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

After reviewing the literature, conducting expert interviews, and analyzing the cases of different schools, each school education model identified was assigned a score from 1 to 3 for each of the 7 criteria named above. Below are spider diagrams visualizing the full list of models and assigned scores by each criteria.

Visualizations demonstrate several important results.

First, we can notice that the focus on "soft skills” and focus on University admission never occur together in the same models; that is, they are supposedly determining the priority educational outcomes.

Second, in a broad sense, inclusivity remains a weakness in all models, even those that imply personalization.

Finally, we can see similarities in the following model pairs: the Russian and Asian models, which focus heavily on academic success; the Finnish model and the model of alternative schools focusing on "soft skills"; the British model and the International Baccalaureate as an attempt to frame soft-skills education academically.

We use spider charts to emphasize the multidimensional space of educational models. Each criteria lies in its own conceptual plane. Nevertheless, to put these models in the operational perspective, we tried to reduce the number of dimensions.

Building a single scheme to classify educational models is difficult because they differ in many ways. A striking example cited by an expert from the Institute of Education of the National Research University Higher School of Economics here would be the very different educational systems of Finland and Shanghai: while they both rank near the top in terms of educational outcomes, this is achieved through different tools — the humanistic approach in Finland and the «drilling» of the mass education system in China. It is necessary to build such a chart that could show the meaningful differences between educational models.

Components of the School Education Models

In this case, two possible dimensions could be "Centralization vs Decentralization" and "Personalization vs Massiveness". These vectors will be used to classify models based on the criteria formulated.

Chart 1. Decentralisation and Individualisation of the School Education Models

The «Personalization» vector consists of the following criteria:

• Ability to personalize the curriculum

• Educational Inclusivity

• Tracking Learning Achievements

The «Decentralization» vector consists of the following criteria:

• The teacher’s role as a mentor

• School as a center for community development

Two of the seven criteria formulated above were omitted from the above integrative vectors. These are "Soft Skills" and "Entering a University", which cannot act as components of the aforementioned vectors but describe separate, complementary attributes.

Below is a scatter chart visualizing the complete list of models and their scores along the «Personalization» and «Decentralization» axes. The number of points for each vector is obtained by adding the points scored by the model for the criteria included in the respective vector (axis). That is, for example, for the "Alternative Schools” model, the total score on the "Personalization” axis is obtained by adding this model’s scores in the following three criteria: curriculum personalization, educational inclusivity and tracking learning achievements. 3 points + 2 points + 3 points = 8 points, and so on.

The chart shows how the models relate to each other in terms of a certain set of criteria. Thus, we can see that the Russian state SGS model differs from the Asian model primarily in the degree of personalization, with the same centralization level. The chart also shows that the aforementioned model pair of alternative and Finnish schools also differs in only one plane: that is, the degree of decentralization. Remarkably, the International Baccalaureate, being a modification of the British model of education, makes a step towards alternative schools and the Finnish model in terms of decentralization and personalization.

Qualitative feedback systems help understand one’s educational path and make the learning more conscious. It is important expanding the teacher’s role as a mentor.

PROSPECTIVE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE SCHOOL OF THE FUTURE MODEL

Based on the highlighted criteria in the analysis of school education models, the content and the qualities of the existing educational models, we put forward several hypotheses as to what the educational model of the School of the Future should include.