O możliwościach badania efektów wychowania

Abstract

The analysis of the works of Polish authors dealing with the problems of education, personality, consciousness or attitudes revals several problems and controversies appearing in the research practice. The assumption of a given standpoint on consecutive levels of analysis creates various possibilities of deciding about the effects of education. Indirect inference as to: 1) the shape of personality on the basis of declared values, opinions, views, 2) the efficiency of education on the basis of personality transformations, is sometimes burdened with error; in effect it influences the accuracy of social prognoses. The effects of education may be evaluated from macro-, mezzo- and microsocial perspective by relating them 1) to the aims of particular groups, serving to stabilize and develop the structure, 2) to the "needs" of global society. The fact of an individual's participation in different social structures allows to isolate, on the level of each of the structures, the sets of values-norms characteristic of each of them, and to analyse only conflict situations (e.g. the appearance, on a microsocial level, of the norms contradictory with those characteristic of mezzoand macro-levels) leaving out the situation of the existence of different yet not contradictory norms. In this way one may avoid the danger inherent in analysing personality, attitudes, hierarchies of values and interpretations concerning the question whether isolated values are interiorized or declared, sensed or accepted, as well as avoid the shortcomings of generally applied research techniques.