ACADEMIC MOBILITY OF THE HIGHER EDUCATION STUDENTS OF RUSSIA: A CROSS–CULTURAL APPROACH
E. A. Kostina
Novosibirsk state pedagogical University, Vilyuiskaya str., 28, Novosibirsk, 630126, Russia
Keywords: academic mobility, cross-cultural approach, cross-cultural, competence
Abstract
Presently, the task of the Russian higher education system is its modernization, contributing to the increase of availability, quality and effectiveness of education. The development of academic mobility of students greatly facilitates the achievement of this goal.
Nowadays, the migration of the academically-oriented youth has become the central part of the world higher education system.
The specificity and the problems of the process of forming and developing students’ academic mobility in Russia can be seen in the following:
1) the unscheduled character of this activity;
2) its theoretical and methodological bases, special mechanisms of its realization and legal norms are not yet developed;
3) the absence of funding and the lack of competent professionals in this sphere.
Insufficient funding and poor knowledge of foreign languages are serious challenges to the process of academic mobility development. At the federal level the critical deficit in organizing academic mobility is the absence of a national body capable of solving a great number of problems connected with the development of international academic mobility. Thus, this task is a total responsibility of each separate higher educational institution. Taking this responsibility must be followed by realizing the strategic importance of this task for the individual higher education institution. Academic mobility is one of the most important sides of the process of integration of Russian higher education institutions and science into the international education space. Besides, academic mobility is an extremely important process for the personal and professional development, because every participant of the process faces the necessity to deal with life situations as well as to analyze them from the point of view of the native and “alien” cultures. Analyzing the situation in modern higher education, the author examines the process of organizing students’ academic mobility from the point of view of cross-cultural approach. Under the conditions of world globalization, the education systems of different countries are in the state of internationalization, the integral part of which is academic mobility. The author analyzes the basic dominants of academic mobility (including the phenomenon of cross-cultural communication and the notion of cross-cultural competence) in the context of cross-cultural approach. Cross-cultural competence is paid special attention to as far as it relates to the definition of the term itself and to the formation of communicative qualities of the cross-culturally competent personality. Students’ skills and abilities are emphasized, which are being developed during the process of academic mobility. By examining the Internet sites of the leading Russian high educational institutions we formulate the tasks of organizing students’ academic mobility. In conclusion the author stresses the necessity of cross-cultural approach to organizing students’ academic mobility for higher educational institutions of the Russian Federation to be able to join the international polycultural environment.
|
