What should be changed in the Russian education?
New method and object of measurement ought to be introduced in education. It is time to move to competences, to the method of assessment in accordance with a new norm that is mastered by a pupil. This new norm is associated with independence, initiative, testing and search as special new disciplines. In fact the heart of change is educational space of school. When it changes, management in general education will also change.
In both developed countries, such as the USA and European states, and in developing ones, such as China and India, emphasis in education has shifted. What is assessed is not knowledge and achievement, but involvement of students, professors and university administration into the educational process.
It would be good to place the same emphasis on involvement in the educational space of school and have a look at it from the standpoint of child and adolescent independence, initiative and eventfulness.
Can you cite instances when educational format in the Russian general education changed?
There was an interesting experiment in Tomsk called “Tolstoy’s school”, where communication and, what is even more important, space were changed within one school and one classroom. This was not a classroom in the conventional sense of the word. These were two rooms with boundaries and passages. In the developmental education tradition, for instance, not only the object of assessment is changed, but also the type of educational content. Initial training pace is interrupted by “revolutions” that are called “project sessions”. Siberian Youth Assembly, which takes place in Tomsk every year, is also organized in the project session format. School children from Tomsk, Krasnoyarsk and Novosibirsk take part in this event. This gives us an inter-school space, which is extremely important.
Should the general education take into account the “outside world” (economic, political, social, corporate) and be more open to changes in it?
Taking the outside world into account is relevant for everyone. However, every time at various trainings when I asked corporations whether they turned towards education – at least towards university education, if not towards school – they gave no answer. And how is the university turned towards school education? And what do we mean by the word “turned”? In my point of view, this is a question of how the university organizes a freshman’s “starting period”. For the corporation it would be the question of how it arranges an intern’s “starting period”. Why do U.S. IT corporations hunt for alumni of certain universities? It happens, because they have competition among companies, not among alumni. This is market. They try to get hold of the best alumni and arrange their “starting period” at the corporation as well as they can.
Coming back to universities and corporations, I cannot cite a management experiment in Russia, where, for instance, a corporation would arrange hiring of a new employee as a special type of work, a special meeting space.
“Meeting” of schools and universities is a management and political approach, and thus it requires a serious discussion between municipal and regional authorities, as well as other governmental bodies.
How should the modern school deal with talents?
Every person has a talent and an anti-talent. Talented chess players and mathematicians are often autistic. Let me reiterate that the key issue for today’s education is involvement into the process, into the pupil’s own world, which he or she does not know yet and is gradually discovering. This not only a moral and ethical issue, this is also an issue of action space, where a pupil needs to discover his or her own talent.
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