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THE CLUSTER APPROACH
IN THE SYSTEM OF LIFELONG EDUCATION
N. Kosmachev
Over the course of millennia, until the late 19th-early 20th century, the intensity of the process of accumulating knowledge, and the continuity of their acquisition did not enter into any noticeable conflict, as the knowledge which the person received at the stage of initial education was mainly sufficient for intellectual and work activity throughout the person’s life. But by the first half of the 20th century, the rates of scientific and technical progress increased, and competition between corporations and nations increased. In this situation, the winners were those with the greatest amount of scientific knowledge. After the Second World War, the growth rates of the new information began to become exponential. This required for measures to be taken in regulating the additional compulsory instruction of working specialists. It was at this time that ideas of lifelong education increasingly became part of state education policy. But not only the intensive process of accumulating scientific and technical information required a transition to lifelong education. In the humanitarian sphere, in the sphere of human culture, the process of increasing knowledge is no less intensive, although the dependence between it and work (production) activity of the person is not so obvious. In the modern situation, the need for lifelong education is increasing many times, which is connected with the transition to the post-industrial stage of human development. Information and knowledge are becoming the dominant production process. The most valuable qualities are the level of education, the learning ability and creativity of the worker.
Despite the growing understanding of the need for lifelong education, there is so far no sufficient consensus in the understanding of the nature of the actual concept of lifelong education. A number of authors (E. D. Dneprov1, V.G. Nushkin, Ye. I. Ogarev2) rely on the principles of the continuity and step-by-step nature of the process of lifelong education, see lifelong education from the position of the inner requirement and ability of developing the creative potential of the personality, while the objective economic need for the constant updating of professional knowledge remains in the shadows, something that stems from the process of the acceleration of the aging of scientific (theoretical and practical) knowledge. In foreign literature, there are around 30 definitions of the concept of “lifelong education”. One definition of undoubted interest comes from R. Dave, who by lifelong education understands the process of improving personal social and professional development throughout the entire lifecycle of the individual, with the aim of improving the quality of life of both individuals and groups3. An interactive definition of the concept in question is given by V. N. Skvortsov, whose viewpoint is the fullest and most relevant to the modern stage of the development of society. He
1 Днепров Э.Д. Современная школьная реформа в России. - М.: Наука, 1968, С. 52.
2 Днепров Э.Д. Современная школьная реформа в России. - М.: Наука, 1968, С. 52.
3 Рухадзе Н.Б. Непрерывное образование - концепция, устремленная в будущее. -Тбилиси: Изд-во ТГУ, 1989.
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defines lifelong education as a “systematically organized process of the education of people throughout their working life, at the basis of which lies normative prescriptions that oblige the employer to provide the employee with the necessary and sufficient conditions for increasing their professional and skills every time when a change in the conditions of their working activity are connected with new or additional professional knowledge presented to them, which allow them to remain an effective employee, be competitive on the domestic and foreign markets, and retain social conditions of living that are adequate to their professional rating on the labor market”1.
At present, an economic social mechanism has yet to be formed for the practical realization of the concept of lifelong education. One of the most widespread methods of ensuring lifelong education abroad is creative corporate universities. Their number has already exceeded 16002. Besides the direct training of company employees, these universities also solve two important tasks: firstly, they make it possible to generalize experience and knowledge accumulated by the corporation; secondly, to form a common corporate culture of the company and a unique system of values. One renowned corporate university in Russia could be considered to be the Gubkin Russian State University of Oil and Gas3. Today, the list of patrons of this university includes all major companies working in the oil and gas sphere (Gazprom, TNK, LUKOIL and others). It is mainly these companies that send their employees to the university to study in their specialized field. However, the formation of corporate universities in Russia is in its initial stage of development. Besides traditional study institutes with lecturers and auditoriums, recently virtual universities have become increasingly popular. Corporate systems of long-distance study in their current form formed in the late 1990s. As analysts at SRI Consulting Business Intelligence not in this study, by this time, companies in the West have finally rejected televised lectures and obviously inconvenient “electronic textbooks” (text on the monitor screen). The modern system of additional education involves a learning managing system (LMS), which is placed on the server of the internal computer of the university network, or on the server of the provider. Network courses are uploaded to it, which can be accessed from any workplace of the corporate network. For example, in the United States, 62% of companies with over 1,000 employees have already installed long-distance learning systems. In Russia there are now around 10 learning managing systems from local and western manufacturers. However, these systems are at present only used by a few major companies (Sibneft, RUSAL, Severstal, VimpelCom etc.). An important area in the creation of the system of lifelong education is also the creation of scientific education institutes and centers within the framework of traditional universities. A center of this kind was created, for example, at Saratov on the basis of the Saratov state university, together with the Saratov branch of the
1 Скворцов В.Н. Социально-экономические проблемы теории непрерывного образования. - Санкт-Петербург: Изд-во СПбГУЭиФ, 1999, С. 25.
2 Корпоративные университеты в российской и зарубежной практике. - Интернет-издание, http://shop.amr.ru/books/detail.php?ID=1124
3 http://grads.gubkin.ru/fcouncil.shtml
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Institute of radio technology and electronics of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the state educational and scientific center College1.
In our opinion, based on the very nature of the concept of “lifelong education”, it would seem more logical to integrate different stages of education into a single whole, managed from united centers. This could be defined as the clusterization of the education system. In the economy, clusters mean a group of mutually related concentrated on a certain territory: suppliers of equipment, utility and specialized services; infrastructure; scientific research institutes; universities and other organizations which mutually supplement each other, and increase the competitive advantages of individual companies and the cluster as a whole. An example of a cluster is Silicon Valley in the USA. An equivalent may also be given in education. We may propose the creation of clusters, the core of which will be tertiary institutions around which a system of general educational schools are grouped, which are “tied” to them. The learning process in these schools may be initially focused on training specialists for a specific university, and not starting from senior years, but from the fifth year. In the first four years, the child’s disposition towards a certain sphere of activity may be determined, or at least their abilities and inclinations2, which will make it possible in future to make a differentiated approach to children’s learning. At the same time, the transfer of children from one school to another should be made as free as possible, so that in the fifth year they are concentrated in “their own schools”, which suit their inclinations and abilities. Already at this stage, it is possible to involve lecturers from the appropriate university to form the necessary professional orientation in children, and create the initial store of knowledge in the future specialized field. This will not be just theoretical, but also practically oriented training. Pupils will be able to take part in internship programs at companies and organizations interested in the lifelong education process, and hiring specialists who will have certain work skills. At present, there are specialized schools and colleges working at a number of universities. But first of all, the percentage of specialized schools in the total number is small. And secondly, colleges start specialized training quite late.
The proposal I have made here will make it possible to provide lifelong education at different stages. However, the realization of this will undoubtedly require fundamental restructuring of the education system.
1 Трубецков Д., Аникин В. Образование плюс наука: первый коллективный грант СГУ// Высшее образование в России. 2007. № 6. С. 156.
2 The first 4 years of learning will then have a general learning program.
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