Politics, Modernisation and Educational Reform in Russia: from past to present

  The volume stimulates an important debate about the methods that inform cross-national and cross-regional work on educational change. This is particularly salient in a study of educational reform in Russia, and begs the question, ‘whose way of thinking, of constructing meaning, and of experiencing the world’ is used to judge the weight and the direction of change? Each chapter shows that a thorough understanding of the nature of change and the direction of reform is only achieved through the ability to decentre - or take on board - the ‘other’ worldview. It argues, therefore, that it is worldview, rather than culture or nation-state, that is the most valid unit of analysis.

  This book pays tribute to K.D. Ushinsky (1824-70), ‘the Russian pioneer of comparative education’, each chapter in it broadly in agreement with his conclusions that:

Public education does not solve the problems of life by itself; it does not lead history; rather, it follows the historical development. It is not the pedagogies or the teachers who create the future, but the people themselves and their great men. Education only follows this road and, in combination with other public (social) factors, helps the individual and the rising generation on its way.