In the definition of civic competences which is situated in the Annex to Recommendation of the European Parliament and of the Council of 18 Decem-ber 2006 on key competences for lifelong learning – Key Competences for Life-long Learning – a European Reference Framework it is written: “Full respect for human rights including equality as a basis for democracy, appreciation and understanding of differences between value systems of different religious or ethnic groups lay the foundations for a positive attitude”. Therefore, the question is: Does school education in general premise developing attitudes based on val-ues essential to democracy? The answers to this question can be searched con-ducting various studies. The paper presents the results of analysis of the core curricula conducted by a team of researchers from the Department of School Education, Faculty of Educational Sciences, Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun (Poland). Why core curricula have become the object of our research? Basically, for two reasons. Firstly, the school has obligated to implement them, and all school programs and textbooks have to be consistent with them. Second-ly, they are also a kind of articulation and a declaration of competence required from people in the given place and time.

The Author presents main tendencies in the development of the "Annales" school from the perspective of its modem development and actual critical view presented by its members. The review of tendencies follows an analysis of recent curricula of the studies in history at the Ecole des Haute Etudes en Sciences Socia/es (EHESS). The Author compares these curricula with the system of history teaching in other universities in France, as well as in Poland.

The paper deals with different approaches used in engineering education. It analyses concepts of engineering curricula, methods of education and technical means used. The main dilemma is represented by “teacher oriented” and “student oriented” concept of engineering education.

The presented material is a concise report of the research on the ‘condition’ of initial teacher education provided at universities in Poland in accordance with ‘new’ Ministry standards of 17 January 2012. In the analysis of data collected from 30 universities in May 2015, we focused on models of the organisation of this part of teaching at universities, the ways of constructing the professional curricula, the role and place of practice in the learning processes and the strategy of assessment of the preparation for teaching. Our research result is not quite optimistic. Under the ‘new label’ of standards we still have quasi-traditional approach to initial teacher education. In acquiring the new professional competencies students do not get real support from their academic and school partners. They are not very interesting in building opportunities for transforming learning aiming at transforming teaching

This paper describes a “distributed method” of introducing the humanitarian engineering principles and concepts to the curriculum of telecommunications at a maritime university. That is by modifying appropriately the syllabi of the telecommunications subjects taught. The propositions made in this area are illustrated by the concrete examples taken from the current Polish Qualifications Framework for the higher education system in Poland. And, for clarity and consistency of presentation, fundamentals and principles as well as a basic terminology and features of this Framework are also highlighted here shortly. Moreover, it has been shown that the approach presented in this paper is more useful compared to a method based on organization of some special courses for students on the humanitarian engineering, in particular when this regards a maritime university.