Volume 21, Nº 4 (2024)

Research activities of postgraduate and undergraduate students are an important component of the educational process and training of qualified specialists who are able to think and independently create new knowledge; therefore, their choice of research career and, consequently, the scientific, technical and humanitarian progress of our country depend on their productive involvement in it. The article presents the results of developing the Questionnaire on Academic Supervision Styles (QA2S) based on the Self-Determination Theory and previous methodological developments and assessing autonomy support, controlling, structuring, and chaotic supervision styles. The study involved 264 Russian undergraduate and postgraduate students ( M = 26 years, SD = 6.3) who assessed the styles of their academic supervisors. The four-factor structure of the questionnaire corresponded to the theoretical concepts of support or frustration of basic psychological needs. All the scales of the questionnaire describing the four academic supervision styles demonstrated acceptable reliability. The construct validity of the questionnaire was testified by the expected relationships of the styles with the quality of motivation, basic psychological needs and learning satisfaction, publication activity, and frequency of contact with the supervisor. Comparison of current and desired supervision styles revealed the expected differences in all the styles except for the controlling one, for which no significant differences were found. The questionnaire is compact, reliable and valid: it can be recommended for diagnosing the identified supervision styles for research and practical purposes, to assess the prediction of intrinsic motivation for research activities and success of undergraduate and postgraduate students.

Active digitalization of education has contributed to the identification of digital competences as an independent group of skills for school teachers. These competences are fundamentally important for the quality of the educational process and the knowledge acquired by students. Therefore, this study, based on existing classifications of digital competencies and approaches to determining the levels of their development, is aimed at identifying the current level of digital competence of school teachers. The study involved 594 teachers aged 18-76 ( M = 41.25, SD = 14.29), of whom 93% were women. The data were collected using the Digital Competence Self-Assessment Questionnaire (by S.V. Gaisina and I.P. Davydova), which had previously successfully passed the psychometric testing. According to the results obtained, the participants’ communication, cooperation and online interaction skills received the highest marks, whereas their competencies in the responsible use of Internet resources, in organizing training in a digital environment and information literacy skills were expressed moderately. The least expressed skills were in creating digital content. The least expressed skills among the participants were those in creating digital content.

Scientific interest in the problem considered in the article is due to the nation al policy aimed at improving the competitiveness of Russian higher education and, as a consequence, increasing the share of international postgraduate students, including those studying at Russian universities in English. The purpose of the study was to analyze and summarize the experience of designing and implementing the Course on Pedagogy of Higher Education for international postgraduate students, identifying its didactic features and considering the students’ educational request regarding this course. The authors analyzed scientific literature, summarized relevant pedagogical experience, and conducted a survey. The anonymous survey involved 124 course participants, including international postgraduate students from countries in Asia, Africa, South America and Europe, studying at the RUDN University in English-language educational programs in Philology, Economics, Law, Construction and Architecture, Ecology, Pedagogy, etc. It has been shown that the design and implementation features of the Course on Pedagogy of Higher Education are determined by both the specifics of the target audience (international postgraduate students with different socio-cultural and academic backgrounds) and the teaching conditions (using the English Medium Instruction (EMI) programs in the Russian-language educational environment). The results of the study suggest that the main factors determining the relevance and effectiveness of the course include the dynamism and interactivity of the learning process, practice-oriented and variable assignments, and the use of the potential of a multicultural environment. The e-learning Course on Pedagogy of Higher Education complements in-class teaching and provides flexibility of the learning process and its adaptation to the individual needs of postgraduate students. The current problems of mastering the course include the timely updating of didactic teaching aids in English, the arrangement of the postgraduates’ efficient independent work in the conditions of a limited number of hours, the choice of effective control/assessment procedures taking into account both the course participants’ socio-cultural and academic backgrounds and the specifics of the digital educational environment. The obtained results are of pedagogical interest and can serve as a basis for the development and improvement of curricula for relevant courses, teaching aids and materials within the framework of postgraduate education programs in English.

In recent years, life history theory has significantly strengthened its position in the social sciences, offering explanations for persistent variations in behavior and values, as well as physiological, cognitive, psychological, and social traits of individuals along the continuum between fast and slow strategies. In this paper, we present a comprehensive overview of this all-encompassing theory, demonstrating its significance across various disciplines. Psychometric methods for assessing life history strategy (LHS) are typically based on the evaluation of the so-called K -factor, where a high value indicates a slower LHS and, conversely, a lower value indicates a faster LHS. In our study, we were adapting and validating the most popular unidimensional measure, the so-called Mini-K, for the Russian context, supplementing it with our measure for assessing the harshness of childhood conditions (threats, deprivations, unpredictability), which allows us to overcome the limitations of the original approach. The first stage of development and adaptation involved a qualitative analysis of the measures’ content using cognitive interviews. These interviews supported the adequacy of the item formulations for the Russian-speaking context, as well as their accuracy and clarity. In the second stage, an empirical validation of the methods was conducted through a sociopsychological survey involving 2,032 Russians. The results showed that the proposed factor structure for both measures possesses optimal global fit with the measurement models. The scales demonstrated sex invariance, high reliability coefficients, as well as convergent and discriminant validity. Considering previous research on the psychometric assessment of LHS, the Mini-K method demonstrated adequate results that are substantively related to the measure assessing the harshness of childhood conditions and some biodemographic indicators. The proposed measures will be especially useful for studies dedicated to examining individual and group differences.

Modern media culture largely determines the content of children’s subculture and their interests, in particular in toys. The transmedia storytelling toys, which have the image of a cartoon, movie or computer game character, have appeared quite recently but have already gained great popularity. The article presents the results of a study conducted in the fall of 2023 by the Center for Interdisciplinary Research of Modern Childhood at the Moscow State Psychological and Pedagogical University to determine the influence of popular media culture on the choice of toys according to parents, educators and preschoolers themselves. The authors conducted a survey using Google forms posted on social networks on the Internet, in which parents of children aged 5-7 years ( N = 215) and teachers of senior and preparatory kindergarten groups ( N = 43) took part. In addition, a face-to-face formalized interview was conducted with children aged 5-8 ( N = 57). The results obtained suggest the popularity of the transmedia storytelling toys among modern preschoolers. Almost every child who participated in the study had such a toy but most often it was not a favorite. According to the teachers and parents, the popularity of these toys is tied to the popularity of media content and is determined by the child’s sympathy for a given character. A change in popular media content entails a change in children’s preferred transmedia storytelling toys. Parents have a predominantly negative attitude towards these toys, because many of them have characteristics that do not meet traditional aesthetic and ethical concepts (for example, monster toys). Educators, however, mainly consider these toys as game items and highlight both their positive and negative properties. The results of the study may be useful for preschool teachers and parents of preschoolers in matters of creating information content for children and purchasing toys.