A LOOK at the GLOBAL EDUCATIONAL CRISIS through the LENS of EXPERIENCE of the HISTORY of SCIENCE Part I. The scientific knowledge structure

Abstract

Introduction. The issue of the global educational crisis was outlined by Ch. P. Snow and denoted by Ph. H. Coombs more than sixty years ago. The viewpoints on this problem outspoken ever since are diversified, but it did not lead to blunting of acuteness thereof. It gives the evidence of the necessity to go on revealing and studying the reasons creating the global educational crisis, of which the rapid growth of scientific knowledge and its accelerated differentiation are outlined by researchers as primary ones. It determines the topicality of researching the structure of scientific knowledge, which is a determinant of the basic education content through the lens of the history of science. The aim of the present study is substantiating of the idea that the basic reason of the world educational crisis is a result of strengthening of scientific knowledge differentiation due to acceleration of its volume growth and developing the approach to overcome the crisis. Methodology and research methods. The methodology of the study is based on the ideology of F. Klein (the Erlangen programme) and the ideas of E. Wigner about the levels of division of the scientific knowledge field (the totality of these ideas allows using them as a tool for description of the scientific knowledge structure and, consequently, of the structure of the education content, the determinant whereof it is); on the personal-activity approach developed by V. S. Lednev for the analysis of the structure of the education content, and on the approaches to description of the behaviour of complex systems on the base of regular laws established by synergetics. Results. Examining the history of development of the scientific knowledge structure within the ideology of F. Klein’s Erlangen programme allowed coming to the conclusion that in general it should be described as a result of the non-completed process of formation of the pattern of dividing the entire scientific knowledge field into three areas constituting three levels: phenomena of nature, laws of nature and the field of symmetry principles. In proportion to growing, each next level provides the previous one with its structure. The currently accepted classification of sciences is a horizontal section of the three-level pattern of dividing the scientific knowledge in the field of laws of nature. Scientific novelty. The paper evidences that the three-level pattern of dividing the scientific knowledge is formed in the course of the history of science as a basis of integration of the scientific knowledge, equalising the process of its differentiation, which shall allow optimising the content of general education with strengthening the integration of its disciplines. Practical significance. The ideas of the scientific knowledge structure, inherent to the three-level pattern of dividing the scientific knowledge, will be utilised as the basis for the formation of a new variant of the general education content structure, which will allow optimising it and mitigating the acuteness of the global educational crisis related to the progressing differentiation of scientific knowledge. © 2020 Russian State Vocational Pedagogical University. All rights reserved.