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

Project-oriented and problem-oriented technologies of education were the starting points of this study and are the key pedagogical technologies of today. They were the keynote of all the interviews and are the most general idea: to go away from classroom-lesson system toward the study of some topic in which the students get an interdisciplinary view of a specific problem researched. Project-based learning involves setting a goal for which students must independently learn new things. Of the motives left out so far, two main directions can be distinguished: 1) inclusivity in the broad sense; 2) personalization of the educational trajectory.

The School of the Future is an inclusive school open to children with a wide range of academic skills. On the one side of the scale, it includes children with special educational needs who are supported by specialists from the resource center — neuropsychologists, speech therapists, and psychologists. On the other side of the spectrum are children who manage to learn faster than others. To create a supportive environment for children of different learning speeds, mobile study groups can be created for students with different levels of achievement in different subjects so that everyone can receive the appropriate level of instructional material.

Personalization of the educational trajectory can be achieved not just through profiling classes, but through the development of a fully flexible, personalized curriculum, which the tutors help to develop. Qualitative, not quantitative, feedback systems help understand one’s educational path and make the learning more conscious. It is important to reduce the distance between the student and the teacher, expanding the teacher’s role as a mentor.

Following the peculiarities of the method for creating private schools, as described by the experts, we can conclude that the key feature of the educational model of the future is not to offer specific curriculum elements of academic disciplines, but to offer criteria for developing models for each specific school.

The methodological support for the teaching team can be provided by the "Academic Board”, a project group of people with experience in launching effective educational projects. To follow and localize the model, to train teaching teams and tutors, a methodological center can be set up. As an autonomous unit and a project team, this center is presented as an environment within which teaching teams will be created in schools. The teaching team at the school cannot be a thing in itself; training and education for teachers, including from students, are provided for this purpose. This design is focused primarily on the format of mass implementation of innovative school programs, in circumstances where there is no opportunity to attract a "celebrity principal" or assemble an equally «stellar» team of teachers, as is common with the opening of new private schools today.

A special feature of the school of the future is that, in addition to the teaching load, its goal is to form a student's portfolio of social activities, in which he or she will be assisted by mentor teachers within the school and by socially responsible projects in the school's community. Community engagement is expected to play an important role: the community centers and the school’s teaching committee will create additional education opportunities for the students, organize internships, and engage new mentors and tutors.

DISCUSSION ABOUT THE SCHOOL OF THE FUTURE

The question of what the school of the future will be like remains open. This can be demonstrated at least by a few experts saying that it is unproductive to single out any particular set of skills and competencies for the student of the future. Speaking of the model school of the future, it is necessary to understand that it is impossible to imagine the future in which the students of this school will live, to begin with. Therefore, the school of the future cannot exist in isolation from the needs of the students and their parents, business and the teaching community, and the social context, and one of the most important qualities for the school of the future is flexibility and openness to change and innovation. The school is becoming more than just a place to teach children academic skills, but a community center that engages not only students, but also their parents and residents within the neighborhood and from other parts of the city.