Home – Home – Jornals – "Philosophy of Education" 2017 number 1

The processes of integration and differentiation in education occur in a variety of problem areas of modern Russian education. Uncontrolled differentiation can be transformed into disintegration, causing negative effects, as well as excessive integration leads to unification and reduction of the viability of the system. The article is aimed at revealing the essence of these contradictions and suggesting ways to resolve them. Total problematic content of integration and differentiation processes in the system of national education have been found in four levels of the educational system, starting with defining of the content of education, taking into account the methods and forms of organization of educational process in the various educational institutions with access to global supranational level. At the level of the content of education, the conflict between differentiation and integration is expressed in the fragmentation of knowledge, on the one hand, and interdisciplinary integration as a principle of selection of educational content, on the other hand. At the level of organization of the educational process, the problem area is the contradiction between the need for standardization of education and its variability. In the system of education as a social institution, discrete-level training is in conflict with the continuum of life-long learning in the knowledge society. Finally, at the global level, the desire to preserve the identity of the domestic educational tradition is opposed to the objective tendencies of Western-style internationalization of higher education. Recommendations to counter negative trends at these levels include: 1) increase in the number of integrated courses that promote a holistic and conceptual thinking as opposed to fragmented and clip thinking; 2) improvement of the tutoring institute in secondary and higher education, as well as the transition of variable components of the learning process in a virtual educational environment, providing the students a series of online courses to choose from, with the use of adaptive learning technologies; 3) network organization of educational space and the creation of integrative regional educational clusters to build continuity of the educational process; 4) intensified trend towards localization, following globalization, associated with the revival of the national educational tradition (ethnopedagogical neotraditionalism) and its combination with the finest examples of Western individualistic and rational educational tradition and collectivist, humanistic orientation of education in the countries of the East.