concept. It is precisely in this that the Socratic question remains a serious philosophical problem today.

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Mária Mičaninová

Scholars whose works constitute medieval philosophy were active as theologians, jurists, physicians, and sometimes even poets. Among them, there is hardly anyone who could be described exclusively as a philosopher.

For theologians and (religious) jurists, the primary source of their philosophical reflection was the Bible or the Qur’an. The second source was the philosophical heritage of the preceding antiquity, in which the figure of Aristotle and his commentators dominated. The Peripatetic legacy was complemented by followers of Plato in the long line of so-called Neoplatonic philosophy (e.g., Plotinus, Iamblichus, and Proclus), which in its beginnings developed within the environment of Hellenistic schools.

It is therefore not surprising that the main philosophical problem for medieval scholars was the relationship between theology and philosophy, or faith and reason, and, consequently, the relationship between theology and metaphysics. In the context of Christian thought, this was already discussed in the 2nd century, when some Church Fathers questioned the value of secular learning for those to whom the truth had been revealed by God.

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Františka Petriková - Vladimír Lichner - Eva Žiaková

The proposed methodological guide focuses on a self-care questionnaire for the target group of adolescents. The creation of this methodology was prompted by its absence in the conditions of the Slovak Republic. The methodological guide consists of both theoretical and empirical parts.

In the theoretical part, the authors present theoretical foundations for the proposed methodology—self-care among adolescents—and also provide theoretical definitions of components of self-care in this target group. The second, empirical part of the methodological guide is dedicated to validation methods used to verify the questionnaire. It also presents results examining differences or correlations in the presented issues.

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E-book

Peter Borza

Eastern Christianity, represented in Slovakia by the Greek Catholic and Orthodox Churches, has influenced the development of Slovak society over the centuries. Both the common history and the coexistence of the two churches in one geographical area have brought diverse experiences that both churches keep in mind.

The university textbook, which deals with their history, contains basic materials for study and focuses on important milestones in their history. It contains general information about the origin of Eastern Christianity and presents in chronological order knowledge of the history of the churches that represent it in Slovakia from the 9th to the 21st century.

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E-book

Soňa Šnircová

This textbook has been designed as supporting material for the postgraduate course on modern trends in European literature. It focuses on the presentation of five modern literary modes of writing: the realistic mode which was brought to its prominence by the nineteenth-century Realist movement; the stream-of-consciousness and ‘absurdist’ modes which were developed in the context of modernism; and the magical realist and metafictional modes which are associated mainly with postmodernist literary trends. Each mode is represented by a well-known text which demonstrates the formal aspects of each mode and deals with the thematic concerns typical of the literary movement that influenced its production.

The textbook adopts an interdisciplinary approach, placing the chosen literary texts into the historical, philosophical and cultural contexts that shaped their characters, and thereby providing the background knowledge necessary for a deeper understanding of their formal and thematic aspects.

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Ingrid Madárová - Lívia Barnišinová - Barbara Mitríková - Zuzana Kolaříková -  Veronika Pálová - Lucia Tóthová

This handbook is primarily intended for university teachers who regularly come into contact with international students. It focuses on supporting effective intercultural communication in the academic environment. Through examples of specific situations from everyday academic life, it offers recommendations on how to prevent potential misunderstandings arising from intercultural differences. It also includes practical advice aimed at building open, culturally sensitive, and respectful communication that enhances mutual understanding and fosters an inclusive educational environment.

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E-book

Helena Kuncová – Pavol Hric (eds.)

Zborník “Stretnutie mladých historikov XIV“ s témou Myslenie a spoločnosť v priebehu dejín prináša súbor vedeckých príspevkov, ktoré sa venujú vzťahu medzi myslením a spoločenskými zmenami v historickom vývoji. Doktorandi a doktorandky z rôznych univerzít a inštitúcií analyzujú, ako politické, ekonomické a sociálne premeny ovplyvňovali myslenie rôznych sociálnych skupín a naopak, ako tieto zmeny v myslení formovali dejinné procesy. Každý príspevok bol podrobený odbornému hodnoteniu dvoch garantov, ktorých pripomienky sú reflektované v predkladanej verzii zborníku. Témy príspevkov sú rozdelené do jednotlivých blokov, v ktorých boli prezentované na konferencii 15. a 16. októbra 2024 na Katedre histórie, FF UPJŠ v Košiciach. Zborník obsahuje príspevky nasledujúcich prezentujúcich: Mgr. Michal Pajer, Mgr. Helena Kuncová, Mgr. Barbora Mlyneková, PhDr. Patrik Beňuš, Mgr. Mária Rímešová, Mgr. Pavol Hric, Mgr. Monika Tresová, Mgr. Miriama Balvirčáková, Mgr. Monika Soukupová, PhDr. Ivan Chylák, Mgr. Dorota Tóthová, Mgr. Dominik Šípoš, Mgr. Martin Pastor a Mgr. Jaroslav Valent.

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