During an economic crisis the labor market undergoes significant structural changes. The negative consequences of these changes are relevant for all work force categories, including university alumni, whose chances to find a job decrease considerably. The threat of long term unemployment leads to various sociopolitical risks. In a crisis, education programs are important not only as a tool of anti-crisis management of employment, but also as an investment in the quality of future economic growth. The article considers such programs as holistic strategies targeting various groups, professional spheres and qualification levels. A priority task is to discuss and develop a procedure whereby the leading universities of the country may be included in this state project.

Trends Shaping Education. 2008. Edition. Center for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI). OECD. Chapter 2, 3.
(Translated from English)

The article examines the role of society’s demands on the outcomes of schools’ efforts to manage education quality. New results in education become achievable if schools receive signals about the existence of society’s demand for these results. For the school, significant signals are criterions by which its activities are evaluated, and steps taken to encourage the activity of teachers. The current signals orient schools rather towards the preservation of the existing goals than towards their change. Unless in the near future schools receive convincing evidence of society’s interest in the change of the quality of education, the outcomes of school education in 2020 will differ little from today’s.

Translated from English: Douglass J.A. The Еntrepreneurial State and Research Universities in the United States: Policy and New State,based Initiatives // Higher Education Management and Policy (OECD). 2007. Vol. 19. No. 1. Р. 84–120.

The article presents the results of a qualitative analysis of Russian elementary school graduates’ performance on the international test of reading comprehension skills PIRLS-2006. The relevance of this analysis is due to the need to determine the advantages and shortcomings of teaching techniques being used in this country. This should provide the information necessary to develop ways of improving teaching techniques of reading comprehension of literary and information texts in elementary school. The study uses a combination of statistical and qualitative analysis, which ensures the objectiveness of the conclusions regarding achievements and shortcomings in the reading skills of Russian elementary school students. Russian elementary school graduates showed a good level of reading comprehension both of literary and information texts. However, the performance on information text comprehension was somewhat lower. Therefore, in order to ensure the viability of Russian elementary school education, more attention should be given to reading information texts of various structures.

The article analyzes the most common elementary school teaching materials for two subjects: ‘Reading’ and ‘The World Around Us’. This is done in the course of discussion of the PIRLS-2006 results. The author considers the effect of the textbooks and workbooks on the high scores achieved by Russian fourth-graders on the international test. Research results show that the textbooks and workbooks used to teach reading in the Russian elementary school help achieve high PIRLS scores. At the same time, these textbooks prepare the ground for the problems that show up in older students and lead to a steep decline in reading skills as detected by the PISA tests.

Rocca F.X. In Spain inbreeding threatens academe // The Chronicle of Higher Education. 2007. Vol. 53. Iss. 22. P. A31. http://chronicle.com 

The article discusses the positive and negative effects of colleges’ practice of hiring their own alumni. The authors review empirical research that analyzes the prevalence and effect of this phenomenon in various educational systems, and the difference in the behavior between insiders and outsiders. To illustrate the ‘upbringing phenomenon’ characteristic of Russian universities, the authors use data collected in interviewing teachers and department heads from 28 faculties of universities in St. Petersburg. All these faculties award degrees in economics. The article investigates how the colleges’ policy of hiring their own alumni affects the strategies and values of university teachers.

The article analyzes the specific features of the development of learning motivation in elementary school students at the end of their first year. The authors investigate the effects of three teaching styles: authoritarian, democratic, and unstable. The results of the study suggest that the most efficient style for bolstering learning motivation is the democratic style, while the unstable style is the least efficient.

Education is a milleniaold institution of reproduction of humans not only as rational and skilled beings, but beings with formed spiritual foundations of their existence. These foundations were always formed by the family, the church, and education. Alas, the primary hope today is with education. All the more alarming is the fact that the traditional ethos of this oldest of social institutions might disappear. What comes under threat then is the very reproduction of the human as a rational and skilled being. The article considers the current situation with this ethos in Russia.

The article attracts attention to the problem of the inefficiency of the extant classroombased style of teaching at schools. As a means to solve this problem, the author suggests that teaching local specifics might be efficient. He gives a short review of the main stages of introducing community related materials in geography classes and in teaching some disciplines close to geography. Experience of teaching an extracurricular course called «Saransk: nature, population, economy» are analyzed in more detail.

The article is based on interviews with the heads of Russian professional education institutions. The interviews were conducted by the HSE in the framework of an education monitoring program. About 1,220 respondents from 500 universities, 400 secondary professional education institutions, and 320 basic professional education institutions participated in each of the polls.

The article continues a series of archive material publications, dealing with the 40th anniversary of the 1968 events. The preceding article in this series was a chronicle of the student unrest in Europe, published in No 4, 2008, of this journal. The author presents some facts characterizing youth and student movement at the end of Khrushchev’s thaw in provincial Russian cities: Vladimir, Gorky, Saratov, Ryazan, and Sverdlovsk. Besides that, the publication contains notes by those who as young people were somehow involved in these historical events. Interviewing active participants and witnesses of «the revolutionary 1968» the author attempts to compare the specifics of the events in Europe and in Russia. Prepared by E.N. Penskaya

This is a short analysis of current trends in the development of education from the point of view of a practicing educator with 30 years of experience. Revolutionary transformations: are the upper echelons able and are the lower echelons willing?