Structures and Meanings in the Agenda of The Scientific Community: an Overview of the International Conference

On October 22, 2021, MGIMO University hosted the international scientific conference Risks to the Human Capital of the Scientific Community in the Context of the COVID-19 Pandemic, organized by the Department of Sociology. The agenda of the conference included a wide variety of topics and issues related to self-identification of the scientific community in times of the COVID-19 pandemic. Its relevance and importance of the topic attracted participants from Russia, the Czech Republic, Italy, Belarus, Vietnam, Lebanon, Armenia, Brazil, Austria, China, Finland and Israel making it diverse and international. During the plenary session possibilities and boundaries of the use of the terms capital and risks in the sociological discourse were considered. The participants discussed global dilemmas of the civilization of the future, philosophical education in conditions of social turbulence, psychological factors in inflating risks and social instability as well as the demand for longterm humanistic trends to minimize risks for human academic capital in times of the pandemic. There were three sessions. The first one concentrated on the issue of human academic capital transformation in times of the pandemic. Its focus was on the effects of COVID on the sociological research agenda, new risks for social sciences (such as pseudoscientific arguments) and many others. The second session as devoted to digitalization with its influence, paradoxes, challenges, and risks. The speakers made it clear that digitalization today is not only a new research area, but a factor of producing social knowledge. This idea was illustrated by the analyses of advantages and disadvantages of scientometrics. The third session discussed the risks associated with digitalization of education and overall implications of the pandemic for the learning process. Both explicit and implicit, these implications of distant learning need to be considered. The participants spoke about digital competences and digital capital of university lecturers and professors, students’ academic mobility, etc. The sociological academic community welcome new perspectives and ideas, thus graduate students and masters were invited to participate in the conference together with experts. The conference bridged two main sociological trends: structural knowledge and comprehension. The former studies social institutions and structures and their functioning, while the latter investigates social actions and interactions, coupled with the meanings and intentions behind them. The current situation made it necessary to combine both approaches so that qualitative and quantitative methods would help study social structures, nuanced contexts, and values alike.

"The “Nestorian Chronicle” in the Prague “Lectures...” of Alfred Bem

During the interwar period, Prague was truly an academic capital of emigration. A unique scientific environment that formed therein a century ago was favorable for the study of Russian literature, including the ancient period. Among the philologists, who emigrated to Czechoslovakia, was Alfred Bem, known to modern science as a talented researcher of the works of Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Blok, Gumilyov and Mayakovsky. However, hardly anyone remembers Bem as Medievalist. The article analyzes the “Lectures” on the history of Old Russian literature (up to the mid XVII century) read to the students of Russian Pedagogical Institute named after Jan Amos Komenský in Prague in the winter semester of 1923 that have been nearly forgotten by now. These are the sheer bibliographic rarity. The circulation of this unique publication is small, just a few copies taken by duplicating machine from the typewritten original, which contains typos and corrections made by the author. “Lectures...” – a full textbook on the history of Russian literature of the XI – first half of the XVII centuries. A significant part of is dedicated to the “Tale of Bygone Years”. A. L. Bem’s view of the "Nestorian Chronicle” reflected in the Prague “Lectures...” is analyzed within the framework of studying the extensive historiographical topic of the “Research of Old Russian Literature in Czechoslovakia in the 1920s – 1930s”. This defines the novelty of this article. The conclusion is made that Alfred Bem made a considerable contribution to the study of the major Russian chronicle, provided in-depth and accurate characteristics to the “Tale of Bygone Years”, determining its historical and literary role. His contemplations on the genre and stylistic uniqueness of the “Tale” have subsequently found reflection in the works of Russian and foreign Medievalists. He also paid special attention to the history of the Corpus, thereby touching upon the question that is yet to be resolved.

Impact of parental bonding on academic resilience

Parent-child relationships are silent predictors for fostering the resilience in the academic arena of children. Parental bonding denotes the intensive attachment that develops between parental and their children through the process of mutual relations. In the field of academic it removes the adversity on part of child and makes him capable to face the academic and personal challenges effectively. Parental bonding emerged as an effective temperament that influences the academic associated activities of the child. It provides an anti-maltreatment approach for shaping the physical, psychological and academic capital of students. The survival and development of the child is mainly based on parental bonding. Parental bonding provides an abundant opportunity for children to boast their own pace in the field of learning. Parental bonding as a life span development has deeply rooted right from the infancy stage to last moments of life by establishing toddler relationship with mother father of primary caregiver. In the later stages of life, parental bonding gradually develops the resilience among children and make them enough competent to cope the stress and challenges in the field of academies. Indian education system is at stake because there is prevalence of heavy overload of academics and tough competition.

Pedagogical Leadership

Pedagogical leadership has been assigned different meanings and conceptualizations in different educational settings and across contexts. In the early childhood sector, the term first emerged in the 1990s. Here, pedagogy is seen as more applicable to the holistic work of early childhood educators in contrast to the term instructional leadership, which is usually associated with the schooling context. Pedagogical leadership is recently gaining more prominence due to the acknowledgment of the importance of leadership in early childhood and its integration into policy and qualifications (e.g., England’s Early Year Professional Status). In the schooling sector, pedagogical leadership was first promoted by Thomas Sergiovanni as an alternative to bureaucratic, visionary, and entrepreneurial leadership. Here, leadership is seen as a form of pedagogy and as being practiced by school leaders and teachers. Proponents of the model argue that pedagogy, especially in contrast to instruction, recognizes the cultural, moral, and societal aspects of learning. It involves a focus on building social and academic capital for students and intellectual and professional capital for teachers. Pedagogical leadership is described as bringing a pedagogical lens to all aspects of teaching and is strongly focused on dialogue with those being led or taught. Pedagogical leadership, as promoted by Sergiovanni, has not found great uptake in policy or research and the author did not further promote or examine the model in his later work. The term pedagogical or pedagogic leadership, however, is often used in research and policy in different contexts with other meanings attached to it. In the North American context, pedagogical leadership is generally used to describe leadership activities specifically focused on the improvement of teaching and learning as an aspect or dimension of a broader leadership model, such as instructional or transformational leadership. In the Scandinavian countries, pedagogical leadership has been used as a term in educational policy since the 1940s; however, it seems to lack a clear conceptualization and, in the schooling sector, is often regarded as the equivalent to instructional leadership, with some noting overlaps to Sergiovanni’s work or extending the earlier conceptualizations. Given the varying conceptualizations and uses of the term pedagogical leadership, this article incorporates sections on the use in each sector and the Scandinavian context. It highlights research published in the field, works that are helpful in understanding overlaps with other models, and works that extended conceptualizations of pedagogical leadership. Finally, sections on journals and books in the field are included.

Deconstructing the Deconstruction.doc

<div>Having read, with interest, an article by Allison Howell and Melanie Richter-Montpetit, “Is securitization theory racist? Civilizationism, methodological whiteness, and antiblack thought in the Copenhagen School”, I discovered that it contains a most fascinating example of academic racialization that a scholar of race and ethnicity would find hard, if not outright impossible, to ignore. </div><div>Setting the ambitious goal of deconstructing the securitization theory and unveiling its “racist foundations” to the world for the first time, the authors undertake painstaking work: they extract rather startling elements from the theory they are working with (one of the central elements among them is “silence”), in order to assemble them into racist discourse and then subject said discourse to crushing criticism. In this brief essay, I shall attempt to deconstruct the aforementioned deconstruction, and thereby demonstrate that:</div><div>1) the theory criticized by A. Howell and M. Richter-Montpetit, is in fact new racist discourse;</div><div>2) the aim of racializing the securitization theory was to accrue academic capital; </div><div>3) the racialization of theories that were not originally racist adds more racism to the academic discourse.</div>

Deconstructing the Deconstruction.doc

<div>Having read, with interest, an article by Allison Howell and Melanie Richter-Montpetit, “Is securitization theory racist? Civilizationism, methodological whiteness, and antiblack thought in the Copenhagen School”, I discovered that it contains a most fascinating example of academic racialization that a scholar of race and ethnicity would find hard, if not outright impossible, to ignore. </div><div>Setting the ambitious goal of deconstructing the securitization theory and unveiling its “racist foundations” to the world for the first time, the authors undertake painstaking work: they extract rather startling elements from the theory they are working with (one of the central elements among them is “silence”), in order to assemble them into racist discourse and then subject said discourse to crushing criticism. In this brief essay, I shall attempt to deconstruct the aforementioned deconstruction, and thereby demonstrate that:</div><div>1) the theory criticized by A. Howell and M. Richter-Montpetit, is in fact new racist discourse;</div><div>2) the aim of racializing the securitization theory was to accrue academic capital; </div><div>3) the racialization of theories that were not originally racist adds more racism to the academic discourse.</div>