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QUESTIONS OF GENERAL THEORY, METHODOLOGY AND PRACTICE OF CONTINUOUS EDUCATION. COUNTRY-SPECIFIC AND TERRITORIAL ASPECTS OF CONTINUOUS
INFLUENCE OF AN EXTERNAL
CONTEXT ON EFFICIENCY
OF AN EDUCATIONAL ORGANIZATION
O. N. Machekhina
Both a person and an educational organisation, whether a lower secondary school, an upper secondary school or a lycee, function in internal and external contexts, the latter playing a very important part. Articles by G. I. Gerasimov,
L. I. Novikova, A. L. Nikiforov, L. V. Ilyukhina etc.) have justified the idea of an educational institution as an aggregate or collective subject of training and education. We believe that both a school as an aggregate subject of educational activity and a person function in internal and external contexts of activity. This article is aimed at considering the influence of an external context on efficiency of an educational organization. In compliance with the Law On Education in the Russian Federation dated December 29, 2012, educational institutions are referred to as educational organisations and understood as non-profit organisations engaged in education as a core activity on the basis of a state licence and in accordance with the purposes the organisation was established for [1]. Consequently, the functioning of an educational organisation largely depends on an external context set by the state.
Since 2010, we have been researching the application of a resource-and-context approach to the strategic design of school development. The research results available now from 32 state educational organisations in Moscow prove legal, political, financial-and-economic, innovative-and-pedagogical, cultural-and-historical, religious, national, natural (consisting of territorial and climatic) contexts to be external. Certainly, an important part in the functioning of an educational organisation is played by each of the above-mentioned external contexts. However, proceeding from the field of our concern, Lifelong development of professional competences: place and role of state, society, business and a person himself in practical fulfilment of the process, let us make a brief introduction to those external contexts that are relevant to the subject declared, viz.legal, innovative-and-pedagogical and cultural-and-historical.
A legal context is set by program documents issued by state education management bodies. It is a legal framework stipulating the functioning of an educational organisation. The program documents include, first of all, the Law On Education in the Russian Federation and the Federal Education Development Target Program for the Years 2011-2015 etc. Regional strategic documents are also important components in a legal context. Not only does a legal context provide formal regulation of some aspects of an educational process, but it also can limit independent activity of schools. Legal acts do not allow an educational institution to
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make any original curricula of its own. On the one hand, such intervention prevents the unauthorised introduction of ineffective experimental programs; on the other hand, it restricts the development of different training, educational and teaching methods and technologies in schools. In our opinion, the situation is not favourable for the implementation of the concept of continuous education. As implementation of any innovation in the area of, say, design and development of universal educational actions in the period of transit from preschool to school encounters a lot of obstacles, it is quite often that the innovative potential of educational organisations can dip down.
Innovative-and-pedagogical context is a quite wide concept, including on the one hand, the identification of weak spots in the education system and the subsequent designing of their improvement and the implementation of projects; and on the other hand, the accumulation and preparation for translation of the pedagogical experience. The education system is in need of regular adjustments, improvements and innovations. Innovations in the pedagogic field can be introduced from above on a large scale at the legislative level. It is also possible to apply innovations in separately taken educational organisations at the teachers’ or administration’s initiative. In practice, it is usually at the state’s initiative that well-reputed, advanced, innovative pedagogical experience meeting such criteria as urgency, novelty, educational and public importance, feasibility, possibility of flexible application in all educational institutions, becomes widespread [5]. Schools have to adopt such changes though they are often fraught with numerous problems, including those of an internal nature. In turn, a necessity to solve these problems causes a new round of design and implementation of projects. However, it is such a course of events that stipulates the comparatively quick introduction of innovative ideas and their transition into an innovative mode. We should take note that it is not only an absence of interest that prevents teachers from developing and applying innovative educational programs on the basis of their pedagogical experience, but also the influence of tradition. Stipulating the continuity of the pedagogical experience, the cultural-and-historical context does not allow for the application of radically innovative models of education. Let us consider this in detail.
A cultural-and-historical context is an environment resulting from the historical process and a priori stipulating a set of moral and ethical values of a particular society. To define the essence of this context, let us interpret the cultural-and-educational environment as a term close to it in its meaning. "A cultural-and-educational environment is a kind of social inheritance area, where cultural and educational characteristics meet each other and where cultural signs represent educational signs, creating conditions for the development of a person in particular socio-cultural conditions» [4]. A cultural-and-historical context focuses more on the separately taken subjects of an educational program. In the absence of a definite historically developed position on some basic mental issues in the public consciousness, a state has to gradually introduce the elements of patriotic education into some subjects. A course of History and Literature is largely focused on the patriotic education of schoolchildren. A lack of time for these subjects causes the focusing on Russian History and literary heritage of Russian standard authors. Historical processes and literary phenomena are considered through the
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prism of love to the Fatherland and attitude to power. Such an approach reduces the independent value of these subjects and restricts the schoolchildren’s outlook. A cultural-and-historical context may be said to have a controversial influence on the Russian educational system. The absence of continuity of pedagogical schools and insufficiently careful analysis of the experience gained quite often result in introduction of artificially developed educational programs which are rather poorly connected with the whole range of opportunities given by the above-mentioned «social inheritance».
In conclusion, let us note that all internal and external contexts dynamically interact, "colliding" with each other at any specific time to generate development situations. It is extremely important for the participants in the educational community to be able to identify such situations, analyse and use them to maintain the high efficiency of the educational organisation.
References
1. Закон об образовании в Российской Федерации. Глава 1. Статья 2. [Электронный ресурс] www.минобрнауки.рф/документы/2974
2. Вербицкий А.А., Калашников В. Г. Категория "контекст" в психологии и педагогике. - М.: Логос, 2о1о.- 304 с.
3. Вербицкий А. А., Мачехина О. Н. Разработка программы развития школы: ресурсноконтекстный подход. Вестник Владимирского государственного университета, 2013, № 2. - C. 16-30.
4. Видт И. Е. Образование как феномен культуры: эволюция образовательных моделей в историко-культурном процессе. Автореферат дис. на соискание ученой степени доктора педагогических наук. - Тюмень, 2003. - 50 с.
5. Сластенин В. А., Исаев И. Ф., Шиянов Е. Н. Педагогика [Электронный ресурс] / под ред. В. А. Сластенина. - М.: Академия. 2002. - 608 с.
Translated from Russian by Znanije Central Translations Bureau
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SOME TERRITORIAL-SECTORAL DIFFERENCES IN THE NON-STATE SECTOR OF HIGHER EDUCATION
T. Prok
The report considers some aspects of the territorial-sector differences in the established organizational system of continuing professional education (hereinafter CPE) of the non-state sector of higher education.
Non-state higher educational institutions differ in terms of: (а) number of higher educational institutions; (b) total number of students in them; (c) student admission and graduation; (d) number of accredited educational programs, areas of training and specialties; (e) number of learners (bachelors and specialists) receiving a state-subsidized education; (f) number of teachers with academic degrees, etc. For example, based on the number of students in non-state higher educational institutions, all regions of the country can be conventionally divided into five groups: (1) regions with a high level of non-state sector of higher education (with more than 50 thousand students); (2) regions with a developed non-state sector of higher education (20-50,000 students); (3) regions with a medium level of development of the non-state sector of higher education (5-20,000 students); (4) regions with a low level of development of the non-state sector (from 1 to 5,000 students); (5) regions with a very low level of development of the non-state sector of higher education (less than 1,000 students). In the studies, the author also referred to building other typologies of the non-state sector of higher education [4; 5].
By the results of the monitoring of the Ministry of Education and Science of the RF, there were 446 non-state higher educational institutions and 661 branches in the Russian Federation registered as of December 7, 2012. According to the results of the monitoring, only 29 higher educational institutions (all accredited ones) and 42 branches (41 accredited) out of 70 higher educational institutions (67 accredited) and 97 branches (72 accredited) included in the sampling were considered effective [2]. At the same time, we think that the structure of the indicators of the state monitoring of non-state higher educational institutions should be supplemented with indicators of regional effectiveness, as the higher educational institutions of this sector are mostly oriented towards the regional market of training of specialists, and interact with the labor market at a regional level. Such an approach might change the assessment of the activities for the better.
One should note the great positive role of the non-state sector of higher education in smoothing out the numerous regional disparities in the territorial-sector structure of the Russian system of education in general and regional systems of CPE in particular. For example, non-state higher educational institutions of a humanitarian and creative specialization in technocratic cities and regions substantially reduce the internal migration of talented young people who used to leave for Moscow, Saint Petersburg and other cities to enter higher educational institutions, and never came back.
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