On February 15, the author’s session Instructional Strategies in the City was held by staff members of the MCU’s Research Institute of Urban Studies and Global Education, within the forum Sustainable Development as a Way to Improve Territories. The session discussed how families can actively re-think the opportunities of the modern education system.
Elena Nekhorosheva, Head of the Laboratory of Urban Health and Wellbeing, initiated the session. In her presentation, Elena Nekhorosheva pointed out the latest trends in the development of instructional strategies and emphasized the role of the pandemic that had provoked the reconsideration of conventional relations between the family and the school and increased the level of parents’ involvedness in the learning process.
Olga Galuzina, Expert at the Methodological and Scientific Office for Design and Development of Urban Initiatives, elaborated on how the parents’ lifestyle and their orientation of improving personal performance affect their choice of strategies for teaching children.
Vladimir Lvovsky, Head of the Laboratory of Activity-based Education Design, highlighted that, recently, more parents are aware of themselves as participants of the learning process and, consequently, choose a school for their children more thoroughly.
Elena Vostorgova, Director of The Project Design Center “Start Pro”, noted the increasing request to private schools for not only teaching regular skills and knowledge but also for cultivating the learning skills. Elena Vostorgova says that “flexibility and variability of the learning formats, personalization, and personal expert support are becoming more relevant”.
Ivan Klimov, Leading Research Fellow at the Center for Analytical Research and Modeling in Education, discussed the findings of the research on how new living quarters are provided with educational facilities. The team led by Elena Nekhorosheva carried out the study at the request of Moscow City Duma. Ivan Klimov underlined that “the city administration shall take complex measures and monitor their fulfillment to ensure easy access to schools and kindergartens”.
Svetlana Kopnina, Head of the Office at the Research and Project Institute “Moscow Urban Plan“, compared the access to educational facilities in Moscow, Abu Dhabi, Delhi, London, Brisbane, and Hong Kong. The speaker noticed that the size of the territory of an educational institution does not affect learning performance but contributes to the flexibility of the learning process and the quality of education.
Ekaterina Barsukova, Research Fellow at the Laboratory of Educational Infrastructures, argued that the school is becoming a more accessible environment for communication between adolescents and may become the so-called “third place” and a space for social activities in the neighborhood.
Elizaveta Martynova, General Director of the Agency for the Development of Human Capital through Development Projects Trend Hunter Russia, moderated the session.
See the session on YouTube: