A.G.Asmolov
Strategy and methodology of sociocultural renovation of education
Herein the authors try to explain the strategy of sociocultural renovation of education as a socialization institution playing a key role in focused development of value systems, standards, paradigms and behavioral patterns of the population of Russia. The authors reveal the role education plays in modeling of such phenomena of social development as social consolidation of the society, civil identity of representatives of various social groups and national cultures of the local population, social confidence, successful socialization of the oncoming generations, and social stratification of the population of Russia. We also cover the issues of the necessity to consider the effects of sociocultural renovation of education as a growth driver for competitive strength of the individual, the society and the state at further design of long-term programs of social and economic development of Russia, including the federal education development program.
At his time a famous psychologist L. Vygotskiy noticed that understanding of the partner’s idea without the awareness of his reasons is incomplete. In this regard we shall try to briefly define the reasons to design a strategy of the Russian education sociocultural renovation.
The stock theme of this work is development of conceptualization of a mission and nature of education being a leading social activity participating in generation of such systematic social and mental effects of the public life as modeling of civil, ethnocultural and panhuman identity; the dynamics of social differentiation and stratification of the society; adoption of various traditions, values, standards and paradigms of behavior for large and minor social groups; acquisition of a repertoire of personal, social and professional competencies supporting individualization, socialization and professionalization of an individual within the system of persons and professions; development of human potential as the most important condition of national competitive performance.
The origin of attitude towards education as towards one of the leading social activities formalizing historic and evolutionary process together with the other socialization institutions (the family, the mass media, the religion) ascend to the ideas a school of thought covering cultural and pragmatist psychology developed by L. Vygotskiy, A. Leontyev, A. Luriya, and to social constructionism, a postmodern school of methodology very congenial to the above mentioned school. The social constructionism paradigm is most concisely presented in publications by P. Berger, T. Lukman “Social modeling of the reality”[1] and K.Dzherzhen “Social constructionism: expertise and practice”[2].
It is a ground of non-classical methodology of cultural and pragmatist psychology and methodology of social modeling of the reality that made it possible for us in the period between 1988 and 2008 to propose and develop a set of ideological constructs which had certain influence on development of national education system:
- “practical psychology of education” as an attitude for understanding and maintenance of importance of each student’s individual growth;
- “variative education” as a attitude for education modeling providing adequate choice of individual education paths for each person[3];
- “tolerance” as a civilization standard providing sustainable development of an individual as well as of social groups within the world of diversity[4].
As far as their genre is concerned, these ideological constructs refer to specific consciousness attitudes which a classical national philosopher A. Losev and historian M. Gefter called “generative hypotheses”[5]. The hypothesis of the necessity of the society sociocultural renovation also pertains to the genre of generative hypotheses. The said hypothesis is the most complete expression of the general attitude of our 20-year long research, viz., ideological attitude for modeling of education as a social activity leading to civil society building and development of human individuality within the variable environment.
From business and economical renovation to sociocultural renovation of education
Let us regard the events of the Russian education contemporary history thorough the perspective of a hypothesis of the necessity for sociocultural development[6] of education and similar range of ideas represented in the Public Chamber report “Education and Society: whether Russia is Ready to Invest in its Future” (2007).
Have we recollected the events of said time, we will make sure that during the last decade Russian education together with the entire country turned into a theater of changes affecting almost every resident of Russia. The education has survived and is still suffering the times of stabilization (the beginning of the 90s), restructuring and evolution (mid 90s) and, finally, renovation (from the end of the 90s until the present year of 2008). The basic vector of the renovation period chronologically dated from 1997 was and now is a vector of design of business and economic projects for education development[7]. The valuation of advances, failures and social and economic consequences of each of the above mentioned periods is the issue of a specific historic and analytic research which as well as any other contemporary history research is required to design the further scenarios for education development.
Moreover, an even brief analysis of the contemporary history of education reforming makes it possible to conclude that education-generated systematic social and mental phenomena, as a rule, fell beyond the reach of various education development scenarios:
- construction of personal identity within a polyethnic, polyconfessional and polycultural state;
- social and spiritual consolidation of the society;
- providence of social mobility of an individual, equality and availability of education being the factors to reduce the risks of social stratification of the society;
- design of social standards of tolerance and mutual confidence of representatives of various social groups, religions and national cultures;
- successful socialization of the oncoming generation;
- improvement of competitive ability of an individual, the society and the state.
For the further search of paths of sociocultural transformation of education system we shall define the field of subject matters concerning the nature of social and mental phenomena of education. We shall try to further express the said subject matters by way of the following questions:
1. What kind of risks do politicians and executive officials face when performing education reformation without due regard to social and mental phenomena of education?
2. How does the education influence the following demonstrations of social differentiation and stratification of the society:
“social elevator” (upward mobility of social and economic status within the system of social ranking of the society);
“social shaker” (interfusion of various social strata of the society);
“social well” (downward mobility of social and economic status within the system of social ranking of the society)?
3. Which social activities and programs are to be performed in order to switch from declaration of the priority of education as a social value to accomplishment of actual priority of education as a national policy objective?
4. What role does the education play in an individual’s civil identity modeling as well as in understanding of people’s historical “common destiny” being the solidarity of the Russian society?
5. Can education as the institution of individual’s socialization be competitive against other institutions for socialization of oncoming generations’: the family, the religion and the mass media?
6. How can one turn education management into an actual resource for reduction of various risks, social and interpersonal conflicts, including conflicts arising due to xenophobia, ethnofobia, migrantophobia, social aggression and intolerance?
7. How can one project the design of tolerance standards, social confidence and mutual understanding within the Russian society through the education, including education system management by means of education standards?
The complete range of issues mentioned above makes it possible to define the subject matter of sociocultural renovation of education.
In order to outline the ways to justify the very necessity and promptness of similar issues we shall refer to analysis of barriers of the collective consciousness preventing construction of ideological attitude towards sociocultural renovation of education.
Barriers of collective consciousness preventing education renovation
Globalization, inevitable involvement of the Russian society in global processes, the already set era of communicative civilization have greatly affected political, sociocultural and economic processes in Russia.
Changes occurring in the society’s lifeway resulted in outlining of the society’s transfer from a relatively stable stage to a dynamic stage of development; from the “closed” society to the “open” society; from the industrial society to the postindustrial information society; from the totalitarian society to the civil society.
Social, mental and economic differentiation of the society peculiar to the said transfer together with appearance of various patterns of ownership became a prerequisite of coexistence of public, private and domestic education and thus an inevitable social transformation of the entire education system as a whole.
The said transformation of education system is commonly regarded as a direct consequence of focused reforms. Such description of changes performed in the sphere of education is not quite accurate and in many respects naïve.
In effect, behind the occurring social changes of the Russian education there are not only attempts of its focused reformation performed by governmental authorities, but also numerous poorly controlled and spontaneous processes: some of those processes are particularly related to initiatives of various social groups, the other – to passive reaction of the education system to various budgetary restrictions. As a result one shall consider the fact that education reformation attempts, including a recent attempt of business and economic development of education, have been performed against negative social expectations of various population strata and of many representatives of education community, as regards to any social reform. There is a variety of big causes for corresponding expectations and disillusions.
w Disregard of population’s motivation at execution of social reforms.
One of the main faults of social policy of post-Soviet Russia was complete disregard of the population mindset, the psychology of mass consciousness which may crash any social reforms, even those thoroughly calculated but still ignoring people’s drives and concealing their goals in regards to certain population strata. Poor efficiency of various state reforms and programs was related to an attempt to perform “administration of complex social systems without motivation or ideology”. In fact we can define the ideology in the context of methodology of social constructionism as an enterprise of motivation of social behavior, design of motivation for large and minor social groups.
Reformers often disregard the fact that motivational schemes of social reforms are as important for the purpose of their execution as economic assessment of various programs of social reformation. Consequentially, similar reforms face not only severe opposition of mass psychology of the local population but in certain cases they also face modeling of protest motivation of social behavior performed by various oppositional political groups.
w Negative experience of preceding reforms in the field of social policy.
Failure of the preceding social policy reforms, including the attempts to reform the education system, is to a certain degree due to the fact that they have been designed without due regard neither to strategic priorities of the society and understanding of its development vector nor to social and mental phenomena of education.
Various attempts to reform education mainly had the following three common characteristics:
- prevailing interests of professional pedagogical community (“education reformation from the inside”);
- “reformation against economy” (economic and business determinism at design of education development programs);
- lack of analysis of political, social and psychological risks at execution of education reforms related to expectations and motivation of various social strata of local population regarding the education.
While declaring the formulas the education priority and its social mission, the representatives of the sphere of education in fact deluded themselves with the utopia of former fame of “the best education in the world” and suffered from the disease of “education narcissism”. The representatives of economic community insisted on the necessity to create the programs of education reformation with due regard to budgetary and tax crisis while normally abstracting away from consideration of education as an institution for reproduction of human capital assets, its role in development of national economy. Consequentially, education reforms substantial and valuable “as is” “in the context of external environment” were often confined to the requirements for additional funds and were slow due to ineffective use of those available funds.
As a result, first the “market” myths and later the “labor market” myth implicitly turned into a education reforms goal in and of itself, and the quality of life and reproduction of human and brain capital assets were normally confined to “facilities”, services and instruments of market economy.
· Narrowing of the national policy of education reformation down to programs of reformation of education as an independent branch.
In the methodology of design of various education programs [8] one can detain three target areas on which various education development programs are potentially oriented.
- education environment;
- education sphere;
- education space[9].
In the context of such classification of target objectives one shall from the very beginning realize the target of the education development program orientation. When the program is oriented on the education space as on a target area of program application, then its comprises such various socialization institutions as the family, the mass media, the religion, the culture traditions and innovations, etc. which define social development together with the education being a leading social activity.
When the program is oriented on the education sphere the focus of force application shall be put on management of education as a specific field of social and economic development of a state, similar to healthcare service, agricultural and industrial sector, etc.
And finally, when the program is oriented on the education environment, the program efforts are focused on basic and professional education of an individual within a certain education institution (kindergarten, school, training college, institution of higher education, etc.)
Definition of the program target area as a focus of program force application helps identify ideology and methodology for program construction, program mission, program scale, problems, program tasks and objectives as well as mechanisms and resources required for program implementation.
When the target area of the program is the education space, we deal with the genre of national education program design (or so called presidential program). The mission of the said education development program is implementation of nationwide ideology and policy which allows achieving such systematic social and mental phenomena as harmonization of the society, social stratification, improvement of national competitive ability, formation of a civil identity being the ground for the development of democratic society. In the context of such program the education acts as a leading social activity generating civil identity and forming people’s mentality, values, social behavioral norms of independent individuals, large and minor social groups. In the said program education standard acts as a social contract while the improvement of quality, availability and mobility of education acts as an instrument of securing the education mission. We can characterize a similar national program of education development as a program of sociocultural renovation of education. It is characterized by: