Abstract:

The 21st century realities, overloaded with global information developments and social distancing due to pandemic challenges have dealt a strong impact on educational practices. Still, the human nature and her capabilities are no less actual than in time of Juan Huarte when he challenged the birth of European intellectual tradition with his quest of human appetites and inclinations, somewhat developing the almost lost at that moment Aristotelean paradigm. Our article reflects organizational experimenting in deep Russia to change and adapt the professional development of teachers to the current developments and challenges. Teachers from rural territories have found themselves on the frontstage of current developments as the federal program of internet proliferation comes up in the situation of teachers ‘broad specialization’ (in fact, the lack of teaching staff, when teachers have to realize differing disciplines and subjects, normally represented by several teachers). Teaching profession is a competitive field, where the technicalities are obvious, while the human resources variable almost unpredictable. Regular courses to retrain teachers from rural schools have elucidated some unexpected points in actual teachers’ identities. Nizhny Tagil Pedagogical Academy during recent 5 years has provided postdoc courses for more than 10000 provincial teachers from the Sverdlovsk oblast region, offering them a reliable series of extra specializations, mostly with cultural studies context. Thus, opening the doors to invest in people, not in infrastructure only. The qualitative survey brought a few critical indicators reflecting the motivation and need to identify the teacher’s personality through seemingly traditional philosophical skills that turn out to be highly pragmatic in the actual teaching situation. Our key result consists in critical qualitative analysis of the teachers’ reflective judgements and their correlation with authentical philosophical tradition when philosophy converts to modern teaching pragmatics. And the project to develop retraining courses is succinctly formulated as a result of our research.

Keywords:

Innovation, information pressure, teacher identity, rural school, philosophy skills.