Articles

Background. Given the contemporary realities, the need to improve the educa[1]tional system in Russia is becoming more and more acute. Such improvements are necessary in terms of implementation of national goals and strategic objectives for Russia’s development, of creation of a sovereign national education system and of strengthening the country’s unified educational space (including new regions). They also encompass compliance of students’ training with the requirements of contemporary information society and with the global trends in strategic academic development as well as the formation of knowledge and skills demanded by the labor market both in the near future and in the long-term prospect. In this regard, it is essential to comprehensively assess the challenges facing the educational system and to propose possible solutions on the part of the university community aimed at the achievement of the goals and objectives, both within the framework of existing national projects and programmes and for the medium-term prospects.

Methods. An interdisciplinary approach and structural-functional analysis of education issues in the context of Russia’s national projects and objectives of strategic development constitute the methodological basis of the article.

Results. The author outlines the main tasks to be solved and the directions in the work of the Russian university community. The article shows the directions for reforming mathematical, chemical, physical, and engineering education. It emphasizes the importance and significance of basic science training in higher education. It substantiates opportunities for strengthening the regional base of personnel training as well as gives recommendations for building a sovereign education system and forming a unified educational space. It also highlights the importance of educational work and patriotic education in universities. The directions in the work of the university corporation, proposed in the article, are in fact a programme document for the higher school for the current period and for the future.

On October 30, 2023, Irina Viktorovna Kostikova, Honored Lecturer at Moscow University, Candidate of Philosophical Sciences, Associate Professor of the Department of Philosophy of the Humanities of the Faculty of Philosophy of Moscow State University, member of the Academic Council of the Faculty of Pedagogical Education (FPO), passed away Lomonosov Moscow State University.

This research discusses a problem that has recently become extremely relevant for research scientists, who are particularly engaged in scientific research, and the teaching staff of educational organizations due to the presence of well-defined indicators, which help reveal the effectiveness and productivity of professional activity of a contemporary Russian scientist and teacher of higher education. The relevance of the chosen research problem is caused by the contradiction between the existing, well-defined, and formal requirements for the publication activity of scientific and pedagogical personnel and the lack of clear and precise understanding concerning the presence of conditions necessary for their qualitative fulfillment by scientific and pedagogical personnel. The author presents an analysis of the situation that has developed in today’s scientific and educational practice due to the illegality and unreasonableness of the requirements for assessing the originality of scientific works and research conducted by domestic scientists and submitted for publication. Particular emphasis is placed on the inadmissibility of substitution of clearly defined definitions existing in the realities of the domestic legal field and their free interpretation, often infringing on the legitimate rights and interests of scientific and pedagogical personnel

The authors develop their concepts from the fact that religious consciousness is one of the categories of consciousness, a way of experiencing and comprehending the world and oneself by a person, which performs an instrumental function — it creates a system of values and hierarchizes them. Religious consciousness is formed and strengthened through educational practices and upbringing at school. It is externalized in the collective consciousness — the religious culture of society. The academic subject “Fundamentals of Religious Culture and Secular Ethics” solves several tasks related to the spiritual and moral development of a primary school student and contributes to the formation of universal values, noted in Decree of the President of the Russian Federation “On approval of the fundamentals of state policy for preserving and strengthening traditional Russian spiritual and moral values” (November 9, 2022 No. 809). The research conducted among primary school students of the Smolensk Orthodox Gymnasium, whose curriculum included the course “Fundamentals of Religious Culture and Secular Ethics,” showed that the fifth-grade students demonstrate confident knowledge of the main religious denominations represented on the territory of the Russian Federation and understand religious traditions and norms of ethnic groups in Russia. Comparative research of the planned educational results of the “Fundamentals of Religious Culture and Secular Ethics” course, expressed in the acquired and developed spiritual and moral values of schoolchildren, made it possible to identify interference with the values listed in the Decree of the President of the Russian Federation “On approval of the fundamentals of state policy for preserving and strengthening traditional Russian spiritual and moral values” (November 9, 2022 No. 809) with the values that serve as the basis for strategic planning in the area of ensuring national security of the Russian Federation, the key once being life, dignity, human rights, freedom, humanism, mercy, service to the Fatherland, patriotism, and continuity of generations and historical memory.

The need to participate in intercultural dialogue with representatives of different countries actualizes the issue of preparation for intercultural communication, namely, the study of a different culture based on the knowledge of the native culture of students. In this regard, the readiness of the future teacher to implement a cultural approach to teaching foreign languages is of great social and practical importance. This research shows that since the beginning of the 1990s, Russia has seen significant changes in the context of learning foreign languages, which have started to be regarded as a real means of communication with representatives of other cultures. Thus, it is necessary to study the culture of the people when learning a foreign language. The authors demonstrate the relevance of the cultural approach to teaching foreign languages and reveal the role of a teacher in its implementation. Additionally, the author specifies the requirements for training a teacher of foreign languages, reflected in professional educational standards and training programs of various disciplines. The problems of training a teacher of foreign languages within the framework of the cultural paradigm are identified and analyzed. Moreover, the authors provide particular examples of the preparation of a future teacher for implementing a cultural approach to teaching foreign languages. The requirements for the study of foreign languages, outlined in the Federal State Educational Standard (FSES), as well as the requirements for the training of a teacher of foreign languages, reflected in the educational programs of higher education of the training program 44.03.01 “Pedagogical Education,” are specified. The authors present disciplines that will provide future teachers with information about the culture of the country of the studied language. Moreover, the authors provide particular examples of how students get acquainted with a different culture and the life of the people of the country of the studied language when studying culturally oriented disciplines. This contributes to the formation of general cultural and professional competencies. The authors conclude that thanks to the culturological knowledge gained through higher education, the teacher will be able to form language skills and knowledge of the culture of the people of the studied language.

The research presents the interim results of the study of the “Center for Improving Teaching Methods of Disciplines” of the Russian Academy of Education on the analysis, systematization, and creation of a register of effective teaching methods for disciplines, subjects, and courses (modules) at various levels of education as part of the study of relevant and effective methods for their testing and scaling. The author indicates that the importance of the search for perfect methods and techniques of learning and teaching, which has been conducted for centuries, is comparable in complexity and importance with research and development in the field of high-tech sciences and industries. From the authors’ point of view, when developing a register of effective training methods, advanced methodological principles of didactic research, a set of didactic objects, and a set of interdisciplinary approaches used should be considered. The author describes objective difficulties arising when forming a thesaurus of the concept of “teaching method” for the development of a register of effective methods. A research hypothesis is presented, which formulates possible options for solving the problem of developing a register of effective methods.

This research describes the implementation of interfaculty courses on artificial intelligence at Lomonosov Moscow State University: from the stage of research and analytical work, interviews, surveys, and studying educational processes in various educational institutions to the practical implementation of the program. The research provides information on the implementation of four interfaculty courses: (1)“Introduction to Programming,” (2)“Programming Fundamentals and Data Analysis with Python,” (3)“Applied Machine Learning with Python,” and (4)“Introduction to Deep Learning” and an additional elective course “Mathematics for Data Analysis.” The author analyzes the general topics of each course and the list of skills that learners will receive after completing the program presented. Students who complete the courses are going to acquire valuable practical skills in working with data, master machine learning tools, acquire knowledge of the Python programming language, learn to work with the NumPy, Pandas, Matplotlib, Scikit-learn, and PyTorch libraries, be able to analyze and visualize data, and, eventually, delve into the world of machine learning, learning different algorithms and peculiarities of how to apply them in solving problems from different areas. The specifics of the organization of interdisciplinary courses lie in carefully selecting content and methodological techniques that allow students of non-core specialties to master AI tools successfully. The research reflects the features of the organization of courses and the methods of using communication tools between participants of the educational process, including for maintaining psychological comfort in educational activities. Interfaculty courses on AI are relevant educational resources that allow students to acquire relevant competencies in the field of AI. They provide students with the opportunity to get acquainted with the theoretical foundations of programming and machine learning and gain practical skills through working with a variety of tools and technologies.

The authors’ approach to analyzing the institutional specifics of the children’s movement is justified by the current tasks of educating children and youth using the opportunities and conditions of a public children’s movement. To identify the specifics of the children’s movement as an educational institution, the authors, on the one hand, used the methods of sociokinetics to analyze the conceptual-categorical apparatus of a specific area of pedagogical knowledge. Sociokinetics was created by researchers of the children’s movement at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries. On the other hand, the authors used the methods of extrapolation to the children’s movement as an educational space of the logic of a multi-subjective education strategy, which reflects the current state of the Russian educational space, characterized by a high formation of horizontal connections between all active subjects of educational activity. The characteristics of the institutional specifics of the children’s movement are presented in the research in five aspects based on the extrapolation of a model for describing educational potential, which includes five components: axiological, teleological, conceptual, methodological, and interactive. Consistently, the research describes the value content of the children’s movement, the goals of educational work, conceptual foundations, organizational and methodological aspects and interaction with other educational institutions. The analysis of the methodological aspect of the educational space of the children’s movement is presented through its specificity, clearly manifested in the instrumental design of the organization of the children’s movement activities. Among the various forms of children’s movement organization, the authors identified and analyzed the following four forms: meeting, romance, primary collective, and patronizing support, characterized by a unique structure and nature of interactions and formed in the pioneer organization, the successor of which is the movement of children and youth. The authors identify the main differences at the conceptual and methodological levels of the foundations of education in the children’s movement from other institutions

The research studies the results of implementing the Belt and Road Initiative in the education system of the People’s Republic of China and the countries of the initiative area. The authors present the results of the analysis of the development of educational cooperation with the countries divided by territorial principle according to the criteria “the number of students from the areal countries” and “the number of Confucius Institutes and Cabinets” (in the context of the development of soft power of China’s external influence). The authors investigate the perspectives of coordination in the field of educational policy and analyze the regulatory legal acts defining the key directions for the development of the Belt and Road Initiative at different levels of the education system. Moreover, the authors analyze the publication activity and current situation on managing the convergence of international students from the countries along the area of the Belt and Road Initiative. The need to organize technical maintenance of the project in the countries along the route actualizes the task of unifying the quality of professional training of foreign personnel participating in the project (according to forecasts, at least 420 thousand people by 2030). The authors prove that the countries located in the area of the Belt and Road Initiative have enormous human, intellectual, natural, cultural, and historical potential, including in the context of implementing educational strategy on the example of the countries of the Maritime Silk Road area of the Belt and Road Initiative in the field of higher education. A case study of Harbin Polytechnic University within the scope of the stated research topic is examined.

The Value Bases for Choosing a Teaching Profession The research raises questions about the value-semantic foundations of the teaching profession in the context of professional choice. The mission of a teacher in contemporary society is to develop a person who has spiritual and moral values that make it possible to withstand global challenges. Simultaneously, the formation of a system of values by a teacher in a child is possible through the teacher’s value system of the teacher himself, which includes the values of the teaching profession. At the state level, the government recognized the need to implement the value-semantic approach in the training of teachers. Based on the analysis of Russian and foreign psychological and pedagogical research, the authors determined the main functions of values as a regulator of personality activity and a source of life and professional goals of a person. The influence of values on the professional self-determination of the future teacher is considered. Various classifications of values of the teaching profession are given. The results of interviews with 90 first-year undergraduate students of Smolensk State University studying in the area of study 44.03.05 “Pedagogical Education (with two majors) are presented”. An analysis of the responses shows that the majority of respondents note the high importance of the teaching profession in today’s society. According to the respondents, the most important characteristics of teachers that have positively affected them are professionalism and moral qualities. The motives for choosing the direction of professional training include the motives of intrinsic value (desire to work with children and interest in the subject) and altruistic motives. More than half of the students declared their desire to work as a teacher, which indicates the acceptance of these values. The conclusions noted the positive aspects and the risks of students’ awareness and acceptance of professionally significant values of the teaching profession.

The research presents the main provisions of the author’s concept of reproducing the educational text, analyzed from the standpoint of the theory of managing the process of mastering knowledge by N. F. Talyzina. The research aims to show the similarity of the methodological foundations of the theory of managing the process of mastering knowledge by N. F. Talyzina and the concept of arbitrary reproduction of educational material, implementing an activity approach to forming mental actions, particularly mnemonic actions that ensure the actualization of educational material. The proximity of the methodological foundations of N. F. Talyzina’s theory of learning process management and the concept of arbitrary reproduction as a reconstructive and reproductive activity is presented through the analysis of the main provisions of these approaches. The results of the authors’ research prove the importance of managing the processes of reproducing educational material through mnemonic actions, which are a set of associative-orienting, analytical-synthetic, and control-evaluative actions that serve as tools for updating the necessary information. It is shown that arbitrary reproduction demonstrates the features of the intellect of the subject of educational activity in a wide range: from the development of meta-regulation to the specifics of the representational picture. The absence of an orienting basis for random reproduction prevents the launch and deployment of multi-level intellectual operations and the regulation of recall, which manifests itself in planning, control, and anticipation of the necessary results. The understanding of mental actions as tools for updating and organizing educational material, which forms the basis of the reproduction concept, significantly expands the possibilities of the theory of managing the process of mastering knowledge by N. F. Talyzina. It should become the theoretical and methodological basis for designing new school textbooks. It is shown that the concept of arbitrary reproduction of educational material, which, similar to the theory of gradual formation of mental actions, implements an activity-based approach to teaching and learning, can act as a methodologically and experimentally grounded continuation of the classical theory of P. Ya. Galperin and N. F. Talyzina.

The research describes the activity theory by N. F. Talyzina from the point of view of the most effective training of a modern teacher to professional activity. The urgent task of building a nationally oriented education system in Russia will be solved based on the experience and traditions of Russian pedagogy. The theory of the step-by-step formation of mental actions and concepts, created by P. Ya. Galperin and the development of this theory in the works of N. F. Talyzina give future teachers theoretical knowledge in the field of pedagogical psychology and ensure their readiness to teach schoolchildren and students because this direction of the domestic activity approach is most fully developed in the practical aspect. This research describes the advantages of studying the activity theory of teaching by teachers as compared with traditional courses in pedagogical psychology. Activity theory of N. F. Talyzina gives future teachers the knowledge and guidelines necessary for designing the training session, such as the form, generality, deployment, and mastery of educational action; general and special cognitive actions; characteristics of the main stages of the process of learning mental actions and concepts; formation of methods of cognitive activity of students.

This research examines the features of the evolution of the national system of training researchers and scientific and pedagogical personnel during the Soviet and Russian periods. Nowadays, the issue of studying the organization and management of the system of training scientific and pedagogical personnel is in the focus of the Russian scientific community and the public administration bodies implementing scientific and educational policy in the country. The research aims to identify and characterize the features of the system of training scientific and pedagogical personnel in the USSR and Russia. Based on a systemic approach combined with the historical method, the authors identify three major stages in the development of Russian postgraduate studies relied on the main regulatory legal documents. The authors also assess the results of decisions taken in the field of training scientific and pedagogical personnel. During the research, the authors came to several conclusions. First, it is quite possible to form an effective environment for training scientific and scientific and pedagogical personnel in Russia. Second, the course for the country’s technological independence may be really implemented based on the Soviet heritage and the experience of modern Russia. Third, the goals of the Decade of Science and Technology in Russia may be achieved if outlined federal projects are implemented by all participants of the science and higher education system, the items of the “Concept of training teachers for the education system for the period up to 2030” are truly applied in practice, and the state administration bodies, responsible for the development and implementation of state policy in the field of higher professional education, provide comprehensive support to the younger generation in science.

This research considers the possibility and effectiveness of using information and communication technologies (ICT) in training Russian language teaching methodology to philology students at pedagogical universities. The types of information and communication technologies that are most often used in lectures and practical classes according to the methodology are distinguished and characterized: computer presentations, information, and training and testing (control) programs. Tactics for including ICT in the learning process are proposed. The forms of using various types of ICT developed by the authors are described, and used in classes on general and private methods of teaching the Russian language: intentionally incomplete computer presentations and incomplete educational information on slides, which requires partial restoration or transformation into another form — a table, a diagram, etc. As an innovative teaching method, the use of hypertext space, which effectively provides educational routes, is particularly considered. Based on hypertext, the basic didactic unit of the learning process, three levels of methodological tasks are distinguished. The first level is perceptual and reproductive. The second is productive. The third level is the task of receiving feedback from students in the form of a new utterance or methodological product. The research also offers a detailed sample of students’ preparatory academic work for a practical lesson using ICT on the topic “Methods of teaching the Russian language,” containing three modules: general didactic, private methodic, practice-oriented, and the development of a practical lesson “Features of the methodology of teaching spelling in primary school,” focused on the development of philology students of private methods teaching spelling.