IOE to Pursue Cooperation with University of Iowa

HSE has recently entered into a cooperation agreement with the College of Education, University of Iowa. The document has been signed by Iowa University President James Bruce Harreld and HSE Vice Rector Ivan Prostakov. The first R&D outputs from the collaboration are expected to be presented this year.

IOE and the College will primarily join forces in spearheading a massive R&D endeavor that focuses on educational trajectories of Russian youth, in which “industrial” and “post-industrial” trends are combined. The partnership framework also envisages promoting academic exchange, co-hosting conferences, etc.

“Back in 2017, we had a truly invigorating and rewarding experience conducting joint research with Dr. David Bills, a professor at the University of Iowa College of Education, which was set within the theoretical framework of late modernity, a dimension that has piqued more interest in studies in sociology and philosophy,” Dmitry Kurakin, Head of the IOE Lab for Cultural Sociology and Anthropology of Education noted while flicking back through how the earliest of joint R&D efforts between IOE and the College came about.

This framework proposes that the way modern youth conceive of themselves and how they choose to build their life-courses are no longer inherited from the older generations, but are rather shaped by carefully thought-out decisions and pragmatic rationales. Yet, this does not fully render the true state of affairs. In Russia, post-industrial patterns in learning and life choices are still interwoven with the “early modernity” of the industrial world. 

Dmitry Kurakin 
Director, IOE Laboratory for Cultural Sociology and Anthropology of Education

“Early modernity” forms “islands” and even large “archipelagos” both in the field of education and the Russian labor market. We are studying how these reflective and legacy strategies are combined in the choice of the educational path,” Dmitry Kurakin added.