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ON THE INTEGRATION OF THE ACADEMIC PROCESS OF POST-INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION
A. K. Oreshkina
The UNESCO directive set out in Geneva in 2004 regards modern education as simultaneously including upbringing, training and formation of one's position in life, which means it can be interpreted both as a method of mastering educational programs and as a way toward types of educational programs determined by social development strategies, the process being unlimited either in time or in form.
According to the UNESCO program, a principle of regular lifelong education is a recognition of the importance of knowledge received in spontaneous education, and its consolidation and integration with knowledge received in the institutional educational establishments. As a result, the educational process is characterised by the conceptual strategy of development stipulated by the universal trends in education. The normative legal basis of the new organisation of education has been stipulated to include:
The Russian Education Modernization Framework up to 2012;
The Russian National Innovative System Development Program up to
2020;
The federal target program, Research and Pedagogical Staff of Innovative Russia, for 2009-2013;
The joint Bologna Declaration of the member states of the Zone of the European Higher Education, signed on June 19, 1999;
The Education and Science Ministry Order No. 2274 dated 20.05.2004 On Experimenting in Application of Test Units in the Academic Process within the Draft Bill On Educational Loans as a form of governmental support in the system of higher education;
The Federal State Educational Standard of General Education of the second generation, etc.
In this context, the development of subsystems of lifelong education changes traditional ideas of their social essence in view of the increase in the importance of informal education, self-education, an increase in the functional significance of socially institutionalized structures having educational potential, expanding the educational sphere to museums, libraries, educational centres, research and leisure establishments, laboratories, structures of additional education and public substructures. This leads to structural and qualitative changes in the organisation of
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educational subsystems, giving prominent features to the formation of the sphere of lifelong education: research and creative schools (macro schools); school research laboratories; integrated departments of institutes of higher education and production; research centres; research-and-production innovative educational centres; integrative infrastructural services of leisure centres; and cultural-and-educational exhibition centres functioning as resource integrated centres of regional and municipal significance. This trend contributes to a new task in pedagogical science, viz. making the academic process transparent and accessible for all age groups. In general, these changes stipulate bringing educational programs in compliance with the requirements of domestic education and with due account of global trends in general, professional and additional education; as well as improving of organizational forms and organizational-and-structural components of the academic process.
As a major social institution, the education complex is characterised by processes of controllable development, self-development and selforganisation. At the present stage, it manifests itself in:
1) the transition from discrete and staged forms of education to an integral system of lifelong education meeting the personal needs of people at any age and by any educational route;
2) the purposeful control over development of the education system at the governmental level, which increases the necessity of conceptual, methodological and normative legal maintenance of basic, professional and additional education, as well as self-education, in line with development of non-institutional/alternative forms characteristic for all subsystems of education. As a result, the continuity of the educational process in the lifelong education system (as a manifestation of the systematic nature and consistency of multilevel educational programs and a condition of the structuring of lifelong education), suited to the needs of a post-industrial society, becomes especially topical. Therefore, the theoretical representation of this continuity, showing itself in the forms of connection between discrete states of the educational process (educational programs) in subsystems and its development, assumes the creation of a form of connection in all organizational and structural components of the lifelong education system and in all its educational lines, which are characterised by active integration.
It is worth mentioning that the classical idea of continuity in pedagogical science represented in such aspects as self-education and the principles of systematic nature and consistency of education, viz. gradual development of various kinds of knowledge, when "the subsequent is
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always based on the previous, and the previous is consolidated by the subsequent” (J. A. Komensky) seems to be the topic of the hour. In the history of pedagogical knowledge, the treatment of continuity in foreign scientists' works was coordinated with the content of education and the academic process (the French materialists C. A. Helvetius, D. Diderot, and
J. A. Condorcet); the Swiss teacher J. H. Pestalozzi treated it as continuous and gradual movement to knowledge; the German humanitarian teacher A. Diesterweg saw it as connection between the previous and the subsequent material combined with some independence of students. In domestic pedagogics, further development of the theory of continuity is coordinated with its interpretation as an idea connected to the external and internal aspects of the pedagogical process that implements its leading function, viz. the development of the person (P. F. Kapterev); additional education (V. P. Vakhterov); anthropological essence of training (K. D. Ushinsky); self-education and natural-consistency on the basis of a moral and humanistic paradigm (N. I. Pirogov, L. N. Tolstoy, etc.); and the pedagogics of preschool childhood (K. N. Ventsel, Y. I. Tikheyeva, I. A. Sikorsky, V. M. Bekhterev, M. K. Svenitskaya, etc.).
Modern philosophical knowledge treats continuity as the basis of stability for the existence and functioning of education, as the inclusion of everything important and necessary from a previous stage into a subsequent stage or link, but not preparation for the previous one. In the context of tradition and innovation, continuity is understood as preservation and delivery of pedagogical knowledge and experience characteristic for the historical period; thus tradition is treated as a form of implementation of this process.
Being the backbone of social infrastructure, and developing on the basis of integrity, variability and interaction with other social systems, the conceptual basis of the formation and development of the system of lifelong education is coordinated with the bringing up to date of all subsystems of education, new forms of their structural and qualitative interrelation, and a change in the essence of pedagogical activity. The multicomponent structure of today's lifelong education system includes a variety of governmental, non-governmental, public, socially institutionalised education structures and comprises multilevel and multi-stage educational programs on the basis of integrity of the components making up the education system. As a result, educational programs and educational technologies are aimed at the removal of inconsistencies between the educational goals on the part of a poly-subject consumer and achievement of the necessary
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accessibility in meeting educational needs. This makes the educational system integral and complete in its functioning in the society.
Modern pedagogical research treats the theoretical problem of consistency in several aspects:
• consistency as a link between different stages or steps of development aimed at the preservation of particular elements of the whole as a system.
• consistency as a correlation of the previous and the subsequent stage in the course of change of a particular object on the basis of the preservation of particular parts, properties and characteristics of the object.
Educational programs from preschool education to adult education and third-age people (target audience, types of educational programs; their urgency, goals and objectives; means of their development and implementation as forms of educational activity, teaching methods and aids) conflict with consumers of education represented by the individual, society, government, production and the educational system itself. The conflict is caused by the fact that educational programs are largely characterised by non-interaction; insufficient expressiveness of the person-focused motivational basis, which manifests itself in unstable motivation for self-realisation and self-disclosure of a person in the educational process; insufficient motivation for creative activity; absence of a wide variability of educational programs/routes stipulated by personal needs in called-for forms, methods and means of their assimilation. To integrate the needs of the individual, society, government, various social groups and the system of lifelong education, it is necessary to develop a new knowledge of the essence of consistency as a process and a result of sequential and systematic inter-connection/“joining” of educational programs. In this case, consistency as a process assumes the inter-connection of educational programs with due account to their hierarchy in the lifelong education system, which is provided with vector direction in education subsystems. The result is personal motivation and values in development and acquisition of sociocultural experience and adaptation to changing social and economic conditions. Consistency as a result provides multiple forms of interaction between the new kinds of educational programs and the standard ones functioning in institutional and socially-institutionalised structures of education along all educational lines and organizational-and-structural components of the lifelong education system, providing the necessity and sufficiency of variable personal needs in education unlimited either in time or form. As far as the result is concerned, consistency of the
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educational process correlates with age, changing the focus of personal education as a special form of lifelong personal activity.
The priority in the creation of consistency in the educational process of the lifelong education system is control over systematic ties between educational programs. This agrees with the development of the methodological basis for consistency of the educational process from the point of view of conceptualization of the idea of the development of the interaction between governmental, public, basic, formal, informal and additional educational structures. At present, the existing structures of education function separately and discordantly. As a result, consistency of the educational process agrees with the creation of forms of connection, providing the necessity and sufficiency of interaction between the components of the lifelong education system: the component of the structural level, standing for vertical and horizontal integration of levels and steps of education; and the socially institutionalized component, standing for integration of public structures and social subsystems of an educational potential with educational structures. The interaction reflects the new essence of post-industrial education.
References
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2. Леднев В.С. Развитие системы профессионально-
педагогического образования / В.С. Леднев, П. Ф. Кубрушко. - М.: Эгвес, 2006.
3. Новиков А.М., Новиков Д.А. Методология научного
исследования. - М.: Книжный дом «Либроком», 2009.
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