DESCRIPTORS:
Educational environment; open-education; educational processes; practical humanism; values; moral education; character development; teacher development; Russian national identity; authorial school; patriotism formation; profession of teacher

SYNOPSIS:
The article describes Karakovsky and Grigoryev’s project of creating an open educational environment that will challenge and support the socio-political development of all students, parents, and teachers, as well as stimulate their growth and broaden their world outlook. This means the creation of a school culture where all four primary processes: teaching, educating, socializing and becoming mature are balanced and kept in harmony.

The authors believe that their concept goals and strategic plans can be achieved through three interconnected projects: 1) Strengthening the school educational process to impact the formation of one’s world outlook and one’s Russian national identity; 2) Organizing the process of teaching to help integrate knowledge into one’s holistic world outlook; and 3) Transforming the space of social actions and responsible care of the students.

Karakovsky and Grigoryev expect that their students will accumulate an experience of independent social activities and will personally develop and grow; that they will learn to fulfill their own initiative, communicate with other social agents, escape violence, and pursue democracy. They anticipate that critical thinking and reflection; a deep understanding of such values as "school patriotism" and tolerance; and skills of self-organization, self-management, and project activities will continue to develop. Their graduates will know how to establish partnerships and cooperative relationships with each other and with adults; how to work in teams; and how to respect the principles of group cooperation.

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I. CONCEPT OF DEVELOPMENT[1]

I.1. Primary project idea

Our idea is to create an open educational environment that will challenge and support the socio-political development of all students, their parents and their teachers, as well as stimulate growth and broaden their world outlook. This task should be completed within the value system of so-called "practical humanism."

When we use the term, "an open educational environment," we mean such a school culture where all four primary processes: teaching, educating, socializing, and becoming mature, are balanced and kept in harmony. Openness of the educational environment means putting the school into active cooperation with other Moscow social institutions.

I.2. Foundational ideas of the project

Our students, their parents, and teachers are oriented towards the creation of "a school of practical humanism."Pedagogy of practical humanism is grounded in one’s efforts to nurture and cultivate one’s human nature without dependence on any authority, edification, or imposition. In other words, it is based on supporting the process of one’s self-determination. It is only now that we can watch this shift in publicschools from indoctrination and authority to humanism (in contrast to a few innovative schools.)

Our school No. 825 is fulfilling its mission and pursuing its goals in line and in cooperation with two more schools of the same type: Moscow School No.1274 named after Mayakovsky[3] and School No. 18 in the city of Ioshkar-Ola[4].

The primary focus is on our students in whom we are developing an attitude to the world, other people, and themselves that is based on true humanistic values. Our professional position is based on our understanding that if schools do not develop such attitudes, then there is a serious danger that another, opposing attitude, arising from non-humanistic values (or anti-values) will take its place. All educators today should be aware of this danger.

Attitudes to the world based on: values anti-values

Objects, attitudes (values)	How do students express their value attitudes to different objects? (Indicators of one’s personal growth)	How do students express their anti-value attitudes to different objects? (Indicators of one’s personal recourse)
Attitude to the world:
Family	Respect for one’s family traditions, proud to be part of one’s family	Absence of one’s social basis, ignoring responsibilities to continue one’s family
Motherland	Patriotism, civic feelings	Social dependence
Earth	Love of nature, careful use of its resources	Consumer’s attitude to nature and its resources
Peace	Peace-making and rejection of any violence	Militarism
Labor	Hard work, attempts to be creative	Laziness
Culture	Intelligence and politeness, good manners	Culturally-deprived behavior, rudeness, vandalism
Knowledge	Curiosity	Ignorance
Attitude to other people
A human being as he or she is (similar to what I am)	Humanity	Cruelty
A human being as another one (as an alternative Ego, not me)	Altruism	Selfishness
A human being as someone different (not similar to me)	Tolerance	Xenophobia, nationalism, racism
Attitude to oneself
I – my body	Care for one’s health, attempts to pursue a healthy life>	Addiction to bad habits, negative attitude to one’s health
I – my soul	"Self-acceptance," one’s inner health	Insufficiency of self, Inferiority complex
I – my spirituality	Freedom as the main trait of one’s spiritual being, which includes independence, self-determination, and self-realization	Absence of freedom, a "social pawn."

If Russian education is planning to succeed, it should consider the ideas developed by Victor Slobodchikov,[5] who believes that education is a unity of four processes:

• Character development and moral education: a purposeful influence on the formation of one’s motivational-value sphere.
• Teaching: a purposeful influence on the formation of one’s symbols-operational sphere.
• Socialization: a child in an educational environment is affected by both organized and spontaneous socialization.
• Maturing: every child goes through certain age-related stages within the educational system of his or her school.

All four processes take place in every educational institution. Innovative schools differ from regular ones because they choose one leading process out of the four and use it as a stimulus, a trigger, and a challenge for the other three. It is not a new idea. Some Moscow schools have been working in this mode for quite a while. Regardless of one’s legal-organizational, school type (comprehensive school, gymnasium, lyceum, center of formation, etc.,) innovative schools could also be defined as "schools of teaching," "schools of character development and moral education," "schools of maturing," or "schools of socialization."

Our school, legally named as "Center of Formation No. 825," is referred to as "a school of character development and moral education," which means that the school is oriented towards the character development of its students. Three other processes: teaching, maturing, and socialization are supplementary to the first one. They depend on it and influence it at the same time.

The theoretical basis of our "center of formation" or "school of practical humanism" is the theory of educational systems developed by a research group under the supervision of the late Dr. Ludmilla Novikova[6].

I.3. Program of development: priority goals

The priority goals are to develop and form:

• Respect for other people, for their rights and freedoms; readiness to defend one’s own honor and dignity, as well as the honor and dignity of other people; resist destructive and anti-social processes.
• Universal learning abilities and competencies that allow students to integrate knowledge into their humanistic world outlook.
• Well-developed Russian identity that includes patriotism, civic self-consciousness, and tolerance; and also the opportunity for a responsible self-determination in the modern culture.
• A preference for: free and responsible social actions; personal experience of democratic behavior; responsible care of one another; and creative-collective activities.

I.4. Strategic directions of change

To fulfill the above-mentioned goals, it is necessary:

• To increase the potentials of character development in terms of forming a student’s world outlook; make the formation of one’s Russian national identity a priority goal in the character development process.
• To redirect the process of teaching and to base it on an understanding of the importance of knowledge and of integrating knowledge into one’s world outlook.
• To create an atmosphere, free and friendly to student innovations, and oriented towards responsible social actions.

I.5. Expected results

New formations in student development, new character traits and features will appear:

Positive dynamics of one’s personal growth; mastering ways which allow non-violent actions and democratic behavior, critical consciousness, skills of self-organization, self-government, project activities; understanding the value of school patriotism and tolerance; personal motivational "mechanisms" of learning; experience of self-learning, self-determination, and self-development in school cognitive activities; an ability to work in a team, and group cooperation skills.

New ideas to be brought into the content, forms and methods of educational activities will arise:

Improvement of the teachers’ professional skills, development of their professional consciousness and their understanding of the tutor’s position; meta-subject system of home assignments; description of the "communicative picture" of one’s class in different school subjects; revealing the values’ content of modern natural-science and humanitarian subjects; forms of humanizing the teaching management and evaluation process of students at various age-related steps of their formation.

New formations in school management will come forth:

• Increase in the efficiency of any administrative decisions while preserving the quality of humanistic attitudes between all "human subjects" of the educational system.
• Catalogue opportunities and risks connected with diversification of the school educational process.
• Creation of the concept and technology of managing the school development as a humanistic educational system.

II. CONCEPT REALIZATION

II.1. Brief analysis of the initial school state

Secondary Comprehensive School No. 825 (since 2006 – the Center of Formation No. 825) was founded in April 1970. It was a typical public school in a typical residential area of Moscow’s southeastern suburb. During the past twenty-nine years, the school has been functioning in a creative mode, and it has proved to be an authorial school. Schoolteachers are known for steady and highly professional results.

The school represents an educational establishment of the mixed type. Along with traditional classes, it has advanced classes, profile classes, and classes that combine various curriculum plans and programs. The professional and research levels of the teachers are very high. The school solves its personnel problems itself. About half of all teachers are former school students and graduates (see: table 1 below).

Table 1

Graduation year	A number of graduates	Enrolled in different colleges	Moscow State Teachers’ Training University and other teachers’ training colleges
2001/02	72	66	22
2002/03	76	74	28
2003/04	80	75	18
2004/05	74	65	11
2005/06	70	57	14

For the past twenty-nine years the school has also worked as a laboratory school, mostly in cooperation with the Institute of Theory and History of Education.[8] The school and its work were described in ten books and in over seventy different Russian and international publications. Four international, twelve All-Russian, and eight Moscow conferences were held in the school building.

Widely famous in Russia and abroad, the school can boast a very effective humanistic educational system, based on global and national values. The existing educational system provides the school with stable and positive results in developing student personality. It expands the limits of self-realization for many students through a number of different extracurricular activities and optional courses. However, a number of problems still exist.

Our school today experiences the following problems:

A more complicated nature of cooperation with student families. Many families are very pragmatic in their outlooks, and their values contradict the school’s values and spirit.

Values of "a consumer society" have penetrated into our children’s hearts and lives, mostly due to our mass media and the Moscow life>

Preparing graduates of elementary grades to enter middle grades. Because of a separate building for elementary students, the process of adaptation of the small ones to their new "middle school" status is difficult.

The prestige of the teacher’s profession as a possible future occupation, especially among young men, is dramatically decreasing.

The school campus has never been renovated because of a constant construction work going on around it. As a result, we have neither good sports grounds nor good jogging areas.

The program that we describe in this article is oriented towards solving some of the above-mentioned issues and towards increasing the institutional status of the school.

II.2. Model of concept realization

We suggest that concept goals and strategic plans can be achieved through three interconnected projects which are described below:

Strengthening the school educational process to impact the formation of one’s world outlook and ones’ Russian national identity.

Organizing the process of teaching to help integrate knowledge into one’s holistic world outlook.

Transforming the environment of social actions and responsible care of the students.

The projects are presented according to the following logic:

What has already been done.

Potential innovative activities within the project framework.

Expected results.

Projects:

II.2.1. Strengthening the school educational process to impact the formation of one’s world outlook and ones’ Russian national identity:

A. What has already been done

Over a number of years, the process of character development and moral education in our school has been developed through a system of what we call "key school activities." The form and the content of these activities help to bring the values of practical humanism into the minds and hearts of our students.

These activities are complex in their nature, and they embrace both the process of teaching and extracurricular activities. We organize them once a month. All the students from grades one to eleven, schoolteachers, many parents, and graduates participate.

There are a number of compulsory steps in every key activity: their collective (or mass participation) development, collective planning, collective fulfillment, and collective analysis of the achieved results. At every step and at every stage, children and adults work togetheras equal partners who are allowed to initiate activities. This helps to develop children’s organizational, communicational and reflective skills, as well as their creativity and responsibility.

The primary and most important structure participating in creative key school activities is the class group.Methods and ways of involving students in preparing these activities can vary, but they should always be based on group cooperation which by itself assigns students to fulfill a number of different roles and helps to develop their personal potential.

Different class groups receive a number of opportunities to cooperate with each other while preparing creative key activities. In its turn, it helps to increase their mutual development: students’ groups that are in the process of developing into a true children’s collective can do it more efficiently, and those who are at the stage of mature group formation receive encouragement for new ideas.

Some examples of key school activities in operation at the moment include the following:

• Tourist-excursion day
• Pushkin’s[9] month
• A celebration of songs
• KVN[10] of the graduates
• Teenagers’ camp assembly
• A festival of knowledge
• A camp assembly of high school students
• A festival to honor the school
• Victory Dawn.

Of these, the "camp assembly" of high school students plays a very special role in the key activities. Regardless of how long it has been used at school, this activity remains very effective. Every year we seem to find new ways of using it in the process of developing student humanistic world outlook.

Acamp assemblyis a temporary and mixed community (children together with young adults and adults) that lives, for a few days, in a very intensive way. Participants are involved in different collective, creative activities for the good of the society and every human being. The assembly inherits its customs and traditions from the communards,[11] and it carries out primary values of care, etc. It does not have any pragmatic value. This is an independent "entity" with its own values of kindness, honor, and justice, shared by children, teenagers, and adults. The assembly is an attempt to create very positive human relationships. This is a project for a better future, based on social and spiritual Russian foundations.

During the year we usually have two camp assemblies: a one-day-long within the school in January, and a three-day-long in March, somewhere outside Moscow.

There are four main groups of participants at every camp assembly:

Young campers – grades five to seven

Senior campers – grades seven to eleven

"Old" campers – school graduates (college students, young professionals) who are allowed by the Big Camp Assembly Council to be helpers and consultants of primary teams and who usually have their own team of "seniors"

"Camper-teachers" -teachers who are confirmed by the Big Camp Assembly Council as senior mentors and consultants. They usually position themselves as a separate pedagogical team.

Each camp assembly has a profound impact on student personality development and world outlook. This happens through:

• Activities of different mixed-aged teams which are formed a month before the camp assembly in order to conduct intensive preparations for the camp assembly itself.
• Joint collective, creative activities which are arranged during the camp assembly and which bring together teams composed of mixed-aged students (i.e. - Primary Philosophic Activity, Primary Creative Activity, etc.).
• Following laws, traditions, and regulations of the camp assembly.
• Establishing a certain symbolic atmosphere due to certain symbols, attributes and songs; every camp assembly has its own.
• Diversity of roles that are available for every participant (i.e. -"an inspirer of ideas," a stage director, a producer, an organizer, an active spectator, etc.).
• On-going reflection on events and relationships during the evening gatherings, discussions, etc.
• Participation in the camp assembly self-government bodies: Big Council and Small Council. The first is open to every participant; it discusses all the issues in a democratic way, makes most important decisions, and evaluates the camp assembly, all the teams, and responsible personalities. The Small Council unites only commissars and commanders-on-duty, representatives of the teams of seniors and "camper-teachers", etc.

B. Potential innovative activities within the project framework

For years our teachers have been working hard to form a humanistic, world outlook and a national, Russian, identity for our students. We have had a number of positive results. Recently this work has become extremely difficult because of the influence of mass media and mass communication systems, and because of the growing influence of consumerism on the Russian life>

Increase the importance or "educational eventfulness" in every collective creative activity. By "an educational event," we mean a certain moment when an adult and a student "meet," and this meeting helps a student to grow personally. Such a "meeting" does not happen every time students communicate with adults. It happens only in cases where adults orient their words and actions towards the values and goals of the younger generation, and when children freely choose "to be and to communicate" with this very adult "here and now." When we plan creative collective activities, we do it in a way that is quite different from typical regular educational activities. In our situation, together with planning certain activities, we also plan a type of communication and the relationships we will build with the students. We keep in mind that these relationships and activities should provoke the development of our students’ self-determination. Such types of relations or educational situations are open. They don’t have a "fixed" scenario of activities. They allow teachers to expose several variants of communication and behavior. We are planning to conduct classes for schoolteachers on how to "write scenarios" for different educational activities.

Create new "content" for patriotic education (a transition from "patriotism of pride" to "patriotism of magnanimity.") When we say, "Russian identity," we mean that instead of such phrases as "this country," "these people," "this city," our students will say, "My country, my people, my city." The goal to form one’s Russian national identity unites several traditional and new objectives: to develop student civic consciousness, patriotism, and tolerance together with mastery of their native languages and native cultures.

Patriotism is extremely important for human self-determination. It makes it clear that one should, once and forever, either fix upon oneself and one’s own personal boundaries within one’s national entity, or concentrate on oneself, acceptonly one’s own uniqueness, and refuse to feel oneself as part of a bigger whole.

We believe that many modern approaches to patriotic education are extremely old-fashioned because they are based on a subjective pride for something "belonging only to us" in contrast to anything that belongs to "others." This is so different from the modern global way of thinking. There is another approach that is quite opposite to the first one. It is based on the ideology of "post-liberalism." The followers of this approach have a very selective attitude towards national pride. They are proud of anything bright and positive, from their point of view, in our history and in today’s events. At the same time, they tend to keep silent or ironically criticize "dark" spots, events, and people.

In our opinion, patriotism is not at all about pride. It is about magnanimity as "a capacity to absorb and accept the whole world the way it is, and to allow oneself to not be satisfied with only one person – oneself. "Magnanimity is freedom and power to manage oneself and one’s own intentions because this is the only thing that belongs to us." (Mamardashvili[12]). Magnanimity is not a sign of feebleness; rather it is a sign of power to accept the world in all its different manifestations.

Patriotism of pride is selective. It does not accept any country’s history and culture as a whole. Rather, it splits it into something worthy and something unworthy. On the contrary, patriotism of magnanimity does not choose or pick up anything. It allows one to be part of everything; to be proud of the good and to suffer the bad.

We believe that the formation of patriotism of magnanimity is based on the following principles and ideas:

Patriotism is the feeling of belonging to everything in one’s culture and civilization. This is a feeling of joy for everything that allows one’s country to develop. This is a painful regret and an attempt to overcome feelings and events that bring misunderstanding to our own people and to the world community.

The primary principle of patriotic education is problem-solving. Teachers should construct such situations that make their students analyze difficult events, define their personal positions, and build skills of communication with those holding different attitudes.

Dialogues and discussions are the most important ways of developing patriotism. It does not mean that students should be ready to argue for their own position, but they should remember the difference and make their choices. The teacher, who is conducting such a dialogue, should ask himself, "Do my students really understand what they have chosen? Are they fully aware of their positions and contrary points of view?" In any discussion the teacher should try to expose students to a lot of information, but let them make their own choices.

Patriotic education should be diversified. Together with military[13]-patriotic, it should also be culture-oriented, science-related, sports-connected, etc.

Patriotism of magnanimity is a profound source for developing tolerance. We believe that one’s capacity to accept and tolerate one’s own imperfections permits one to be tolerant of the imperfections of another person.

Allow for the self-determination of teenagers and young adults through strategies for "educational support." Our school has been closely involved in developing different educational strategies that allow us to form tolerance and cultural self-determination, and to provoke one’s search for one’s purpose in life. Our plan for the next two years is to make these technologies ready for use not only by our teachers but also by different schools across Russia. When we mention the term "educational support," we primarily mean the concept suggested by the late Oleg Gazman[14] who considered that educational support allows one "to define a certain problem and to indirectly help a student in solving this problem."Our technologies are grounded in the general concept of "educational support" and on the principle of problem solving using "cultural texts" within it. The word "text" here is given in its widest sense, meaning material from the arts: literature, cinema, music; as well as that coming from the mass media: television, newspapers, youth magazines, etc.; and finally, texts from youth subculture.

Educational support coming from teachers to students is a step-by-step process:

The teacher introduces a cultural text to a mini-group or a class group as part of the process of building relationships with them. Such a "text" colors the relationships with certain values and problems, and also stimulates student thinking.

The teenager builds his or her own initial understanding or misunderstanding of the "text."

The teacher helps to create a situation that stimulates the student’s reflection and understanding.

Then conflicting views of the same situation are introduced. They allow the teacher to construct an exchange of ideas based on an acceptance of differences. They also allow the building of an "entity" of students and teacher where the teacher plays the role of a reflective professional. While exchanging different ideas, students come to understand the necessity of cooperation or competition among different positions, and the necessity for the acceptance of similar positions.

Reflection or review of the process completes the cycle.

Even after the process is over, it is actually never over for the teacher and the students. A teenager will continue to process and rethink these ideas in real-life situations, and this is exactly what any teacher wants. Now the student is ready for self-determination because he or she has mastered all the necessary steps of the process (understanding, creating a problem, communication, reflection) and ways (texts, the position of an adult, etc.) Student abilities to master the above-mentioned skills will improve if teachers manage to create such relations in different educational circumstances on the basis of different cultural texts.

C. Expected results

As for students, we expect to observe their personal growth, development of their humanistic world outlook, and a positive, Russian, national identity. Teachers will master different methods of creativity: educational support for teenagers’ self-determination; strategies of developing their humanistic world attitudes; and methods of building "patriotism of magnanimity." Teachers themselves will also grow professionally.

II.2.2. Organizing the process of teaching to help the integration of knowledge into one’s holistic world outlook.

The teaching process in modern Russian schools is becoming more and more diversified. The content of subjects is also changing. On the one hand, this creates new opportunities for teaching, educating, and developing students. On the other hand, there is the danger of the disintegration of education; of losing the systematic aspect and connection between teaching, socializing, and character development.

A. What has already been done

During the last twenty years we managed to accumulate a number of forms, ways, and methods that allow the combination of teaching and character development. They are:

• Group projects
• "Public Knowledge Review"
• Cross-disciplinary and integrated classes
• Mixed-aged classes
• Creative work, students’ research
• Providing choices for teachers
• Teacher-students’ cooperation in arranging classes
• Integrative tests
• Role-play games
• Brainstorming
• Research conferences, briefings
• Use of creative, collective activities in the teaching process
• "An Hour of Questions and Answers"
• An oral magazine "Wonders Near Us"
• "What? Where? When?"
• Didactic fairy-tales
• "Subject Adventures"
• "An Auction of Knowledge"
• Didactic theatre
• "An ABC of Human Knowledge"
• Field trips, excursions
• "Reading City"
• History games
• Fantasy projects
• "Festival of Knowledge."

B. Potential innovative activities within the project framework

Presently, we consider that the integration of knowledge into student world outlook is extremely important, and to do this we use the following:

Creative "retro-innovations." We plan to radically restore and "give a second chance" to such old methods as didactic theatre, "Public Knowledge Review," "Deep into the Epoch," and field trips.

Explicit "values’ content" of subject knowledge. The idea is to systematize methods and sources that allow for a clear understanding of the values content of every school subject.

Cross-disciplinary integration on the basis of a module-type of school subject syllabi. The importance of this work is even more critical today when schools are supposed to provide students with subject-oriented teaching but at the same time to keep secondary education universal in nature. In this respect, we are planning to prepare a catalogue of subject modules open to cross-disciplinary integration.

Provoking self-cognition, self-determination, self-realization, self-development, and mutual co-development of students within the limits of every class. All the above-mentioned processes, starting with the word "self," become quite specific when applied to the teaching process. For example, self-realization in this content is an expression of one’s creative potential in teaching assignments and more widely – in every teaching situation. To be able to "launch" these processes, it is important for a teacher to:

Use teaching methods that are adequate for a number of processes, starting with "self-…"

Preserve the personally-oriented and communication-oriented nature of every class.

Be a true professional with an attractive personal image.

We are also planning to develop a system of meta-subject assignments, which will permit us to provide every student with everything necessary for maximum self-cognition, self-determination, self-realization, self-development, and mutual co-development.

C. Expected results

We expect that students will develop personal "tools" to stimulate their own learning; that they will acquire a genuine experience of self-cognition, self-determination, self-realization, and self-development. We expect them to know how to conduct a "learning" dialogue; how to reflect on their activities in a problem-solving way; and how to develop skills of learning, self-control, and self-evaluation. As a result, we also plan to develop a meta-subject system of assignments oriented towards self-cognition, self-determination, self-realization, self-development, and mutual co-development of our students and a description of a communicative picture of every class, regardless of the subject. We foresee the possibility of defining values content of modern science and humanitarian subjects and to systematize all possible ways of humanizing the evaluation of the teaching process at every school grade and age.

II.2.3 Transforming the space of social actions and responsible care of the students

Today, our system of education is facing a number of social challenges. It is evident that schools tend to loose their educational influence on the younger generation. This influence is replaced by mass media, social surroundings, and by how our life is organized in the wider, social sphere. As a result, we observe an increase of negative tendencies, such as infantilism and the inability of youth to make responsible decisions and act on them. As our system of education does not possess any real tools that will make the process of socializing children and young adults efficient, the next generation falls under the influence of the most active social agents (not schools) and loses interest in participating in school, city, or national activities.

A. What has already been done

Our camp assemblies proved to have a strong social influence on high school students (see: II.2.1). Within the boundaries of such assemblies, we always hold a number of socially oriented activities, such as "labor landing," "debate-club," etc. In this respect, camp assemblies remain precious.

One additional school activity is the development of the "professional"pedagogical culture of our high school students; orienting them, at the secondary school level, towards the profession of the teacher. In this respect our high school students serve as true "social workers" and teachers’ partners in educating children from elementary and middle school grades. This type of work presupposes the following strategies:

Teaching our high school students certain abilities and skills that allow them to serve as tutors for younger children within the limits of mixed-aged assembly teams.

A systematic pre-professional training incorporated into profile classes oriented towards teaching. It includes:

• Teaching a number of advanced college classes like "School in the History of the Mankind: its Formation and Development;" "Great Russian Educators;" "The Basics of General and Child Psychology;" "Aesthetics of Everyday Life;" "Psychology of the Personality;" and "A Human Being in the Changing World."
• Public presentation and defense of student course work.
• Training sessions, role-playing, roundtable panels, and other interactive forms of communication with high school students in the role of future teachers.
• "Field practice" in elementary grades
• Group research projects
• Individual and group tutoring
• Probing classes
• Summer camp work.

Teenagers from grades eight to eleven participate in different activities of our Research Students’ Society in its "Psychology and Pedagogy" group.

B. Potential innovative activities within the project framework

While experimenting with different variants of student socialization, we have finally found the best. To us it is the creation of different social environments where students are exposed to probing activities and to actions that have a genuine social effect. These activities seem to be appropriate in the current sociopolitical situation as they help to raise the social responsibilities of every student.

These social environments should be arranged together with the following:

1) An "events" approach to children’s self-government. From a philosophic point of view, student self-government is a measure of children’s independence within the adult world. In a pragmatic way, self-government is a joint people-to-people activity, together with government and management. In the process of self-governing any institution, any group of people can gather together to define joint goals, objects, ways, and methods to meet those goals. While working together and communicating with each other, these people are destined to build a specific type of relationship, colored by cooperation and a developed "co-events" existence. Some time later, relationships based on this "co-events" existence, become the basis of further development and improvement of mutual activities. Modern psychology has proved that this type of existence and these relationships help children to develop into creative and unique personalities. School life is full of different events. In our opinion, students themselves can be involved in preparing, realizing, and reflecting on these events while being engaged in their school’s self-governing process.
But first and foremost students should be ready to accept the foundational ideas of the self-government of children. Here are some of them:

• Self-government is valid because children can learn the process of building democratic relationships and reflect on their meaning. Self-government does not mean including children into a typical bureaucratic pyramid – "a boss and his or her subordinates."
• Self-government combines both independent and joint activities for schoolchildren. This allows developing democratic relationships among students and creating possibilities for the civic and personal self-determination of teenagers and young adults.
• Creating a system of self-government is not a goal in itself. It is more like a form of stabilizing and optimizing self-governing processes in the environment of children. Such a system is very complicated and can appear only as a result of long-term collaborative work of teachers and children that usually allows for the definition of all the system’s elements and traits. Self-governing bodies do not represent a system. They serve only as its framework. The system can be considered built and developed when there are developed connections among all the elements; when the self-governing bodies in practice solve real school and student problems; and when students can feel independent at school. Only after that, can one start to realize some "mechanisms" of self-government. For this process we suggest a few key steps:

Step one. Diagnosing the interschool relationship environment.

This means diagnosing all types of interpersonal relationships, within each age group and among age groups. Usually there is a teachers’ group that initiates this process and involves some active students who are also ready to think and reflect on their school development. Together, they form a "diagnosing school servicegroup." Initiation of such a group as a team-explorer and a team-designer is the main goal of the starting process.

Step two. Designing and realizing "cases of self-government."

This stage shows a more developed form of the children’s "diagnosing school service group" that initiates some changes in school life. These are situations in self-government that can be fulfilled by students independently and in a self-governing mode.

Step three. Children’s self-government as a vector for developing all school and social events.

All school events that potentially can be realized through self-government should be a focus of children’s activities. Every event can "unfold" itself during the following stages:

• An announcement of a contest for a project of the best collective creative activity.
• Putting together temporary creative groups to prepare projects.
• Selecting the best project or the best designers of projects. The jurors are high school students.
• Composing a team that will work to implement the project.
• Actual teamwork in attracting all interested people.

This stage of self-government presupposes maintenance of formal democratic principles: personal responsibility; an attempt to reach an agreement; freedom of opinions; interchangeable nature of management positions; equality of opportunities, etc. All these principles should be formalized in a special document, "Regulations for School Self-Government."

2) Creation of a museum to be called, "School of Character Development," with the following goals and objectives:

• Forming a pedagogical culture as an important component of one’s general culture.
• Introducing teachers, students, and their parents to the history of pedagogical ideas and practice, and to the heritage of great educators.
• Developing students’ research and communication skills, helping to improve their creative self-realization.
• Generalizing best educational ideas from the past and present.
• Organizing contacts with similar schools in Russia and abroad.
• Forming the positive attitude of parents towards a school as a social institute and developing respect to teachers’ labor.

3)Social projects of "The Commonwealth of Campers"

"The Commonwealth" is a free unity of school students, graduates, and teachers oriented towards a practical realization of humanistic values, and towards a decent life>

Period one: (January-April) "Camp Assembly"

This includes preparing, performing, and analyzing a one-day teenagers’ camp and a three-day annual camp. During this time, "The Commonwealth" lives in accordance with the "team principle." The team head is a commissar who is elected and approved by the Big Council and a commander on-duty is elected by a certain team for a certain period of time. Teams initiate socially important activities within their school and in the surrounding area.

Period two: (May-December) "Between Camp Assemblies"

During this time all the ideas, initiatives and life>

Expected results

We expect that our students will accumulate an experience of independent social activities and will personally develop and grow. They will learn to fulfill their own initiatives, to communicate with other social agents, to escape violence, and pursue democracy. We anticipate that critical thinking and reflection; the deep understanding of such values as "school patriotism" and tolerance; and skills of self-organization, self-management and project activities will continue to develop. Finally our graduates will know how to establish partnerships and cooperative relationships with each other and with adults; how to work in teams; and how to respect the principles of group cooperation.