A selection of fragments about academic work from Dmitry Vinogradov conversation with Lev Lyubimov (14.06.1936 - 03.04.2021), which took place in July 2020.

Garen A. Avanesian, PhD in Sociology, Leading Researcher, Department of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Southern Federal University. E-mail: avanesian@sfedu.ru (corresponding author) 

Marina A. Borovskaya, Doctor of Economics, Professor, President of Southern Federal University. E-mail: bma@sfedu.ru 

Viсtoria S. Ryzhova, Junior Researcher, Department of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Southern Federal University. E-mail: vryzhova@sfedu.ru 

Vladimir S. Kirik, PhD in Sociology, Head of Department of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Southern Federal University. E-mail: vakirik@sfedu.ru 

Valeria A. Egorova, Junior Researcher, Department of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Southern Federal University. E-mail: veremeeva@sfedu.ru 

Alexander G. Bermous, Doctor of Pedagogy, Professor, Department of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Southern Federal University. E-mail: bermous@sfedu.ru 

Address: 105/42 Bolshaya Sadovaya Str., 344006 Rostov-on-Don, Russian Federation. 

The research aims to discover how non-cognitive skills influence students' academic achievement. The particular emphasis was put on how non-cognitive skills influence academic achievement in students from families with low socio-economic status. The study uses the data of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) collected in Russia in 2018. The PISA-2018 provides nationally representative data that contains information from more than 7000 students in the 9th grade in Russia. For data analysis, propensity score matching was used as one of the causal analysis methods used in econometrics. The study results reveal that the development of such non-cognitive skills as growth mindset, self-efficacy, and grit lowers students’ probability to become low achievers. The effect is particularly strong for the students from the poorest families. In conclusion, the authors suggest recommendations for educational policy on the inclusion of socio-emotional learning programs in educational standards of school education.

Nikita V. Bolshakov, Candidate of Sociological Sciences, senior lecturer, Department of Sociological Research Methods; senior research fellow, International Laboratory for Social Integration Research, National Research University Higher School of Economics. E-mail: nbolshakov@hse.ru (Corresponding author) 

Ekaterina M. Dolgova, student, “Applied Methods of Social Analysis of Markets” master’s program; research assistant, International Laboratory for Social Integration Research, National Research University Higher School of Economics. E-mail: e.dolgova@hse.ru 

Address: 20 Myasnitskaya Str., 101000 Moscow, Russian Federation. 

After the breakup of the USSR, the education systems of the former Soviet republics began to develop independently and adopt new legal and professional norms. Many of these norms are universal in nature — for example, inclusion and equal access to education for all categories of the population, including access to secondary and higher education for children with various disabilities. 
The present study makes use of the results of a survey of parents of schoolchildren in Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Russia, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and the Ukraine to assess the satisfaction of parents of children with or without special educational needs studying at inclusive schools. It is shown that parents of children with or without disabilities have a fairly positive attitude towards inclusive education, albeit the main demand for inclusive education stems from parents of children with disabilities. However, respondents in most countries assessed the situation in inclusive schools as not being ideal — in particular, they were not satisfied with the qualifications of teachers. The present study shows that the countries of the post-Soviet space are extremely inhomogeneous in the indicators of parental satisfaction with inclusive education and stand at different stages of the development of the latter.

Mikhail V. Gasinets, analyst, Laboratory for Curriculum Design, Institute of Education, National Research University Higher School of Economics. E-mail: mgasinec@hse.ru (сorresponding author) 

Anastasia V. Kapuza, research fellow, International Laboratory for Evaluation of Practices and Innovations in Education, National Research University Higher School of Economics. E-mail: akapuza@hse.ru 

Maria S. Dobryakova, chief expert, Laboratory for Curriculum Design, Institute of Education, National Research University Higher School of Economics. E-mail: mdobryakova@hse.ru 

Address: 16 Potapovsky Lane, bldg. 10, 101000 Moscow, Russian Federation. 

All over the world, educational and, particularly, curriculum reforms face different issues, including communication with teachers. To implement reforms successfully, politicians should consider the teacher agency since teachers deliver all the innovations to schools. Agency is an autonomous activity to change routine practices. The high level of agency is related to teacher’s belief in the possibility to influence the results of the work. 
This study focuses on the teachers’ perceptions about the role of school, family and students themselves in academic success. A mixed methods strategy was used to analyze the results of a Russian national survey of over 4,000 teachers and 12 focus groups. 
Results showed that over half of teachers believed that their work and other school factors do not affect the students’ academic success. The most crucial factors of success, according to teachers, were students’ diligence and motivation, as well as family contribution. Many teachers believed that the academic success factors are beyond their control, the school is just an instrument to unleash the students’ potential. Thus, many teachers had attitudes that do not encourage a high level of agency that define teacher practices transformation during curriculum reforms implementation.

Iuliia O. Gerasimova, research intern at the International Laboratory for Evaluation of Practices and Innovations in Education, Institute of Education, National Research University Higher School of Economics. E-mail: ygerasimova@hse.ru 

Tatiana A. Chirkina, research fellow at the International Laboratory for Evaluation of Practices and Innovations in Education, Institute of Education, National Research University Higher School of Economics. E-mail: tchirkina@hse.ru (сorresponding author) 

Address: Bld. 10, 16 Potapovsky Ln, 101000 Moscow, Russian Federation.

The present study aims to examine the construct of the classroom goal structure. Achievement goal theory of motivation suggests that two types of classroom goal structures can be identified: mastery goal structure and performance goal structure. 
The study presents the results of the Russian adaptation of the Approach to Instruction (Patterns of Adapted Learning Survey) scale which can be used to assess classroom goal structures from the perspective of teacher practices. The survey is built on a data which comes from a survey on a sample of fifth-grade teachers (N = 656) conducted in the fall of 2020. The study includes a description of the steps for adaptation of the scale into Russian. The study presents the results of confirmatory factor analysis and describes the adjustments to the initial model. The adapted scale demonstrated a good fit to the empirical data and adequate internal consistency. 
The Russian-language version of the scale can be used by researchers in future studies of the educational environment in the classroom in the context of learning motivation. The scale could potentially be employed in the future studies examining the factors that determine students’ educational outcomes as well as the development of social-emotional skills.

Pavel S. Sorokin, associate professor and senior research fellow, head of Laboratory for Research in Human Potential and Education, Institute of Education, National Research University Higher School of Economics. E-mail: psorokin@hse.ru (сorresponding author) 

Isak D. Froumin, head, professor, Institute of Education, National Research University Higher School of Economics. E-mail: ifroumin@hse.ru 

Address: Bld. 10, 16 Potapovsky Ln, 101000 Moscow, Russian Federation. 

The issue of “transformative agency”, which proactively improves and transforms social structures, is relevant both for theoretical discussions and practical agenda. The field of education is of particular importance in terms of shaping the potential for agency. However, the dominant areas of research in education, including the sociology of education, focus, on the contrary, on the mechanisms and factors of reproduction of social structures and related activities. The authors propose to expand the research agenda by increasing attention to the conditions and mechanisms of the formation of “transformative agency” at different levels of education and in its various segments, with an account of the processes of de-structuration that weaken the forms of institutional coercion familiar to the 20th century. The article raises theoretical questions and suggests relevant empirical phenomena for further research.

Egor B. Sagitov, master’s student, Institute of Education, National Research University Higher School of Economics. E-mail: ebsagitov@edu.hse.ru 

Evgeniia D. Shmeleva, Research Fellow, Сenter for Sociology of Higher Education, Institute of Education, National Research University Higher School of Economics. E-mail: eshmeleva@hse.ru (corresponding author) 

Address: Bld. 10, 16 Potapovsky Ln, 101000 Moscow, Russian Federation. 

Student academic dishonesty is one of the most serious problems of higher education in Russia and all over the world. This problem became especially severe and widespread during a mass forced transfer to distant education followed by the Covid-19 pandemic. In this regard, it is highly demanded to find affordable measures to combat academic dishonesty, some of which can be implemented at the level of the organization of the learning process. The purpose of this study was to assess and analyze the relationship between the prevalence of passive and active pedagogical practices and academic cheating among students. Based on pieces of evidence, we hypothesized that students are more likely to cheat in conditions where their classes are organized mostly around passive educational practices such as writing down or retelling the course material. The empirical basis of this study is data gathered within the project “Monitoring of education markets and organizations” in spring 2020. Students of full-time bachelor and specialist programs of Russian higher educational institutions were surveyed. The sample includes 17 316 students from 291 Russian universities. Data analysis was carried out using a series of binary multilevel logistic regressions with the sequential addition of groups of individual and group level variables. This study was the first to show the relationship between different pedagogical practices and the risk of student cheating. The main result of this study can be considered a confirmed positive relationship between the prevalence of rewriting and retelling of the course materials during seminars (passive pedagogical practices) and student cheating. The second hypothesis about the relationship between active pedagogical practices and cheating received partial confirmation. The results of this study may be used as a base for recommendations for instructors and administrators of universities to enforce student academic integrity and reduce the prevalence of cheating among them.

Tatyana Yu. Chaban, head, Department for Monitoring the Quality of Education, “Center for Education Quality Assessment” Krasnoyarsk Territorial State Government-Owned Specialized Establishment. E-mail: chaban@coko24.ru 

Roza S. Rameeva, head, Department of Information and Analysis, “Center for Education Quality Assessment” Krasnoyarsk Territorial State Government-Owned Specialized Establishment. E-mail: rameeva@coko24.ru 

Address: 9 Vysotnaya Str., 660062 Krasnoyarsk, Russian Federation. 

Ilya S. Denisov, research assistant, Center for Psychometrics and Measurements in Education, Institute of Education, National Research University Higher School of Economics. E-mail: idenisov@hse.ru 

Yulia D. Kersha, junior research fellow, Pinsky Center of General and Extracurricular Education, Institute of Education, National Research University Higher School of Economics. E-mail: ykersha@hse.ru 

Roman S. Zvyagintsev, junior research fellow, Pinsky Center of General and Extracurricular Education, Institute of Education, National Research University Higher School of Economics. E-mail: rzvyagincev@hse.ru (сorresponding author) 

Address: 16 Potapovsky Lane, bldg. 10, 101000 Moscow, Russian Federation. 

International studies about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the quality of general education have yielded contradictory results: educational outcomes have fallen markedly in some countries while remaining more or less constant in others. At the same time, over half of published studies attest to the growth of educational inequality during the pandemic. The present article assesses the impact of the pandemic using the data of a regional monitoring study of all schoolchildren in grades 4, 6 and 8 in the Krasnoyarsk Region in 2019 and 2021. Tests of reading literacy in grades 4 and 6 as well as of science literacy in grade 8 have shown the satisfactory psychometric quality. Multilevel regression analysis was used to show that the level of functional literacy of the “pandemic” cohort of schoolchildren, controlled for contextual characteristics, was significantly lower for students in all grades except grade 4. The biggest loss was found for scientific literacy. No correlation was found between the pandemic effect size and the socioeconomic composition of the class (the gap between children with different SES remains at the same level as it was before the pandemic). The teachers’ opportunity to conduct online classes did not serve to improve the educational outcomes of schoolchildren during the pandemic.

Elen M. Yusupova, research assistant, Center for Psychometrics and Educational Measurements, Institute of Education, National Research University Higher School of Economics. E-mail: eabdurakhmanova@hse.ru (сorresponding author) 

Anastasia V. Kapuza, research fellow, International Laboratory for Evaluation of Practices and Innovations in Education, Institute of Education, National Research University Higher School of Economics. E-mail: akapuza@hse.ru 

Elena Yu. Kardanova, Candidate of Science in Physics and Mathematics, associate professor, director, Center for Psychometrics and Educational Measurement, Institute of Education, National Research University Higher School of Economics. E-mail: ekardanova@hse.ru 

Address: 16 Potapovsky Lane, bldg. 10, 101000 Moscow, Russian Federation. 

Teachers’ expectations may affect the academic performance of their pupils, leading to the effect of “self-fulfilling prophecies”. Teachers form their expectations about the academic performance of their pupils based on the information they possess about the latter. The present study tested a hypothesis about a correlation between the teacher’s disposal of information about the pupil’s ranking on an initial diagnostic test at the beginning of the first grade and the pupil’s academic performance at the end of the first grade. It also tested the hypothesis that the teacher’s disposal of information about the pupil’s ranking can affect his or her expectations about the level of the pupil’s cognitive skills. In this large-scale cluster randomized controlled experimental study, the participants included 4,460 first-grade students from 188 schools in a Russian region. We divided the schools into the experimental and control groups randomly. The teachers in the control group received information about the basic skills of their pupils. In contrast, experimental group teachers additionally received information about their pupils’ ranking based on a combination of indicators of their cognitive (basic reading and math) and non-cognitive (personal and socio-emotional) skills. The study did not confirm the hypotheses.

Svetlana M. Avdeeva, Candidate of Technical Sciences, head of the Laboratory for Measuring New Constructs and Test Design, Centre for Psychometrics and Measurement in Education, Institute of Education, National Research University Higher School of Economics; deputy executive director, National Training Foundation. E-mail: avdeeva@ntf.ru (corresponding author) 

Alexander Yu. Uvarov, Doctor of Sciences in Education, leading researcher at the Institute of Cybernetics and Educational Computing, The Federal Research Centre “Computer Science and Control” of the Russian Academy of Sciences; Professor at the Department of Educational Programs, Institute of Education, National Research University Higher School of Economics. E-mail: auvarov@hse.ru 

Ksenia V. Tarasova, Candidate of Sciences in Education, deputy head of the Laboratory for Measuring New Constructs and Test Design, Centre for Psychometrics and Measurement in Education, National Research University Higher School of Economics. E-mail: ktarasova@hse.ru 

Address: 16 Potapovsky Lane, bldg. 10, 101000 Moscow, Russian Federation. 

Information and communication literacy is one of the main meta-subject competencies that graduates of the secondary school should possess. The full-fledged formation of this competence is considered as one of the tasks of preparing students for life in the information society and the digital economy. The article discusses the results of a monitoring study of the information and communication literacy of 9th grade students, which was conducted in 21 regions of the Russian Federation in 2020. About half (45.4%) demonstrated a level of competence that corresponds to the readiness for life in the digital economy. Was considered the influence of the equipment of schools and the peculiarities of the organization of educational activities on the students’ level of information and communication literacy (ICL). The results of the study indicate a strong connection between the students’ competence and their out-of-school environment and a weak — with their work in the school. Research findings allow to determine the reasons for the insufficient level of ICL in a significant part of graduates and used to propose recommendations for its increase.

Maria Yu. Lebedeva, Candidate of Philological Sciences, leading research fellow, Pushkin State Russian Language Institute. 
E-mail: m.u.lebedeva@gmail.com. 

Address: 6 Akademika Volgina Str., 117485 Moscow, Russian Federation. 

For success in education and life in our informationally saturated digital society, one must be able to select and interpret digital texts of different genres, choose optimal ways of interacting with these texts, and extract and assess information from them. Contemporary education specialists believe that skills of working with digital texts are an integral part of reading literacy; their publications model successful results of interacting with digital texts. Nevertheless, the means of attaining these results remains a very important and topical question for the education system. What strategies allow one to interact with digital texts effectively? How should one teach these strategies to contemporary schoolchildren? The present article aims to identify and classify metacognitive strategies used by competent Russian-speaking lower secondary students for performing learning assignments based on digital texts. It is based on the analysis of think-aloud protocols and data from the online monitoring of readers’ activities on the screen. The study describes and analyzes seven groups of digital reading strategies. The results contribute to basic knowledge about the processes at the root of effective digital reading and hence of the development of approaches to teaching and assessing reading literacy in the digital age.

Dmitry M. Rogozin, Candidate of Sociological Sciences, director of the Center for Field Studies, Institute of Social Analysis and Forecasting, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. E-mail: rogozin@ranepa.ru (сorresponding author) 

Olga B. Solodovnikova, Candidate of Philological Sciences, senior research fellow of the Center for Field Studies, Institute of Social Analysis and Forecasting, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. E-mail: solodovnikova-ob@ranepa.ru 

Anna A. Ipatova, Candidate of Cultural Studies, senior research fellow of the Center for Field Studies, Institute of Social Analysis and Forecasting, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. E-mail: ipatova@ranepa.ru 

Address: 11 Prechistenskaya Embankment, bldg. 1, 119034 Moscow, Russian Federation. 

The absolute majority of publications about changes in higher education resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic focus on the problems faced by students. They fail to articulate the position of university faculty members who are concerned about their dwindling role as a result of the digital transformation of education. 
Since 2020, the Institute of Social Analysis and Forecasting at the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration with the support of the Russian Ministry of Science and Higher Education has conducted a monitoring study of the attitude of university faculty members to the changes taking place in higher education. The present article is based on the results of three research waves (non-random, administrative, two-stream samples) conducted in April 2020 (N = 33,987), June-July 2020 (N = 27,484) and April-May 2021 (N = 26,334). An overall positive trend is observed in teacher attitudes: the peak of discontent about the introduction of distance education has passed, and the attitude to online learning has become calmer and more level-headed. Most teachers continue to express unconditional support for traditional in-person learning, however. The article takes a close look at the attitude of teachers to the digital transformation of higher education and analyzes their narratives. Teachers believe that the most promising aspect of the digital transformation of universities is the use of blended learning technologies that combine the benefits of classical and innovative teaching methods. The article identifies risk factors and further opportunities for digital innovations in higher education.