Three Decades of International Education Research and Development Collaboration: University of Hawaii and Russian Academy of Sciences

Abstract

The paper studies collaboration between Russian and American educators in science teaching research and development. It describes the result of this collaboration – inquiry-based Russian program developed under D. Young’s direction. It is an integrated science program for school use where students work in small research teams to generate the content of the program. The program is grounded in the definition of intellectual activity as the intellectual realm constituting Man’s use of symbols that is held to be the basis for general education where a discipline is characterized as a model for curriculum development and implementation. The paper also describes the joint efforts of an international research team to develop, test, and implement the program in Russian schools. It gives a brief overview of the science program developed by D. Young for elementary school and his Civic Education for the Information Age program that are also based on the approach described. The paper concludes that implementation of the project has become possible because of the support of Moscow education system and administration of the University of Hawaii.