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THE SOCIAL EFFECTS OF CONTINUOUS LIBERAL ARTS EDUCATION
N. R. Malikova
This article describes the current problems and social effects of innovative interactive methods of training/education, benefits, and limitations of the implementation of distant learning.
В статье раскрываются актуальные проблемы и социальные эффекты инновационных интерактивных методов обучения, преимущества и ограничения внедрения дистантного образования.
Key words: innovation, "anticipatory", distant learning, participatory approach, international integration.
Ключевые слова: инновационное, «предвосхищающее», дистантное обучение, партисипаторный подход, международная интеграция.
The timeliness of the problems discussed at the 13th international conference, entitled "Education Throughout Life: Continuous Education in the Interests of Sustainable Development" is self-evident. It continues the tradition of discussing the prospects of development of mass education at the Rome Club of intellectuals. A. Peccei, the founder of the Club of Rome, thought that attaining the social effects necessary for mankind is possible through, first and foremost, changing human qualities, and fostering "new humanism", so that people with different education levels could comprehend the sense of world problems [Печчеи: 128-129].
In 1979 J. Botkin (USA), Mahdi Elmanjra (Morocco) and Mircea Malitza (Romania) published a report entitled "No Limits to Learning", setting the objectives of unlocking the potential of education and the facilities of lifelong learning in order to bridge the gap of social, educational and cultural differences between people of different countries of the world, and the analysis of potential problems of public education. They called to us all to pay heed to the need for reforming the national education system with regard to the current global issues of our time, to improve innovations, and to introduce progressive social technologies in the process of learning. A "superior", future-oriented consciousness must be shaped, rather than a "lagging" one. Not simply passive adaptation to the values of the past, but active confirmation of the values fostering the transition to sustainable development. In 1996, the UNESCO report entitled "Learning - The Treasure Within" - stressed the crucial role of education, not only in society, but in personal development as well. Both then and afterwards, the problem of social inequality and access to quality education remains urgent everywhere. The principal vector of the Bologna Reforms is to guarantee and assure the high quality of tertiary education. Attention to quality increases at each new stage of the Bologna process’s development. It is education quality that is capable of bringing a country to the top positions in the sphere of scientific research and education, and making it more competitive.
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It has become evident that the laws of unrestricted market competition should be applied to education. But how do matters stand with the promotion of innovative knowledge, interdisciplinary integration, the introduction of the recent advances in social sciences and humanities, and pure and natural sciences in the process of teaching? Why does the pedagogical community still view Russia's joining the Bologna process so ambiguously? Latent resistance to international integration reflects the specific nature of the Russian educational system. Problems arise with respect to engaging students in quality assurance, attitude to accreditation, and directive control of the quality of education. Apart from a lack of resources, other problems are also frequently encountered. The degree of Russia's involvement into the European educational space is still low. The standards of 3rd generation teaching and guiding educational programs development do not fully meet the up-to-date requirements. There is no transparency and objectivity of educational work assessment. The mechanisms of providing educational innovations with resources are not efficient.
Globalization could not but touch upon the problems of sociological education quality assurance. Such issues as the need to introduce and expand the range of innovative methods in the teaching of social sciences and humanities remain especially relevant. Are the techniques and methods of teaching and academic training of specialists adequate for the challenges of contemporary social transformation and rapid economic modernization?
Unfortunately, there is an imbalance between the education system and the objective needs of the labor market, the levels of inter-university and international cooperation. The differences in the professional training levels and sociopsychological preparedness for interactive innovative interaction with students among various generations of teachers in the country's regions are substantial. The level of innovations and quality of humanitarian education is insufficient. Nevertheless, there is a model of education that contemplates the partial replacement of the traditional "reproducing education" and active introduction of the "innovative education" techniques and methods into the training process. Apart from the intensity of mastering a certain volume of knowledge, they induce an active response to the relevant problems of social, economic, political, spiritual and cultural life within society. Such an educational strategy is assured most efficiently by resorting to the "participatory approach". Participativity is a reflexive way of empowering people with the ability and authority to perform efficient actions with the objective of improving their life situation by means of intellectual activity. Therefore, the teachers and the learners become responsible both for the production of knowledge and for its utilization. A participatory approach provides a wide range of techniques for the development of democratic processes and decentralization of control in education. Today, a growing number of countries are switching to a model of problem oriented teaching in their secondary and tertiary educational institutions. In this model, a teacher plays the role of a coach, giving incentives and allotting tasks, and students search, generalize and provide information on their own. The teacher intervenes in the cases when advisory support is required, or a failure occurs in the self-control processes. This method is
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used especially successfully in classes in social sciences and humanities, requiring the development of independent, critical thinking, individual and collective work skill, and responsibility and interest in new knowledge, where the experience of independent discoveries and upholding and reviewing one's opinion is so important. Active participation in mastering the fundamentals and skills of planning the process of one's studies is shaped. Besides, supplementary objectives are attained, which promotes the enhancement of both intellectual and leadership potential - for example, cooperation in discussing current social problems is organized in sociology classes, given in the form of a training seminar.
It produces certain social effects.Interactive methods of problem and situation analysis (case studies, social assessment, debates/discussion, brainstorm, simulation, business/role playing games) are used extensively in the process of teaching. As a result, apart form taking in knowledge actively, students master projective roles and statuses (those of a leader, opponent, speaker, and mediator). Experience has shown that the process of collective searching and adoption of a decision mobilizes students to accept social changes and innovations more readily.
Innovations and interactive methods in education have gained new substantive aspects and qualities in the context of teaching project implementation, having become an "intellectual commodity". Since the global information network (Internet) is being introduced and promoted in a space on a wide scale, a fundamentally new form of competition in providing educational services on the international market arose as well. The support of remote learning improvement in the RuNet is manifestly insufficient. Besides, the involvement of the Russian financial capital and business structures is practically non-existent, and incomparable with the situation in economically developed countries. This looks like a paradox, because just this segment of education is attractive for large commercial structures and transnational financial and industrial corporations, which are ready to invest funds into education, employer-sponsored training and retraining of specialists, thus striving for a lessening of state control of education. A quarter of a century ago in 1989, a group of industrial enterprise owners published a report entitled "Education and European Competence". It claimed that education and vocational training must be viewed as "vital strategic investments into the future success of an enterprise". The facts that those subjects were still viewed as internal affairs of state authorities, and that industry rendered only a slight impact on educational programs, were considered regrettable. Back in 1990, the European Commission adopted a working paper "Distance Education and Training", that stated that this education is especially interesting from the point of view of education cost efficiency. Thereafter, the European Commission documents tended increasingly to view distance education "open universities" as enterprises controlled by the laws of supply and demand, offering a new type of product to a consumer. Thus, students become customers and education courses become products. It was stated at the 1996 UNESCO meeting in Philadelphia (USA) that "continuity in education cannot be ensured by the permanent presence of a teacher". It must be ensured by the educational services provider. Leonardo
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da Vinci and Socrates programs with multibillion dollar budgets were launched in order to create favorable conditions for the development of distance education; they were intended to develop the system of "continuous life-long education and new forms of training", having made a point of "spreading knowledge acquisition throughout Europe". The prospect of liberalization in the sphere of education and the development of distance education promise large profits in the private sector, generated by hardware and software sales and electronic network operation. It is presumed that this strategy must not only bring about the adaptation of education to the requirements of the contemporary economy, but also ensure the quality preparation for interactive communicative interaction in the global network.
It is possible that a radically different interactive form of teaching mediated by a virtual space of communication with multimedia content will reduce the costs of narrowly focused vocational training. However, a question always arises: to what extent this virtual separation of students and teachers must ensure the acquisition of fundamental knowledge without the spread of IT dependence, "clip thinking", the difficulty in acquiring scientific cognition skills being a task of training highly qualified specialists: The advantages of distance education are more evident for those who improve their skills on their own, saving education costs. A virtual interactive education project emerges: the creation of a widespread system of private and commercial education, reduced to the basic standards, on the periphery of state education. However, we have to solve an important problem in the legislative regulation for the implementation of this problem, because the sphere of commercial education and recognition of diplomas falls within the authority of the state. As a result, the initiative of the European Commission proposes a "knowledge accreditation card" issued by various suppliers of educational programs via the Internet. As a student advances in education, providers will provide him or her with credit for the knowledge he/she has. This accreditation will be recorded on a floppy disc or on a job placement website when hired by employers. Apparently, personal "accreditation cards" will become real passes to the world of job openings, and therefore there will be no need for diplomas. But the main issues are the cost of such knowledge accreditation, the quality of knowledge acquired, the extent of social need for it, and social-normative and legal regulation.
Needless to say, with the help of technology, one can create networks of educational crosslinks, make the process of education more flexible, and be able to call on the teacher's support at any moment in a remote online mode of communication and interaction. The introduction of new technologies will allow us to retain the tendency of expanding access to the tertiary liberal art education. Computer systems are capable of creating a supportive education network. It pays to combine the traditional forms of teaching with the supplementary capabilities of telecommunication consultations. However, technological and administrative changes are needed to carry out wide-scope innovative transformation in the Russian educational system under the impact of interdiscplinary knowledge expansion and international integration of the scientific and technological infrastructure of continuous education in the age of globalization.
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Translated from Russian by Znanije Central Translastions Bureas
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