BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Jacek Pyżalski has an MA in special pedagogy (specialty: resocialization) and a PhD in pedagogy (University of Łódź, 2002). Practitioner, carer at the Youth Educational Centre in Łódź (1998–2000). Lecturer in the Special Pedagogy Department of the Łódź University(1999–2008). Currently, he is vice president of the Higher School of Pedagogy in Łódź and a lecturer at the Institute of Occupational Medicine in Łódź – the National Centre Workplace Health Promotion, which serves as the national Contact Point of the European Centre for Workplace Health Promotion. A court mediator. The author of numerous publications in pedagogy and health promotion. Publications in Polish and English (more than 70), including thematic publications, monograph editions (including papers in foreign languages), articles, and chapters in thematic monographs. Research interests associated with such issues as discipline in the classroom and coping by teachers/educators with aggression at school; occupational stress and professional burnout; difficult behaviour of students; health promotion; and cyberbullying (currently, he is conducting a study funded by a grant awarded by the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education).
A co-author of a recognized tool for measuring occupational stress in teachers, the Teachers’ Occupational Stress Questionnaire (available in the Promempol data base).
The author, co-executor, executor, and manager of several national and international projects, including ACERISH 2, Adult Mentoring, Dragon Fly, ROBUSD. He conducted training for academic lecturers within a programme called Europhamili, at the National School of Public Health (ENSP) in Rennes, France (2003), and delivered lectures within an exchange at the University in Orebro, Sweden. He has trained 3000 teachers and other professionals in how to deal with students’ problematic behaviour (also in cooperation with such institutions as the State Agency for Solving Alcohol Problems, the police, and provincial teacher training centres). He has been appointed by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education to represent Poland in the International Committee managing the COST (European Cooperation in the Field of Scientific and Technical Research) Action IS0801: Cyberbullying: coping with negative and enhancing positive uses of new technologies, in relationships in educational settings. It is a scientific consortium for prevention of cyberbullying among children and youth. Awarded by the President of the Łódź University for his teaching work (2nd degree prize) and by the World Health Organization with a team award for research in health promotion conducted at the Institute of Occupational Medicine in Łódź.