This is a very special journal issue – for the first time we have given all of it over to young researchers and to those who are just starting their academic activities. This is an opportunity for them to introduce themselves and their work to the wider world. The idea of this journal came to us long time ago. We always wanted to launch a productive dialogue among young researchers in education and psychology from Russia and the United States but every time something prevented it. Finally, we are publishing the first nine articles, and we certainly won’t close the doors on this – there will be more journal issues in the future devoted to the papers of young researchers.

In the history of education, there sometimes occurs the wondrous establishment of an amiable relationship between the past and the present wherein the worldview, ideas, and opinions of a mighty, educational thinker of former times resonates in a new epoch. In this connection, contemporary Russia and its national education system while once more searching for its essential path towards further spiritual development and moral improvement has found guidance in the philosophy of education proposed by Alexander Ivanovich Herzen (1812-1870) whose 200th birthday is being widely recognized and celebrated through national policy statements and in the worlds of culture and science. Following his death, Herzen’s contributions to the world of science and culture were recognized internationally. It must be emphasized that his outstanding gifts as a writer, his brilliant abilities as a polemicist, his colossal erudition, and his prominent talent placed him as one of the central figures of the Russian and world communities. Indisputably, he can be considered one of the significant contributors to world literature, philosophy, political science, and culture. There has been, however, far less study of A.I. Herzen’s views on education.

Many middle and high school students in the United States receive only modest exposure to the American Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s during their academic careers. Research indicates these students receive even less exposure to similar 20th century social movements, human rights struggles, or related events in other parts of the world. For these students, inadequate attention to social history and civil/human rights issues may lead to lacking connections between the American Civil Rights Movement and similar events in other parts of the world such as Ireland, Russia, Cambodia, and Sudan, among others. Research shows that gaps in students’ understandings of their roles regarding promotion and preservation of human/civil rights for all can lead to diminished empathy for victims of human rights violations. This project is intended to enable teachers to experience and engage in a comparative study of 20th century human/civil rights history and conflict resolution, and use what they have learned to generate lessons and units for use by middle and high school history teachers throughout the United States and around the world.

Nowadays, the problem of the innovative development and eventual commercialization of scientific products is very topical not only for the Russian scientific community but for our entire economy. Obviously, the development of an economy in the “Knowledge Era” when “information” and to be more precise, “innovative-technologies” (and not labor) plays the main role, is impossible without scientific development and the intricate integration of such fundamental factors as business, science, and education. The generation of new knowledge is a necessity, but it must also be incorporated in the production process. The time has come for states to be grounded not in the quantity of goods produced but in the unique quality of the goods if they are going to provide the nation’s economy with a competitive advantage. In discussions between the scientific community, business, universities, and the government of the Russian Federation, a number of problems were identified in the approaches to our national, innovation infrastructure. The following issues commanded the center of attention: “Which form of integration is most suitable for our country’s specific socio-cultural features?” “What mechanism for cooperation between state, business, and science will be most effective under the current and future circumstances?”

A new phenomenon has arisen within the juvenile-delinquent subculture recently. All-girl gangs have come into prominence among adolescents engaging in anti-social, criminal activities. Criminologists point out that the past decade witnessed an unprecedented surge in female crime and overall delinquency. Female crime is marked by the same negative tendencies as observed in the entire criminal world: a rise in juvenile crime rates, a growing number of violent crimes and an increase in organized, crime activities. Criminologists’ gravest concerns are focused on the increase in juvenile, female, gang involvement. This increase indicates a change in gender stereotypes. Many researchers believe that female crime and female, deviant activities are all the more dangerous because of their direct influence on adolescents. Not only does female crime promote adolescent criminal involvement, but it is, first and foremost, a decisive factor in teen, role identification. It is widely known, for instance, that teenage smoking is rarely connected with paternal smoking but is often linked with maternal smoking.

In the third millennium the world community is faced with the problem of tolerance formation in gender relations. The role of schools in this process is critical. The formation of gender tolerance as an integral feature of a personality is becoming a vital part of the education goals, aiming at the gender socialization of students. Today, two models of gender role socialization are discussed in the scholarly articles: one of polarization (based on a strict distribution of male and female roles) and the other, of continuum (allowing a mixture of male and female functions.) The second model and the development of a gender approach based on it are considered most important from the point of view of gender role students’ socialization. According to Anatoly Mudrik, gender approach in education aims to create such conditions for the education of young men and women in which their development and spiritual value orientation will contribute to the formation of individual positive masculine, feminine, and androgynous features, as well as to the relatively painless adjustment of the younger generation to the realities of gender-role attitudes and the effective gender-role separation in the society.

As technology has evolved, so have the lifestyles of American students. The Sloan Consortium estimated the number of K-12 students engaged in some kind of online course in 2007-2008 at over one million. Students choose online learning for a variety of reasons. “Students are choosing online courses for the same reasons that students use iPods instead of compact disks and watch YouTube in addition to television; these all represent more options, choices, convenience, and flexibility”. In addition to said flexibility, perhaps, students are choosing an online setting for the anonymity and equality that this unique modality provides. Several studies reported students felt online learning provided them with a safer place to explore their learning at their own pace and with greater equality. Equality, for example, can be explained by unlimited student mathematical engagement rather than the limited seat-time defined by a traditional class. Further the medium reduces social context clues related to race, gender, disability, or status and frees students to connect intellectually without distraction.

Computer Games Addiction, which we define as a type of deviant behavior featuring growing inclination towards retreat from reality by means of changing one’s psychological condition by constantly focusing on active interaction with computer games or other users via such software, has currently become one of the most urgent problems of education and psychology throughout the world. Computer games addiction is known to be caused by psychological and social factors. The first are determined by psychological and personality-shaping peculiarities of teenagers (neuro-psychic frailty, pronounced character accentuations, behavioral response) and specific disturbances in socialization. The second are influenced by social environment and conditions interfering with the realization of various behavioral strategies. In order to better understand how computer games addiction starts and develops, it is necessary to conduct a thorough research of these peculiarities. The research will enable us not only to understand the causes of such addiction but also how to develop efficient prevention and correction patterns as well as determine which other factors contribute (under similar conditions) to increased addictive or adequate types of interaction with a computer game.

Online education has altered the higher education landscape and ushered in a new era of teaching and learning. Over the past decade, enrollment in online courses has grown faster than the entire student body throughout higher education. Community college students are particularly attracted to the flexibility of online learning because when compared to four-year students, they tend to be older than the traditional age of 18-22, declared financially independent, work at least 35 hours a week, and have family commitments beyond the classroom. This, however, generates a precarious situation because most community college entrants are academically at-risk and in need of remediation upon enrollment. Internet courses may not be ideal for an academically weak population. Consequently, community college students are more likely to take, and subsequently fail, an online course than their four-year counterparts. Community college administrators have declared that the expansion of online education is paramount to their institution’s future. Therefore, research that examines the phenomenon of online education from the perspective of community college students is timely and relevant.

Today in Russia there are many teenagers who are having difficulty with situations in their lives and they are in dire need of educational and social support. Their problems are primarily caused by the national social and international economic crises of the past few decades which have significantly impacted the status of the youth of our country. These problems have not only produced a large number of negative effects on teen development in their family life but also on their health, education, and leisure activities. Although our research is an attempt to understand and deal with this complex and multidimensional problem, we have only just begun and all the ideas, principles, and methods presented in this article will need further, in-depth review and analysis. We will begin by first defining the term, “teenagers having difficult situations in their lives.” Research literature shows that these are mostly teens from socially underprivileged and dysfunctional families; teens living without parental support; teens with disabilities and emotional or other sorts of disturbances in their development; kids living under extremely difficult conditions; young people who are victims of violence; or teenagers whose lives were disrupted due to specific circumstances which they cannot overcome independently or even with some help from the family.

In 1997, UNESCO declared the first decade of the 21st century to be a decade of "A Culture of Peace and Nonviolence toward Children of the World." This program was to create global educational concepts whose purpose would be: to advance the values and goals necessary for a culture of peace; to develop tolerance in the young; and to develop the skills needed for intercultural communications and readiness for international cooperation. We are able to observe at this time how, under the influence of the process of globalization, the cultural diversity of the world has intensified and the utilization of contemporary information technologies has enabled people of various countries and nationalities to introduce their cultural values to other nations. However, many researchers note that although technology can enhance the exchange of scientific and cultural achievements and ease international cooperation between countries, at the same time, it can also lead to a loss of the social and cultural identity of an individual. That is why the Russian educational system has selected the "formation of the personality" as one of its goals. It believes that the individual should not only have a "global vision of world processes," in other words, that one perceive himself as a citizen of the world and subject to the influence of many cultures, but one must also be aware of one’s membership in a particular culture, know its roots, and share its values and traditions.