Home – Home – Jornals – "Philosophy of Education" 2015 number 2

The paper deals with the cultural and historical roots and the genesis of the research education concept from the perspective of the knowledge society development. The challenge is to clarify the origin of the modern model of science education of a research type and to determine the trends of its development. The preamble shows the key role of research education in the development of the knowledge society. The socioeconomic framework of the knowledge society is the creation of new knowledge and its innovative use. This is a result of the research function of thinking which is fostered by the science education of a research type. Such education uses methods of cognition inherent in scientific research; it is instituted in the cluster-online forms and distributed in educational and scientific innovative environment. Modern education, both higher and secondary, while moving towards the knowledge society, acquires a paradigmatically differentiated structure. Research education becomes its cultural-producing locus, which provides an end-to-end prevailing character of education in secondary and higher educational institutions that was previously separated. I. Kant put the search and «public presentation of the truth», which are usually provided by the Department of Philosophy, into the idea of University. Later, through the Department of Philosophy, natural sciences penetrated into the university education. In the 19th century, the Humboldt University of Berlin was built on the idea of connection between research and teaching rather than between research and education. The University in the industrial epoch required the student’s participation in research, which was becoming a part of the learning process. However, its mission was education and research, i.e., the searching work was a part of training, but did not determine its content and structure as a whole. At the end of the 20th century, scientific research became a genetic part of the university education of a research type in which research was used as a training method. They began to form the learning process and cognitive thinking. The influence of the «Russian school of training for engineers», formed in the second half of the 19th century in IMTU (now the Bauman MSTU), on the genesis of the research education concept in the world is shown in the present paper. The conceptual principles of the new educational episteme are examined, which were formulated in the theory of knowledge society, the theory having been created by P. Drucker in 1940-1960-ies. Drucker's ideas on the innovation system of society have been implemented by the beginning of the new century in the Western universities, which began to play a leading role in the commercial development of scientific knowledge and became a key link in implementing the ideology of research excellence in the EU. The studies conducted in the United States and Western Europe, have shown the fundamental role of secondary education in the formation of research competences. To implement this task, it is necessary to form educational partnerships of schools, universities and research organizations to build successive training based on the principles of investigative cognition. The analysis of traditional ideas, proceeding from I. Kant and W. Humboldt, shows that such a task is new to the school institution. The issues of enhancement of the socio-cultural space have been actively discussed since the middle of the 20th century. During this period, the task of creative teaching of schoolchildren began to be resolved in the United States at the State level; in a number of European countries, the evolution in the direction of using education as a means to identify and train talented and gifted children from all social groups was taking place. In the 80’s, the promotion of research activities in school became an integral part of human potential development policies implemented by the European Commission. In Russia, the development of modern models of research education in secondary and higher educational institutions started to be implemented under the influence of «The Step into the Future» Program in the early 1990’s. Thus, the educational institution of a research type - the university and school - appears at the end of the industrial era, in the late 20th century. Research education is being formed as a separate part of the paradigmatically differentiated system of education in the society developing towards the knowledge society.