Introduction. In the conditions of complexity, uncertainty, and diversity of contemporary Russian reality, the task of personal self-determination for the future teacher, understood as a mechanism of self-regulation, becomes a priority. In this regard, it is appropriate to consider teaching practice not only in the context of professional self-determination, but including personal selfdetermination. The “activity-based” interpretation of personal self-determination provides the prospects for finding an integrative pedagogical mechanism, which mediates the process of future teachers’ personal self-determination.
The aim of the present research is the conceptualisation of ideas about pedagogical support as a mechanism and form of mediating personal selfdetermination, theoretical substantiation of the model for pedagogical support of students’ personal self-determination during the period of teaching practice.
Methodology and research methods. To achieve the goal of the research, a reliable theoretical and methodological base has been defined: cultural-historical theory, psychological theory of activity, subject-activity approach, modern interpretation of the existential approach in psychology, environmental approach, and hermeneutic approach in pedagogy. The following methods of theoretical level are used: analysis of the main tendencies of modern pedagogical education development; analysis of basic theories and approaches; conceptualisation of pedagogical support ideas; hypothesis, modelling, extrapolation; generalization of research results. The materials of the research are: the sources of scientific information recognised in the scientific community (47 sources), included in the RSCI citation base, in the international citation systems Web of Science, Web of Science (RSCI), Scopus; well-known models of psychological and pedagogical support of a person in the educational process; local experience of testing the author’s model for supporting students’ personal self-determination during the period of teaching practice.
Results. A developed theoretical model for supporting students’ personal self-determination during the period of teaching practice includes: design of the individual trajectory for development as the main means of support; justification of the interaction between tutors and students as the main mode of pedagogical support; disclosure of meaningful dominants of support at the main stages of personal interaction with the social and educational environment; general characterisation of the proposed methods and means of pedagogical support. The strategy of pedagogical support is proposed, taking into account the essential properties of personal self-determination (an activity of externally and internally mediated process) and the objective possibilities of teaching practice as a “space of self-determination”, which consists in ensuring the movement of the individual from external to internal, from unconscious to conscious, from passive to intentional, from spontaneous to a controlled process of selfdetermination.
Scientific novelty. For the first time, pedagogical support is justified as a mechanism for mediating the personal self-determination of a future teacher. The model of pedagogical support as a mediating activity of a teacher is theoretically substantiated. The novelty of the model lies in the restructuring of the relations of its main elements: the support stages are isomorphic to the stages of selfdetermination; the “prolonged” means of support is an individual development path that integrates other means and methods. Special attention is focused on the role of the tutor’s personality and his or her interaction with students.
Practical significance. The model of pedagogical support is presented as the basis for the prospective design and practical implementation of the maintenance procedure, designing and testing its methods and means, comprehending and “enriching” its content. Thus, the demonstrated model is designed to contribute to the formation of pedagogical support for the personal self-determination of future teachers as a real and in-demand educational practice in the current conditions of educational practice.

Introduction. Today, one of the most debatable issues currently discussed in the professional community is the problem of the effectiveness of teacher education system. A significant number of the leaders of the educational sector and the expert community are convinced that teacher training system has long ceased to meet the challenges of the time and needs to be reorganised. The most radical position was declared at the Higher School of Economics: “To stop the degradation of education, it is necessary to include all pedagogical institutions of higher education into the composition of classical universities, as it is done in most Anglo-Saxon countries”. The underlying claims to the pedagogical system are the significant extent to which graduates of pedagogical institutions avoid working in their specialty, as well as the overproduction of pedagogical specialists in the absence of need for them. Meanwhile, instead of substantiated quantitative estimates of these phenomena in the literature, we will find only approximate figures calculated on limited statistics obtained by experts.
The aim of the present research is to review the results of employment of graduates of higher education institutions trained in teacher specialties, relying on a new information base – federal statistical observation form No. ОО-1 “Information about the organisation providing training for educational programmes of primary general, basic general, secondary general education”, and the assessment of the effectiveness of teacher education system based on a quantitative approach.
Methodology and research methods. The methodological framework of the research is based on the systematic approach in which general scientific (comparative, retrospective analysis, systematization, generalisation) and statistical research methods (statistical and correlation analysis, etc.) were employed.
Results and scientific novelty. In the current research, it is proved that the allegations of low efficiency of the system of teacher education are untenable. In assessing the profile employment of graduates, the market for pedagogical labour is limited by experts to job vacancies in secondary schools, while institutions of pre-school, additional, special correctional, as well as secondary and higher professional education fall out of sight. Moreover, graduates of all pedagogical specialties (educators, masters of vocational training, speech therapists, psychologists, additional education teachers, etc.), as well as extramural graduates, are mistakenly included in the number of young specialists – teachers. As a result, the actual amount of teacher training is unjustifiably overstated. A comparison of overstated training with an understated number of jobs inevitably leads to erroneous estimates of the effectiveness of the training system.
In addition, it was established that the admission to schools of young teachers of higher qualification is 25–30% higher than the actual graduation of students of teaching specialties of the full-time department of universities, which would be impossible if the graduate employment profile was low. This excess is explained by the minimisation of the volume of teacher training to a critical level and the growing recruitment to teacher positions of non-specialists teachers, which is caused by errors in planning of determining the benchmarks for enrollment to study at universities.
Practical significance. The authors believe that this article will allow to clarify approaches to assessing the effectiveness of teacher education system and adjust the control figures for university admission in the field of “Education and Pedagogical Sciences” in accordance with the current personnel supply and demand.

Introduction. Improving quality assurance requires vocational education to be consistent and to be appropriate with the context of the school education. The school quality assurance operations are a driving mechanism for achieving high educational results at the next stages of education. This process will result in sustainably improving education quality.
The research aims were to assess the conditions for improving the quality of education in colleges under the Office of the Vocational Education Commission (OVEC) and to analyse and evaluate the operational approach to ensuring the quality of education.
Methodology and research methods. The study participants included college personnel directors, teachers, and staff selected through purposive sampling. A total of 44 participants were recruited for the context assessment: 28 people to analyse the operational approach and 39 people to assess the operational approach. The research tools included a record form to provide an educational quality assurance context, a questionnaire to determine the operational approach of educational quality assurance, and an assessment form to determine the operational approach of educational quality assurance. The data were analysed using percentage, mean, standard deviation, odds ratio, and content analyses.
Results and scientific novelty. The research results show that the similar contexts of education at all courses are the standard of vocational management and the standard for creating a society of learning (cooperation in creating a society of learning). Meanwhile, the differences identified are related to the peculiarities of professional qualifications and various standards for creating a learning society (innovation, inventions, creative work and research). The analysis of the operational approach allowed the authors to find out eight internal quality assurance factors for educational quality assurance: educational quality assurance planning; design of education quality assurance; study focusing on the actual operations; following the process; selection of quality indicators and criteria according to the educational context; efficient data management; following and monitoring assessments; and reviewing revised or edited assessments. Moreover, four external quality assurance factors are identified: evidence for educational quality assurance; accreditation of educational quality assurance; assessors holding appropriate qualifications; and judgment of the assessment results. In the course of the operational approach assessment, it is established that there are high levels of feasibility and appropriateness in all aspects.
The operational approach to educational quality assurance was developed using the context analysis, inputs, processes, results and concepts of internal and external quality assurance through evidence of cross-impact analysis. This method of analysis can be used to respond to educational quality assurance policy that requires that the demonstrated approach is to be easily applied in practice and requires the use of both quantitative and qualitative methods, thus creating innovations in the field of productivity-enhancing and their application in vocational education.
Practical significance. The research results can be useful for directors, teachers and staff at colleges and the Office for National Education Standards and Quality Assessment in Thailand to design and develop the methods for achieving improved quality of education on a sustainable basis.

Introduction. The present article is devoted to the study of the procrastination severity in medical university students with different personality orientation, as well as to a comparative qualitative and quantitative analysis of this phenomenon.
The aim of the current research is to investigate the procrastination severity in medical university students depending on the personality orientation.
Methodology and research methods. The methodological basis of the study is the fundamental principles of the personality psychology, developed in the Russian psychology by A. N. Leontiev, S. L. Rubinstein. The personality orientation was considered on the basis of the provisions formulated by A. S. Makarenko, A. N. Leontiev, V. N. Myasishchev, K. K. Platonov. To understand the phenomenon of procrastination, the authors implemented the provisions articulated by Ya. I. Varvarycheva, E. L. Mikhailova, N. A. Shukhov. C. Lei’s procrastination scale was used in order to study the procrastination level. Personality orientation was examined with the use of the questionnaire developed by V. Smekal and M.Kucher.The obtained results were processed using the methods of mathematical
statistics, in particular, the Kruskal–Wallis test, and Spearman’s rank correlation test. The sample included 96 students of the 1^st-2^nd years of education (average age is 19.5) of the Irkutsk State Medical University.
Results. The distribution of medical students by the level of severity of procrastination is determined. It is demonstrated that this category of students is characterised by an average and high level of a partial or constant tendency to delay the implementation of important matters and making decisions, consciously postponing the implementation of leading activity.
The business orientation of the personality, manifested in the predominance of motives associated with the activity itself and with the enthusiasm for the activity, dominates in students. It was estimated that students characterised by personal, business and interaction orientation are statistically significantly different by the severity of procrastination, while the students focused on communication and interaction are characterised by a higher level of procrastination.
The prevalence of social networks, the availability of mobile communications and the Internet create the basis for the implementation of the communication need with the use of virtual communication, and simultaneously is an obstacle to the implementation of leading activities. For students with a personality orientation, it is most difficult to correlate their own needs and the need to care responsibilities, such a dissonance of tasks and leading motives activates procrastinating behaviour.
Scientific novelty. The levels of procrastination among medical students are revealed. It is established that differences in the severity of procrastinating behaviour depends on the dominant orientation of the person (personal orientation, business orientation, interaction orientation). It is stated that students with an interaction orientation, inclined to show interest in people, attentiveness to interpersonal relations, have a higher level of procrastinating behaviour. It is revealed for the first time that the focus on communication with other people is a personal predictor of procrastinating behaviour among medical students.
Practical significance. The research results allow for the determination of strategies and formulation of recommendations on correcting procrastination, as well as prevention of procrastination. The research findings can be employed to organise targeted psychological work with students of medical universities.

Introduction. One of the consequences of the crisis associated with the coronavirus pandemic will be increased global competition for human capital. Russia’s ability to create barriers to “brain drain” will determine how quickly to overcome the crisis and enter the sixth technological order. Improving the efficiency of the educational system (primarily higher education) as a “basis” for training scientists, who can provide “breakthrough” scientific results, actualises the research aimed at eliminating ineffective standards, which set false benchmarks for the innovative development of higher education and science.
The aim of the present research is to identify the nature of institutional traps in the scientific and educational sphere and to suggest the ways to eliminate them.
Methodology and research methods. The current research was carried out on the basis of a systematic approach. The following general scientific methods were employed: analytical review of scientific literature and the content of normative documents, generalisation, comparison, synthesis.
Results and scientific novelty. The author’s hypothesis that the backbone of the institutional trap in the scientific and educational sphere is the trap of strategic planning in the formal documents, which should set strategic guidelines of development of higher education and science, the real content of these documents does not represent: a) the structure of trained personnel (the proportion of graduates, who studied under secondary professional and higher education programmes); b) the planned number of future specialists in specialties and areas of training, which are critical for a breakthrough in the sixth technological order; с) the necessary and sufficient number of researchers, who can provide “breakthrough” scientific results; d) the necessary and sufficient number of higher school teachers, who can provide high-quality transfer of “compressed” human experience. In the scientific sphere, the phenomenon of “implicit knowledge deficit” is recorded: against the background of an increase in the proportion of young researchers (up to 39 years of age), the number and proportion in the cohort of middle-aged researchers (40-59 years) decreases. In higher education, there is a “surplus of implicit knowledge”: a decrease in the share of young teachers with a fairly stable share of middle-aged teachers creates a situation, where there is no one to transmit implicit knowledge to. Cumulatively, this can prevent real scientific results from being obtained and promoted in the real economy and commercialisation, as well as lead to imitation of scientific research and the absence of “breakthrough” scientific results. The analysis of approaches used by the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation to assess the effectiveness of universities and research organisations suggests the existence of a “performance evaluation trap”, when the proposed methods do not allow making an objective conclusion about the essence of the measured.
The trap of strategic planning in the scientific and educational sphere predefined the paradoxes of strategic planning in the Russian Federation when the development of strategies and programmes for the promotion of crucial sectors of the national economy is not based on forecasting long-term socio-economic development of Russia. Based on the generalisation of the results of the analysis, the proposals are formulated, which should be kept in a reference framework for a national-oriented strategy for the development of the scientific and educational sphere.
Practical significance. The research results can be used to adjust the strategy for the development of scientific and educational sphere.

Introduction. National education and science systems are increasingly integrated into the international scientific and educational space in the context of increasing globalisation. The result of integration processes is an increase in the number of students in the world: if in the 1970s there were about 29 million people in the three-level education system, in 2000 – 100 million, in 2005 – 139 million, in 2010 – 181 million, in 2012 – 196 million. According to the UNESCO Institute for Statistics, the number of such students will grow to 263 million in 2025. In the Russian Federation, 283 000 foreign students (5% of the total number of students) were enrolled in the 2016 / 2017 academic year, and in the United States, about 1 million foreign students were enrolled in the 2014 / 2015 academic year.
Given the trends of globalisation of education, Japan was forced to join the struggle for foreign students and the export of educational services. Negative demographic trends such as falling birth rates, an aging population, and a declining youth population are also stimulating the factors in the internationalisation of Japanese universities and the country’s increased participation in the global competition to attract young people to the national higher education system.
The aim of the study was to identify the features of the functioning of the model of attracting foreign youth to the higher education system in Japan in the context of worsening problems of population aging and slowing economic growth. This situation is also partly relevant for Russian socio-economic and demographic development.
Materials and methods. The article uses statistical data from a number of international organisations (UNESCO, OECD, IOM, World Bank), the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan, the Japan Foundation, and public and private universities in Japan. The sociological method was applied. The authors of the article conducted three focus groups on strategies and tools for attracting foreign students to Japan during a research trip in July 2019. Currently, the higher education system in Japan is one of the best not only in the Asia-Pacific region, but throughout the world. Japan has actually become one of the leaders in the world market for educational services; applicants from different countries seek to master the most in-demand specialties.
Results. The study revealed that the system of attracting foreign students to Japanese universities is based on the concept of foreign migration policy, that is, on promoting the country’s geopolitical and economic interests in the AsiaPacific Region (APR). Japanese universities teach students from countries that are strategic partners of Japan: China, Vietnam, Nepal, South Korea, Thailand and Taiwan. An important element of the strategy for attracting foreigners is the work of universities, cultural and educational foundations that promote the Japanese language and culture outside of Japan. The Japanese higher education system, despite its historical traditionalism and conservatism, is gradually internationalising and opening up to the world through active access of universities to foreign educational markets and channels for attracting foreign students. Universities, as the main elements of the higher education system, have become the agents of Japan’s foreign policy, focused primarily on the Asia-Pacific countries and its strategic partners. Moreover, the partner countries were chosen not only based on the priorities of Japanese geopolitics and economy, but also on objective demographic indicators (young age structure, large population). The interaction with migration partner countries is supported by real steps on the part of the Japanese authorities: investment, trade, business and cultural contacts. The experience of Japan can be used in Russia to organise work to attract young people to study in higher education institutions from countries that are geopolitical partners, primarily in the former Soviet Union.
Scientific novelty. The features of the functioning of the model of attracting foreign youth to the higher education system in Japan in the context of worsening problems of population aging and slowing economic growth are revealed. Practical significance lies in the possibility of further practical application of the results of the current research on the features of the Japanese model of attracting foreign youth to the higher education system.

Introduction. In the modern educational space, an intensive digital transformation is currently taking place, which imposes new requirements for teacher competencies. This determines the relevance of setting goals and solving problems in order to develop up-to-date models for improving the qualifications of teachers of vocational education and training (VET). The paper discusses the current state of the development of digital competencies of teachers and teachers of Serbia and Russia in line with the European Digital Competence Framework (DigComp) and the European Digital Competence Framework for Educators (DigСompЕdu). The paper includes an analysis of the peculiarities of vocational education and training systems, as well as the directions of further training of teachers, conducted by participants in the international project “Professional Development of Vocation Education Teachers with European Practices (Pro-VET)”. In order to better understand national contexts, the content of the reports of the participating countries of the project was analysed in the context of the EU policy and strategy for the development of digital competency of VET teachers. In this article, the authors focus on exploring digital competencies required of VET teachers within the European Digital Competence Framework for Educators (DigСompЕdu) to identify digital competencies and development needs of Serbian and Russian VET teachers when working in online learning environments.
The aims of the research are the following: 1) to compare the educational needs of Russian and Serbian VET teachers in the development of their digital pedagogical competencies; 2) to identify the theoretical and practical base for VET teachers’ digitally competent development programme design in the context of online learning according to the best European practices in the field of VET.
Methodology and research methods. The development of the model was based on learning theories, didactics and practical approaches to soft skills development in online learning environments. The research has been conducted by the means of document analysis, theoretical analysis and synthesis methods, comparative method, modelling method and expert estimation method.
Results and scientific novelty. Key aspects of VET teacher training systems in Russia and Serbia are compared and needs in development of digital pedagogical skills of Russian and Serbian VET teachers are identified. A developed model of VET teachers’ digitally competent development programme design in the context of online learning according to best European practices in this fields is represented by two components: structural and functional. The structural component of VET teachers’ digitally competent development model contains: learning theories and didactics, adult learning theories, soft skills development approaches in online learning, learning outcomes development approaches. The functional component of the model contains: national and European educational policy, strategies in the field of digitalisation of education and the development of digital competencies of teachers, European Union policies related to online learning; pedagogical, psychological and didactical design parameters of the content of advanced training programmes in the context of e-learning.
Practical significance. The demonstrated model is being tested in the framework of the implementation of the international Pro-VET project supported by ERASMUS+. Methodological approaches, procedure and tools of VET teachers’ digitally competent development are being developed and tested. The application of digitally competent development programmes ensures the transparency of training and allows for the correlation of national and international training programmes as well as the development of academic and professional mobility of VET teachers. The process of designing such educational training programmes in online environment for VET teachers has begun at some universities in Russia and Serbia (participants of the project). The developed online training programmes can be used as a basis to design more quality online courses beyond the Pro-VET project in the sphere of professional development for VET teachers.