Knowledge management as a modern educational trend

Volkova Vera Doctor of Philosophy Professor, Department of Methodology, History and Philosophy of Sciences, Nizhny Novgorod State Technical University named after R.E. Alekseev 603950, Russia, Nizhegorodskaya oblast', g. Nizhnii Novgorod, ul. Minina, 24 sophiapsy@yandex.ru

Kainova Anastasiia Postgraduate student, Department of Methodology, History and Philosophy of Sciences, Nizhny Novgorod State Technical University named after R.E. Alekseev 603950, Russia, Nizhegorodskaya oblast', g. Nizhnii Novgorod, ul. Minina, 24 kainova.av@gmail.com

Introduction

To date, the availability of knowledge is literally "off the scale" – the information that could previously be obtained only by diligently attending classes at school or university is now easy to get at any time thanks to a smartphone in your pocket. It would seem that the process of acquiring knowledge and education itself had to move to a qualitatively new level, as well as the quality of specialists trained in the new digital era.

However, a person who wants to gain knowledge, with such easy access to them, has faced problems that indicate the advent of the era of knowledge engineering. A huge amount of information leads to the fact that several familiar sources that have come to taste are chosen, the rest are ignored both consciously, due to the oversaturation of the flow of information, and unconsciously – limiting the information overload of the brain.

In the global network, it is becoming increasingly difficult to identify reliable sources of information. Today, any of us can enter any data into the network, while no one will require validation of the information. The difficulty of determining which of the published "knowledge" is scientific is constantly growing. The criticality to perceived information decreases.

"Information noise" (advertising and the like) is beginning to make up an increasing part of the information received as a whole. The understanding of the value of information and knowledge is falling.

The constant increase in the requirements for the amount of knowledge that a "modern" specialist should possess in the conditions of digital chaos leads to a decrease in the quality of the specialist, as well as his training in general. Easy access to knowledge through the Web makes a person naturally avoid efforts in finding a way of research, accompanied by difficulties in mastering new material. The ability to detect it is gradually decreasing. A person begins to act according to previously invented patterns of meeting with information and processing it. In the conditions of university education, restrictions in the development of new material become a significant obstacle in professional development.

It is extremely important to develop students' abilities for self-learning and self-organization based on a holistic holistic vision of the world as a source of knowledge management. Education as a philosophical phenomenon relies on various approaches (in this case, approaches of globalization and postmodernism) to the idea of its organization. Each approach is characterized by a position regarding the involvement of students in the learning process, increasing criticality and motivation for self-study.

Special requirements are imposed on the organizers of education, their analytical abilities and skills to pick up the innovativeness of social communications as manifestations of creative management of their knowledge.

Educational trends in knowledge management

The modern educational system should be designed in such a way that students master in its depths, not forcibly, but arbitrarily, the desire for self-learning based on critical thinking. The analysis of approaches to the formation of the educational system allowed us to highlight the features of knowledge engineering as a discipline that complements the work with educational information with the role of an educational analyst and creative manager. At the same time, the concept of "role" denotes a metaphorical and conditional character. This role is one of the contexts of professional pedagogical activity, unfortunately, largely obscured by the traditional attitude towards higher school teachers.

E. N. Knyazeva points out the features of innovative social management combined with the modern educational trend of knowledge management. The most important feature is "the ability to contextualize your knowledge" ^[3].

The analytical abilities of the organizer of education (the ability to reflect on the current situation) are combined with the ability to see the situation as a space of communication and subjective connections in a certain configuration (scheme, image, figure), which makes it possible to assess and control the situation on a global scale. Creative thought is combined with the ability to think strategically and voluminously.

The adjustment of this vision leads to reflections at the level of structures that unfold into the processes of internal transformation, connection and repulsion, generation and decay. Analytics of this kind requires high philosophical training of teachers not only in their field of knowledge, but also in the ability to manage them in the future of their deployment, modification, registration in an information system of methodological content level.

The management of the educational process should be designed in the strategies of knowledge acquisition. First of all, in finding the necessary subject, schematic forms of their representation ^[4]. But no less important is the social mission: an educational analyst is not capable of being a "human function", but must have a sufficient stock of philosophical, psychological and educational competencies for the engineering of knowledge. Such competencies are the ability to reflect, control your thoughts, control your emotions and actions, see the situation completely, get used to the contextual connections that are being formed.

From the point of view of educational competencies, the analyst is obliged to understand that the solution of the problem of mastering knowledge is possible by creating a self-learning model by means of a special communication device within an educational organization. This communication should be self-learning, i.e. linked by mutual intentions of production and mastering of knowledge between its members.

Unfortunately, the method of testing the idea of knowledge engineering in education remains a priority mainly in the system of teacher training ^{[2; 3]}.

The idea of knowledge management is the basis for building a cognitive practice of self-learning. On the one hand, it is constructed by the consciousness of an educational analyst as an educational process that requires accurate calculation in the construction of the knowledge mastered by students, their presentation, reconstruction of ways of understanding, on the other hand, the communicative involvement of students is necessary not only in the system of mutual obligations, but also a mental unifying organization.

An approach to education from the point of view of globalism

Modern education still retains the main trend within itself, due to the worldview of globalism and the prevailing neoliberal approach – the perception of education solely as an investment in a person as capital, in order to maintain the competitiveness of a society with this capital on the world market. Students with this approach are consumers, but not active participants and partners in the educational system.

The contradiction between the model of the quality of education of the neoliberal approach and the model of constructive alignment, softening the neoliberal views on education, is becoming more acute in the XXI century. However, in both cases, orientation to the effectiveness of learning outcomes is supported from the position of the "usefulness" of the education received for society as a whole, and not for a person as an individual ^[5].

The model of constructive alignment was developed in Western education. It presupposes the existence of a clear linear relationship between educational activities, the learning process itself, and the assessment of academic performance, which in Russia is usually associated with the quality of education received. Evaluation, which is often the main part of the "activity-learning-evaluation" system, expresses the hidden superiority of the teacher over the student, which consists in the unilateral determination of the student's abilities on the principle of "knows – does not know".

If an alignment model is used, then it is more correct for teachers to focus on the abilities and capabilities of students, rather than on compliance with curriculum indicators. At the same time, the alignment should not be carried out by the administration of the educational institution.

Peters believes that "administrative" alignment leads to a decrease in interest in the educational process as a whole, turns students into passive consumers of information, which can lead to a loss of the ability to think critically. In this case, the meaning and value of scientific knowledge is questioned ^[18].

In the era of "post-truth" critical thinking is replaced by standards, pedagogy follows the sanctions and requirements of the state to the educational process. Peters believes that the state's desire to create a skilled workforce for the global economy leads to a weakening of attention to the values of democracy and, as a result, to a decrease in criticality to the educational products consumed ^[18]. He also notes that the right to freedom of speech has turned into an opportunity to say and publish anything, regardless of how stupid or dangerous it is. The digital chaos created in this way reduces the criticality of the perception of the information provided to us, which is also a problem for education as a whole, allowing any information and standards preferred by the state to be introduced into it ^[14]. Hence, there is a need for skillful orientation in the giant information flow, as well as the need to teach the learning process itself.

However, it is impossible to instill the value of the self-learning process without first increasing involvement in the education process itself. The model of constructive alignment is based on giving students the opportunity to perceive the learning process themselves as a situation of instability, to go through critical periods for themselves with less personal loss in image. The entire space of learning tasks is filled with contexts of optimal solutions from unbalanced positions in the management of their knowledge.

Involvement of students in the educational process

Social management of education is possible if students are included (involved) in the educational process as active participants. Involvement is distinguished by types: behavioral (manifestation of interest in education through social activity), emotional (emotional reaction to learning) and cognitive (implementation of independent regulation of skills and learning concepts used) ^[13].

Based on the analysis of sources, the subject of which is the study of involvement, several definitions of behavioral involvement can be distinguished:

- compliance with the norms of behavior in the classroom and formal rules ^{[9; 10; 11]};

- perseverance, attention, concentration on tasks, efforts to understand and pose questions in the learning process ^{[6; 9; 19]};

- participation in extracurricular activities ^{[9; 11]}.

These definitions demonstrate several levels of involvement ^[12] from passive adherence to established norms and rules to active initiative on the part of the student. From the point of view of the need to improve the quality of education, the mechanism of developing involvement to the highest level – to joint participation with the teacher in the educational process is interesting.

Emotional involvement is associated with the manifestation of emotions by students in the classroom: interest, happiness, sadness, boredom, anxiety, etc. Motivation studies cite different types of emotional involvement:

- involvement caused by momentary interest in what is happening;

- involvement due to personal interest in what is happening.

The first type is temporary, due to the peculiarities of the activity of the current moment, for example, novelty. The second – personal interest – is much more stable, leads to a willingness to solve more complex tasks, as well as greater awareness in the learning process ^[15]. The main task of the teacher, thus, as a creative education manager, is to arouse the student's personal interest and support him.

Cognitive involvement is defined as a student's mental efforts and psychological investment in learning and self-regulation for extended participation in the learning process ^[16]. Self-regulation implies the creation of students' own methods of time planning, tracking and evaluating their cognitive process in order to better memorize and systematize the material ^{[7; 20]}. At the same time, it is necessary to distinguish behavioral involvement, i.e. performing work according to the rules established by the teacher, and cognitive involvement, when the student seeks to study and assimilate the material. The ability to self-regulate in the learning process is directly related to internal motivation, and hence emotional involvement.

Survey and observation methods currently prevail in the use for the study of engagement. The subject of some studies are obstacles to involvement, for example, problems of social dominance in the educational process.

Thus, an education analyst (teacher, expert) must have a good understanding of the essence of involvement, influencing its factors, both external (for example, the attitude to education in the student's family) and internal (inside the classroom). By involving students in the educational process, it is possible to instill in them the value of obtaining knowledge as the first step towards building the process of self-learning. Student engagement is becoming the dominant context of the educational trend in knowledge management. It demonstrates the openness of social innovation, the risk of its development, the reproduction of its scenarios as a prospect of opportunities for its own growth.

An approach to knowledge management based on the ideas of postmodernism

If it is necessary to transform a person into an "actor" of the capitalist economy, as well as to adapt to the prevailing living conditions in modern civilization, the entry into the formation of postmodernism ideas has to be accepted as a necessary moment.

Unpredictability and uncertainty around the man of the technological age are one of the issues of Deleuze philosophy ^[8]. The multiplicity of factors hindering the human principle in the learning process makes it impossible to predict the consequences of digitalization for education. This is a kind of new space, characterized by the intensity of transformation. The role in education and decision–making – how and what to study and what to teach others - a person needs to rethink.

The role of the teacher and his position of dominance in relation to students is undergoing change – it is known that students are often more literate participants in modern digital reality than their teachers. The main task of the teacher is to realize when it is necessary to step back and give the main role to the student.

The teacher's ability to create a space for creative development as an uncertainty, not a prescription, according to Westman and Bergmark, is the basis of pedagogy ^[21].

They note that pedagogical relations should act as "multiple voices" that ensure their own development and the development of others without restriction through instructions and prescribed algorithms of action.

It remains to determine how, from the point of view of postmodernism, it is possible to assess how well the educational process is carried out.

Postmodernism and evaluation of the quality of education

One of the parameters of knowledge management is the assessment of the quality of education. Within the framework of the philosophy of postmodernism , the following positions are proposed for assessing the quality of education:

1) It is necessary to constantly change the dominant ones – transferring the dominant position from the teacher to the students and back, according to the idea of deconstruction;

From this point of view, the teacher should be the "producer" of the educational process, and not its "author" ^[21] – that is, correctly highlight the moment when it is necessary to step into the background, give the initiative to students, motivating them to research activities. At the same time, the ultimate goal of training should not be the expected learning outcomes proposed by higher authorities – they should be the starting point for research conducted by students.  At the same time, excessive control and strict limits, according to Fredricks, Blumenfeld and Paris, reduce the involvement of students ^[13].

2) Giving students a dominant position in the educational process requires them to have a certain level of preparedness: in the organization of their time and social relations;

In the absence of the above-described preparation, the freedom of action provided may bring undesirable results. By an insufficiently prepared student, obtaining a dominant position can be perceived as a potential opportunity to achieve results with a minimum of effort, demonstrating exclusively behavioral involvement – readiness to follow the rules and requirements of the teacher. A teacher, as a creative manager of the educational process and an expert, should be able to identify and maintain the internal motivation of students, develop through it the desire for self-learning in each of them.

3) The assessment of the quality of education should be a deeply reflective process that allows analyzing the mechanisms of obtaining knowledge and how they affect students.

Constant observation and reflection on the learning process are necessary in order to use and improve educational strategies most competently to increase engagement.

Creative management as a way of managing the educational process

Westman and Bergmark point out that education can be defined as the ability to intelligently manage the educational process. In this case, the quality assessment is translated into a different direction of thinking of professional teachers of higher education than the previously authoritarian one ^[21]. The authors believe that higher education is a "totality in itself", i.e. there is an integrity of all the positions included in this "totality" with which one should work as a manager. A teacher of higher education becomes a creative manager ^[1] with good methodological and philosophical training.

The ability of a creative manager to self-development, analysis and finding ways out of the information chaos to build a consistent educational process is its distinctive feature.

The expertise of a creative manager is the competent perception and use of social innovations that stimulate the development of teachers through the development of their students.

The contextual framework for assessing the quality of education is determined by the synthesis of art and science, which is quite innovative for domestic education, and is also known from transcriptions of art science ^[17].

Art science is a discipline of cognitive direction. When applied to the assessment of the quality of higher education, it can be understood as the principle of strengthening the role of human relations in the educational process. Attention is drawn not only to rational factors, but also to unconscious, as well as game features of development.

A creative manager uses, on the one hand, modern educational approaches, technologies (including gaming) and methods, and, on the other hand, being savvy in the psychological, motivational aspects of the learning process, is able to competently direct not only the educational process itself, but also each individual participant, increasing the latter's interest and involvement into what is happening.

As a starting position, the methodology of creative management assumes an Open Mind – the perception of everything new as a discovery for oneself as an expert, an open view of things. The perception of what is happening when you first look at it as something new and unique, the rejection of your own assessment at the first contact – in a broad sense, can represent an Open Mind. If there is a need to recognize and develop the internal motivation of students, it is necessary to perceive reality and the learning process through their eyes, i.e. directly use Open Mind. Such an approach to students will also help to concentrate their self-regulation, involvement and motivation in the direction of awareness of the acquired knowledge and their deep understanding.

The Open Mind methodology consists of a number of necessary conditions:

- Strategic vision – the ability to see the future and determine the necessary actions for a gradual movement towards it in conditions of considerable uncertainty.

- Contextual vision – the ability to identify the context of unstable phenomena and organize local management action in accordance with it.

- Reflexive vision – understanding the world in the forms of states and processes, rather than things and structures, based on the ideas of art techniques of art and co-evolution, to work and live together with other people.

The Open Mind methodology can be competently combined with the positions of postmodernism indicated above, used to assess the quality of education. The restructuring of dominance positions is closely related to the vision of the "context" of what is happening – when the teacher needs to step aside, and when to return to the position of leading the process. The connection between reflection in the educational process and reflexive vision is obvious and requires no explanation.

As for the strategic vision, this can be attributed to the abilities of a creative manager to be a "manager" of educational processes. In future research, it is worth considering existing knowledge management technologies – Knowledge Management, which has been actively used by modern IT companies for a long time, as well as project management technologies - after all, the educational process, "the totality itself", can be considered as a kind of extended project.

The main tasks of a creative manager are to increase the involvement of students not only in the current educational process, but also the interest in obtaining new knowledge in general. As a consequence, the key result of the creative manager's educational activity should not be a certain list of memorized topics in the student's head, but the development of his flexibility, ability to self-study and highlight key information for him in the conditions of digital chaos. The creative manager is free from physical fixation in any form. It can be embodied in an organizing position when its functions are transferred from subject to subject, from teacher to student and back. 

Conclusion

Ubiquitous digitalization and internetization, and, as a result, the ubiquity of information, can lead to a number of serious problems: limiting the number of trusted sources of information, reducing criticality to perceived knowledge, as well as the value of education and the quality of training, loss of self-education abilities.

The educational system should respond qualitatively to such challenges of digital reality. Education should become a flexible and self-managed generalized system.  A comparison of the globalist and postmodern approaches to the construction of education systems is shown in order to identify which of them (or the features, methods and principles of which of them or their combination) it is able to properly, if not resolve, then bring it closer to solving or minimize the effect of the above-mentioned digitalization problems.

The globalist approach to education, which consists in preparing human resources for the tasks and problems of the economy, is dominant today. Such an approach calls into question the value and quality of education as a whole, since its main focus on the development of man and society as a whole in this approach is very doubtful. The focus on the standardization of knowledge needed by specialists of a particular profile, "useful" for economic development, leads to a decrease in criticality to perceived information, since it is not only not necessary to evaluate the quality of knowledge supplied "from above", but it is also a very useless attempt to go against the system. By abandoning administrative standardization and increasing the degree of student involvement in the educational process, it is possible to increase interest in the latter and more conscious consumption of information in general.

A postmodern approach based on uncertainty and unpredictability of circumstances is more advantageous for responding to the challenges of digital reality. In the process of rethinking how and what to learn, how and what to teach others, the option of constantly rebuilding the positions of dominance is offered – the position of who is the teacher and who is the student. Skilful and timely provision of students with a dominant role in the educational process allows them to increase their involvement, craving for education and self-learning in general. Another approach of postmodernism – the constant joint reflection of the teacher and the student – allows us to look at the ways of knowledge management in a different way than with standardized globalism.

For modern students, a creative manager who manages educational processes based on deep philosophical and methodological knowledge becomes a "guide" to conscious learning. Taking the Open Mind methodology as a basis, a creative manager is able to look at reality through the eyes of his students, which makes it possible to choose an individual approach to each of them, which, again, increases involvement in the educational process. A qualitative increase in engagement raises a chain of positive changes: an increase in interest in education and criticism of perceived information, the development of self-learning abilities. All of the above makes it possible, if not completely solve the identified problems, then effectively minimize the possibility of their occurrence and negative consequences.

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