Civil Identity Formation within Contemporary Informational Space (Historical Policy and Educational Practices)

Abstract

The main focus of the article was on the impact of current historical policy affecting the foreign and domestic political interests of the Russian Federation (mainly in the fields of interethnic relations and international law) on the educational strategies of the authorities, designed to facilitate or impede the process of forming a Russian civil identity. Specific historical and contemporary examples show that the latter has long been considered as a humanitarian technology for solving state problems in this field, within the contemporary informational space with a cumulative effect in terms of the space of politically engaged versions of different pages of history, especially closely related to the formation of the contemporary world order. Accordingly, the focus of the study is the contradictions between the historical and educational policies of the Russian Federation, which are analyzed through the lens of the evolution of the aims of the authorities in matters of the historical education and historical memory, their norm-legal regulation and institutional support, as well as real educational practices after 1991. The experience of the several years (since 2014) on the introduction of the historical and cultural standard for teaching the school course of the history is considered as a collective attempt by the authorities and society to lead historical and educational policies to a common denominator in terms of the content and value. The special accent in the article concerns the problems of the teacher professional training for the implementation of the state historical and educational policy of the Russian Federation within given framework, considering the specifics of the contemporary informational space. Both methodological and organizational restrictions were identified in secondary and higher schools (primarily at specialized faculties of pedagogical universities), which have a significant impact on the formation of civil identity through historical education, both at the stage of training pedagogical personnel and in the process of studying the school course of the history.