The paper discusses the acute methodology problem: elicitation of the fundamental principle of modern education. In the course of retrospective analysis, the author attempts to trace the essence and comparative historical specificity of the principle in question, and find out whether the currently declared one actually corresponds with the society demands and time requirements.

Consequently, the author singles out three successive historical types of education, each of them based on the respective ideological and methodological assumptions. The first one (the 17th – mid-19th century), based on the ontological system of the «Man and Nature», regards the man as a natural creature and proclaims a fundamental educational principle of adequacy to nature. The second type, formed by the end of the 19th century and based on the ontological system of the «Man and Society», takes the man as a social creature and puts forward a fundamental educational principle of adequacy to society. And finally, the multi-dimensional ontological system of the «ManNature-Culture-Society», developed in the mid-20th century, defines the man as a bio-socio-cultural creature and forms a basis for a new fundamental educational principle of adequacy to culture.

The paper maintains that the principle of adequacy to nature corresponds with the classical period of education history; orientation on the social adequacy represents its non-classical stage; and consequently, the principle of cultural adequacy signifies the post-non-classical phase. In conclusion, the author argues that resumption of the initial educational principle of adequacy to nature can be regarded as moving backward.

The paper considers the inner problems of secondary vocational education, activated by implementation of the new competence oriented educational standards. The comprehension of the multi-dimensional construct of professional competence along with the related delusions is regarded as one of the problems. According to the authors, teachers are supposed to know the methods, educational content and objectives of teaching activity, while the students have to understand what they study and why. The authors argue that the task of competence formation can’t be carried out only by means of reproductive methods. There is an urgent need for adapting the theory of developmental education to the specifics of vocational training. The authors insist on further studies for finding the optimum solutions of the given problems, otherwise the Federal State Educational Standards are unlikely to facilitate the quality assurance of secondary vocational education.

The paper considers the influence of globalization (both its positive and negative effects) on higher education systems worldwide including the USA and Russia. The research analyzes the potential of higher educational institutions for raising students’ capability of living and working in the global environment, which implies both raising the global competencies and preserving the traditional national and cultural values. Applying the comparative historical method, the author traces the US history that combines the “macdonaldization” period and long records of poly-cultural social interactions and cross-cultural adaptations. As an alternative to the existing pragmatic approach, the author puts forward the multicultural educational paradigm which is a culture relevant, valuebased system of moral and civil education focused on preservation of unique national features and simultaneous development of universal human values. The research objectives include critical evaluation of the USA experience, regarding the advantages and disadvantages of commercialized education; and identification of the pragmatic approach consequences in Russia, such as unification and simplification of education, and negative impact on the cultural and national identity formation. The research findings could be used for developing the higher education strategy as well as the curriculum on globalistics, multicultural education, and cross-cultural communications.

The paper looks at the urgent problems of the Russian higher vocational school from a philosophical and social viewpoint, and maintains that its current situation and prospects should be analyzed in the context of complicated social processes and socio-economic reorganizations undertaken at the turn of the 20th – 21st centuries. Facing a cultural crisis, the Russian society requires new cultural, political, economic and social ways out. The research shows that a considerable decline in the specialists’ competence level results from the low education quality requirements and decreasing social status of vocational education. The authors emphasize the culture study aspects of professional activity and regard them as the basis for vocational training quality assurance aimed at raising the professional competence. In authors’ opinion, the aspect of culture studies remains the most important in the process of liberalization and humanization of vocational education, since the modern culture is an effective instrument of world perfection as well as students’ self-development and self-understanding. 

The paper regards the development of the information and education environment of Russian universities as an important condition for successful reorganization of higher education. Taking as an example one of theUSuniversities, the author demonstrates the capacity of information education environment and its impact on the multilevel educational process. The comparative analysis of the existing information education environments of Russian an American universities reveals that such effective improvements as increasing number of students working on the individual curricula,__ implementation of the learning outcome monitoring, inclusive education, etc require immediate and substantial development of the information education environment of Russian universities. Both the development level and informational content of the environment in question remain unsatisfactory due to the financial, economic and staff related reasons. Consequently, the higher school reorganization is lagging behind retarded by the lack of synchronization between the attempts to improve the education quality and competitiveness on the one hand, and insufficient level of the information education environment characteristic of Russian universities on the other hand.

The paper looks at the problems facing the art teachers and resulted, in the author’s opinion, from separation of the content and functional side of the subject. The other problem is the lack of insight regarding social behavior, forms of consciousness and perception (including the spatial and temporal ones) underlying all sorts and forms of art. The paper demonstrates the interrelations between the history of arts and education history considered in terms of development and fixation of various forms of social consciousness. The audiovisual syncretism is regarded as the nature of perception and world reflection at specific historical stages of human knowledge and creativity development. Both the history of arts and education include the content and procedure related aspects. The whole history of pedagogy involves the procedure improvements (methods, means, forms, etc.) along the way «from integration to differentiation, and backwards»; and on the other side, it incorporates the invariable educational content. Likewise, throughout the history of arts we can trace the procedural aspect developments and the existence of the “eternal” content related to personality upbringing.

The paper summaries the experience of implementing the information and communications technologies of distance learning recommended to children with disabilities; the need for distance learning of disabled children being denoted along with the concept of distance learning technologies. The author gives the general characteristics of existing informational educational platforms of the “Tele-school” and “I-school”, functioning as the network resources and available in most regions of theRussian Federation. They give the necessary informational and methodological support to the distance education centers, organized for coordinating and guaranteeing the distance learning of children with disabilities; the main functions of the centers and the distance education models being outlined. The author considers the distance learning as a prospective educational trend supported by the state and society including teachers, parents and children. However, any educational model should comply with the unified requirements – i.e. availability of education, adaptability to different levels, needs and specifics of disabled children, and health protection.

The paper is devoted to the urgent issue of moral personality formation in the framework of the modern education system. Both the society and education specialists are concerned about the unsatisfactory moral education of the growing generation. For solving the problem of moral revival, the author considers the Russian pedagogical heritage - in particular, philosophical and publicistic works of F. M. Dostoyevsky and L. N. Tolstoy. The paper provides the modern definition of spirituality as the intellectual essence of the human being, based both on the deep knowledge of nature, society, human individuality and humanistic or religious values outweighing the selfish needs. In author’s opinion, the pedagogical concepts developed by Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy are still relevant, being aimed at developing a free personality and addressing the universal human values. The ideas and concepts of the 19th century’s outstanding thinkers perfectly correspond with the currently proclaimed educational content: they define the man as the highest society value; direct all the principles and parenting practices of spiritual and ethic education at creativity development, self-development, and self-improvement; and acknowledge the student’s right of individuality.

The paper analyzes a widely discussed problem of the negative health dynamics of the growing generation, and points out the necessity of complex consideration of all the factors adversely affecting children’s health. The special emphasis is on the fallowing harmful factors: intensification of training process; discrepancy between the applied training methods and techniques on the one side, and children’s age, sex and functional specifics and capabilities on the other side; shortcomings in organizing children’s physical activities; limitations of the expositive illustrative methods for developing the healthy lifestyle habits. The other group of factors is related to the teaching style and professional characteristics of the teachers. They include the common practice of «stress» tactics; incompetence in health saving technologies; personal indisposition and psychological drawbacks. The situation is exacerbated by the absence of psychologists and pediatricians in educational institutions. The multilevel approach to solving the problems of students’ health preservation and promotion involves the elicitation of objective, subjective, inschool and out-of-school health determining factors. The paper denotes the actual ways of children’s health preservation at the level of related ministries, departments, and educational institutions.

The paper is devoted to the technique designed for diagnosing the technical university student’s readiness for research activities that is closely related to the research competence structure. Based on the survey results and literature analysis, the authors considered ten primary components of the readiness in question, and analyzed each component along with the corresponding weight value, mean value, and probability density. Consequently, the high level of academic knowledge and motivation for research activity were singled out as the priority components. The paper describes the linear mathematical model, developed for diagnosing student’s readiness for research activities, and presents the minimum, maximum and threshold values of diagnostic assessments, and the relating indicators. The given model can be used as the basic one for developing a test software product for students and research supervisors diagnosing the readiness for research activity

The paper considers the problem of young people’s moral education with the reference to the system of secondary vocational education; the relevance of the study being enhanced by the greater independence of vocational college students compared to their high school peers. In addition, the paper describes the psychological and pedagogical difficulties in developing the moral norms, behavior principles, and life position in adolescence, when a mere moral declaration has little effect. Taking into consideration the students’ psychological and age characteristics, the authors suggest the active methods of dialogical interactions and recommend the system of ethical education and culture studies based on a differentiated understanding of specificity of the domestic moral culture, and axiological analysis of its educational potential. The multi-variant moral norms coexisting in modernRussiainclude the traditional, aristocratic, pragmatic and other types of values; all of them can be introduced in the series of educational discussions. The paper lists the approximate topics for such ethical and cultural debates, and demonstrates the expected effect of students’ moral self-assessment related to their life position and behavior patterns. The recognized moral values are likely to make a foundation for the students’ proper behavior both in college and in their future work.