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CONTINUITY OF EDUCATION: ORGANIZATIONAL AND PEDAGOGICAL ASPECTS
T. M. Churekova
Changes in the Russian educational system, associated with the trend of integrating it into the European system of higher education, have meant that new approaches, concepts of lifelong education and the establishment of a unified educational space must be developed. Society has begun to realize that it is education that is the main precondition for survival and the improvement of humanity in the context of global anthropogenic problems, and the key factor for success and reaching a high quality of life for everyone.
The idea of lifelong education is not unique, neither is it new. One can often find it in works by ancient scholars in India, China, Rome and Greece or by outstanding figures in science and culture. Some pedagogical theories of the past considered education as an eternal source of folk wisdom, which should be constantly enriched by constant knowledge improvement. They saw, in the succession of knowledge and continuity of education, an incontestable precondition for success. Some classical figures in Russian pedagogy also touched upon this topic. For example, K.D. Ushinsky thought that the main task of education was to improve a student's ability and desire to continue learning throughout his life.
The concept of lifelong education as a scientific theory originally appeared (in the first half of the 20th century) due to the extension of adult education and was associated with it in the first stages of its development. Between the 1970 and 1990s, foreign scholars (P. Lengren, P. Dave, D. Kidd) and Russian scholars (A. P. Vladislavlev, A. V. Darinsky, Y.N. Kulyutkin, V. G. Onushkin and others) asked for the following: a) a more precise definition of the essential features of lifelong education (concept, purposes, functions, division of the basic subsystems, identification of the specific features of their interconnections and function in the whole system of education); b) a definition of the principles of lifelong education (entirety, integrity, succession, person-orientation, predictability, flexibility and dynamism, unity and discretization, diversity of the educational forms).
In those years the basic characteristics of lifelong education were formed: the orientation of the teaching process toward general, specialized and supplementary education, i.e. toward an individual’s acquisition of knowledge, skills and abilities throughout life; the availability of the institutional and self-educational components in a structure of these types of education, where self-education serves as a "link between the separate
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stages of institutionalized education, making an educational process constant and unified” [1].
At the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century, new trends in the development of lifelong education were developed and it is now being considered from different aspects: a) pedagogical (development of the unified and successive content of education, search and approbation of the effective technologies); b) administrative (development and implementation of the models of functioning and development of the system of lifelong education); c) legal (legal basis for the system of lifelong education and all its entities); d) social and psychological (availability of lifelong education to different social groups, allowing for the needs and abilities of production and people).
At present, lifelong education in the framework of the Bologna declaration is aimed at the full satisfaction of the people’s educational needs, stimulated by either aspiration toward maximum self-actualization or by the need to adapt to the conditions of a constantly changing world. A person becomes an active participant in an educational process: whether it is a school pupil (basic and specialized learning), a student (bachelor, master or specialist) or a professional making his or her choices among forms of refresher training and retraining. Today's education, as underlined in the reports of UNESCO's International Commission on Education, must provide a person with the ability of self-understanding and an understanding of the environment, and a way to contribute labor and toward the execution of his or her social function in life in the information society.
In this respect, educational establishments face the need to lay out a system of lifelong education as a basis for the full development and formation of a personality that would facilitate his or her socialization process. The main trends of the organizational re-establishment of universities at the end of the 1980s determined a transition to a multi-stage, flexible, open, spatially dispersed model of an institution of higher education, which has to provide the necessary conditions for the provision of education on the whole territory of a region.
At that time, Kemerovo State University developed and implemented a model of lifelong education with a structural component, a Center of Lifelong Education, established in 1989. The center was created by the method of vertical integration and horizontal consolidation. Vertical integration allowed for the development of lifelong education that was systematic, consistent and successive for the students. Horizontal consolidation allowed for the objective and active implementation of the educational programs across the whole region on at a certain level and orientation.
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One of the first developed programs was a pre-university education, where all the departments of Kemerovo State University were centers of organization and support. We assumed then and we are convinced now that without constant participation of a higher education establishment in the school's problem-solving, concentration, and succession, “continuity of education” would remain on the drawing board. We took as a basis the main principles of integrative activity: a) goal orientation and mutual interest in the common activity of the department and the higher education establishment in the creation of the conditions for implementation of successive and specialized education and improvement of the teacher’s proficiency; b) differentiation in the choice of ways and forms of activity in accordance with the needs of the participants of educational process; c) person-orientation and fundamentality of the educational services provided by the departmental professors to teachers and pupils; d) flexibility and openness of content and forms of interaction of the department with educational establishments, which stimulate the search and introduction of new ways and forms of partnership.
The effectiveness of the following forms of interaction with all the subjects of the educational process was proven in practice: a) collective planning of the content of the school subjects according to the state educational standards; b) regular discussions about improving teaching methods at departmental meetings, thematic seminars, scientific conferences; c) publications of joint study guides for pupils in classes with the profound learning of certain subjects; d) approbation and introduction of the results of a scientific study by university professors in the school practice, on one hand, and, on the other, application of the teachers’ experience as a means of improving the professional training of students; e) setting up and holding of academic competitions; f) flexible system of private lessons etc.
Cooperation between the university and the secondary education establishments lets all the participants of this process act on a systematic basis, appropriate to their educational, cultural, social and economic concentration, implementing the principles of succession and cooperation, integrity, humanization and humanitarianization, psychological comfort, variability and creativeness.
References
Онушкин В. Г. Непрерывное образование - приоритетное становление науки / В. Г. Онушкин, Ю. Н. Кулюткин // Педагогика. -1989. - № 2. - С. 86-90.
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