Educational Reform in Post-Soviet Russia: Legacies and Prospects

by Eklof,Ben; Eklof,Ben

• ISBN13: 9780714657059
• ISBN10: 0714657050
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-07-12
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

This volume consists of a collection of essays devoted to study of the most recent educational reform in Russia. In his first decree Boris Yeltsin proclaimed education a top priority of state policy. Yet the economic decline which accompanied the collapse of the Soviet Union dealt a crippling blow to reformist aspirations, and to the existing school system itself. The public lost faith in school reform and by the mid-1990s a reaction had set in. Nevertheless, large-scale changes have been effected in finance, structure, governance and curricula. At the same time, there has been a renewed and widespread appreciation for the positive aspects of the Soviet legacy in schooling. The essays presented here compare current educational reform to reforms of the past, analyze it in a broader cultural, political and social context, and study the shifts that have occurred at the different levels of schooling 'from political decision-making and changes in school administration to the rewriting textbooks andteachers' everyday problems. The authors are both Russian educators, who have played a leading role in implementation of the reform, and Western scholars, who have been studying it from its very early stages. Together, they formulate an intricate but cohesive picture, which is in keeping with the complex nature of the reform itself.

Table of Contents

Notes on contributors	xi
Preface	xv
Introduction -- Russian education: the past in the present	1	(20)
Ben Eklof
PART I Educational Policy	21	(174)
Educational change in time of social revolution: the case of post-Communist Russia in comparative perspective	23	(33)
Vyacheslav Karpov
Elena Lisovskaya
School and schooling under Stalin, 1931-1953	56	(46)
Larry E. Holmes
The experimental tradition in Russian education	102	(27)
Stephen T. Kerr
Democratizing the Russian school: achievements and setbacks	129	(24)
Isak D. Froumin
Demographic change and the fate of Russia's schools: the impact of population shifts on educational practice and policy	153	(23)
Stephen T. Kerr
The education of Russian-speakers in Estonia	176	(19)
Kara D. Brown
PART II The teacher, the textbook and educational practice	195	(139)
Teachers in Russia: state, community and profession	197	(24)
Ben Eklof
Scott Seregny
Civic education in a changing Russia	221	(26)
Janet G. Vaillant
History teaching in post-Soviet Russia: coping with antithetical traditions	247	(25)
Vera Kaplan
Rewriting the national past: new images of Russia in history textbooks of the 1990s	272	(19)
Alexander Shevyrev
New trends in historical scholarship and the teaching of history in Russia's schools	291	(18)
Igor Ionov
Teaching literature in the new Russian school	309	(13)
Nadya Peterson
The conduct of lessons in the Russian school: is real change on the way?	322	(12)
James Muckle
Appendix A: Russian education system	334	(1)
Appendix B: Russian general school system	335	(1)
Appendix C: Core curricula of the Russian school system	336	(2)
Glossary	338	(3)
Index	341