Implementation of autonomy principle in educational institutions of the Russian Federation

Abstract

Introduction. Contemporary challenges to the development of education imply the search and understanding of highly effective approaches and management methods. Experts who have conducted PISA studies in Western educational systems have identified a direct correlation between the autonomy of an educational institution and the results of its activities. The extrapolation of PISA results in the Russian education system is possible only with unified theoretical approaches to understanding the conceptual unit of "autonomy", the category "autonomy of an educational institution" and the principle of autonomy, as well as a sociological study, the respondents of which are the heads of educational institutions in Russia. The purpose hereof is a conceptual analysis of existing approaches to understanding the phenomena of "autonomy" and "autonomy of an educational institution" in the legal framework of the Russian education system, in domestic and foreign sources. A certain set of indicators of the phenomenon of autonomy in the Russian educational environment was used in this research as the main toolkit for achieving this goal. Materials and methods. The ideas of the systemic and activity approaches, the general scientific method of comparative analysis serve as the methodological basis of the research. The content-invariant foreign and domestic sources served as the platform for quantitative and qualitative content analysis. In addition to general scientific methods, within the framework of this research, a private scientific survey method was used in the form of a questionnaire survey of the heads of general educational institutions. More than 10 thousand school principals from 84 constituent entities of the Russian Federation took part in the experiment in the course of the sociological research "Autonomy of educational institutions: results and prospects". Research results. The study reveals the theoretical and practical aspects of the implementation of the autonomy principle in the educational system of the Russian Federation. The analysis of domestic and foreign thesaurus on the problem of the autonomy of an educational institution was carried out. The authors dwell in detail on the mechanisms for introducing the principle of autonomy in the educational process in Russia, identify existing obstacles to the implementation of the provisions declared in the legal field. Clustering of elements (indicators) that determine the degree of autonomy is significant for further research of the phenomenon of "autonomy of educational institutions".