Presented to the Forum of the Minor Academy of Sciences, March 2010, Bekasovo, Russia

1. Creating the Future
Model of Education
Pavel Luksha
pavel.luksha@gmail.com
SCHOOL 2020
Presented to the Forum
on the Future of Education
November 2009,
Obninsk, Russia

2. 2
Russian Education in the ‘Reactive Mode’
• Increasing gap between the content of education and
demand from the economy / government
• Changes come from outside,
and the education system reacts:
– e.g. ‘Unified State Examination*
-
should be cancelled’; ‘Bologna
process - should be stopped’; …
• ‘Reactive Mode’ is a weak
position: “please give us back
what we had before the change came”
A STRONG POSITION WOULD BE:
“LET’S MAKE IT BETTER BY
IMPLEMENTING A NEW MODEL OF
* Unified State Examination
(EGE) – standard aptitude test
mandatory in Russia since 2008

3. 3
A New Model of Education
• Responds to global challenges
• Responds to the country’s strategies in
the modern world (geopolitical,
economic, scientific, cultural …)
• Responds to requests and demands of
students
DOES A RESPONSE EXIST?

4. 4
School Education:
New Global Challenges
• “Post-information society”: the
traditional model of knowledge transfer
is not required at all (‘Google knows
everything’)
• Life long learning gets real:
deinstitutionalization of education
(‘iPod instead of lecturer’ etc.)
• ‘A school of life’ or ‘a school for
loosers”? (like Russian Army is now)

5. 5
Country Situation and
Strategic Dilemmas
• Geopolitics (strong Europe, pressure from China,
internal instability, depopulation): a new model or
a collapse of united country?
• Economics (‘post-oil era’, inability to compete with
Asia): smart manufacturing or “Fourth World”?
• Science (demolition of scientific schools, objective
inability to lead in key areas): focused breakthrough
or “Fourth World”?
• Culture (reduction of the ‘Russian World’, conflicts
between religion and modernization): cultural
renaissance or cultural degradation?

6. 6
Pragmatics: How the world will look
for school graduates in 2020?
• Competition in the global labor market: traditional
and new developed countries (Asia-2025: +1 billion
urban citizens from now)
• Technological and social progress: the most
prestigious professions of 2020 many not even exist
today, and skills learnt in school will be not relevant
• Employers receive ‘semi-finished product’ requiring
additional learning / training – practice is more
valuable than knowledge

7. 7
The future cannot be foreseen
but it can be built
Trends may create a
range of scenarios
BUT
The probability of
any scenario depends
on our actions

8. 8
Re-Programming the
(Secondary School) Education?
• For post-information society, the
revision of education models
implies:
– Responses to new challenges of
education
– Positioning towards the country
priorities
– Key skills of employees in 2025 (in
real connection between the school
and the professional world)

9. 9
Some Elements of the
New Education Model
• Abandoning of the traditional ‘teacher
as speaker’ model in favor of a shared
research & exploration model
• Abandoning of the traditional
subject-focused model in favor
of the ‘competence learning’ model
• The key competencies:
– Working in the modern organizational
environment (communication, management and
creativity in peer groups)
– Working in the world of abundant information
• New learning environments

10. 10
Some Ideas for New Education Model
• Collaborative work and creativity
• Firm knowledge, not ‘correct answers’
• Shared process of search for truth
• Real student democracy
• Abandoning of class- and
lesson-oriented (Komensky)
education system
• Learning of skills for learning
But… these are ideas of of 20-century Russian
pedagogues (Shatsky, Makarenko, …), the ground of our
work in last 20-30 years – can they be the ground of new
education model? WHAT ELSE IS NEEDED THEN?

11. 11
Designing the future of Schools:
“design probations” (by Philips Design)

12. 12
‘Future Probation’ for New Learning
Environment: School-2020 in Britain
and in the US

13. 13
What else could be done: government?
• State-supported grant system for the development of
education methods for post-information society
• Federal program for creation
of new learning environment prototypes
• Public-private programs for the
development of distance learning
courses, electronic certification
systems etc.
• Grants for creation and distribution of innovative
educational programs in mainstream and alternative
education
• Exchange of international expertise, incl. transfer of
Russian ‘best practices’ in education to foreign teachers

14. 14
School-2020: Challenge to Be Taken
• The challenges of post-information society are real.
The crisis of educational system and radical change of
education models is a global phenomenon rather than
Russia-specific one
• ‘Reactive’ paradigms in education mean that the
government will make educational system change –
but not the way we want it and with some delay
• The Russian pedagogic traditions can help the
Russian educational innovator community lead the
process of the global education paradigm
transformation - Will you be able to use the chance
of ‘anticipatory development’?