Abstract: Should we politicize education? What can we do to teach political thinking to school students? What is the most appropriate form of political education? There are constant debates about these issues. Occasionally teachers express concerns regarding excessive ideologization of school students. Meanwhile, education is actively involved into the political process. Many school graduates have to take an examination in social studies today. Statistics of previous years indicate that practically half of school students have to show their knowledge in social studies when passing the Unified State Exam. The Russian language and mathematics are mandatory exams but social studies are to be taken, too, by students who seek admission to humanitarian universities. The subject of the present research is the analysis of different problems of the geopolitical situation in the world that are essential for modern education. Social studies provide school students with the knowledge about many aspects of social including economics, law, philosophy, sociology, politology and history. Society is a living organism, developing system closely connected with the basic needs of human. In his research Gurevich has used the methodology of social philosophy which allows to productively analyze the situation in the modern world. In addition, the author has applied achievements of modern pedagogy. The author compares the two different researches (selected works 'Modern World and Geopolitics' and A. Vafin's monograph 'Political Marginals in Russia and Europe. Limonov, Fortein, Fortuyn, Cohn-Bendit and other cases'). These researches allow to describe a wide range of problems characterizing geopolitical priorities of Russia. According to the author, it is impossible to get a true insight into social issues without taking into account interpersonal, interclass, international and intergroup relations. It is noted that social studies should explain political issues to school students and to develop their living position, public spirit and their own views on modern political realias. 

Keywords: international relations, politics, geopolitical priorities, civilizational patterns, mental schemes, political marginalism, political leadership, political preconception, populism, social studies

Abstract: The article gives the analysis of reforms in higher education which were performed in the Russian Federation and also in Israel, the USA and France. The main aim of the article is to clarify paradigm principles, main purposes and objectives of reforms being conducted. Attention is paid to the necessity not to destroy previous achievements and avoid coping the experience of other countries and nations but to save best achievements of our nation in the sphere of education and to multiply them. It is underlined in the article that cutting down humanitarian cycles and socially-oriented blocs will inevitably lead to spiritually poor personality with low potential of social activity. Western European countries orientation on specialist and professional is only one side of education, the other one is educational, spiritually enriching and personality forming side of the process of education. The Western model can be defined as empiric-rational with the stress on professionalism. The main task which is stated is to create a person-function, person of wish. The aim of our system of higher education is to develop an intellectual human-creator. The research methodology is based on the comparative philosophical and religious analysis. The main research method is the comparative analytical method. General scientific methods such as analysis, synthesis, generalization and individualization have been also applied. It is stated in the article that the prospect for our development is the formation of mature personality with philosophical and cultural outlook and breadth of thinking but not a person- “small screw”, not a professional of narrow sphere. Political, ideological and economic problems of the modern world are often concealed in the destruction of the system of education, its orientation not on statement of universal principals and norms but on search of particular, narrow professionally oriented, pragmatic factors of growth. The authors believe that when one conducts reforms he should be moderate which supposes the harmony of common and particular, scientific and humanitarian knowledge and preparation of the person creator and person-professional and performer. It is concluded that pre-revolutionary as well as the Soviet system of education in Russia had humanitarian character of upbringing of intellectual and paid insufficient attention to the formation of professional while the Western model is vice versa has always been considered to be successful in creating professional, person-function but both models have their own disadvantages. Educational reforms are performed everywhere but tasks are different. So, it is important to save everything valuable that our secondary and higher schools have always had. 

Keywords: personality, professional, human-creator, teacher, humanities, natural sciences, science, education model, paradigm, reform

Abstract: The article gives a detailed account of scientometric approaches to evaluating the effectiveness of research. Different scientometric indicators of the scientist – the total number of publications and their citation, impact factor of the journals in which the scientist works are published, etc are touched. However, Levin focuses on the most commonly used indicator – Hirsch index. The definition of this indicator, various methods of calculation, accompanied by examples are presented. The point of view of J. Hirsch on the opportunities of index created by him to identify the importance and significance of the contribution of scientists to science, to compare efficiency of various scientists and to forecast the scientific achievements of the scientist is given. Critical assessment of this indicator of current scientists is also presented. The author also shares his own point of view on the matter as well as describes other scientometric indicators. Levin provides a few examples showing the inability of this and other scientometric indicators to adequately assess various aspects of scientist's activity. The author indicates risks associated with the possibility of falsification of scientometric indicators. At the end of the article the author concludes that it would be worth-while to apply the traditional expert review method to evaluating scientific activity. 

Keywords: traditional reviews, falsification of indicators, evaluation of achievements, contribution to science, scientific activity, impact factor, citation index, Hirsch index, bibliometrics, scientometrics

Abstract: The subject of the research is the education and upbringing or the system of cultivation of human and his socialization in Russia which presently does not satisfy the requirements set by the modern development of productive forces for the level of intellectual and social maturity of human. With the help of nanotechnologies, an individual becomes the force that can change the evolution of the planetary socionatural Universum. This situation demands a drastic change of the entire system of personal education and upbringing as well as new worldviews regarding the place and the role of human in the nature and society. Based on statistical data, the author's expert evaluation, researches of famous specialists and comparative analysis of the system of education during the Soviet Union, perestroika and contemporary periods, the author describes drawbacks of the process of cultivation within the family, schools and universities. Special attention is paid to the ability of educators, school and university teachers to raise intellectually and socially mature and creative members of the society who are capable of understanding their place and role in the nature and society and providing further development of human and society. According the author, the main reason of the non-conformity of the system of cultivation of human is the postmodern value orientations rather than the low quality of teachers' training or lack of modern equipment at schools or universtities. Postmodern society needs an easily manipulated individual who is ready for performing narrow professional functions without critical re-evaluation of his role in the nature and society but not versatile personality. The results of the present research can be helpful for those who search for drastic changes of the system of education and upbringing. 

Keywords: information, pedagogue, knowledge, institute of higher education, school, upbringing, education, man, society, Weltanschauung

Abstract: The subject under research of the present article is the conceptual grounds for building the system of psychological safety at a higher education establishment. The article was written at the confluence of the psychology of education, psychology of personal safety and psychology of corporate safety. That allowed the authors to apply theoretical findings of the aforesaid branches of psychological knowledge to creating their own concepts. The authors provide a detailed description of the contents and structure of the key elements of the psychological safety system at a higher education institute. They emphasize the need to develop the main principles the psychological safety system can be based on at a University. Special attention is paid to interpretation of the terms introduced by the authors for analyzing the psychological safety system at a higher education establishment. In order to achieve the goals of the research, the authors have applied the methods of the theoretical analysis, generalization and systematization of the key phenomena as well as analysis of the possibility to apply such empirical methods as observation and survey. The scientific novelty ofthe research is caused by the fact that the authors describe the main components of psychological safety at a University such as social-psychological, reputation and anti-terrorist safety. For the first time in the academic literature the authors view University reputation safety in terms of anti-corruption and image-building stability. The results of the research allow to refer integrity, systematicity, consistency, noncontradiction, continuity and succession as the main principles for building the system of psychological safety at a higher education university.   

Keywords: psychological safety, safety system, safety measures, corporate safety, reputation safety, image safety, anti-corruption safety, social and psychological safety, safety threats, safety of a University

Abstract: The subject of the research is the sociocultural (fundamentalist) approach to the philosophy of mathematics, in particular, ethnomathematics as the sphere of mathematical research. Particular attention is paid to the ideas of Oswald Spengler, the author of The Decline of the West, Neo-Kantian Hermann Cohen and Paul Natorp about the position and role of mathematics in the cognitive process as well as the relationship between mathematics and culture. The results of the research show that the human mind is able to offer many different ways to quantitative perception of the world, each of which arises from everyday practice, and that the paradigm adopted by contemporary mathematics is in fact only one of possibilities. The main research methods used by the author include generalization, logical and historical methods, as well as a comparative analysis. The novelty of the research is caused by the fact that it reveals the unity of ideas expressed in ethnomathematical researches that deal with the problems of occurrence and development of "experimental" mathematics as well as researches in the field of socio-cultural philosophy of mathematics. It is shown that these results support the idea of Spengler about the dependence of the forms of knowledge on human conditions of existence, about existence of not one but several mathematics, each of which is rooted in their own culture, as well as the ideas of the representatives of the Marburg Neo-Kantian School about mathematics being the "first principle" of thinking. The author of the article concludes that researches in the field of ethnomathematics, and in a broader context, as part of the socio-cultural approach to mathematical knowledge, are most effective when considering mathematics in terms of its historical development; that their results can serve as an additional argument in favor of mathematical empiricism in its confrontation with the mathematical apriorism. 

Keywords: philosophy of mathematics, universality, sociocultural philosophy, neofundamentalist approach, thinking, mathematics, fundamentalist approach, culture, contextualism, ethnomathematics

Abstract: The object of the research is psychological safety of school students in terms of cross-cultural education. Today many Russian schools have students of various nationalities and ethnic backgrounds. Understanding the uniqueness of their nationality, some school students express intolerance towards representatives of other nations which creates threats to psychological safety. The present article presents the results of the pilot study which targets were to define the level of psychological safety of school students in the cross-cultural education environment and to describe criteria that influence school psychological safety. 127 7th- and 8th-grade students aged 13 - 14 years participated in the research. Those were children who studied in different schools and lived in different regions, either in cities or country-side, with the different level of industry, science nd culture. The criteria of school psychological safety were the following: satisfaction with the education environment, feeling protected from psychological violence and self-confidence. In order the define the correlation between the aforesaid criteria and integral indicator of psychological safety, the author has calculated the pair correlation (r-Pearson correlation). The results of the research have allowed to define the present level of psychological safety for all 127 respondents as well as to compare indicators of psychological safety at the schools participating in the research. The analysis of the results prove that feeling protected is the factor that has the most influence on the level of psychological safety in the cross-cultural education environment. In its turn, the feeling of being protected is influeced by the high level of comfort of the psychological atmosphere, mutual help and support as well as the low level of aggression demonstrated by classmates and peers. 

Keywords: satisfaction with the education environment, feeling protected, self-confidence, education establishment, psychological atmosphere, mutual help, psychological safety, education environment, cross-cultural education

Abstract: In her article Murzina discusses the phenomenon of open education as a projection of the model of open society. The key concept of "freedom" is revealed as the freedom of choice of educational strategies and content of education. Prospects of education development are associated with new directions attributable to the globalized culture of the information society. These directions include transformation of the educational process, interactivity, adaptability to the qualification level of learners, and e-learning. One of the phenomena of globalization in education is the MOOC (massive open online courses) and a new quality of open universities. The author of the article discusses development of open education based on the example of the open pedagogical university. The author applies the methodology of discursive analysis that reveals the relationship between language concepts and sociocultural environment. The author relies on simulation methods and analysis of educational systems. The novelty of the research is caused by the fact that the author discusses the phenomenon of open education as a cultural phenomenon of the information society, defines vectors, prospects and risks of open education. The author of the article outlines the prospects of education: high technology, changing nature of communication (teacher–student, students–parents, school–society, business-education), new directions for continuing education and implementation of the idea of lifelong education. 

Keywords: prospects of education development, Education 2030, foresight, massive open online courses, open university, information society, open education, open society, e-learning

Abstract: The article states the results of studying the personal maturity of adult learners and the features of their motivation to study foreign languages. The purpose of this work is to reveal the characteristics of personal maturity which are closely correlated with the level of motivation to study, and as a consequence to increase the effectiveness of teaching process. This research is very urgent as, on the one hand, it is necessary to improve the pedagogical effectiveness of teaching foreign languages of adult learners because cross-cultural interaction and international contacts between different states and nationalities are expanding today in the modern world. On the other hand, the issue of motivation to study foreign languages by adult learners has been studied insufficiently, there are practically no andragogical recommendations in the academic literature regarding how to teach foreign languages. To solve these tasks the authors of the article used different personal maturity tests developed by foreign psychologists and scientists of our country such as Yury Gilbukh's personal maturity inventory, self-actualization SAT test, Arthur Reana's and Vladimir Yakunin's questionnaire. To analyze the compared variables, the authors have applied the standard mathematical method of correlation analysis which is based on the calculation of Pearson correlation coefficient. The scientific novelty is caused by the fact that the authors conduct an empirical study of the relationshp between motivation to study demonstrated by adults and the level of their personal maturity (which, according to the authors, is the factor of their 'maturity'). The reasearch revealed a certain correlation between the motivation to study by adult learners and the level of their personal maturity. On the basis of these results, it is possible to give recommendations to teachers concerning the ways to increase the motivation to study foreign languages by adult learners.

Keywords: foreign language, motivation to study, personal maturity, adult education, training effect, career motivation, personality questionnaire, experimental research, andragogy, teaching adults

Abstract: The content of the concept of “communication success” is described in the article. Communication success is considered to be not as the characteristic of personality but as tge characteristic of activities and more exactly of the communicative act. This approach comes from the field methodological paradigm which describes the intrinsic feature of psychical processes in terms of their activity nature. That extends the sphere of knowledge about the features of communicatively successful behavior. The subject of the research is the communicative act. The object of the research is success as the characteristic of the communicative act. The author pays special attention to the activity nature of communication success. The research is based on Kurt Lewin's field theory as well as Alexey Leontiev's activity theory. For the first time in the academic literature communication success is viewed not as a personal trait but characteristic of the communicative field. The author comes to the conclusion that psychological content of the concept of “communication success” implies orientation at an interlocutor and achievement of communication targets including improving the quality of relations between communicants. The results of the research can be used by psychologists and teachers of psychology, especially, psychology of communication, conflictology and other disciplines. The author’s approach to the communicative act as an action taking place in the communicative field opens the possibilities for organizing more effective communication including communication in the process of education. 

Keywords: interlecutor, communication targets, efficiency, speech act, speech, activity, communication, communicative field, communication success, communication act

Abstract: Constructive or cooperative nature of social communicaton is one of the basic values of a healthy society. The problem of teaching these values to the growing generations is one of the most important and nettlesome. However, actual relations are far from being ideal. As the history shows, competition, rivalry and conflicts are a social norm. Such grounds of social relations are of paradoxical nature and provide both destruction and, quite unexpectedly, success. However, almost always they are the reason for suffering and experiencing negative emotions such as vanity, greed, envy, and hatred. The present article is devoted to the analysis of the competitive side of academic interaction and can serve as a pedagogically important illustration to the topic of teaching the culture of dialogue and cooperation. Using the methods of historical and philosophical analysis, the author of the article describes bright historical cases and analyzes history, phenomenology and psychological mechanisms of conflicts arising between scientists in the process of their scientific search. The author concludes that competition has certain potential but only if it is of constructive nature and based on a good dialogue, intelligence, human dignity and commitment. 

Keywords: scientific priority, scientific progress, history of science, philosophy of science, hatred, conflict, cooperation, dialogue, competition, rivalry