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The paper is devoted to improving the results of a general school by introducing changes to the established practices of decision-making and setting development goals that have settled in school management practices. The paper is based on materials of a project of targeted methodological assistance to schools with low educational outcomes, that was implemented from 2020 to 2022 in the Russian Federation. The authors set a goal to identify the existence of a correlation between a number of parameters characterising an educational organisation (the proportion of underachieving students), its management style (the director’s attitudes, the dynamics of changes in management and pedagogical practices) and the likelihood of effective implementation of the development program, observed through increasing students’ outcomes. The results show a straight correlation between the principal's attitudes and the results, a straight connection with different weights of different practices from the study set, and no correlation for the proportion of underachieving students. The conclusion is drawn about the influence of a low level of manager competencies on the director’s attitudes, the feasibility of helping schools in identifying and preventing risk factors, the universality of benefits from the introduction of data-driven management mechanisms data in any school, regardless of the depth of underachievement.

Self-efficacy forms a major factor that influences many life aspects, as a result, it has been researched by many psychologists and educators worldwide from different perspectives. Embracing the context of Bandura’s Self- efficacy Theory as a theoretical framework, this quantitative empirical research paper introduces an overview of the role that self–efficacy plays in shaping higher education students’ academic achievement among a diverse group of college students. The diverse group comprises 374 students who took part in this research study and responded to the General Self–efficacy Scale (GSE) to disclose the perception of their self-efficacy and the ability to perform the required academic tasks. Multiple analysis techniques including Descriptive analysis, Pearson Correlation Coefficient, t-test for independent sample, and Simple Linear Regression were conducted to achieve the paper’s objectives. Data analysis demonstrated a strong positive correlation between students’ general self–efficacy and academic achievement. Moreover, students’ self–efficacy was found as a significant predictor of students’ academic achievement. Findings indicated that no gender-based differences in students’ general self-efficacy among higher education students. The discoveries of this research study can be implemented in instructional designing, curriculum development, and college counseling services to promote students’ academic achievement.

The rapid pace of innovation and the increased quantity of information are affecting the traditional educational routes. Schools are now facing quite a new task: how to teach children to learn. The developmental learning approach of Elkonin and Davidov provides rich experience of solving this task. The paper describes a technology of learning space polarization that promotes learning autonomy in primary school and has been successfully applied in developmental learning classes. We explore the prerequisites of individual learning action formation, the action which is self-motivated, independent and responsible. We also describe three lines of learning autonomy development in students: result, research and product. The paper concludes with a description of the evolution of learning autonomy and its social/institutional forms and relates its stages to certain age periods in the child development.

The paper analyses differences in the expression and determination of the educational and developmental activity of students in everyday life and under forced social isolation. The study was conducted on a sample of young students (N=338) aged 16—25 years (M=19.9; SD=2.1), 63.9% female. The following methods were used: the authors’ questionnaire aimed at identifying the intensity of educational and developmental activity in different life conditions; the technique “Activity of personality under forced social restrictions” (by N.V. Usova, I.V. Arendachuk, M.A. Klenova); the technique “Assessment of mental activation, interest, emotional tonus, tension and comfort” (by L.A. Kurgansky, T.A. Nemchin). The study found that under self-isolation the educational and developmental activity of students is higher than in ‘normal’ life. The paper also shows how various psychological features determine such activity. The less the students under self-isolation display educational and developmental activity, the more it is due to reactions of frustration and is further compensated by the transfer of activity to family relationships. Those students who display high educational and developmental activity tend to be more confident of having control over their life. They focus on professional development, recreation and entertainment. More or less, the display of educational and developmental activity of students greatly depends on their psychological and emotional states.

The paper analyzes the notions of parents and teachers about the reasons behind low academic achievements of children as well as about the opportunities to overcome learning difficulties provided by modern Russian schools. The study uses data from surveys of parents, students and teachers of comprehensive schools conducted as part of the Monitoring of the Economics of Education (IEE) implemented by the National Research University Higher School of Economics (NRU HSE) in the academic year 2020-2021.It is shown that the parents of low-achieving students notice the lack of attention from schools to the problems of children with learning difficulties, the lack of additional classes and support from specialists to overcome these difficulties. This group of parents demonstrates a higher level of willingness to transfer their children to another school. As for the teachers working in schools with a large number of poorly performing students, they tend to have a lower sense of responsibility for the academic success of students and a higher level of dissatisfaction with the choice of profession. They are less likely to receive support from various specialists (psychologists, special needs teachers, etc.), and as they realize they lack the professional skills necessary for working with children with learning and behavioral difficulties, they tend to engage more in professional development activities. The paper concludes that the psychological climate existing in classes and schools with a high proportion of underachieving students is an impediment in overcoming low academic performance, and that the groups of parents and teachers experiencing the greatest difficulties in providing quality education also experience the greatest deficit of support.

Low readiness for independent living is what underlies the problems of social adaptation in children and adolescents from orphan organizations. This review explores how scientists and practitioners interpret this very concept of readiness for independent living. It is shown that the external determinants of readiness for independence in orphans are associated with the specifics of their growing up and fall within the research field of social adaptation of orphanage graduates. The paper describes the internal determinants of readiness for independent living as stable sociopsychological features that are essential prerequisites for success in independent living. The sets of allocated characteristics are revealed depending on the key system-forming concept: independence, resilience, life skills, competencies, self-determination. The paper analyzes the influence of the chosen approach on the content of training activities aimed at promoting readiness for independent living and on its assessment. The multidimensional character of the factors related to readiness for independent living requires complex preparation and training. The paper concludes with some suggestions concerning the modernization of such training for adolescents from orphan organizations.

The paper presents results of a study aimed at exploring how comprehensive assessment of inclusive process may be used as a tool for designing inclusion The paper presents results of a study aimed at exploring how comprehensive assessment of inclusive process may be used as a tool for designing inclusion within an educational institution. The assessment technique is based on three methodological foundations: activity, participatory and human rights based approaches which imply active involvement of the key subject groups in joint activities aimed at developing inclusion. The assessment model is built into the development cycle of an inclusive process and includes, along with self-examination and external expertise, the analysis of the assessment results by the school community with the participation of an external expert, the design of changes, their implementation and re-assessment. The participatory approach enabled us to involve the parent community as one of the subjects of assessing the state of the inclusive process at school. We focused on the following research tasks: to describe the stages in the assessment of inclusive educational process by its participants; to show, using the case of one of the schools involved in testing as an example, how the assessment and its discussion by the participants of the educational process and by the external expert affect the choices in the design of changes, making the educational institution more inclusion-oriented. To analyze the results of applying the assessment technique, one of the Moscow schools was selected which has extensive experience in the implementation of inclusive education and has reached the stage of change design in the cycle of inclusion development. The participatory approach made it possible, on the one hand, to involve the parent community as one of the subjects of assessing the state of the inclusive process at school. On the other hand, the assessment by an external expert was used as a tool for developing the institution’s inclusiveness. All groups of respondents gave a fairly high level of assessment of the inclusive process, although there were statistically significant differences (p

The study of virtual reality in psychology and pedagogy requires an understanding of the essential connections and relationships of VR with various mental phenomena, and above all - reflection.The urgency of considering this problem is due to the search of VR developers and those who use virtual technologies in practice, including VR didactics, practical psychology, for a solution to the issue of self-management of systems with VR.Can VR exercise the reflective function of the mind represented in the processes of self-development, self-determination, self-management of the individual? The first step in solving this issue is to identify and describe the essential relations of reflection and virtual reality.For this, an etymological analysis of the concepts of reflection and virtual reality was carried out.The paper highlights the intersections in the semantic meanings of these concepts.Our analysis allowed us to employ the functional model of reflection (Anikina V.G.), within which VR can be considered as a ‘chronotope’ of reflection — the space-time continuum of the presence of Self ‘outside’ the situation, in relation to which the reflective process is meaningfully carried out.The paper outlines the possible ways of using VR in the development and formation of reflection and universal reflective actions in the educational process.

The paper focuses on the specifics of children’s learning activity organization aimed at creating the Zone of Proximal Development. From this perspective, we analyze the potential of the theory of learning activity and the practice of developmental learning (D.B. Elkonin, V.V. Davydov), outline the achievements of this approach and reveal the issues of concern regarding the correlation between students preconceptions and scientific concepts. The paper thoroughly reconstructs the scientific discourse between the academic standpoints of the “Developmental Learning” and the “School of the Dialogue of Cultures” supporters, showing the relevance of this discourse in the light of modern challenges in education. Finally, we discuss the approaches to the task of developing theoretical thinking in students and engaging them in quasi-investigations presented in the works of M. Hedegaard and E. Etkina.

The paper describes the main stages and transitions in the unfolding of the Learning Activity which is reviewed within the framework of D.B. Elkonin and V.V. Davydov’s concepts about the meaning and content of education. The unfolding of teaching/learning is explained through the emergence of a joint action of teacher and students, that is, the Mediative Action. The concept of the Learning Task as a basis for constructing the general method of action, central to the system of D.B. Elkonin and V.V. Davydov, is also considered as a source of learning motivation. The learning task is seen as the distinct opposition between the search for the method of acting (possible scaffolds of acting) and the very achievement of the result, i.e. the opposition between the consideration (of situation) and the immediate achievement (of result), and, therefore, the opposition between the intriguing (interesting) and the required. The paper also focuses on the evolution of modeling as the evolution of sign mediation in the student’s activity. As the student progresses from understanding and configuring the model to using it as a means of acting, the model evolves. Having gained the function of the means, the model becomes a resource of possible action, and that is how the experience of acting appears before the student him/herself. The unfolding of the learning task and modeling is conceptualized as the correlation between functional genesis and ontogenesis.

The paper analyzes the conceptual framework of the activity-based content of education that was elaborated by Vasiliy Davydov and implemented in a new design of school subjects. The article shows that, in order to promote activity practice in education, Davydov had to develop three project-oriented notions that he integrated into a single system of activity practice: 1. The notion of the structure of the thinking act – the ‘cell’ of any thinking processes acquired by students; 2. The notion of the concept as a system of actions (i.e. the concepts from school subjects, such as ‘number’, ‘phoneme’) that represents the main content of primary education; 3. The notion of a schoolchild’s learning activity as a form of activity aimed at mastering new types of school subjects. The integration of these three notions was possible due to Davydov’s metacognitive approach that allows one to analyze the concretization of the notions about the thinking act using the materials from different school subjects, in different types of activity. The paper argues that the next step in the development of activity practice in education requires the elaboration of the concept of education as a form of integration of the student’s learning activity and the teacher’s instructional activity.

The paper attempts to take a look at the works of V.V. Davydov from the perspective of classical historical ideas of objective forms of thinking, through the prism of dialectics as logics – in other words, through the notions that Davydov himself considered as basic foundations of his pedagogical transformations. Appreciation or rejection of Davydov’s achievements depends entirely on the position of ‘experts’: looking at his accomplishments with the eyes of Hegel or Marx, or analyzing them from the point of view of real educational practice are two principally different things. The extent to which historical classics of philosophy and pedagogy revealed itself in Davydov’s activity and how it was or was not implemented – these are the issues that await their exploration. The paper outlines some topics for such research.

The paper presents a technique for assessing features of creative movement in children aged 3—6 years; the technique was used to test the hypothesis about the specifics of these features in each of the preschool ages. The paper outlines the creative task and the entire procedure of the technique; describes the parameters of creative movement (the use of various expressive movements, their originality, transformation into the character etc.) and the system of their assessments. The study involved 205 children aged 3—6 and the paper discusses the obtained data: compares the developmental dynamics of creative movement basing on its parameters and the correlation between them; provides intermediate conclusions concerning the predominance of the cognitive aspect of creativity (“use of means” of the language of movements) over the actual creative aspect (“transformation into the character”, “originality”).

The paper focuses on a social psychological analysis of the effects of new technologies on the individual and his/her social experience. Among the impacts of social media on everyday life are the transformation and simplification of communication process, as well as the transformation of power relations and norms associated with this process. Participants of communication process have various opportunities to maintain anonymity, to construct and modify identities, and to interrupt and or even to terminate communication process at any time. The literature review reveals the negative side of the Internet use and demonstrates antinormative phenomena. The explanations of aggressive online behaviour, as well as the attempts to predict offline behaviour from online observations, are based on a wide range of interindividual constructs. However, these studies are mostly descriptive. The paper highlights the potential of social psychological knowledge (social cognitive theory, social representations theory and deindividuation theory) to answer the question about the relationship of online and offline behaviour. The theory of social representations may also be of much use in creating prevention programmes for adolescents and young people.

The paper presents results of a study on the relationship between psychological well-being of adolescents and features of their parents’ communication. The study involved 92 subjects: 46 adolescents aged 13—14 years, studying in one of the Moscow schools, and their mothers (46 females). The adolescents’ psychological well-being was measured with the Piers-Harris Self-Concept Scale (scales VI, VII and VIII), the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-Being Scale, and with the questionnaire by I.М. Markovskaya. Features of parental communication were assessed using the social skills questionnaire by V.F. Ryakhovskiy, the Self-Monitoring Scale by M. Snyder, and the Questionnaire Measure of Emotional Empathy by A. Mehrabian and N. Epstein. The study revealed a five-factor structure of psychological well-being of the adolescents and of their perception of childparent relations. It showed a correlation between the level of parental emotional response and the adolescents' assessments of consent in their relationships with the parents. The adolescents’ satisfaction with communication with peers was also related to their parents’ social skills. Low and pronounced communicative skills of the parents are associated with high and average levels of adolescent satisfaction with peer communication respectively; normal communicative skills in the parents is associated with low satisfaction in the adolescents. The paper concludes with a discussion on the application of the obtained results in psychological counseling and psychological education of parents.

This paper is part of a larger research focused on observations of preschool children in free make-believe play with different objects. This paper presents the outcomes of observations of children’s play with toys that imitate real objects (cups, swords, irons and so on).The dynamics of play activity in different age groups (3, 4, 5 and 6 years) is shown. In the two younger groups, role renaming is extremely rare and is accompanied by play actions, while children do not change their appearance in accordance with the role. From the age of 5, the number of renaming increases sharply: two-thirds of children call themselves some kind of a role name, many dress up, and the vast majority plays a role. At 6 years, there is a slight decline in the number of children with role renaming and a slight increase in the number of children who change their appearance as compared to 5-year-olds.In the environment with toys imitating real objects, the role emerges in response to toys, which significantly differs from how the role appears in the environment with open-ended materials. The paper describes the roles that were employed in the play with toys.

The paper describes a research on the methods of psychological and pedagogical assessment of movement development in children of 5—7 years. The importance of creating a set of methods for identifying the actual motor development in children is discussed. According to the hypothesis, new types of movements (which appear at this age) and how children carry them out can become the basis of psychological and pedagogical assessment of motor development in children aged 5 to 7 years. The paper outlines the principles underlying the choice of movements for diagnostic purposes and provides data of the experimental study of movement in 100 children aged 5—7 and its comparison to the data of pedagogical monitoring. In the final part the paper discusses the perspectives of applying the described methods of psychological and pedagogical assessment of motor development - as more informative (basing on the revealed developmental features) and as more effective (less time-consuming).

Creative thinking is an important skill of the modern world, and its assessment with the help of modern digital tools is becoming an increasingly complex methodological task. The inclusion of process data of task performance in the assessment model of creative thinking is a promising direction that becomes possible in computer testing. The use of such data allows us to consider the processes of creative thinking in dynamics, which makes the assessment of the level of creativity of students more accurate and multifaceted. The purpose of the study was to determine the possibility of using process data of task performance as part of evaluating creative thinking using a tool in a digital environment. The paper presents an analysis of the work of 823 4th grade students who, during the assignment, created images in a closed simulation environment to assess creative and critical thinking. The analysis of process data of completing tasks performance took place using N-grams of various lengths. As a result, the sequences of actions of students with different levels of creative thinking were compared, and various strategies of behavior of the test takers were identified in task for creative thinking compared with a task for critical thinking. Together with information about the level of creativity based on the analysis of the created product, process data of task performance improves the understanding of the functioning of tasks through the prism of the task execution process by the test takers. It also makes a step forward in detailing the feedback that can be obtained as part of testing.

The article presents the results of a correlation analysis of the influence of Dota-2 players’ personal characteristics on their behavior in the virtual space. The analysis is based on the data, received in the course of a series of experiments conducted by the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on Contemporary Childhood in Moscow State University of Psychology and Education in 2015-2023. Research methods include the Q-Sort technique by W. Stephenson, the Butler-Haigh “Real and Ideal Test”, the Role Conflict Questionnaire developed by O.V. Rubtsova, and Adolescent Egocentrism Scale (AES) by R. Enright. The sample includes 103 active players of MOBA Dota-2 aged 14—25. The paper discusses statistical correlations, in particular, those identified on the basis of a network analysis of partial correlations. The analysis suggests that such factors as role incompatibility and the need for role-playing experience may be manifested in virtual play activity and partly determine the specifics of its implementation by adolescents and young adults.

The paper presents the results of studying the resources of academic, socio-cultural and psychological adaptation of students representing indigenous peoples of the North, Siberia and the Far East to college. The sample consisted of 720 students, of which 304 people (58% girls) identify themselves as representatives of the indigenous peoples of the North and the Far East. The collection of empirical data was carried out using questionnaires (Scale of academic motivation; Questionnaire of online and offline coping; The Child and Youth Resilience Measure; Types of ethnic identity questionnaire; Scales of Psychological problems of adolescents; Methodology psychological safety of the educational environment). The adaptability of students was studied using the Scale of Socio-Cultural Adaptation; Self-assessment scales of satisfaction with various aspects of life; author's questionnaire. Regression analysis revealed invariant predictors (emotional attitude towards college, satisfaction with the educational environment of the college, adaptation to the amount of homework in the educational process) only for academic adaptation. Indicators of introjected learning motivation are also significant for predicting the success of academic adaptation of students representing the Indigenous Minorities and the Far East. The predictor of socio-cultural adaptation for the students representing the North, Siberia and the Far East nations is the level of ethno-egoism. Coping strategies and the size of the settlement predict the psychological adaptation this group students. The results obtained can contribute to the optimization of the process of socio-psychological adaptation of students-representatives the Indigenous Minorities to study in colleges.

The paper provides a review of modern foreign systems of evaluating teaching skills and teacher performance. It is argued that the evaluation of professional activities in teachers becomes an effective tool of performance improvement only in the context of professional growth and continuing education. The paper outlines the typology of teacher evaluation forms according to the aims and tasks; normative grounds; tools employed; subject of evaluation. The following key international studies on effective teacher evaluation methods are analysed: ETC (2008), The Sutton Trust (2013), MET (2009-2013).The paper describes the best practices in teacher performance assessment for future teachers (graduates of teacher training programmes) developed within EdTPA, PPAT, TAA, MCTE.Also, the paper addresses the issue of teacher certification on the basis of professional standards such as NBPTS (1987) and APST (2013).Finally, some recommendations are given on how to evaluate teacher performance in the context of the establishment of the national system of teacher growth in the Russian Federation.

This paper presents an empirical study on the interrelationship between levels of regulatory functions development in preschool children and the quality of preschool education.The study involved 31 groups of preschool children in Moscow (657 children aged 5—6 years).ECERS-R scales and the NEPSY-II battery were used.A number of significant correlations was revealed between such components of regulatory functions as verbal working memory, visual-spatial working memory, inhibitory control, cognitive flexibility and various environmental factors.The paper stresses the importance of creating conditions for recreation and relaxation as well as for the development of gross motor skills, and highlights the significance of group interaction for the development of regulatory functions in children.

The paper presents results of adapting the Russian version of the Malevolent Creativity Behavior Scale (MCBS) developed under the guidance of M.Ranko (Hao et al, Front.Psychol.2016.Vol.7.682).The adaptation was carried out in 2016—2018 on a sample of 458 people (convicted of lucrative, aggressive and lucrative, and aggressive violent crimes; employees of law enforcement bodies, football fans; students of Moscow educational institutions of different profiles).The three-factor structure of the translated version corresponds to the original version and includes 3 scales: ‘Harm’, ‘Lies’ and ‘Mean jokes’.The analysis of constructive validity revealed significant correlations of the integral scale with aggression, hostility, anger (Bass-Perry questionnaire), search for novelty (TCI-125), and aggression and hostility became significant positive predictors of malevolent creativity.The paper analyses the differences from the original version of the scale.As it was revealed, the values of the social focus, ‘Traditions’ and ‘Conformism-Rules’ (PVQ-R), can block the connection between aggression components and malevolent creativity.The stability of the scale’s factor structure was confirmed on different samples of subjects; the evaluation of construct validity and retest reliability was carried out.According to the adaptation results, the translated version of the MCBS can be applied in practice and research.The paper outlines the core of melavolent creativity profile and provides some suggestions for further research.

This paper is devoted to the research of preschoolers' free play in an open object environment.The results of observations showed different dynamics of play activity in different age groups (3, 4, 5 and 6 years).In the two younger groups, role renaming was observed in a third of the sample, and in the majority of children it was accompanied by certain changes in the appearance and by fragmentary play actions.Beyond 5 years the frequency of renaming increased — two-thirds of children called themselves a role name and almost all played roles.Many children created complex plots with a lot of branching.In the oldest group there was a significant decline in renaming and changing of the appearance (less than half of the children) as compared to the 5-year-olds, and almost complete absence of role play actions.This paper lists the roles that modern preschoolers reproduce in their play.The study shows that the role does not precede the play, but is born in the process of various actions, including exploratory and trialing actions, with objects.The importance of exploratory, manipulative activity for the emergence and development of the role is underlined.An open object environment promotes the development of such activity.

The paper analyses several principles of designing the educational process in the master’s programme in Psychology and Education (Preschool Teachers), in particular: the networking principle which implies cooperation with preschool educational institutions; the practice-oriented principle that creates conditions for increasing practical training; the modular principle that combines similar learning disciplines into a larger instructional unit; the principle of individualisation and differentiation that implies designing instruction according to the individual’s basic (non-basic) education.Using the “Individualisation and differentiation of educational work with preschool children” module as an example, the paper shows the opportunities of applying various forms and methods of controlling the educational outcomes in students of the master’s programme using individual and group, classroom-based and out-of-class forms of control (theoretical; practical; ICT-based; case study-based; based on bibliographic analysis).

The paper focuses on how graduates of pedagogical university departments and first-year teachers evaluate their readiness to carry out professional activities.A survey of 1440 graduate students and a survey, testing and interview with 305 first-year teachers (trainees) conducted at the Tula State Lev Tolstoy Pedagogical University revealed the subjects’ perceptions of the level of development of their professional knowledge and skills.Becoming a teacher and the subject of one’s own teaching activity implies, among other things, being able to reflect upon the professional practice.The paper states that young teachers need professional support as entering the profession is associated with adaptational stress which may interfere with the process of their becoming the subjects of their own pedagogical practice.The paper argues that it is necessary for university services to render such support to graduates of pedagogical departments.

The paper explores parental attitudes towards additional education basing on the materials of 20 interviews with parents of schoolchildren. We analyse the ideas about the value and objectives of additional education among parents in the context of three types of children’s involvement in additional education — high, flickering and low. We then discuss parental practices of control over children's education and of maintaining children's motivation and compare their views on the problems solved by different areas of activities (foreign languages, sports and dance, visual arts, revising the curriculum with the help of tutors, computer knowledge).Also, we focus on the strategies of "maximal" and "optimal" filling of out-of-school educational space that is common among parents of children with high involvement in additional education. The paper concludes with reflections on the significance of the family in the organization of the child’s educational space since the parents and other members of the family are the primary initiators, organizers, actors responsible for the child’s educational space.

In this paper we argue that creating and implementing a monitoring system for psychosocial development of schoolchildren is reasonable as it is one of the most effective and easily applied means of addressing a number of significant tasks, both psychological/pedagogical and organizational/administrative. In the context of testing the general hypothesis that the introduction of the monitoring system will promote individually oriented approach to learning without radical transformation of the existing secondary education system we developed and verified a set of techniques to be used in the monitoring, including the following: differential of psychosocial development, technique for defining group value orientations, and a social psychological modification of G. Kelly’s repertory grid. The paper presents outcomes of a study that aimed to prove the heuristic character of the chosen theoretical and methodological approach; it was carried out on a sample of children of 6th—10th classes of the Moscow school #1409.It is shown that monitoring of psychosocial development of schoolchildren helps to reveal educational and developmental difficulties and develop effective means of psychological and pedagogical intervention taking into account the specifics of a particular educational institution.

This paper discusses the outcome of the research that was conducted as part of the projects completed in the Centre for Leadership Development in Education, Institute of Education and Faculty of Business and Management, NRU HSE in 2017—2018.The research was carried out in two university cities of the Russian Federation — Moscow and Tomsk — and was based on Alan Rowe’s methodology. The target of the research is the decision-making styles applied by state-funded school principals. The research aims to establish trends in the employment policy in the two cities and claims that it is characterized by the ratio of the number of principles with a peculiar decision-making style to the total number of principles in the sample. The paper contains questionnaire data, focus-groups data and transcripts of interviews with principles and members of their management teams. The outcome correlates with the major structural and employment reforms that have been made in Moscow within the last 7 years.

The paper focuses on blended learning which is now quite common both in basic and in higher education and which is usually defined as a combination of e-learning and face-to-face instruction. The author explores the main models of blended learning in basic education (K-12), evaluates their benefits and limitations, and reflects on the changes in the current model of teaching activity and standards for teachers. The paper also presents a review of modern studies on the effectiveness of blended learning as compared to distance learning and traditional in-class education. As it is revealed, the role of blended learning is that of a ‘hybrid’ educational innovation which interlocks the past and the future in education.

Russian and foreign studies suggest that there is a significant increase in the use of computer programmes by preschool children, and that children are generally introduced to computers at a much younger age, practically in their first months of life. Even though the majority of sociological studies show that computer technologies are in high demand by small children and their parents, psychological exploration into this phenomenon is both insufficient and contradictory. Some researchers argue that computer games have a destructive effect upon the child’s development, while others present data proving their positive impacts. We suggest that sociological quantitative methods may not be appropriate in this case and that comparative analysis of the child’s activity with virtual and real material would provide a better understanding. The main part of our paper focuses on this very analysis. We describe outcomes of a study showing that children’s interactions with electronic gadgets differ substantially from the more traditional forms of child activity and cannot compensate for the lack of the latter. In the final part of the paper we provide some recommendations on how to choose computer programmes for children of late preschool age.

New ways of life in the digital world create a special social situation of development of the child, which is characterized by a decrease in the universality and dominance of the adult in the parent-child relationships in online contexts. Nevertheless, children and adolescents still desperately need the support of adults, especially of their parents, to master new online opportunities as well as to cope with online risks. The paper presents data from two studies carried out in 2013 and in 2018 and attempts to compare some of the knowledge and abilities of the parents that they had as assistants and experts helping their children to explore the Internet. These studies were conducted in 8 federal districts of the Russian Federation on the following samples: in 2013 — 1203 adolescents aged 12—17 and 1209 parents; in 2018 — 1554 adolescents aged 12—17 and 1105 parents. The paper traces the changes in the digital portraits of modern parents as Internet users, focusing, in particular, on their awareness of their children’s encounters with online risks and on the dynamics of parental mediation strategies concerning the use of the Internet. There is a clear tendency to reduce the digital gap between the Russian adolescents and their parents which is expressed both in the increasing digital activity of the parents and in their concern with establishing and maintaining close relationships with the children in the context of their Internet activity.

This article focuses on the issues of low academic results. Research on the role of children’s early educational experiences highlights the important role of kindergartens, socioeconomic status (SES[1]), cultural capital (CC[2]), and other family characteristics for future educational outcomes. The goal of this paper is to investigate the relationship of SES and CC with academic achievement of children in elementary school, using a sample of 5235 students of the first (n=2574) and fourth (n=2661) grades of secondary schools from the Nizhny Novgorod region of Russia. The academic results were measured using the “Start” and “Progress” tests; the information about family and educational experiences was collected using family surveys. The results suggest that children with low academic achievement typically reside in in rural areas and mostly come from families with low SES. The results indicated that in the fourth grade, the academic results of the children who didn´t attend a kindergarten are higher than the results of the children who did. Nevertheless, this result refers only to a sample of fourth graders with medium and high academic achievement, coming from families with high SES and CC. These results contradict the findings from Russian and foreign studies on the role of early educational experiences. Therefore, the results from this study should be interpreted with caution and require additional rigorous examination. [1] Socio-economic status includes such indicators as level of education of parents, place of residence, family wealth, etc. [17; 19]. [2] Cultural capital includes social attitudes, values, knowledge and educational qualifications [10].

Affordable high-quality university education is a moral and legal imperative today. At the same time, there are still numerous barriers to get this university education. The orientation of higher education towards world rankings and economic efficiency indicators contradicts with inclusive values and goals. Inclusive politics needs radical revision and updating. The aim of this research is to design an inclusive university model based on universal educational design. The research method is a review and theoretical analysis of scientific publications devoted to inclusive higher education and published on the platforms SpringerLink, PubMed, Frontiers and Taylor & Francis Group. The paper examines the concepts of inclusive excellence and universal design for learning and provides a theoretical analysis of the possibility of using these approaches to transform a modern university. The authors propose a model that takes into account: organizational culture, indicators of inclusive excellence, principles of transformation of the educational environment, external factors, global and national context and the process of transformation (involvement, representation, action through a plurality of means and environments based on agency). The expected result is of high importance for Russian and world science and is in the trend of key scientific research of education and its transformation, focused on the values of social justice, accessibility and equal opportunities, and also responds to the crisis situation in the humanities.

The paper presents an analysis of scientific research on rehabilitation of persons with disabilities acquired during special military operations. We identified scientific deficiencies in secondary vocational rehabilitation and vocational retraining of these persons. We described main approaches of the concept of professional and psychological rehabilitation in the context of psychophysiological, psychological, professional-pedagogical and socio-environmental directions. The resource potential of educational institutions of higher education is analyzed from the point of view of the effectiveness of the implementation of this concept.

Developing inclusive higher education implies creating and promoting among students and academic staff information and training materials adapted for different types of disabilities as well as rules and regulations concerning university admissions, instruction, employment and support of persons with disabilities. These materials may be created and distributed openly through the Federal Library of Information and Resources on Inclusive Higher Education. The paper focuses on the importance of establishing such resource and describes the conceptual framework for developing and spreading information and instructional materials specially adapted for individuals with hearing and visual impairments which are crucial to the quality and accessibility of higher education. The paper also outlines the structure and functioning of this open information system.

The paper focuses on the attitude of university staff towards students with disabilities and on the readiness for inclusive higher education in members of the academic staff. It is stressed that one of the main tasks of the resource and training centers network is to help overcome such powerful barriers as social stereotypes and incompetence in inclusive education and to assist university teachers in establishing contacts and interaction with students with disabilities. The paper presents a study that involved 2181 university teachers from 10 universities of the Tyumen region. The study had two objectives: first, to explore the attitude of the academic staff of the universities to students with disabilities and the former’s readiness for inclusive education; secondly, to reveal gender differences in relation to inclusion. The main outcomes of the study are as follows. Women working in higher education are more positive towards inclusive education and its prospects, more tolerant and sympathetic to persons with disabilities. They are more focused on active inclusive behavior, on acquiring new knowledge and skills, and on rendering extensive support to students with disabilities. They value their own skills and competencies in inclusive teaching and collaboration highly enough. The paper concludes that women working at the universities of the Tyumen regions are an important resource for achieving the goals of resource training centers in the field of inclusive higher education.

The paper presents a specially developed technique for professional orientation in persons with disabilities, outlines determinants affecting the main research variables, and offers some methodological tips on the use of the technique basing on the most significant research data. Providing career guidance to people with disabilities is a priority task as professional self-determination and work socialization are extremely important for the disabled in modern society. The paper describes a process of developing a new methodology for measuring quantitative and qualitative features of vocational interests in high school students with disabilities. The recommendations provided focus on how to arrange effective analytic work aimed at rendering optimal training support to students of 11th classes with different types of disabilities.

The paper reviews the social situation of development of children and adolescents in the modern society marked by rapid changes. The development of children and adolescents is described as ‘embedding into the culture’ through the education and is closely associated with the formation of their psychological culture. The paper analyses the conditions of personality development in modern children and adolescents, the factors which impede the communication and understanding of other people; it highlights the risks of escaping into the virtual reality or joining asocial groups. The paper also suggests important measures aimed at the formation of psychological culture in children in relation to age-specific tasks of development in primary school and adolescent ages. The development of psychological culture is regarded as the key means of supporting the implementation of modern educational standards as well as the foundation of psychological health in schoolchildren.

The paper reviews the issue of self-regulation development in adolescents as the process of supporting favourable and transforming unfavourable emotional states appropriate to the performed joint activity. Experiencing intense emotions makes personal growth more difficult for the adolescent, and therefore the task of promoting self-regulation becomes extremely important. Our hypothesis was that the development of self-regulation contributes to the adolescent’s ability to recognize and interpret emotional states and extends the range of practices available to him/ her. Creating operative images of an object in concrete situations has a mediated effect on the transformation of the emotional states experienced by the adolescent. The revealed social psychological conditions were implemented through role-based forms of group activities, methods and means of self-regulation development. We evaluate the effectiveness of the development of self-regulation in adolescents based on certain criteria and analyse the outcomes of an experimental study. The ideas proposed in this paper can be used in the formation of regulative universal learning actions in adolescents at school to develop their ability to consciously regulate emotional states in the context of implementing the federal state education standards.

The paper gives an overview of EdCrunch, the International Conference on New Educational Technologies, focusing on its key topics and main fields of work. The Conference will be held in October 1—2, 2018. The paper stresses the importance of the Conference and its impact on each and every level of education when it comes to applying new learning technologies in education.

The paper discusses the problems and ways of implementing in educational design the relevant educational paradigm that focuses on personality development in students. The authors analyse various approaches in psychology and pedagogics to the phenomenon of educational environment and its special role in personality development of individuals. As it is shown, personality development in students occurs in the process of their situational interaction with educational environment and as a result of actualization of specific psychological mechanisms. The paper provides a typology of situations of personality development in educational environment (cognitive orientation; object and activity orientation; values and meaning orientation; holistic orientation).Each type of situation corresponds with its own basic psychological mechanisms of personality development. It is argued that the major psychological mechanisms of each of the four types of personality development situations are interrelated following the principle of complementing outer activity of the student with inner activity.

The paper addresses the issue of factors that define the choice of university and future profession in prospective students of the Tula State Lev Tolstoy Pedagogical University. The motives of professional choice are essential when it comes to analyzing the conditions of development of professional subjectness. Our study involved 62% of all first-year students and 85% of first-year students of pedagogical departments. We used our specially developed questionnaire “Motives of University Choice” and a set of others, such as V.G. Katashev’s “Technique for Measuring Learning Motivation in Students” and K. Zamfir’s “Work Motivation Technique” (modified by A.A. Rean). The outcomes show that most students make choices basing on their emotional attitude to the professional sphere which is generally positive. Also, it was revealed that important inner and outer positive motives prevail in most future teachers. The paper states that it is necessary to find the universal criteria which could help predict successful self-actualisation in profession in individuals during their study at university and thus help reveal the mechanisms for managing this process. Finally, we suggest some possible forms promoting professional self-orientation at university.

The paper reviews the problem of the structure and functions of the Russian language textbook in a retrospective aspect.A critical analysis of psychological and didactic research in this field revealed that, despite a significant number of published works, the question of the scientifically grounded structure and functions of the textbook has not been resolved.The structure of textbooks of a new type described in the paper was developed basing on the systematization and generalization of psychodidactic knowledge as well as on the fundamental and individual studies carried out by the authors of these textbooks.The paper outlines the key principles of this Russian language course developed for students of 1st-9th grades.This course is built on a syntactic basis and is designed not as concentric circles, like the existing textbooks, but as an expanding spiral.The paper reviews the structural components of the textbook (theoretical linguistic texts, theoretical psychodidactic texts, fiction texts and educational texts of the tasks) which are aimed at forming the psychological mechanisms of literate oral and written speech in schoolchildren, at developing their text comprehension skills, awakening their emotions through reading.The paper concludes with examples of some structural components of the textbook.

The paper focuses on the role of teachers’ psychological culture in supporting the implementation of the Federal State Educational Standard for Basic Education.The authors stress that formation of personal educational outcomes in students is a task closely associated with the level of psychological culture of teachers.Using a questionnaire designed to explore the teachers’ need to improve their psychological competence, the authors carried out a survey of 69 teachers and outlined the priority areas of psychological culture improvement for the teachers basing on the outcomes of the survey.The paper analyses the relationship between the professionally significant qualities of the teachers (such as communicative and organizational skills) and their views on the formation of personal educational outcomes in students.Finally, the paper outlines the possibilities of developing psychological culture in teachers as a system of means allowing them to fulfill the requirements of modern educational standards, in particular, to resolve the task of forming personal educational outcomes in students.

The paper addresses the need for developing criteria-based diagnostic tools for quick individual and group evaluation of musical knowledge in children within the system of basic music education. The proposed technique called “Five Minutes of Composers” allows one to evaluate musical knowledge in a single child, in a whole class or in an educational organisation. The paper provides a full description of the technique and the process of its standartisation: stanines and corresponding normative values are assigned to each age group; the differential validity of the technique is statistically proven for the factors "gender", "stage of education", "age", and "total productivity". The outcomes of the conducted study show the following: the average level of productivity is significantly higher in girls; this level is significantly higher in students of 6th and 7th classes as compared to students of 3rd—5th classes; there is a direct correlation between age and productivity of recall; children with high levels of productivity outscore others in the number of recalled names of composers right from the start. The paper concludes with some remarks concerning the possibilities of using this technique for measuring the progress in children’s musical knowledge, for criteria-based comparative analysis of the quality of teaching, and for evaluating the quality of music education in single classes and educational organisations in general.

This paper reviews how teacher-student relationships affect the success of learning activity in schoolchildren. Outcomes of Russian and foreign studies suggest that positive relationships between teachers and students are critically important for successful learning at school. The paper thoroughly analyses individual characteristics of teachers. It is emphasized that some of these characteristics (such as emotional support and academic guidance) can act as a reliable basis, encouraging students to engage more fully in learning activities and to achieve high academic performance. It is argued that the assumption according to which the relationship between teachers and students is a significant motivational factor in academic performance is still relevant. The paper describes the effect of teacher expectations on student achievement and concludes with several important notes concerning the discussed problem of teacher-student relationships and their impact on the success of learning activity.

The paper describes approaches to the organisation of psychological and pedagogical expert evaluation in the system of education as a type of humanitarian evaluation.The analysis of scientific and legislative foundations of psychological and pedagogical evaluation in the system of general education revealed the absence of a unified approach to the definition of the very concept of such evaluation.The paper presents an integrated overview of the approaches and regulatory and methodological foundations of psychological and pedagogical evaluation.It outlines the goals, tasks, object, subject and main areas of psychological and pedagogical evaluation in the system of education and provides a thorough description of its model.

The paper presents outcomes of an empirical research on general education teachers’ attitudes to students with different status in school class. The issue of teachers’ evaluation of middle status members of student groups was of special interest. The research involved a set of social psychological techniques: parametric sociometry, autosociometry, parametric reference measurement tool, autoreference measurement tool, a tool for measuring informal intragroup power structure in contact community, and G. Kelly’s Repertory Grid Technique (modification). The subjects were 126 teachers of 5—11 grades of Moscow schools, with work experience ranging from 3 to 38 years. As it was revealed, the teachers adequately perceive the status structure of the class; however, they tend to poorly differentiate the category of middle status students. The paper also discusses the features of the teachers’ emotional attitude to the students depending on the latter’s status in the student group.

The paper reviews theoretical and empirical research of foreign psychologists on organizational culture in schools. The key problematics is as follows: paradigm, methodology, typologies, impact on school effectiveness. The paper reveals basic contradictions of these problems and outlines possible solutions proposed by foreign researchers. It analyses functional and dynamic paradigms of research on organizational culture and perspectives of their integration; describes the typologies developed according to the specifics of educational organization. Empirical studies focus mainly on the impacts of organizational culture on school effectiveness, as well as on the development and transformation of culture