Home – Home – Jornals – "Philosophy of Education" 2015 number 6

The article is exploratory in nature. The aim of the research is to reveal the essential reasons for the low competitiveness of Russian universities in the global market of education and science. We used dialectical and analytical methods of the reality cognition to reveal the contradictions between the essence of University and its manifestation in the institutions of higher education of the XXI century. We studied the understanding of classical and contemporary authors about the essence of University education and its historical changes since the appearance of the first universities to the present time. We studied the mission statement of the Russian and foreign universities, the leaders in the educational market. The transformation is described of the essence of University in the process of historical development and its current manifestations that define the position of universities in the world ranking. We developed a formulation of the essence of modern University and demonstrated its threefold structure. We selected the levels of manifestation of the essence of University: existing, similar, distant and visible. The developed formulations of the essence of the system elements with respect to the hierarchy levels of University are given, reflecting a high degree of separation from them of the current manifestations of these elements in the Russian education in the beginning of XXI century, which determines the low competitiveness of Russian universities in the global market. Further research should be directed at the development of systemic upgrade of the structural constituent entities of the University, as having the greatest impact on the pace and results of the competitiveness of Russian universities. The obtained results allow adjusting and deepening the strategies of competitiveness improvement used by the management of Russian universities. Among the valuable results of the paper are the revealed essence of modern University and the representation of its structure as a unity of spirit, intellect and energy of the staff, which allowed developing a new definition of the «University» concept. The distinguishing of the levels of manifestation of essence allows us to estimate the degree of disengagement from it of the current Russian universities, to understand the root causes of intrinsic inconsistency of the system elements of a concrete University and come closer to their meaningful improvement for effective improvement of its competitiveness.

The article is devoted to identification of the development tendencies of higher education in Russia, in particular, the implementation of innovative projects in the regions of Siberia and the Far East connected with introducing of the models of research and Federal universities. The analysis of the first results on the introduction of new types of universities has showed that the main focus in the implementation of the models of Federal and research universities is on the integration of education and science. The universities, which had as a prerequisite a long history of cooperation with organizations of the Russian Academy of Sciences, on the early stages received a carte blanche, but in the conditions of absence of a strong reform of this structure and the creation of FANO, the integration process has started to develop more painfully in connection with the attempts of simultaneously solving the issues of University development and transformation of scientific institutions. A historiographical analysis of the example of the formation of a joint scientific center of the Russian Academy of Sciences and University development in Yakutia showed that the interaction of these organizations in the twentieth century has allowed solving not only the problem of training qualified personnel for all sectors of the economy, development of natural resources of the Russian Far East, but also laying the foundation for the implementation of the model of the Federal University in modern conditions.

The paper is devoted to the discourse of university in the works of Karl Jaspers and its transformation in the 1920-1960’s. The author investigates Jaspers’ interpretation of university in the prewar and postwar periods. The analysis is based on the historical-biographical approach: it actualizes the facts of Jaspers’ life that influenced his turning to the problems of university education and the contemporary historical context that has determined the research perspective. The discourse of university is considered in light of the events with significant for Jaspers: the work at Heidelberg University, the prohibition to teach and publish in the Nazi period, Second World War and the post-war reconstruction of the university system. The basis of the paper is the analysis of Jaspers’ work «The idea of the university» in its three editions (1923, 1946, 1961), as well as papers and reports. It is noted that by his writings Jaspers enters into the discussions on the fate and objectives of higher education, which had been taking place in Germany for more than a decade. According to Jaspers, university realizes three goals: vocational education, research and upbringing of the person. It does not just give knowledge or makes the student ae specialist in some field, but forms the worldview of the person. In the unity of the three goals, university always realizes its idea. The idea of university is the foundation of Jaspers’ educational discourse. The idea of university is the idea of spiritual unity of professors and students, unity of the community kept and developed the truth through the centuries. University exists for the truth and as an institution is just a place for realization of the idea of university. As Jaspers emphasized, university is the core of culture and society. One of the most important problems for Jaspers is the problem of determining the status of philosophy in university education. He believes that, to restore a central status in the system of university disciplines, philosophy should not be guided by natural sciences. It should not be taught as knowledge, but as experience. Moreover, the most important section is the history of philosophy. Reading the texts of the great philosophers, students begin to think and cognize themselves. The dialogue with the great thinkers starts spiritual movement and personal development. To awaken the work of the soul is the main goal of the university. The problems analyzed in the paper are important for the development of modern discussions on possible strategies for education, on the status of philosophy in the system of university disciplines. By turning to the philosophical heritage it can contribute to decision-making in modern Russian realities.

The relevance of the research of the problems and peculiarities of modern economic education taking into account information technologies is due to significance of the results in the applications. Such an analysis is doubly important for Russia, and naturally affects the educational system as a whole and economical education in particular. In the last decades there has been formed a single information and communication space, which allows using mondialist methods to manage the economy in real time. Modern economy presupposes an appropriate level of education, takes into account the adaptation of national economies to the new conditions. The fundamental role is played by computerization of production technology, characteristic of post-industrial economy, which leads to the intellectualization of labor, greatly enhancing the creative potential in it. Modern economies are increasingly moving closer to the process of education, allowing developing a universal method of introduction of new informational means of communication. The idea of creating a world educational space uniting the existing national education systems is becoming increasingly popular. Economic education aims at the formation of the new man, thus it accumulates inseparable dialectical unity of conservation and development of the best educational traditions in a broad economic range. Currently there is actualized the need for the formation of new methods, leveling the above negative consequences. In accordance with the economic laws there is established the structure and functioning of economy of a particular country. Modern education must include the moral and spiritual elements. The concepts of sustainable development of Russia can be successfully implemented by relying on originality, which corresponds to a new educational paradigm, which is based on tradition and focused on the future. Future economic education should help meet the urgent needs of the modern man, the restoration of social justice, improve the health of the nation, and so on. It is these directions of state policies that should be emphasized, although the results of the strategic plan will emerge in years, but they will have the key importance for the restoration of the power and greatness of the country.

In the article the existence of educational system as a special kind of dialogue is considered, its main participants are defined, the ways and consequences of their interaction are considered. The main streams of cognition of universe are identified, while defining the role of scientific, logic-based, value-related knowledge as an educational basis. The article contains an analysis of specifics of the conditions of realization of communicative competences of scientists and teachers. For example, a scientist constantly finds himself not only on intersection of several communication channels (with the object of research, scientific team, predecessors and contemporaries - the carriers of knowledge in his/her fields) but also on the intersection of two words: of scientists and non-scientists. The modern educational system is defined as an open, self-organizing, nonlinear developing system, which elementary structural units (as a result of using the structural analysis method) are as follows: «scientist - teacher» and «teacher - specialist». Then, in terms of A. Moll’s theory of communication there are revealed the problems of understanding between those units and possibility of their further mutual influence. So, the correlation between the set of ideas of a sender and the set of ideas of a recipient can be presented differently: (1) partial coincidence; 2) coincidence in the major part; 3) absence of intersections; 4) the recipient’s set is completely included into the sender’s set. We pose a question about the conditions of realization of «co-existence» of scientist and teacher, answering to which becomes impossible without taking into account the role of a third participant of the dialogue, the business community. In the light of those tendencies like the transition to the post-industrial society and the knowledge economy, strengthening of market orientation in the educational and scientific systems, increasing of the scales of cultural interaction, actualization of civil education etc., there are determined the areas of common interest of education, science and business. Using the method of comparative analysis, there are distinguished parallel tendencies and common fields of their interaction: rapid redistribution of resources in the production sphere, training of comprehensively educated high qualified specialists; attention to active, non-rich consumers, widening of scholarship and grant programs; necessity of cooperation on different levels, creation of interdisciplinary, interuniversity teams, international project and research teams and etc. In conclusion of the article, we present reasoning about the necessity of certain specialization of knowledge, while simultaneously increasing of the need in mastering the universum as a whole, in building of a holistic world picture.

In today's world, information and knowledge are the main transformative force, and the information technologies are strategic resources of the society development. More and more popular there becomes special training of the person to the life in the information society, because the career of the future expert, to a great extent, depends on the ability to find and make productive use of new information. Information society in which information serves as a basic social value implies a radical change in all social institutions and especially in education. One of the leading trends in the transformation of modern education is Smart-technologies. The model of education, based on Smart-technologies, involves creating an environment that guarantees the highest level of formation of the competitive professional. However, implementation of Smart-education entails a number of problems and is very expensive for all subjects of educational cooperation, which in turn provokes unfolding of digital divide between the subjects of educational space.

The article deals with methodological issues of studying the processes of formation and development of the system of higher vocational education in social work. Social education in the modern world is a priority in the development of educational systems both globally and in terms of national models of training for the social sphere. Formation of the system of professional education in social work in Russia meets these trends. The accumulated experience of the research requires scientific understanding, possibly in the presence of new methodological approaches, the development of which is an important scientific task. The purpose of the study is to present the main provisions of paradigmatic analysis in a systematic approach as an independent research methodological tool that provides a multidimensional study of the processes of formation and development of professional education in social work in Russia at the present stage. In this regard, there is revealed the content of the system approach in addressing the issues of vocational education in the modern world. There are analyzed the foreign trends, which determine the nature of paradigmatic change in the development of social work in general, and staff training system for this sector. Building on the work of the researcher B. Shteotzel (Germany), the article examines the processes associated with the transition of Europe to a new type of social work in the 1990 - early 2000. These changes were of paradigmatic character, defining the change of content and the fundamental principles of the functioning of social work at the level of theory and practice. Extrapolating the trends in the world to the situation with the development of social work and training system for social services in Russia, the author compares the technocratic (traditional) and humanistic (new) paradigm of social work and vocational training for this sector. A particular attention is paid to the role of pedagogical universities in the implementation of programs of social education.

The philosophy of management is a new field of philosophical knowledge of the applied character, having two foundations: the «novelty» and «practical applicability», which play both negative and positive roles. On one hand, this situation provides numerous opportunities for the study of some problems of management, and, on the other, adds a kind of uncertainty into the research field. The third difficulty and, at the same time, a positive factor, having the heuristic character, is the experience of implementation in the educational process. A way out of this situation is the consideration of the management philosophy through the prism of anthropological, epistemological and ethical foundations. The results of consideration of the anthropological, gnoseological and ethical foundations of the management philosophy lead to the following conclusions: 1) it is necessary to introduce the philosophy of management into the educational process, because its function is the humanization of management that can be achieved with the help of methodological tools of philosophical anthropology; 2) the «management philosophy» as philosophy itself, is situated in an interdisciplinary field that allows it to make generalized conclusions and find the necessary relationships with different areas of knowledge; 3) the gnoseological foundations of the theory of management are in the field of decision-making, risks and uncertainties, which involves the use of not only of logic as a branch of philosophical knowledge, but also the exact sciences; 4) when considering the ethical foundations, one should understand that ethics is a field of philosophical knowledge, which studies morality and ethics, allowing a deeper understanding of the processes of human relationships which, in turn, cannot be reduced only to the consumer or pragmatic actions.

The article presents an analysis, from the standpoint of the philosophy of education, of the dialectical transformation of medical knowledge in the system of Russian medical education, including modern innovation processes. There are revealed the milestone in the development of domestic medical education due to social transformations occurring in the country. There are identified the main characteristics of the paradigm of medical education. There are analyzed the innovation processes in the medical knowledge in the early XXI century in terms of the concept of quality education.

In dealing with modern linguistic semantics what draws attention is that the explanation of the meanings of language units is commonly made from the standpoint of intentionalism and mentalism. However, the explanation of some semantic phenomena is impossible from such a position. For instance, it is evident when teaching such a tense-aspect verbal form as the English perfect. The difficulties involved in trying to explain the meaning of the grammatical form reflect the important philosophical issue of the meaning of a word. The difficulties with explaining the meaning of the grammatical category suggests that there must be shortcomings in the mentalist approach to the explanation of semantics. One of the drawbacks of traditional approaches to the perfect tense semantics is that the basic meaning of this grammatical category is not fully revealed. To reveal it, it seems appropriate to refer to the diachronically original meaning of this verbal form it used to have before the grammaticalization of this initially syntactic possessive construction. An analysis of the semantic evolution of the perfect gives the impression that the functioning of this grammatical form is accomplished not entirely in line with the mental semantics that is usually attributed to it. In this regard, attention is drawn to the semantic approach to explaining the meaning of a word that is found in the works of proponents of analytic philosophy. The situation with the English perfect resembles what these authors say about non-mentalist assigning of meanings to words. Contemporary English speakers use the perfect in accordance with non-mental activity patterns they learn in the course of social practice, which to some extent reflect the meaning of the initial possessive structure the modern perfect developed from. At the same time, a mental meaning in the mind of a person apparently does not fully reflect the «objective» meaning of this grammatical category. The above considerations have implications for the philosophy of mind and language. Even if we are not willing to completely abandon the mentalist views, we still have to agree that mechanisms that can provisionally be called behaviorist or functionalist play a significant role in human activity.

The article is devoted to the study of social practices that enable the continuity of constantly changing constructed nations in the environment of free access to varied cultural markers in the modern world. The author observes these processes on the case of state language education. The education is employed by elites as a means of code unification to broadcast the collective narrative effectively. The development of a language into a code used for education and official documents produces language practices that an individual utilizes in social communication. These language practices are considerably predetermined by the principle of belonging that characterizes a given society. In the modern world the field of possible social experiences is unprecedentedly wide compared to any preceding epochs, and state language education becomes one of the means to provide some common social experience for a wide range of members of a national community who do not physically interact with each other. As national identities exist as dynamic comparison of identification and self-identification by an individual, we may describe the role of state language education as continuous supply of situations that evoke this comparison. The concept of a multiethnic civic national community is based on the assumption that linguistic personalities are changeable. State language education as a process transforms the linguistic identity of an individual through encouraging the individual to perceive his/her linguistic identity in a more meaningful and symbolically marked way. The system of teaching the state language also promotes similarity of cultural markers for members of one political community.

The systemic crisis, which took place in Russia at the turn of the century, led to a complete change of axiological reference points that have changed the direction of the education system development. Consequently, there arose methodological and ontological problems related to the new social role of knowledge, which ceased to be only the prerogative of the scientific production, since their use is now seen as strengthening the capacity of the society to practical action. The contradictions in today's education system are developing, their essence is deepening; there is no coordination interaction between them. Bringing together these contradictions is possible only on the basis of a deep philosophical analysis that allows creating a system of social development in the changed socio-cultural conditions. A special role of the education system lies in the production and dissemination of knowledge and information: the need to update the personal and professional competence requires constant training and restructuring the education institutions to meet the requirements of the cognitive dynamics of society, whereas the organization and content of education presupposes the activation of innovative technologies. Unfortunately, today the domestic higher education system, for the most part, produces not the highly qualified professionals ready to work in new conditions of the changing society, but the graduates with a diploma; although the demand for highly qualified personnel remains quite high. In times of crisis, the change of priorities of the development of modern education in general is possible due to changes in axiological reference points associated with the formation of socially adaptive person capable not only of «replicating and copying» the gained knowledge, but also of creating and developing new knowledge, able to actively participate in social life and change it, while being focused on self-reproduction, self-preservation and self-development of the society as such. Such an education system with the changed axiological priorities can be the basis of the emerging knowledge society.

In this article the authors analyze the problem the modern system of upbringing, which form the values of the young generation of the Russian society. The authors tried to answer the question: to what extent the formation of the value reference points of the modern system of upbringing helps or hinders the further development of the country? The search for the spiritual foundations of modern Russia brings to the problem of value changes correlated with the processes of globalization. Globalization, the essential basis of which is the information revolution, has a decisive influence on all states and, in particular, Russia. In the globalization processes, we can observed, on one hand, the cross-cultural interaction and interpenetration of economies, but, on the other hand, the society experiences spiritual crisis, artificial imposing of other values, concepts, the projects ignoring national traditions, strengthening of religious fundamentalism etc. Therefore, the Russian political and public forces are facing an urgent problem of rehabilitation of the discourse on values and, respectively, on the upbringing system. Raising the question about the values which ​​should be cultivated by the modern system of upbringing in the Russian society for its further successful development, it is necessary to take into account, first, the realism of the system of values: if a system of values ​​does not reflect the reality, but is just declarative, then it will simply not be believed. Second, Western culture is inherently dehumanizing, it forms the basic values ​​of neoliberalism: the lack of spirituality, selfishness, success and profit at all costs, brutality and aggression in the relationships between people, which eventually leads to the destruction of the national public consciousness. The author concludes that it is necessary to convey to the younger generations the role of these anti-values, because it is impossible to get rid of the expansion of Western culture; it is necessary to preserve the traditional cultural and spiritual values ​​and very accurately combine them with innovations (positive achievements of the West); we must remember the traditional values ​​of the East and be very prudent.

The paper deals with science as a social institution that can exist and develop only in a society the fundamental values of which are compatible with its values. It analyzes materials on the history of Russian science in the second half of the 19th century. The attention is focused on the formation of national science in close connection with the educational system. It is shown how the cultural climate and value system was changing with regard to science and education in the public mind of the period. The paper discusses the role of universities in the organization of science in the post-reform era, changes in the «women’s issue», and the participation of society in the emergence of non-state higher educational institutions. It is concluded that the Russian university of the 19th century is to a large extent characterized by distinctive features of the classical Humboldt University with its ideal of «pure science». It is suggested that the abandonment of the ideals of classical university so ingrained in the minds of scientists and educators is presumably the reason why the reforms in modern education are perceived as painful.

The paper discusses the issues of meaning-related values of domestic education in the light of the development strategy «Kazakhstan-2050». It is noted that the changes in education are inextricably linked to the processes taking place in the socio-political and economic life of the world community, when the world's leading trend becomes the globalization of social and cultural processes. It is shown in the paper that the meaning-related values of the domestic education should become the values that have stood the test of time. These include independence, national unity, peace and harmony in the Kazakhstan society, secular society and high spirituality, common history, culture and language. The authors suggest: to overcome the meaning-related and value-related disorientation of the person of the transitional society (such as the Republic of Kazakhstan), we should turn to the history of domestic education philosophy, which ontological basis is culture. It is known that culture is a way of providing, organizing and improving the activity of humanity, which is necessarily reproduced by the passing generations. The core of culture is constituted by the universal human values, humanistic ideals as well as the historically established ways of their perceiving and attaining. Being a universal phenomenon, culture is perceived, mastered and reproduced by each person individually, conditioning his/her personal growth.

The article is devoted to the presently topical subject of formation of value orientations of Russian education in the context of sustainable development and strengthening of the influence of pragmatism. The idea is substantiated of preservation of national traditions of education, while taking into account the best experience of pedagogics of pragmatism. In article there are analyzed the purposes of upbringing of the student’s personality on the basis of educational standards, whose achievement is a condition of effective reforming of Russian education. It is shown that scientific discussion concerning preservation of national identity in higher education integrates new understanding of the limits of cultural imitation. The author focuses attention on the historical roots of the Russian professional education, humanistic orientation and formation of the integral personality. Besides, there is considered in the article the significance of ancient philosophy, within which the West European culture and pragmatism were gradually formed. An analysis of the views of researchers on the essence of the paradigm of education is carried out in the article. It is shown that the practical orientation of education, the connections between theory and practice are reflected in the didactic principles of pedagogy. However, focusing only on studying the sciences that are useful to profession with reducing the humanistic role of education is not typical for the national education system, because it depreciates the cultural values which have always been the foundation of society. On the basis of studying the present educational paradigms in philosophy and pedagogics, a conclusion is made about aspiration of domestic scientists and teachers to search for the best concept of training and development of youth. The ideas of pragmatic education can be considered as a means of strengthening of interaction of cultures in the field of sustainable development. In conclusion, the significance is noted of the considered problem for determining the future development of education, taking into account the objectives of entering the world educational space, when the best choice is the traditional classical education system and a modern interpretation of pragmatism.

The purpose of the article is to analyze the issues related to the resistance to terrorism. The issues are considered of the choice of forms and methods of struggling with modern terrorism. As a strategy to overcome it, it is proposed to use the soft-power methods. The author believes that the fight against terrorism should focus more on prevention, through a balanced system of public education, by influencing the degree of aggressiveness in society and thereby reducing the level of terrorism threat. The most important component of the strategy of fighting terrorism is the modern pedagogical, educational daily activity aimed at restructuring the public consciousness by providing a positive impact on the basic value orientations and attitudes of young generation. In modern Russian pedagogy one of the main vectors of development is the formation and development of intercultural tolerance in the personality structure of the student. Tolerance is seen as a way to counter extremism and terrorism among the youth. It is necessary to bring up tolerance, to form humanistic value orientations, the ability to compromise, to harmonize positions instead of confrontation as a means of imposing one’s own interests. We should actively form a social and state system of upbringing with the emphasis on the formation of the personality of a young Russian, citizen and patriot of the homeland. Today, it is required a comprehensive prevention of social consequences of terrorism, introduction of a specialized program for the prevention of social consequences of terrorism focused on improving the quality of life of the population, including a set of measures aimed at the formation of worldview based on humanistic values. At the present stage of development, the potential of Russian education should be fully utilized for the consolidation of society, preservation of an integrated socio-cultural space of the country, overcoming of ethnic tensions and social conflicts.

The article analyzes the results of domestic research in the field of psychology and pedagogy, on the basis of which one can make a conclusion about the role of visual cognition of the world that allows enhancing pupils' thinking and forming successful experience of self-exploration of reality through practical work in the field of fine arts. The basis justifying presence of the fine arts at school is its educational developing component allowing not only the development of skills of perception of professional art, passive contemplation and explanation of the considered plots, but also the development of intellectual and emotional-creative potential which becomes more mature already at an early stage of learning. The purposes of training can be defined by a content-related factor allowing estimating the importance of this or that training material; which, in turn, allows judging whether it is necessary to include the material into the program of a basic or an elective course, or it is necessary to exclude it completely from the program, to determine the level of studying and to plan the levels of mastering the material. The author indicated that, for the adequate scientific organization of the training process, the teacher needs good knowledge of not only the theoretical bases in the field of fine arts and the technique of their teaching, but also the psychologically justified regularities of the training process, the features of formation of knowledge, formation of abilities, skills, specifics of the development of thinking. Organizing training in the fine arts, it is necessary to pay attention to the psychological features of the pupils, determining the content of the subject. The understanding of the essence and structure of what is represented requires from the pupils the ability to carry out cogitative operations of modeling, abstraction, etc., which determines creative and artistic-esthetic thinking which is formed in the course of training and develops as the pupils move into adulthood. It is noted that one of important incentives of cognition of the new in the educational process is interest, using which it is possible to develop intellectual activity, memory, imagination, attention and concentration. The interest of pupils to a subject domain is successfully used in the formation of moral and strong-willed qualities and the development of the personality as a whole.

We analyze the integration of nature-compatibility and culturological approach in the creative activity of future designer on the basis of philosophical views. At the foundation of the concept we set the educational task of forming the worldview of the student; the methodology is realized in the projects of the student, the future designer. In the process of creative activity, the future designer begins to understand and realize the value of life and the meaning of the universe; he gives birth to ideas and methods of overcoming the split between technical civilization, spiritual culture and nature in the process of designing the environment. We present a system of rules in designing the picture of nature-compatibility and culturological approach in the creative activity of future designers. We reveal the essence of design as the «design of humaneness». According to the modern interpretation of the natural compatibility principle, upbringing should be based on the scientific understanding of the natural and social processes, should be harmonized with the general laws of development of nature and the human being.

The article focuses the attention of educators on one of possible innovative ways of modernization of the contemporary historical education. Historiography is a mandatory element of the content of historical education, including the totality of historical research related to any problem. So we need a professional review of the theoretical and empirical levels of historical knowledge to increase the competence of teachers in the field of epistemology. The authors analyze the impact of the philosophical trends in historical research. It is exactly a specific influence of philosophical and world-view schools on cognition, their impact on historical research through the choice of research priorities that determine the significance of theoretical and practical levels of the epistemology of history. The theoretical level, reflecting the connection between the contemporary historical cognition with the system of other scientific knowledge, explains the presence of controversial issues of history by the subject of research itself, by the multiplicity of «historical reality» in the context of the modern theory and practice of historical research. Historical cognition has a constructive character, but this construction is involuntarily and is determined by the «address» of the historian, characterizing a particular cognitive result of his/her work: - the individual context (the historian is not just a product of his/her time, he/she is a unique intersection of social and cultural traditions with the individual characteristics of the research activity); - the socio-cultural context (the historian in his/her research affects the reality under study, because he/she always perceive the past from the perspective of his/her time, in the light of contemporary social and cultural environment, having an inevitable impact on his/her research position and understanding of the events of the past). The pragmatic level of cognition of history is associated with the development of historical knowledge, which updating is influenced by the modern historiographical situation that leads to rethinking of «the phenomenon of disagreement between historians» concerning the controversial issues of the historical science under their study. The pragmatic level of cognition of history is also connected with the desire to improve the methodology of cognition of history. This leads to the necessity to address in the teaching the controversial issues of historical sciences: how do historians-professionals study the controversial issues interesting for them? what are the levels of their cognition and the selection criteria in the content of historical research? The proposed experience of the scientist-historian as a subject of cognition and the conclusions made by him/her can be discussed by a wide range of teachers in their own language, and, during its consideration and use in the teaching of controversial issues of the social-humanitarian science, there is preserved the value-semantic content of real life.

The article considers the issues of topicality for modern humanity and, especially, for Russia of the rational content of the Indo-Tibetan system of Buddhism - a critical philosophy that «empties» the realistic ontology and reveals the gnoseological roots of negative emotions and behavior, the philosophical education - the knowledge of the basic doctrines of Buddhism (the Four Noble Truths, the Rangtong doctrine of emptiness) and the methods of one-directional and analytical meditation used for achieving deep and stable positive changes of consciousness. The main idea is that the «internal» science of Buddhism which is founded on the theory of valid cognition due to Dignaga and Dharmakirti and, in general, on the Nalanda philosophical tradition is a theoretical basis of the path of gradual improvement of personality by means of various techniques which are ordered in a substantiated system and are practically effective. These knowledge and techniques have universal significance and application.

The author demonstrates the dynamics of the attitude of the expert community to the problem of adaptation and integration of migrants on the example of changes in the migration legislation of the Russian Federation, the emergence of new educational practices. In the article the problems and the prospects of educational space are presented as a part of interaction between the «newcomers», representatives of ethnic groups, and the «locals», the representatives of the host community, and are considered in two aspects. In the aspect of adult education we are talking about the need to improve the legal framework and practices of certification of foreign citizens to obtain a patent for work in Russia. In the aspect of the education of migrant children we are talking about the difficulties faced by the education system and groups of schools with the multinational structure of pupils. The presented material contains the findings of sociological research aimed at identifying the strategies of mutual adaptation of migrants and the host community.On the basis of analysis of the statistical data obtained from the survey of ethnic migrants from neighboring countries and representatives of the host community, several significant conclusions are made. In the sphere of interpersonal relations it is obvious that ethnic migrants are striving to reduce the distance with the host community, but the «locals» remain indifferent to their efforts. Eventually, adaptation measures are necessary to both parties: migrants and the host community. The activity of state structures (including FMS), aimed at the incorporation of immigrants from neighboring countries into the structure of Russian society, is insufficient. The efforts of scientific and pedagogical intelligentsia will not yield a positive result unless on the regional and municipal levels there are formed expert network undertaking ethnosocial monitoring. Besides, appropriate programs are necessary to facilitate the adaptation of children of different nationalities to the educational space, cooperation between the two categories of the population in the framework of territorial public self-awareness in the media, including in terms of the presentation of the objective criminal statistics, both about the ones which are committed by migrants and in relation to them. These measures should be implemented in a comprehensive manner and focused not only on migrants, but also on the host society.

As the title implies, the article describes the content of the concepts of imagology and artistic imagology. Also, the authors give a description of the concepts of travelogue and the most successful of them are indicated. The authors’ attention is given to the development of artistic imagology as a way of learning a foreign culture. This aspect is based on the example of L. Stern’s «Sentimental travel». This area is also complemented by the consideration of the travelogue of French Marquis Astolphe de Custine «Russia in 1839». The authors come to the conclusion that imagology reflected in the travelogues gives a visual perception of the people and the country, their culture and lifestyle.