Contemporary anthropology deals with a lot of topics that go beyond the traditional area of anthropological research. However, the problem of lying remains on themargins of anthropological analysis, although lying is generally considered to be an everyday factor in the life of many people. In this article, the author considers the possible reasons for this neglect. She argues that the omission cannot be explained in terms of the apparent lack of connection between lying and socio-cultural factors, but rather by the difficulty of conducting research on lying from the perspective of anthropology. Then she discusses her own approach to the study of lying, which she applied in researching the community of the Catholic Crisis Intervention Center. In this regard, she refers to Els van Dongen’s and Sylvie Fainzang’s idea, which emerged on the basis of medical anthropology.

The paper presents the results of the research on the assessment of environmental conditions in selected university buildings — focused on building-surroundings relations. The research was conducted in 5 buildings in a few academic centers in Poland, using questionnaire technique. The respondents were students of architecture, art, psychology and landscape architecture, in the surveyed buildings (N=184). Analysis of the results — apart from the main finding of the general lack of the ‘space for students’ (including both individual workplaces and recreational spaces) — revealed the important role of the surroundings for the way of use and description of the buildings. ‘Location’ and generally ‘external’ elements such as garden, greenery and small architecture for recreation, the ‘edges’ of the building (such as the elevation and the roof) as well as the direct visual connections, constituted the largest group among all respondents’ ‘strengths’ of analyzed buildings. A significant and puzzling exception in this group is the latest in the analyzed WICA building in Lublin — best evaluated in terms of functionality but also described with the most neutral terms (on the ‘positive’ scale), whose students (N=31) in their assessments and descriptions do not take into account (or do not notice) the building-environment relationship. The analysis of the results revealed individualized image of the places. ‘Functionality’ occured to be not the only one predictor of behavioral and emotional bonds with places; the important role is also — as it seems — played by a ‘friendly’ environment. This — basing on the analysis of the content — means both selected aspect of urban relationships (accessibility, public transportation, facilities), but also the quality (beauty and utility) of landscape architecture.

The term “metalearning”, which was introduced into scientific literature by J. Biggs (1985) is, broadly speaking, an awareness of one’s own learning process and exercising control over it. Metalearning, whose roots lie in the personal, early experiences of the child related to learning, and which is expressed in her or his current concepts – is considered in this article as a basic condition for the acquisition of one of the key competences of 21st century man, namely, the learning competence. Recognizing the importance of colloquial concepts of learning, as well as their uniqueness and contextuality – in the article I will present the main problems associated with learning about the vision and understanding of the personal worlds of the learning of pupils, coming at the end of early education. On the basis of analysis of the scientific literature and previous studies conducted abroad, as well as a number of my own research projects (resulting from the application of quantitative or qualitative approach), I will present questions, doubts and selected emerging difficulties in the application of both the presented research approaches.