Russian Pedagogy Research Articles

ISSUES OF READING CULTURE IN LITHUANIAN LIBRARIANSHIP inin 1918–1940

The article the discusses theoretical and me­thodical premises of the culture of reading in 1918–1940 in Lithuania. The culture of reading is interpreted as a dual system of practical and intelectual abilities, required in the reading pro­cess. The subject is analysed with distinguishing between direct (propaganda of reading, books and library services, also informational, cultural and educational library services that intesify readership) and indirect methods (organisation of the system of libraries, gathering of reading materials, bibliographical work), elaborated in theoretical and methodical library science pub­lications of Lithuanian and translated foreign authors. In Lithuanian publications, access to books and periodicals stand as the priority task of librarianship (V. Biržiška, J. Slapšinskas (Rim­antas), V. Ruzgas). Authors described methods of working with readers, unfolding the content of direct and indirect education of readers. Pro­paganda of library services, books and reading, psychological judgement of the readership in the library, bibliographical work (V. Biržiška, V. Ruzgas, J. Slapšinskas (Rimantas), V. Ru­zgas), appliation of sociological statistical re­search methods (V. Ruzgas, R. Burokas), policy of library collection supplement that matched the needs of the educational process and readers’ interests (V. Biržiška, R. Burokas, J. Slapšinskas (Rimantas) would make the core of Lithuanian culture of reading theory. Lithuanian authors mostly cited Russian pedagogues, psycholo­gists (N. Rubakin, V. Vachterov, V. Vladislavlev (I. Gulbinski), V. Nevski and others). Methods of discretional (conscious, critical) reading were built according to the Western scientists (E. Faguet). There was also a special interest in the theory of self-education by Russian bibliop­sychologist N. Rubakin. During the period un­der analysis, translations of the following authors were published: P. Ladewig’s textbook of librari­anship, which included the basic knowledge of the culture of reading formation in librar­ies, N. Rubakin’s studies of science populariza­tion and self-sustaining reading techniques, and articles by Western pedagogues, literary critics (G. Brandes, E. Dévaud and others) on the topi­cal matters concerning reading.

Academic Writing in Russia: Evolution or Revolution

The aim of this working paper is to give a personal, first-hand account of the recent changes in the attitude towards academic writing in Russia. The idea of the paper emerged from two schools conducted by US experts in Russia in 2013, which made the author focus on the American rather than European approach to writing. More comprehensive research in the field is definitely vital, but it will take time. Still, as issues of academic writing are rapidly gaining a momentum among Russian policymakers, educators, teachers and publishers, the author thinks it important to inform international colleagues, both those in Eastern Europe who might encounter similar problems, and those in Western universities who consider providing professional support and promote academic writing in Russia, about some cultural and methodological impediments faced by pioneers of academic writing in this country.

The most common reasons and motivation for learning the Russian language at the Teacher training faculties in Serbia

In the conditions of globalization and transition in the world, domination of English as a universal world language increases daily. However, it is not so in Serbia. On the basis of traditional friendship between Russian and Serbian people and the fact that pedagogy and education in Serbia is still bound with Russian pedagogy, a great number of students from Teacher training faculties in Serbia opt for learning Russian. In order to find out Teacher training faculty students' opinion of importance, need and motivation for learning Russian, a research was conducted on the sample of 105 students of Teacher training faculty from Prizren (settled in Leposavic now) in the month of October and November in 2013. Data collected by the research was processed by factor analysis and Krusakl-Volis method. Three factors that point to the importance of learning Russian were determined by factor analysis while Krusakl-Volis test confirmed that motivation of students for learning Russian increases with each enrolled year.

The Education Systems of Germany and Other European Countries of the 19th Century in the View of American and Russian Classics: Horace Mann and Konstantin Ushinsky

The article deals with comparative studies of the American founder of the Common School and public education in the U.S.A., Horace Mann (1796-1859), and the founder of the Russian pedagogy and public school, Konstantin Ushinsky (1824-1870) . They were visiting several European education systems, in order to get inspirations for the reform activities in their own countries. In the early 19th century the education system in the German Kingdom of Prussia was considered the most progressive in Europe. The article shows what Mann, Ushinsky and others could learn from their comparisons, what they thought to be useful for their countries or what might be rather rejected. It is mostly about the question if and to which extent national educational experiences are importable, exportable and interchangeable. Some of the instructive findings of the American Horace Mann and the Russian Konstantin Ushinsky, but also their misconceptions are both historically relevant and of most currency.

Features of realization of competence approach to the formation general professional competence of graduates of the training program “Oil and gas engineering”

The article discusses the possibility of improving the graduate training quality of “Oil and Gas Engineering” by means of competence-based approach to the modernization of vocational training content. The author emphasizes the importance of the “Theoretical and Applied Mechanics” integrated discipline as the basis for the training of 131000 “Oil and Gas Engineering” bachelor program. Particular attention is paid to the definitions of the terms “competence” and “competency” in modern Russian science, are the most common opinions on the use of competence and competence in Russian pedagogy. Also reveal views on the concept of “competence” and “competency”, used in the educational practice of the EU countries. The article shows that the European competence models specialists have identified a common set of competencies for all degrees of graduates and identified a list of 85 skills and competencies. The analysis identified four types of competencies that have been identified higher education institutions and companies, as relevant, these include: instrumental, interpersonal and systemic and special. The author believes that at present Russian educational system faced with sufficient difficult and ambiguous solved researchers the task of determining the content of the notions of “competence” and “competency” and discussion of the competencies types employed in the educational practices of the European Union. The paper provides a classification of competencies used in the Federal State Educational Standard of Higher Education, as well as a list of general competencies for “Oil and Gas engineering” bachelor program. The author shows that the general professional competencies are the basis for the formation of professional competencies and emphasizes the fact that general professional skills allow higher education institutions to prepare specialists meeting the oil and gas industry requirements. The author in this case focuses on the problems arose in the development of new bachelors’ working program and educational complex for “Theoretical and Applied Mechanics” worked out in line with competency-based approach and the requirements of the third-generation State Educational Standard for Higher Professional Education.

CURRENT STATE OF HISTORIC AND EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH

In this paper we analyze the results of development of national historic and educational research at the turn of the XXth century; pinpoint obvious success and indicate problems and contradictory areas; give grounding to the development model of the XXth century Russian pedagogy; make suggestions on the strategy and tactics of further development of historic and educational science and suggest areas for further research. They are ‘new social history’ of education, professional education and teacher training, personified microhistory and history of local educational environment, genesis of didactic principles, ethno-pedagogy, country school, pedagogical diagnostics, Orthodox religious education, contemporary history of foreign pedagogy, pedagogical futurology. We prove the need in reassessment of certain studies’ viability. We draw the conclusion that historic and educational knowledge determines areas and instruments to understand the problems of educational issues, their roots and realize the existence of ways to solve them. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.12731/2218-7405-2013-5-35

Сущность информационно-коммуникационного педагогического взаимодействия в интернет-среде

The article considers the essence of the notion "information and communicative pedagogic interaction in the Internet environment" which stands for transformed computer-mediated pedagogic interaction in electronic environment including the Internet. The author compares the key approaches to the notion prevailing in modern Russian pedagogy.

Russian Education in Transition: Trends at the Primary Level

This article assesses Zankov's intellectual legacy to education, with a specific focus on the comprehensive teaching model he developed for the early years level. His model is based on the assumption that appropriate teaching methods stimulate cognitive development. Although, as far back as the 1960s, research findings showed the validity of his model, it is only recently that Zankov's ideas have received significant attention within Russian educational circles. Most notably, his model has been embraced by the newest generation of Russian educators whose memories of teacher centred classrooms are of recent vintage

THE SHANGHAI CONSERVATORY, CHINESE MUSICAL LIFE, AND THE RUSSIAN DIASPORA, 1927–1949

Shanghai in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was home to communities and musicians from all parts of the world. Among the over 20,000 Russians living there, a significant population of musicians contributed to the musical life of the city, particularly the Conservatory of Music founded in November 1927. This article reveals an overlooked phase of musical exchange between China and the West by 1) tracing the context and early development of the Conservatory; 2) identifying and discussing the activities of the Russian pedagogues (including Boris Zakharov, Vladimir Shushlin, and Sergei Aksakov amongst others) and their more notable Chinese students’ (including Li Delun, Ding Shande, Wu Leyi, and Yi Kaiji amongst others) reaction to them; 3) assessing the role that Russians played in the affairs of the Conservatory; and 4) demonstrating how Russian pedagogues influenced the development of Western classical music in China through their students’ notable achievements.

The Shanghai Conservatory, Chinese Musical Life, and The Russian Diaspora, 1927–1949: Dedicated to Neil Edmunds

Shanghai in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was home to communities and musicians from all parts of the world. Among the over 20,000 Russians living there, a significant population of musicians contributed to the musical life of the city, particularly the Conservatory of Music founded in November 1927. This article reveals an overlooked phase of musical exchange between China and the West by 1) tracing the context and early development of the Conservatory; 2) identifying and discussing the activities of the Russian pedagogues (including Boris Zakharov, Vladimir Shushlin, and Sergei Aksakov amongst others) and their more notable Chinese students’ (including Li Delun, Ding Shande, Wu Leyi, and Yi Kaiji amongst others) reaction to them; 3) assessing the role that Russians played in the affairs of the Conservatory; and 4) demonstrating how Russian pedagogues influenced the development of Western classical music in China through their students’ notable achievements.

Introduction: Contesting China’s New “National” Music

Introduction: Contesting China’s New “National” Music Joshua H. Howard Despite widespread recognition that music both constitutes and reflects culture, the study of Chinese music and its development has been marginalized from mainstream topics of historical inquiry. In most English-language Chinese history textbooks, for instance, the subject of music in twentieth-century China is conspicuous only by its absence. Twentieth-Century China seeks to redress this historiographical lacuna by devoting a special issue to music, especially the development of “New Music,” defined by one of its leading scholars as, “music composed by Chinese using European compositional techniques and musical idioms.”1 Given that the new music was largely a product of semi-colonial, cosmopolitan Shanghai, it is appropriate that all four articles consider musicians and musical developments in Shanghai, where Chinese-foreign interaction and experimentation in modern art forms were most visible and audible. Each author examines how members of China’s music community struggled for national transformation in a highly contested process of defining the new “national” music, whether that meant defending elements of pre-existing Chinese music, adopting European stylistic elements, composing Chinese-Western fusion works, or creating a socialist realist style directed towards a new mass audience. In “The Shanghai Conservatory, Chinese Musical Life, and the Russian Diaspora, 1927–1949,” Hon-Lun Yang brings to life a forgotten chapter in the development of China’s “new music.” Although Russian pedagogues constituted almost half of all full-time faculty at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music and influenced an entire generation of Chinese musicians that came to the fore during the Maoist era, such as composer He Luting, pianist Ding Shande, and conductor Li Delun, the question of how Western musicians, and Russian musicians in particular, contributed to the development of Chinese music was largely avoided during the Maoist era for its sensitive political implications. Yang suggests that Russian musicians, because of their own marginalized status in Shanghai’s expatriate community, may have been uniquely positioned to influence their Chinese counterparts. Yang’s use of memoirs reveals that Chinese graduates from the Shanghai Conservatory remember a time of intense musical exchange with their Russian teachers, during which a transculturation of the nation’s musical practices occurred that facilitated China’s musical modernity. John Winzenburg’s “Aaron Avshalomov and New Chinese Music in Shanghai, 1931–1947” reveals how this Russian-Jewish immigrant’s hybrid identity as a [End Page 2] Chinese acculturated foreigner facilitated his experimental work as conductor, composer, and pedagogue that defied rigid traditional-modern, Chinese-Western dichotomies and contributed to the development of a new “national” Chinese music. Analyzing Avshalomov’s compositional style and influence on musicians, the author demonstrates how Avshalomov inspired burgeoning composers to experiment with Chinese stylistic elements while using Western musical techniques. Moreover, Avshalomov’s compositions have contemporary relevance as they have foreshadowed an important genre of Chinese-Western fusion compositions during the ongoing reform era. Contestation over participation in China’s musical modernity is the subject of Joys Cheung’s article, “Divide and Connections in Chinese Musical Modernity: Cases of Musical Networks Emerging in Colonial Shanghai, 1919–1937.” Cheung argues that previous interpretations of Chinese musical modernity have privileged the reform-oriented Shanghai Conservatory over the nativist Great Unity Music Society. Whereas the former advocated Western classical music as the foundation for a new Chinese music, the latter sought to defend preexisting Chinese music practices while incorporating them into modern developments. By the early 1930s these two organizations had developed an antagonistic relationship with each other. Prominent reformers, for instance, criticized Chinese musical instruments for being technologically obsolete and lacking expressive power. Perhaps as a consequence of accepting these criticisms at face value, musicologists have often treated the Great Unity Music Society as peripheral to China’s musical modernity, or, at best, an organization “on the verge” of musical modernity. By contrast, Cheung reveals that musicians from the two organizations overlapped in significant ways. Employing the concept of “weak ties,” derived from social network theory, Cheung argues that the two organizations shared a commitment to the nation-building project and that both “reformers” and “defenders” “embraced a greater openness to a bi-musical—albeit loosely defined—approach in pursuing Chinese modernity...

Global Pollution Needs a Local Solution Russian and American Middle School Students Participate in a Videoconference

This paper discusses how Russian and American social studies educators utilized a videoconference for engaging middle school students in the study of environmental issues. The preparation for the videoconference required Russian and American students to explore human-environmental interactions in their local areas and to evaluate the impact of these interactions on the local and global environment. Students shared findings of their exploration with their counterparts in Russia during a videoconference that culminated the project. The authors discussed the preparation, administration, and outcomes of the project and included the instructional materials. The authors believe their reflective ideas provide insights on the use of videoconferencing as a means of enhancing student learning in a social studies classroom.

Economic Education in Post-Soviet Russia: Measuring the Effectiveness of Native Russian Educators

This paper examines the effectiveness of the National Council on Economic Education's Cooperative Education Exchange Program (CEEP) by evaluating teacher and student learning. This study employs a randomization of teachers across treatment and control groups at two separate stages of the research design. We find that participation in the workshop delivered by native Russian trainers improved teachers' pre-course TEL scores by approximately ten percent, holding all else constant. After controlling for students dropping out of the sample, we also find that student economic literacy was significantly higher for students taught by teachers trained through the program, ceteris paribus. When the impacts of the workshop are further examined, we find that pedagogy and materials have a significant impact on student learning.

Theory Basis of Educational Cognition

Introduction. The modern society develops rapidly, and constantly significant changes take place in economics, politics, social processes. The processes of changes leave behind schools, education, upbringing, and neither society, nor personality needs, nor individual potential improvement at school is satisfied. Aim of the Study. To analyse the unity of didactics, pedagogical psychology and methods as the theory basis of pupils’ educational cognition. Materials and Methods. Pedagogy history, didactics, pedagogic psychology and method sources in Latvian, European and Russian pedagogy and psychology were used for the scientific analysis. Results. Theories of didactics have been perfected within the historic development of school and pedagogic thought. Methodology principles of conformity of nature and culture that require basing pupils’ cognition on peculiarities of the specific age and development in studies are significant. Conclusions. Results of the scientific analysis prove that training should use didactic theories, actual findings of pedagogical psychology that correspond to the period, and methods of each lesson should be based on that for the specific age of pupils. General didactics theories are not sufficient for the school.

Technical assistance, neo-colonialism or mutual trade? The experience of an Anglo/Ukrainian/Russian social work practice learning project

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union there has been a steady stream of Western consultants ready to work in Eastern Europe and Russia and share professional and academic expertise and experience. Social work, unknown as a discrete discipline or profession in the Soviet Union, has been a growth area with funding from a variety of sources to help promote East–West partnerships. Social work theory and practice emphasises critical appraisal of policy and embraces issues of power, discrimination and oppression. Social work educators should therefore be especially alert to the complex ethical questions which these kinds of collaborations raise, and adept at finding practical solutions or workable compromises. This article explores these ethical and political issues with reference to a project to develop social work practice learning in a Russian oblast’ (region). The project was an ambitious partnership of British, Ukrainian and Russian educators, involving numerous Russian social work and related agencies, and four Russian universities and colleges in one oblast’. The authors use a series of vignettes to help the reader achieve insights into these East–West transactions. The article concludes with a discussion of different interpretations of these dealings, using three prisms: technical assistance, neo-colonialism and mutual trade.

Children and War

247 Children, Youth and Environments Vol. 17 No. 3 (2007) ISSN: 1546-2250 Children and War James, Marten (2002). New York: New York University Press; 313 pages. $22. ISBN 0814756662. Children and War is an admirable collection of scholarly essays edited by James Marten, Professor of History atMarquette University. Robert Coles, in his forward to the collection, pays tribute to Anna Freud’s observations of British children during the London blitz and to her deep respect for their agility and resourcefulness in times of terrible danger. In many respects, this book serves as an extended commentary on Freud’s profound understanding of the capabilities of children. The book consists of 21 essays that address children’s engagement with war as soldiers, victims, observers, supporters, spies, and as symbols of national angst, identity and valor in a wide variety of conflicts. About a quarter of the essays address World War II and its aftermath, while others concern the American Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars, the Civil War, World War I, colonial wars against the Maori, the Australian Aborigines, Native Americans, the Sandino and Mexican Revolutions, the Civil War in Liberia, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and other conflicts. The portraits that emerge are complex, inspiring, and troubling. These essays show how the historical and cross-cultural diversity of children and varied understandings of childhood challenge current international efforts to create a universal definition of “the child” through the Convention on the Rights of the Child. In these essays, it is striking how engaged and animated children are by war, both in the imagination and in reality. In addition, the book shows the ways children are subjected to relentless attempts by society to control and mediate their responses to war, even to the extent, as James Martin puts it, of trying to shape their memories of war. 248 I will not catalogue all the essays in the book, but reviewing a few of them will give a sense of the range of issues the book addresses. Marten’s introduction sets the tone of the book. He discusses the narrative of Iron Hawk, a Sioux warrior who at age 14 fought at the Little Big Horn River in 1876 and participated in wiping out General Custer and his troops. Iron Hawk recounts shooting an arrow into a soldier, knocking him off his horse, and beating him to death with his bow. Told when he was an old man living on a bleak reservation of the defeated Sioux, Iron Hawk’s narrative makes clear that at age 14 he thought of himself as a man, and that even many years later his victory at war continued to give meaning to his life. Elizabeth William’s essay, “Childhood, Memory and the American Revolution,” continues this line of analysis with her reviews of men’s and women’s accounts of their childhoods during the American Revolution. Many boys, some as young as age 12, joined the revolutionary army, often enlisting with their fathers and uncles. Williams tells us of women’s accounts of the moral threats that accompanied wartime violence. Both men and women wrote proudly of how, as children, they bore their share of the burden during the Revolution. In “Rescue and Trauma,” Eric Sterling explores a darker side of children’s resilience as he introduces us to a hidden tragedy of war. He writes of Helga, a Jewish woman desperate to save her daughter Eva’s life in Nazi Germany. She sent her to England in the famous Kinder transports, which saved some 10,000 children from the fate that befell 1.5 million other Jewish children who were murdered during the Holocaust. Miraculously, Helga survived Auschwitz, only to find at the war’s end that Eva had transformed herself into an English child, changed her name to Evelyn, and wanted nothing to do with her mother ever again. At the same time, war has inspired adults to mediate and shape children’s behavior and values. In “Flower of Evil,” Aaron Cohen describes the alarm bells raised among Russian pedagogues and teachers as they fearfully observed children’s growing fascination with war at the onset of World War I. Many of these teachers came to see...

Russian Educators Visit APSA

Russian Educators Visit APSA

Speech communication in Russia

This study reports the results of a survey given to Russian educators to assess the status of speech communication instruction in Russia. A stratified random survey was distributed by the Sociological Center of the State Committee on Higher Education of the Russian Federation to 2,200 Russian educators. Results suggest that most Russian educators are not familiar with speech communication as an academic discipline. Even though 40% of the respondents disagreed that speech communication should be included in the Russian curriculum, half of the respondents agreed or strongly agreed that it should be included in the Russian curriculum. Most respondents agreed that if introduced to Russians, it should be included first in higher education, beginning with only one class included as part of a curriculum offered by another more traditional Russian academic department. Russian educators valued communication skills less than did U.S. personnel managers. Of the respondents 85% in the current study were unsure concerning whether they would be interested in personally teaching speech communication; 15% of the respondents indicated they would be interested in teaching speech communication. No respondents completely rejected the idea of teaching speech communication. Suggestions for establishing speech communication instruction in Russia are presented.

Education and Social Order

The dramatic conclusion of the twentieth century in the history of Russia has confronted this country's social scientists with the task of rethinking many truths, events, and phenomena that would have seemed to be unshakable. Among these problems, which had supposedly been solved forever, I should like to single out the problem of the role played by the educational system in maintaining social stability. This is because, as we examine the origins of what is happening in our country, we are acutely aware of education's dual role as a double-edged weapon that is capable of supplying both the defenders of social order and the mortal enemies of that order—the revolutionaries. Education's role has become clearer with respect to the process of breaking up traditional social strata and marginalizing them. When dealing with this problem in Russia, the authorities and society, the authorities and Russian pedagogy, have often found themselves on different sides of the barricades, and, moreover, with the passing years, the differences between them have not diminished but have actually grown.

The structure of temperament and personality in Russian children.

Russian schoolchildren (N = 480) 8-10 years old were rated by their teachers on 60 scales drawn from 3 sources: the temperament literature, studies of child personality, and Russian educators. Analysis of 21 temperament scales produced 4 meaningful components: sociability, anger, impulsivity, and fear. Component scores formed from these scales were then analyzed in the context of the remaining scales, leading to a solution that demonstrated the usefulness of the Big Five for the organization of personality characteristics in the Russian language and culture. The high degree of relation between the temperament dimensions and 4 of the 5 personality dimensions supports the view of many developmentalists that temperament not only is a major component of personality but may be the foundation of personality.