UrFU Humanities Students and Their Chinese Colleagues Will Launch a Virtual Department

09:42, April 4, 2024

Specialists will study the well-being of schoolchildren and the problems of rural education [photo report]

Humanities students from UrFU Ural Institute of Humanities (UrIH) and their colleagues from Mudanjiang Pedagogical University (China, Heilongjiang Province) will open a virtual department for researching rural education problems. The agreement on the creation of the department was signed during the visit of the UrFU delegation to China. The consortium will also include Tomsk State Pedagogical University and Novosibirsk State University of Economics and Management.

"Specialists of the department will share practices, knowledge, and methodological developments on the problems of students and teachers in rural schools. The staff will develop innovative courses taking into account the obtained scientific results. It is planned to conduct professional development courses for rural teachers in Russia and the People's Republic of China. UrIH researchers will study various aspects of the well-being of participants in the educational process in rural schools. Chinese colleagues are interested in the aspects of narrowing the gap between the quality of education in urban and rural educational institutions and improving the level of teaching staff. Colleagues from the Institute of Pedagogy of Mudanjiang Pedagogical University have already started translating the monograph on teachers' professional development published by Elvira Symanyuk, Director of the UrIH and Head of the Department of General and Social Psychology at UrFU," explains Yulia Zapariy, Head of the UrFU Office of Research and Innovative Work Organization.

The goal of the Chinese colleagues is to understand how teacher training can be strengthened in rural schools and to identify the challenges that students face to reduce the disparity in educational attainment between rural and urban school graduates.

"The fact is that China pays serious attention to the development of human capital and narrowing the gap in the quality of education. Colleagues highly appreciate the experience of the Soviet Union in organizing the general and higher education system, so they are interested in the history of education and how the educational process is organized. Colleagues are also interested in psychological topics, including the readiness of schoolchildren for high academic workloads. For example, while discussing the research plan, they were interested in such an aspect as "math anxiety" - a well-studied state of tension that many children experience while waiting for a test or quiz in exact sciences; anxiety prevents them from concentrating and generally affects their academic performance. Our psychologists and sociologists, in turn, are interested in studying aspects of Chinese students' and teachers' well-being, identifying specific features and commonalities with Russian students," explains Yulia Zapariy.

The interaction between UrFU and Mudanjiang Pedagogical University has been building up since last year. Thus, the topics of joint research and work of the department were outlined during the visit of the Chinese delegation to the seventh Russian-Chinese Expo, which took place in Ekaterinburg in July 2023. In early 2024, the researchers held a joint conference "Human well-being in the conditions of digital transformation: the role and importance of education". In general, the program of joint work between the humanitarians of UrFU and Mudanjiang Pedagogical University includes scientific events, an exchange of lecturers and students, and Master's and PhD students.

Anna Marinovich

The news article was translated by UrFU International Marketing Office.
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