Myths and Manipulation in Political Discourse

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Gabriel Eštok - Mária Hrehová - Renáta Bzdilová (eds.)

Collection of contributions from II. year of the Student Scientific Conference held on May 17, 2013 by the Department of Political Science of the Faculty of Arts of the University of Pavel Jozef Šafárik in Košice

The collection was created on the basis of an event with a thematically defined and political science, perhaps the most frequently discussed issue of democracy. I would add that the event was also attended by doctoral students of other fields of study, who analyzed the topic of democracy from positions other than political science. I very much welcomed the fact that a contribution from the legal issues of the European Union appeared in the proceedings. Enriching the collection is also a contribution from international political issues, which sheds light on democratic rules applied in territory other than European. Other contributions focus on various aspects of the creation of a democratic political environment in Slovakia and the European Union, while several sympathetic attempts at non-traditional perspectives on the development of civil society, public and party politics appear in them.

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Mária Bačíková

The primary aim of the presented monograph is to introduce Slovak readers to the current state of knowledge in the field of parental control psychology and its consequences for various aspects of adolescent development. Additionally, it seeks to present research findings obtained from a representative sample of Slovak adolescents in early adolescence. The topic of parental control has been marginally addressed in the Slovak context, primarily as part of studies on parenting styles, but a detailed analysis of its forms and consequences within the Slovak environment is lacking.

The monograph is divided into nine chapters, with the first seven being theoretical in nature: Chapter 1 focuses on specific aspects of the parent-adolescent relationship and describes changes that occur during adolescence. Chapter 2 introduces the construct of parental control, situating it within several social-personality theories and general parenting styles. Chapter 3 examines two fundamental forms of control: behavioral and psychological, as well as their interplay. Chapter 4 defines the concept of structure as one form of parental control. Chapter 5 summarizes current knowledge about gender differences in the application of parental control. Chapter 6 presents factors related to the application of control, including child-related, parent-related, and contextual factors. Chapter 7, concluding the theoretical section, discusses discrepancies in perceptions of control between adolescents and their parents.

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Iveta Bónová - Marián Gladiš (eds.)

About the personality of university professor František Miko, DrSc., much has rightly been written, especially after 1989. Indeed, anyone involved in language and literature, at least within the geographical scope of the West Slavic region, is familiar with his work, particularly his brilliant expressive conception of style.

Our ambition in the introduction of this presented collection is not to substitute a dictionary of linguists, nor to provide a comprehensive view of his life and professional career. Rather, it is to remind ourselves of an exceptional individual—a scientist whose attitude, contributions, and results have influenced and continue to influence not only entire generations of researchers but also scientific thinking as a whole.

In the presented collection, we supplement the characterization contained in the inventively and convincingly formulated title of the obituary The Quiet Revolutionary of Our Science, František Miko, with a set of thematically diverse contributions (from the fields of style, sound, translation studies, phraseology, didactics...) dedicated to this significant figure of Slovak science on the occasion of what would have been his ninety-fifth birthday.

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Iveta Bónová

The textbook is addressed to up-and-coming media staffers and teachers of Slovak language, a target group which will be a prospective model for common users in their language behaviour. It poses an educational project that points out to the correlation of standard language and language (primarily orthoepical) norm.

The publication is structured in the way that after the explanation of the given orthoepical problem on the segmenal level (in correspondence with the valid orthoepical norm anchored in Rules of Slovak Orthoepy by Á. Kráľ, 2005, 2009), there follow exercises with an aim to know and practically apply presented norms as standardised acoustic forms. However, considering the natural (not artificial) language and the real (not absolutely ideal) norm, under the exercises we give sociolinguistically oriented topics and tasks for discussion (sometimes also with references to specialist sources) with an aim to draw the listeners’ attention to the current state of live, phonically realised language, or to possible solutions that functionally correspond to the interests and needs of lanugage community and are not in contradiction with internal language rules at the same time.

An explanation of particular orthopeic phenomena on the segmental level is closed not only with exercices and topics for discussion but also with a short test in which students can individually verify their special competences in connection to speech practise.

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Oľga Orosová - Marcela Štefaňáková - Mária Bačíková - Beáta Gajdošová - Anna Janovská

The research monograph is focused on studying the effectiveness of the Unplugged prevention program conducted at primary schools across Slovakia.

Using two large datasets with repeated measures, the monograph contributes to research knowledge about substance use prevention. The authors studied protective and risk factors, developmental trends of smoking and alcohol consumption as well as the effectiveness of the Unplugged prevention program – its effect on psychological and behavioural indicators of health-related behaviour.

Considering the complexity of the analyses on two datasets with 5 waves of data, each chapter is presented as a separate research study. The findings serve as a basis for recommendations for parents and teachers and also for school management at primary schools that support effective school policy aimed at the prevention and promotion of the health in schoolchildren.

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Adriana Jesenková (ed.)

The topic of gender equality in the university and academic environment in Slovakia remains in a highly ambivalent position – often overlooked and marginalized, instrumentalized and perceived as an alien element or a formal necessity, but most frequently exposed to numerous misunderstandings and misinterpretations.

The intention of the presented publication and its authorial collective is to contribute to shaping and cultivating an environment where it is possible to discuss issues of gender relations in the academic environment objectively, develop research from a gender perspective, and primarily implement gender equality policy as one of the tools for democratizing the academic sphere and the university. The collection was created within the framework of the project VVGS-2018-749, "Creating a Gender Equality Plan at UPJŠ in Košice," and presents various contexts and perspectives from which to consider issues of gender equality at the university. Individual authors focus on the topic of gender equality from philosophical, philosophical-legal, and legal perspectives in their texts.

The final text presents the findings of qualitative research, which was part of the mentioned project, their interpretation, and conclusions from the perspective of further implementation of gender equality policy at Pavol Jozef Šafárik University in Košice. We understand the publication as an invitation to discussion, critical thinking, and research, and thus to creating a university as we can be.

Adriana Jesenková

The peer-reviewed collection of scientific works is distributed under the Creative Commons 4.0 – Attribution CC BY-NC license, which allows non-commercial use of the work provided that the names of the authors are mentioned.

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Miroslava Köverová - Margita Mesárošová (eds.)

The publication „Helping professions and self-care from the perspective of psychology and social work“ includes research studies focused on self-care, and the positive and negative effects of helping among specific groups of helping professionals – psychologists and social workers.

A number of Slovak as well as foreign authors contributed to the book of proceedings. The contributions are theoretical studies, research studies and case studies. The theoretical and research studies are focused on important issues of professional helping: self-care, compassion satisfaction, compassion fatigue, burnout, perceived stress, secondary traumatic stress, mindfulness, empathy, job satisfaction and turnover among psychologists and social workers.

Research interest in the phenomena is especially important in the context of the mental health of helping professionals and in reducing the negative consequences of helping. 

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Jana Balegová

The university textbook Lingua Latina – cursus communis is designed for students of all study programs at the Faculty of Arts, where Latin is included as a subject related to the main field of study or specialization (history, philosophy, philological specializations, etc.).

The textbook contains Latin grammar, exercise sentences intended for practicing the grammatical phenomena covered in seminars under the guidance of an instructor, and a Latin-Slovak dictionary. To practice Latin grammar at home, parallel workbooks are available, which are tailored to meet the needs of students from specific study fields and specializations (e.g., Lingua Latina – workbook for historians, Lingua Latina – workbook for philosophers, Lingua Latina – workbook for philologists).

The textbook Lingua Latina – cursus communis is accessible electronically in PDF format. As part of the educational program, online tests available on the KKF FF UPJŠ website serve to reinforce the learned material. This textbook is a product of the grant project KEGA 010UPJŠ-4/2017.

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Božena Velebná

The following material has been created during the two years of teaching English for Chemists at the Faculty of Science of the Pavol Jozef Šafárik University and is therefore designed to meet the needs of this course. The main motivation was the lack of appropriate materials, especially as the groups generally comprise students with a very diverse level of English. This diversity therefore became the main criterion determining both the form and the content of this text.

In the ten units that provide material for a one semester course, the emphasis is put on teaching the students vocabulary and terminology, which is introduced via authentic texts, depending on the topic of each unit. Students are encouraged to learn the meaning of new words in context. Grammar is included too, with the aim of demonstrating and explaining grammatical rules by means of examples taken directly from the texts. For the more advanced students, grammatical exercises in this material can serve for revision while the beginners might need more supplementary materials.

I hope that this material, the preparation of which has been a challenging as well as enjoyable experience will be useful for future teachers and the students of this course.

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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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Soňa Lovašová - Katarína Šiňanská - Magdaléna Halachová  - Vladimír Lichner (eds.)

The central theme of the conference is violence in social work. Violence in social work appears in various forms, whether it involves working with clients who are victims of different types of violence or dealing with aggressive clients where the social worker themselves becomes the victim. Violence in society is rapidly increasing, and social work is a science that must necessarily adapt to society; this is its essence. Therefore, managing aggressive situations in any form is an important part of a social worker's personal skill set.

Unfortunately, protecting social workers from violence will gradually become a necessity, and in the future, we may not avoid training in self-defense and reducing aggression as part of professional preparation or lifelong education.

The aim of this collection is to present the issue of violence in social work from various perspectives to both the professional and lay public. We hope that this serious problem will receive increasing attention and that the individual contributions will help readers understand the extent of the problem of violence in social work.

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Vladimír Leško - Pavol Tholt (eds.)

Proceedings of the Fourth International Philosophical Symposium History of Philosophy as a Philosophical Problem, held on 14-15 October 2010

The Philosophical Proceedings is the final presentation of the results of the work of the research teams of the research projects VEGA 1/0650/08 - Heidegger and the History of Philosophy and VEGA 1/4679/07 - Jan Patočka's Asubjective Phenomenology and the History of Philosophy solved at the Department of Philosophy and the History of Philosophy of the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Applied Sciences in Košice.

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Adriana Jesenková

The ethics of care offers inspiring ways to think about the relationships and connections we are part of. It provides a new and unconventional reading and understanding of human relationships, thereby enabling us to respond in new and appropriate ways to certain empirical challenges (Pettersen 2011, p. 51).

Just twenty-five years ago, thinking about care was associated with women’s decisions in the private sphere concerning their personal dilemmas and problems. Over the last two decades, advocates of the ethics of care have demonstrated that the ideal of care has the potential to regulate not only private behavior but also human interactions in general.

Today, ideas about care have the power to change how we evaluate personal relationships, professional conduct, public policy, international relations, and global issues. The relevance of the ethics of care in such a wide range of areas of life, many of which are characterized by mutual incompatibilities and conflicting interests, is conditioned by several factors. However, one of the most significant is the creativity and fruitfulness of the thinking of the representatives of the ethics of care, who develop ethical concepts, models, and methods capable of grasping and analyzing human relationships in all their diversity (Pettersen 2011, p. 52).

Compared to traditional ethical concepts and theories in moral philosophy, the ethics of care introduces radically different sets of models and normative concepts. Today, it is precisely feminist ethics of care that offers a critical reflection on care within the realm of moral philosophy, ethics, and social philosophy. The aim of this publication is to identify the concept, subject, approach, philosophical foundations and starting points, as well as the possibilities for applying the ethics of care as a specific moral approach and, at the same time, as a specific moral theory in the field of social science and humanities research.

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Peter Fedoročko (eds.)

From June 14 to June 17, 2022, the 8th annual Spring School for Doctoral Students at Pavol Jozef Šafárik University in Košice will take place in Liptovský Ján. The scientific program of the spring school will comprise 3 plenary lectures by leading scientific experts and 1 workshop. Doctoral students will present their research papers in two sections: 22 doctoral students of Faculty of Public Administration, Faculty of Law and Faculty of Arts, and 26 doctoral students of Faculty of Medicine and Faculty of Science. The scientific programme of the spring school will also include a panel discussion with the management of Pavol Jozef Šafárik University in Košice.

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Róbert Stojka

The aim of the presented monograph is primarily to introduce Patočka's concept of the philosophy of history as comprehensively as possible, although I am aware that this is by no means an easy task. This difficulty arises not only because, as already mentioned, there is currently no extensive and exhaustive work on this topic.

While there is a relatively large number of studies devoted to Patočka's concept of the philosophy of history, none of them, however, examine this concept from a comprehensive perspective as a unified whole – most focus on specific partial issues (and there are many) stemming from this concept. This fact, incidentally, serves as clear evidence to me that this is undoubtedly a highly demanding topic.

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Gabriel Eštok - Mária Hrehová - Renáta Bzdilová (eds.)

Collection of contributions from II. year of the Student Scientific Conference held on May 17, 2013 by the Department of Political Science of the Faculty of Arts of the University of Pavel Jozef Šafárik in Košice

The collection was created on the basis of an event with a thematically defined and political science, perhaps the most frequently discussed issue of democracy. I would add that the event was also attended by doctoral students of other fields of study, who analyzed the topic of democracy from positions other than political science. I very much welcomed the fact that a contribution from the legal issues of the European Union appeared in the proceedings. Enriching the collection is also a contribution from international political issues, which sheds light on democratic rules applied in territory other than European. Other contributions focus on various aspects of the creation of a democratic political environment in Slovakia and the European Union, while several sympathetic attempts at non-traditional perspectives on the development of civil society, public and party politics appear in them.

Download the e-book for free (pdf)

E-book

Mária Bačíková

The primary aim of the presented monograph is to introduce Slovak readers to the current state of knowledge in the field of parental control psychology and its consequences for various aspects of adolescent development. Additionally, it seeks to present research findings obtained from a representative sample of Slovak adolescents in early adolescence. The topic of parental control has been marginally addressed in the Slovak context, primarily as part of studies on parenting styles, but a detailed analysis of its forms and consequences within the Slovak environment is lacking.

The monograph is divided into nine chapters, with the first seven being theoretical in nature: Chapter 1 focuses on specific aspects of the parent-adolescent relationship and describes changes that occur during adolescence. Chapter 2 introduces the construct of parental control, situating it within several social-personality theories and general parenting styles. Chapter 3 examines two fundamental forms of control: behavioral and psychological, as well as their interplay. Chapter 4 defines the concept of structure as one form of parental control. Chapter 5 summarizes current knowledge about gender differences in the application of parental control. Chapter 6 presents factors related to the application of control, including child-related, parent-related, and contextual factors. Chapter 7, concluding the theoretical section, discusses discrepancies in perceptions of control between adolescents and their parents.

Download the e-book for free  (pdf)

E-book

Iveta Bónová - Marián Gladiš (eds.)

About the personality of university professor František Miko, DrSc., much has rightly been written, especially after 1989. Indeed, anyone involved in language and literature, at least within the geographical scope of the West Slavic region, is familiar with his work, particularly his brilliant expressive conception of style.

Our ambition in the introduction of this presented collection is not to substitute a dictionary of linguists, nor to provide a comprehensive view of his life and professional career. Rather, it is to remind ourselves of an exceptional individual—a scientist whose attitude, contributions, and results have influenced and continue to influence not only entire generations of researchers but also scientific thinking as a whole.

In the presented collection, we supplement the characterization contained in the inventively and convincingly formulated title of the obituary The Quiet Revolutionary of Our Science, František Miko, with a set of thematically diverse contributions (from the fields of style, sound, translation studies, phraseology, didactics...) dedicated to this significant figure of Slovak science on the occasion of what would have been his ninety-fifth birthday.

Download the e-book for free

E-book

Iveta Bónová

The textbook is addressed to up-and-coming media staffers and teachers of Slovak language, a target group which will be a prospective model for common users in their language behaviour. It poses an educational project that points out to the correlation of standard language and language (primarily orthoepical) norm.

The publication is structured in the way that after the explanation of the given orthoepical problem on the segmenal level (in correspondence with the valid orthoepical norm anchored in Rules of Slovak Orthoepy by Á. Kráľ, 2005, 2009), there follow exercises with an aim to know and practically apply presented norms as standardised acoustic forms. However, considering the natural (not artificial) language and the real (not absolutely ideal) norm, under the exercises we give sociolinguistically oriented topics and tasks for discussion (sometimes also with references to specialist sources) with an aim to draw the listeners’ attention to the current state of live, phonically realised language, or to possible solutions that functionally correspond to the interests and needs of lanugage community and are not in contradiction with internal language rules at the same time.

An explanation of particular orthopeic phenomena on the segmental level is closed not only with exercices and topics for discussion but also with a short test in which students can individually verify their special competences in connection to speech practise.

Download the e-book for free  (pdf)

E-book

Oľga Orosová - Marcela Štefaňáková - Mária Bačíková - Beáta Gajdošová - Anna Janovská

The research monograph is focused on studying the effectiveness of the Unplugged prevention program conducted at primary schools across Slovakia.

Using two large datasets with repeated measures, the monograph contributes to research knowledge about substance use prevention. The authors studied protective and risk factors, developmental trends of smoking and alcohol consumption as well as the effectiveness of the Unplugged prevention program – its effect on psychological and behavioural indicators of health-related behaviour.

Considering the complexity of the analyses on two datasets with 5 waves of data, each chapter is presented as a separate research study. The findings serve as a basis for recommendations for parents and teachers and also for school management at primary schools that support effective school policy aimed at the prevention and promotion of the health in schoolchildren.

Download the e-book for free (pdf)