KEYWORDS:  social education, socialization, values, social educational practice.

ABSTRACT: This is an attempt to foretell the ways of developing social education in the future taking into consideration the objective nature of the social and individual changes, and the ways a personality can realize him/herself in the modern world. The author emphasizes key social educational tendencies that include the values’ aspect, the extension of the experience, a change in “the design” of social education, and the development of the sociality of an individual.

Modern social educational discourse is very broad and varied. It includes youth subcultural practices, patriotism, social networks as a factor of socialization, social differentiation of youth and childhood, and social and cultural identity of the young generation, among others. The state keeps an eye on them together with the public and an academic community [1; 3; 7]. Such "social educational turn" in modern education could be explained by the objective nature of challenges that create the need for a new model of education in the foreseeable future. These challenges include:

• the change of  sociality of the post-industrial society [the transformation of traditional (family, school), and the emergence of new institutions of socialization (media, subcultural community, network)];
• the strengthening of a consumer nature of modern life (reduction of the motivation for social participation, the prevalence of nihilistic attitudes, a deficit of humanistic values, and the growth of individualization);
• the Internet spread and the increase in digital technologies (changing patterns of conservation and transmission of social experience, and the process of managing one’s own development and individual values);
• different understanding of the role and place of social education (an economic feasibility of educational activities that becomes part of the formation of the social capital, and a social demand for monitoring educational activities).

But since the positions to discuss social education differ, it is fundamentally important to define an initial methodological framework, which sets the boundaries of subjective theoretical patterns of social education. Following the ideas of Anatoly V. Mudrik’s research school, I define social education as an integral part of the overall process of human socialization that helps to introduce an individual to the system of social and cultural values, through the assimilation of the norms and laws of the society in which this individual lives; and also through the process of self-determination, self-development, and self-realization in the suggested socio-cultural conditions [2].

Based on the foregoing, it can be argued that social education,

• is not the only the social practice that allows an individual to interact with the society, to modify it and to change oneself (there are other practices such as public, family, religious, political, etc. that also ensure the process of human socialization);
• always sets norms for developing certain individual qualities that allow him/her to acquire a sense of belonging to the community. This happens regardless of the humanistic potential of the education. At the same time social education of an individual becomes more subjective, providing more chances for self-realization, self-affirmation, etc.
• is a goal-oriented process provided by a certain group of people, and the participants of this activity – individuals, groups, or collectives who share different, often conflicting and opposing values;
• is inevitably limited by time and space, but at the same time it is carried out in the broader context of our everyday life, which is not always amenable to structuring, but it is always present, depending on the specific features of educational organizations [In more detail see 6].

To initially understand the essence of modern social education, one should understand the changes that take place in the society, in the lives of people in this world and in the ways they realize themselves in it. A famous Polish sociologist P. Sztompka defined the problem of social changes as one of the central in sociology in the last century. So according to this renowned researcher, “social changes” is a category that was often used “… to define situations of some "deviation" from the norm in the social development" [10, p. 226]. This seems to be extremely important because, as the author further emphasizes, "social reality is not a static condition but a dynamic process; it occurs and does not exist, it consists of events and not of objects" [Ibid]. New social groups come into sight, and the nature of these groups is not obvious; a new pace and new models of time shifting appear, new special living environment (new types of settlements, forms of transport links between them) emerge, and new forms of social interactions are being developed.  All this increases the "risk phenomenon" in the life of a modern individual. This phenomenon is becoming even more harmful due to the fact that not only risk factors increase today but their subjective perception also aggravates.

According to the futurological forecasts it is possible to add to these characteristics such new trends as [1]:

a) Informational transparency that is associated with the ability to monitor the behavior of an individual with the help of biometric bracelets, systems for monitoring one’s individual health (sports and fitness devices), and professional psycho-diagnostic and any other tests available at Google, Facebook, and the like.

b) The spread of the ideology of the so-called ‘new sincerity’, when everyone can get access to individual information about others in real time.

c) Augmented (alternative, gaming) reality, which invades our everyday life, deconstructs the real world, legitimizes the possibility of the existence of any extremely idealized reality based on the competition and the absolute lack of objective truths.

Such attributes of a modern social life are accompanied by confusion in value orientations. Research data confirms, the generation that grew up in gaming environments and had an experience of communication with virtual worlds, augmented reality and achieve-logic is prone to develop an extremely unstable and distorted system of values. This leads not only to the increase of deviant behavior, but also to the escalation of the intergenerational conflicts.

An individual in this changing world has also changed. To shape new ideas about social education today we need to understand the nature of changes that have occurred, and are occurring with young and growing individuals; the changes that have been discussed by medical doctors, psychologists, and physiologists.  I mean the changes in mental and psychomotor processes, and the adoption of new ways of finding information, forming new mass "skills" with the help of the Internet (S. D. Polyakov). All this leads to the formation of steady states such as medicalization, the changing age status of development, differentiation of children on various grounds (Fel'dshtein) [9]. As a result, the concept of “a normal child” gradually ceases to be productive in the educational discourse. This diminishes the idea of a norm, and brings about its new understanding. Now the norm could be a variety of different ways of children’s development. An adult (teacher, parent) should be ready to interact with special (or different) children: gifted in different areas, or with intellectual challenges that has become the basis for the development of special and inclusive education. All the aforementioned should turn into the strategy in the development of educational concepts and methods, and pedagogy [9; 11].

Social education itself undergoes changes. In traditional societies social education was carried out according to the custom and tradition, and was part of the lifestyle. In an industrial society social education existed as a certain standard created on the basis of established and controlled rules, laws, and regulations. But in a modern post-industrial society social education is happening in a constantly and dynamically changing situation that might provide an educational effect but might also fail to do so. It will depend on the participants involved in it, their values, life experiences, and the complex web of interrelations and activities.

Consequently, modern social education could be fundamentally various: public, religious, family, and dissocial (Mudrik), and in the long run it could become virtual, street-provided, subcultural, etc. Each of these types has its own goals, the nature of the interaction between the subjects and the methods of its implementation. However, the common denominator for all types of social education is their value component, because when we refer to social education, we mean an introduction to a certain system of values, which is transferred to the young by their tutors or teachers, and which these teachers consider basic for themselves and their own educational activities. And from this point of view, social education experiences a number of difficulties.

As Mudrik opines, in a traditional society values remain unchanged, and teachers should search for new ways and methods of preserving and transferring these values from their generation to a new one. In contrast, in modernized and unstable societies (that are undergoing the process of changes) social education faces new challenges of choosing which values to transfer and how. Modern people live in such circumstances as the split of values and an intergenerational gap. The latter raises the issue of global and eternal values and their combinability, and also an issue of complementing them with the values of a particular nature (ethnic, gender-related, political, religious, sexual, etc.). In this case, in order to promote global values in the youth environment we can use effective ICT solutions (for example, educational interactive online games and quests for students of different ages for the promotion of positive values).

The second important perspective of the development of social education will be expanding the experienceof productive behavior, and a personal participation in solving one’s own problems. Self-determination and making a choice are key components of anyone's life. The ability to make a choice and then act in accordance with it is very closely linked to the development of reflective capabilities, which require a dialogical model for a teacher-student’s interaction, as well as for the interaction among students. Consequently, it is necessary to have the ability to form such an interaction, to create the space and the content for a dialogue, to learn the ways and methods of organizing it. Quite obviously, a number of issues affecting a young person's life are solved outside the framework of traditional institutions – in informal groups, and groups of different age participants, and in subcultural communities which leads to the actualization of certain competences (social competences, transversal competences), based on a teamwork, cooperation, and the ability to resolve conflicts. The skills that allow working with people who possess different experience and different values, the ability to focus on personal and group interests become very important. This is the actual emphasis of communicative concepts (K. N. Schaeffer, B. Kramer) that are being generated in the framework of interactionism, and that are used to develop ways to eliminate psychological barriers for productive communication, and to organize group interaction [6]. "Communicative didactics” promotes students’ social and emotional development and thereby, enhances their role in their own socialization.

It is inevitable that social education should take into consideration the changes concerning its localization, environment, and space. It is not so much a real place (spatial localization) of social educational activities that is important but an event or a reason that triggered this joint action (social project, social action, game projects) and also a method of its implementation (scientific and creative theme parks, flash mobs). The social educational environment becomes a virtual society with all its benefits and risks. An important trend nowadays is a move from the fact that families and schools are primary agents of sociality (as it happens in traditional and industrial societies). Today they are substituted by new entities such as information and communication technologies, subcultural and online communities, which are beginning to play an increasingly important role in the development of the social education infrastructure.

What kind of a professional will be in demand in the sphere of social education? How can we train this professional? These questions have become one more trend of the social education discourse. It is critical to realize that to develop skills that would make a teacher a good educator, one needs to start dealing with his/her values with the emphasis on the ability to understand others and oneself, and to be prepared for establishing a dialogue. The development of this social educational potential should be targeted at accumulating social education competence of a teacher and mastering different languages of interaction. The latter will allow a teacher to perform various roles of a tutor, mediator, facilitator, or a coach. In its turn, this  involves changes in the traditional system of training teachers as social educators. As noted by V. P. Stepanov, N. L. Selivanova, and others, in order to increase professional teachers’ competences it is important to maintain the process of interaction with different professional communities while being placed into innovative educational institutions, or participating in various professional projects that allow to evaluate one’s own level, to share experiences, and in this way, to contribute to the positive image of modern education and a modern professional teacher [7].

An important tool for the development of professionalism in the field of social education should be to develop a criteria-based system for quality evaluation of social educational achievement results. We strongly support the idea about the general prospects of social education on its way to modernization, which is inevitably accompanied by standardization (A.M. Sidorkin) [8]. I can see how the learning standards are being developed together with standardized tests, quality system, etc. In order to make social education part of the reform agenda, we need, first of all, ‘an economic theory of social education,’ impossible without standardized procedures that will allow direct access to economically viable resources and costs of social education.

It  is not a secret that many of the effective methods that were developed in the theory of social education much earlier are pushed out and do not constitute part of the  activities of a modern teacher today, (for example, Anatoly N. Lukoshkin’s methods associated with the emotional component of the collective; or the so-called collective creative activity in its combination of collective planning, collective organization, collective preparation and analysis; and methods and ways of working with symbols and rituals of the educational organization, etc.). Today there is a need to revive, within the field of social education, such instruments that could better provide a difficult process of an individual formation in modern life, and in this regard to strongly consider various emotionally charged activities that can generate and support children’s activities, communities and youth movements, supplementary education, summer leisure time and living conditions, together with a socio-educational support, and symbolic culture of the educational organization.

This requires researchers’ reflection on the issues of what social education ‘can’ and ‘cannot’ do, regarding the fact that the boundaries of social education depend not only on its arrangements, but also on the spontaneous socialization, and a biogenetic disposition that defines human existence.

Obviously, we are moving towards a multi-vector, multi-subjective, discrete, and equally uncertain social education that mirrors the basic characteristics of our time. This social education creates opportunities for the implementation of different social educational practices that mix the interests and needs of various stakeholders – a society in its wide social meaning, a state, a family, social groups and an individual. All this has an influence on the scales and forms of implementation of social education. In the situation of an increasing "social context" the need for an interdisciplinary cooperation with other social studies in the development of goals and objectives of the social educational activity becomes vital.

References

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This publication was supported by the grant from the Russian Humanitarian Science Foundation, Project #16-06-00659.