Educational Hybrids in Russian Higher Education

Abstract

The paper applies the conception of social hybridization as an instrument for scientific analysis of national educational reality. This work provides a rationale of the hybrid nature of the national higher education system modernization. The influence of integration preferences on the formation of hybrid educational structures in the system of national higher education is revealed. The hybrid system’s definition is given and the processes of education sphere hybridization are considered. Various aspects of educational hybridization are discussed. In particular, the hybrid nature of the competence approach is emphasized. The authors dwell on the features of hybrid transformations in connection with educational reality and come to a conclusion that today there is an artificial education system in Russia, which generates the distorted educational forms distorting the Russian education system due to a shift of educational activity meanings and the creation of inverted structures. The paper considers the models of hybrid systems based on converted forms. Inversion, like a virus, generates hybrids everywhere. The society and the basic social institutions have been “hybridized” to a large extent. The realistic description of the arising hybrid educational models requires bearing in mind the principle of additionality; otherwise we will have a distorted idea about the transformations of educational reality. We may observe this on the example of the forced implementation of foreign educational models in domestic educational environment. Hybrid educational systems should be “grown” but not implanted.

Keywords

• hybrid education systems
• hybrid nature of modernization
• hybridization of education
• hybrid transformations
• knowledge approach
• competence approach
• modeling of educational reality
• inversion
• converted form