No 3-2 (2015)

The analysis of the major world statistical data on education confirms the recent trend aimed at the increase in management’s attention all over the world to the issues of education. Therefore, the desire of management of universities and governments to enhance the world attractiveness of higher education institutions requires being aware of the world educational environment, and that confirms the importance of this research. Based on the global database Euromonitor and other statistical sources the author has analyzed the overall expenses on education in the world countries, the share of higher education in the amount of all the exported services, the import share of educational services in the total volume of market transactions, as well as the total expenditure on import of educational services. Globally, according to the forecasts, government and consumer spending on education will continue to grow, particularly in the countries with developing economies. The increasing role of education will continue to provide more and more opportunities to people and companies. The paper studies the situation with the Russian education, outlines the area of the current reforms in higher education, such as: higher education funding, changing its structure and increasing competitiveness of Russian universities. In solving the problem of lack of funding for higher education the author describes the options for the progression of events. The difference between the structures of the Russian higher education and the foreign one is defined by a number of features inherent in Russian secondary school, which are revealed in the paper. The performed study has allowed predicting the following forecast: taking into account the complication of the economic and political situation in the international field, Russian universities should be prepared for the increasing competition for students.

The paper analyses and systematizes theoretical material in the field of media-linguistics and political linguistics, the foundation of which is identification of the key features of the political media-text as the major means of building a political image.

The paper systematizes and specifies such terms as “text”, “media-text”, “supertext”, “political text”, and “image-building text”. Author reviews in detail the functional characteristics of these terms and considers them as the determining basis for the “image-building political media-text”.

The image-building political media-text is a key unit of the political image formation, speaking both as a tool and as a reflection of the image-building process. However, media-text as a means of creating a political image has not been thoroughly researched. In this regard, consideration of functional, linguistic and pragmatic features of the image-building political media-text seems to be particularly interesting and important with regard to different language communities.

Analysis of modern linguistic and pragmatic researches allows the authors to give a detailed and precise definition of the “image-building political media-text” concept. To understand the formation process of a political image it is necessary to review completely its essential features as a supertext with the definite linguistic and pragmatic settings having media, poly-code and targeting characteristics, as well as consider the functions of an image-building political media-text in the social and political environment.

Thus, an image-building political media-text can be determined as a supertext initiated by a political system of one country and functioning in the field of public political communication of the other country. It contains the information on important political issues and is aimed at formation, maintaining and correction of the positive image of a subject. Such text is aimed at potential mass audience and spread through the mass media channels.

This paper discusses peculiarities of attitude to Apostle Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians at different times. Regarding the interpretation of the epistle over the period of its study, the author analyzes some modern interpretations of this source. An attempt is made to reveal the problems of studying the religious text in terms of its artistic value. It is shown how the ancient author solves the problem of achieving a maximum impact of the text on the audience.

To study the critical literature, the researcher uses the method of analysis and synthesis; the main research method is the comparative analysis of the selected literature. In this paper the analysis of materials has involved induction and deduction as the basic methods of scientific thinking, which allow making conclusion on the analyzed critical materials and the original source.

It is possible to put forward the following main results achieved in the course of the research:

– St. Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians certainly has artistic value;

– Literary approach to the study of the Apostle Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians makes it possible to disclose the source contents and show the true attitude to the person of the Apostle Paul as a writer.

Study of the literary features of the Apostle Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians makes it possible to identify the particular influence of the text messages on the audience and appreciate the author’s artistic skills by viewing him as a writer.

Analysis of artistic means used in the text allows taking a look at the development of the world literature as a process of direct interference of public writers and religious leaders.

Based on the fact that St. Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians has artistic value, the author concludes that the religious sources have influenced not only public opinion, but also the development of the artistic expression in general.

The paper considers the concept of communicative and information competence of civil servants. The purpose of public service informatization is to streamline its employees’ work through application of information and communicative technologies. The informatization process of public administration makes new demands for improving competence both of experienced civil servants and graduates or applicants for vacant positions in public service. However, practice shows that civil servants almost never have the necessary expertise.

The research paper substantiates the author's definition of information-communicative competence of civil servants. Its structure is represented by four interrelated components: cognitive, operational, motivational-personal, and reflective. It also substantiates the fact that the virtual communication should be an integral part of information-communicative competence of the state civil servant.

The paper presents the results of the author’s sociological study the objective of which was to distinguish the state of information and communicative competence of civil servants in Belgorod region. The research has been conducted by using the method of expert survey and questioning of civil servants of Belgorod region. The results reveal the necessity of their expertise development which means its qualitative improvement. The level of development determines the degree of efficiency of the use of information and communication technologies in the professional activity. The author proposes the following classification of information-communicative competence of civil servants: a basic level, advanced and a professional one.

Sociological diagnostics of information-communicative competence of civil servants involves working out recommendations for the development of the competence. There is an attempt to justify the use of social technologies. The paper describes algorithm of technologization that includes three interconnected phases.

The determining of the correct focus and further direction of humanity life, its evolutionary development are the high-priority tasks in the cognitive process. First of all, the direction of humanity development depends on the state of people consciousness on the Earth. Therefore, the authors analyze the aspects of the collective conscious formation basing on the consideration of the human consciousness evolutionary process and the social processes in the society; it became the purpose of the study.

Basing on the AGOLM model, the authors carried out the analysis of the stages of the conscious evolutionary variability with the emphasis on its collective nature, as well as their respective state of social processes through the ages. The paper presents the development of the human conscious through the four stages – from the collective unconscious to the collective conscious which is necessary for the evolution today.

The study showed that the discursive thinking is the forming factor for the creation of the collective conscious under the conditions of the certain degree of development of spiritual and moral potential of a person. The authors revealed that the necessity of formation of creative (small) groups with the collective thinking that are able to solve global problems facing the humanity within its development is the distinguishing feature of the society present state, which corresponds to the fourth step of the evolutionary cone.

Global mental reserves are collected at high school today. Therefore, the further research will be focused on determining the factors allowing improvement of the personal qualities of a future high school graduate, which will provide the basis for the formation of the collective conscious.

This paper examines the possibility of presenting social conflict and some of its features by means of mathematics in terms of socio-energy approach.

This research is extremely important today in connection with the need to create a prognostic device for such phenomena.

Methodology of the article includes methods of mathematical modeling based on nonlinear dynamics, system approach and Wiener processes.

At the beginning of the article the author gives a brief classification of social conflicts, as well as describes the state of the science in this field of knowledge. There are four main types of conflicts classified in several types of their localization and rise conditions according to various persons and their groups.

The paper introduces the basics of socio-energy approach, its instruments and representation of the energy flow through the social system, including a graphical vector imaging. At the core of socio-energy approach there is a nonlinear dynamic model, as well as the elements of fractal geometry to describe intrastructural distributions in the society.

The author considers three main theories on classification of a social conflict: by Coser, Dahrendorf, and Boulding. Two aspects of social conflict are highlighted: they are static and dynamic.

As a result, the author gives certain generalized statements true for most types of social conflicts, as well as mathematically defined concept of social conflict. This description will facilitate further creation of a mathematical model of a social conflict based on stochastic differential equations. Such instrument is able to properly reveal specific basic processes and characteristics of ethnical and social conflicts, and conditions for their generation and localization.

Conversion to 2-level higher education system in Russia and immersion of the new federal state educational standards demands defining of contents of professional training and more detailed description of its results. The main purpose of this article is to reveal characteristics of the notion “project skills of a teacher”, to describe the position of those skills within methodological competence of foreign language teacher (FL-teacher), to make links between project skills and levels of methodological competence. The author shows the value of methodological competence in FL-teacher’s activity, its structure; states the place of project skills (project subcompetence), reveals the links with other subcompetences within methodological (pedagogical) competence, suggesting a model of the latter. She also specifies the contents of project skills, correlates the list of those skills with the level of methodological competence. Levels of methodological competence suggested by the author, i.e. basic, technological and scientific-methodological, reveal which project skills are formed, partially formed or not formed according to these levels. The author gives a detailed list of project skills put in some groups: analytical, anticipating, organizing, methodological (skills of choice), planning and others. The results of this research can be applied to further developing of professional training standards and to FL-teachers’ evaluation process.

The paper considers authentication as a phenomenon of a modern mediatext. Authorization is understood as a conscious or unconscious expression in the text of the position and personality of its creator, which is detectable through analysis of specific linguistic means, communicative strategies and tactics of the text composition. It is important that a journalistic text is always interpreted by the audience as an expression of the author’s ethical position, their knowledge and understanding of life even though they never use direct reference to their point of view. The degree of the author’s characteristics manifestation is strictly regulated by the requirements to the design and style in the texts produced in different public spheres. For a journalistic text, authentication is one of the most notable features. Today, authentication in social and political journalism is aimed at the author’s specific images; the most popular is the image of a journalist who can comprehend and evaluate their own reality, showing their ideological position and personality through speech freedom and the desire to move away from standard newspaper and journalistic style. Specific verbal structures used by the journalists to represent themselves in the text and create a recognized form of the narration subject are studied in the paper. The most noticeable authentication is carried out by means of so called meta-text inclusions of different types. The author’s meta-text inclusions are used in the text of all newspaper genres, except those in which the journalists adheres factual way to convey events.

The phenomenon of nationalism is highly complex; therefore there is no single typology of nationalisms and it can not exist. This article examines one of the most replicable typologies developed by an American researcher Hans Kohn. The article presents a critical assessment of the proposed by Hans Kohn division of nationalism into Western and Eastern. Such a dichotomy is still used by some scientists following the constructivist approach. Nationalism, in broad sense, is understood in this article after Hans Kohn as a special state of mind when an individual exhibits a high degree of loyalty towards the government. In addition to the original theory of Hans Kohn, the article discusses the theories of German scientist Ergbert Yan and British researcher John Plamenatz. The author of the article reveals the reasons for the origin and popularity of the typology proposed by Hans Kohn in the academic field and everyday discourse. It focuses on the historical development of the classification and the associated changes introduced by the semantic content of Hans Kohn’s concepts. In particular, Western nationalism started to be called "civil", while the Eastern - "ethnic." Also in the article, the author highlights the essential reasons for the refusal by many modern researchers from the division of nationalism into Western and Eastern, and introduces criticism of the typology proposed by Hans Kohn. The article discusses the trend of rejecting the use of typology in explaining the phenomena of the nation and nationalism. However, in everyday life, the classifications remain popular.

An important problem of modern higher vocational education is the increasing role of a foreign language in education of bachelors, especially in the formation of the competencies provided for the FSES. The quality and level of higher education depends on the quality of language education. The author draws attention to the need to review the current objectives, methods and technologies of teaching, methods of teaching foreign languages, especially English.

The paper studies the peculiarities of the language training of the higher school students in the conditions of educational reform in terms of competency-based approach, indicates significant professional competencies of any graduate who in their working activity and employment are using professional foreign language.

The paper specifies difficulties and problems that arise in practical work of teachers in teaching language. The research raises the question of the necessity to form the linguistic education policy of the university and early professional development in language training that are inextricably connected with the used teaching materials, the level of teachers’ skills, and the implemented training technologies. The author emphasizes the role and importance of special texts in such training. This refers to integration of several disciplines (English and the subject on a specialty), establishment of interdisciplinary connections and the integration of different types of educational activities.

All these will improve the quality of foreign language training at a required level, facilitate the popularity of the university providing such training among applicants.

Corporate training is a tool to achieve short-term and long-term goals of the organization; it is viewed through the prism of the general development strategy. Implementation of corporate training at the organization ranges from one training specialist to creation of its own corporate university. Anyway, the ultimate goal is considered as the formation of a self-learning organization.

The authors explain the choice of instruments for corporate training which appears to be a mechanism for management of the employees’ new knowledge formation in a self-learning organization that is characterized by a group-project activity related to implementation and promotion of innovative ideas.

The paper outlines the peculiarities of corporate training at the self-learning organization and explains the choice of quality indicators that are typical for the processes of corporate training as a part of informational and educational system as a whole.

The authors reveal the concept of a self-learning organization and its features; suggest forming a knowledge-center of informational and educational system of the self-learning organization to control its positive dynamics. The knowledge-center of the informational and educational system is viewed by the authors as a set of distinctive competence, professional expertise, social competence and special competence of employees of a self-learning organization.

A special feature presented in the paper is the author's model for assessing the quality of corporate training of the company employees by monitoring the controlled parameters of the informational and educational system core effectiveness.

The paper assesses the contents of corporate training. The model contains eleven well-grounded quality indicators, each of which, in its turn, is an integral indicator. The novelty of the proposed solutions is that the quality issues of the knowledge transfer are discussed in the educational environment for the first time. Moreover, new are the methods for evaluation of the quality parameters arranged according to the robust design approach, widely used overseas for evaluating quality indicators in the management systems.

Formation of professional educational culture of future teachers-musicians is one of the most important task of the modern music education. Nowadays, the competitive resource of teacher’s activity is not only special knowledge but also the professional educational culture providing his personality development. The level of professional educational culture influences the successful professional activity of a specialist, his competitiveness and professionalism. The study of the issue of formation of future teachers-musicians professional educational culture is caused by the modern requirements for teachers-musicians professional training and the demand of society for specialists with high level of professional educational culture. The study of modern state of this issue showed the necessity of determination and justification of educational conditions directed to the formation of professional educational culture of a future teacher-musician. This paper highlights the complex of educational conditions for the formation of professional educational culture of future teachers-musicians, which includes: the design of high school creative educational environment basing on the integration of its structural content-related components; the integration of psychology-educational and specific musical training of students for the future profession; the introduction of “Professional educational culture of a teacher-musician” special course to the educational process, which provides the application of specially developed complex of educational materials; the use of active forms and methods while implementing the process of formation of professional educational culture of future teachers-musicians. When choosing educational conditions, the author took into account the specificity of professional activity of future teachers-musicians. The conditions selected are immediately interconnected between each other. The author considers the notions of “condition”, “educational conditions”, gives the detailed characteristic of each condition and describes each condition peculiarities. The successful implementation of suggested educational conditions is the important factor for the specialists’ high-quality training directed to the formation of professional educational culture of the students.

The paper considers the issue of importance to form professional reliability of a person as a future specialist at the classes on physical education. To secure professional reliability of a person is one of the main objectives in labour psychology which becomes the most important in the professions related to the increased requirements to a person, high cost of the error, responsibility, extreme conditions, health and life risk. The authors define professional reliability of a person as an integrative feature of an individual possessing certain characteristics. One of the modern trends to ensure reliability of the professional identity is linked to the development of health programs, which are based on the organization of living and working space.

A theoretical analysis of regulatory documents and applied research of professional activity of graduates allow the authors to develop and implement a workbook into educational process as a means of self-formation of the individual’s professional reliability. It includes a set of tests, evaluation tests, health monitoring which allows the students to analyze changes in the body, both physical and mental performance, and is aimed to explore and assess the performance of professionally important personal qualities of the students. The designed workbook for students’ self-control also contains information and recommendations on implementation of the healthy lifestyle principles in order to improve and maintain health. Fixing one’s health data, physical fitness and development, the student can analyze the changes in the physical and psychological state of the organism. Based on these indicators and recommendations one can objectively assess the level of one’s health to take measures in advance to restore the body after work by means and methods of physical culture.

Regular analysis of the workbook generates the habit of self-control in students of senior courses and makes them more attentive to their health through development of their functional status and health of the body which, in its turn, contributes to creating a favorable functional background of future specialist’s life, forming the necessary qualities of professional reliability of the person in the chosen profession.

Knowledge intellectualization is one of the components of modern economic development of the country and the main task of the educational system in the whole. The essence of the expected results is reflected in the positive dynamics of new knowledge volume and creation of high-tech educational environment, where the risks of low-quality learning results are minimal. This aspect contributes to the development of new educational systems management tools in their application interpretation. The ability to use the expert systems for quality of training evaluation is one of the highlights of knowledge intellectualization. It is an understudied and not widely interpreted line of ​​applied research. The authors consider the new ideas of designing and development of intelligent automated teaching and control systems which allow practical implementation of new educational technologies and means of educational communications, for example, E-learning technologies.

Basing on the new theory of systems formalization based on the use of algebraic methods, the authors formulated and proved the principles of expert training systems improvement, and considered the requirements for the intelligent automated system of evaluation of knowledge control results. New methods considered in this paper are the further development of the conclusions of famous scientists: A.I. Maltsev – in the algebraic systems theory, A.G. Kurosh – in the theory of groups, and Y.L. Yershov – in the theory of serving embeddings.

The authors suggest using an algorithm for building up the knowledge base and mathematical model of the exam, which can be classified by dimensionality formats: 1D, 2D, 3D, ..., nD.

The purpose of the research paper is the familiarization of wide audience with the new methodology of training and control of generated knowledge on the base of instrument of expert technologies and algebraic methods allowing considering the learned material quality characteristics.

Monitoring of the controlled parameters allows the owner of the management process of the information-educational system currency to identify, in a timely manner, existing deviations and take corrective actions to reduce the risk in performance quality. Firstly, why constant updating of the information-educational system is so important? Secondly, what is meant by information-educational system, and what quality indicators can describe it as effective and efficient? The paper has revealed one of the educational management approaches to the performance quality of information-educational system in the self-learning organizations.

The information-educational system is viewed as a complex dynamic structure, hierarchically associated with various informational components and causal relationships, and interacting with a variety of internal and external components. Note that its main meaning is contained in the available content which should be adapted to the requirements of the environment. Therefore, updating of the information-educational system content can be monitored only through reference points which should be subject to control and monitoring. Hence we make the conclusion about the necessity to assess the quality of content for the complex dynamic system through identification of its reference points and substantiation of parameters of their variation.

The paper suggests using a robust approach to identify the cost of quality of the information-educational system performance by introducing the concept of quality loss function. This approach includes methods of planning the experiment and is a fundamentally new tool to assess the opportunity for improving quality while reducing the cost of its assurance.

The author has introduced the concept of robustness in relation to educational systems, describes the stages of designing information-educational system, and presents a model of robust design of its contents.