How and why did Russian education go from the enthusiastic liberalization in the early 1990s to the restoration of a Soviet-style system in the new century? Attempting to answer this question, the authors reassess and advance a theoretical model that they initially proposed fifteen years ago. While most research on education in transitional…

This article considers the high significance of the Russian Orthodox Church's system of religious education, which is currently being built in the Russian Federation. The great value of this system is due to the fact that Orthodoxy has historically been the most massive and important religion in Russia. Sunday schools are examined as a form of…

The article analyzes the pedagogical views, and the practice of implementing them through the experience of the Ukrainian-Russian social and religious reformer, Nikolay Neplyuev (1851-1908). His social experiments were a unique attempt at solving the social and economic problems of the peasant classes within the Russian Empire by means of…

RE in Russia has been recently introduced as a compulsory regular school subject during the last year of elementary school. The present study offers a critical analysis of the current practice of Russian RE by comparing it with RE in Sweden, Denmark and Britain. This analysis shows that Russian RE is ambivalent. Although it is based on a…

This work explores the system of public education in Kars Oblast in the period 1878-1917. The present part of the work covers the period 1908-1917, which spans the timeframe from the commencement of preparatory activities on the introduction of compulsory primary education to the start of the February Revolution. The key sources used in putting…

In April 2010 a new school subject group called "Foundations of Religious Cultures and Secular Ethics" (FRCSE) was introduced as an experiment in selected regions of Russia. It consists of six subjects, or "modules." One module is "Foundations of Orthodox Culture" (FOC). This article examines FOC within the context of…

This article examines 10 textbooks used in Jewish religion classes in Russian high schools in the final decades of the 19th century. The textbooks reveal an expectation of a low level of Hebrew background, an interest in promoting the practice of prayer, and two distinct approaches to teaching Judaism. While some of the books introduce students to…

REDCo findings question the ideal of neutrality of the teacher on ethical, epistemological and didactical grounds showing in particular that the exposure of the teacher's personal commitments and beliefs stimulates students to participate in dialogue. The findings support hermeneutical approaches to the empirical studies in education showing that…

In the final decades of the twentieth century there was a considerable increase in the scale of religious education in Russia. Inasmuch as the targets of influence of religious institutions are citizens of Russia who profess a particular religion, the activities of the institutions have to be carried out on the basis of laws in force in Russia, in…