Позитивные изменения. Образование. Школа будущего (Тематический выпуск, 2022)/Positive changes. Education. The school of the future (Special issue, 2

A desk review of publications was conducted to develop a conceptual framework within which the school education could be described. In the preparatory part of the study, the authors consider sources of information about modern approaches to the organization of school education in Russia and abroad. These included both theoretical sources describing various concepts, which were used later to formulate the questionnaire guide, and narratives illustrating important case studies of educational models.

Based on the concepts highlighted, an expert questionnaire guide was compiled, with the purpose of providing meaningful content based on school case studies. A total of 20 experts from different segments of the field under study were interviewed. This included representatives of the teaching community, authors of their own educational concepts, specialists in education management. The objective of the survey was to compare different viewpoints on the prospective development of educational practices in the school and to produce a framework that would enable us to describe the school education process, so it can be modeled subsequently in the context of the School of the Future.

The case study examined 27 private general secondary education institutions and public schools with educational models different from that of a regular secondary general school (SGS). Having this sample enabled us to follow the strategy of greatest differences in case selection — without claiming to cover the entire general population, we are supposed to consider their differences rather than their similarities.

Further, the highlighted criteria formed the basis for describing the key models of school education. The models are instrumental in highlighting "growth points”, which are used to formulate a forward-looking model of the School of the Future and its characteristics.

Thus, the School of the Future model logically follows from the concepts derived from reviewing the existing educational research through expert interviews and the synthesis of selected educational characteristics into the criteria of educational models. A description of the study stages and the relationship between them is presented in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Map of the study

CRITERIA FOR SELECTING AND ANALYZING SCHOOL EDUCATION MODELS

As noted earlier, a guide was developed for the expert survey based on a desk study. The main concepts in the expert survey were:

• expected educational outcomes of the School of the Future students (knowledge, abilities and skills, or others);

• criteria for classifying the cases of existing general secondary education institutions, as suggested by the experts;

• educational models based on the criteria identified.

EXPECTED EDUCATIONAL OUTCOMES (KEY KNOWLEDGE, ABILITIES AND SKILLS)

The questions were worded so as to suggest focusing on discussing specific extracurricular skills, not the academic knowledge (which is quite difficult to list). As one expert said, "the future remains unexplored," so it is quite expected that cognitive flexibility was the most frequently cited skill of the future. The ethical basis for this flexibility is respect for the others and a culture of tolerance for others’ values. Tolerance is important, not only for the other, but also for yourself, for your own mistakes, which become part of learning.

However, in addition to the learning abilities, the experts named some specific skills that are not commonly taught in school now, but which would be extremely useful to a person in life today and in the future. One of these is the content skill, which is both an educational element, designed to move away from the lecture format, and an element of project activity, the logic of which the member of the society of the future has to learn. In this chaotic world, where one has to be flexible and adaptive, it is important to learn the practices of self-care — for which it is important to have knowledge of good nutrition, cooking and one’s own resources.

Below is a list of key competencies named by the experts that a School of the Future student should possess. Each competency was named by at least two experts.

Extracurricular competencies

• Cognitive flexibility:

the ability to acquire new knowledge and to solve new, non-typical problems using existing learnings

• Intuition: the ability to rely on a "gut feeling”

• Respect and understanding of the value of oneself and the others

• Maintaining and developing motivation for learning

• A culture of tolerance for mistakes (own and the others’) and uncertainty

Specific knowledge, skills and abilities