Introduction
The introduction of new educational standards for primary and secondary school education (2010) made it possible to more clearly identify key deficiencies in the traditional teacher education system. The new standards established requirements for meta-subject and personal achievements, while teacher training tools remained primarily focused on developing specific knowledge and skills.
Achieving meta-subject and personal results (E.V. Vysotskaya et al., 2021) presupposes the use of all the resources of a comprehensive school educational environment. — primarily the organization of children's learning activity and the necessary restructuring of teacher-student relationships (V.V. Rubtsov, V.I. Panov et al., 2007). The technology that most consistently ensures the organization of students' learning activity and constructive interaction between students and teachers in solving learning problems is the technology of developmental learning (V.V. Davydov, 1972; 1996; D.B. Elkonin, 1966; 1989; V.V. Rubtsov, 2024a; 2024b: 1996; G.A. Tsukerman, 2020; etc.).
Many years of experience in implementing developmental learning system (DL) permit the researchers to formulate a general approach to the training and retraining of teachers. We proceed from the fact that if a teacher develops children's learning activity, ensuring the interiorization of a collectively distributed form of activity and turning it into an individual one, then he should master a new type of his own pedagogical activity in a similar way - in the practical solution of corresponding problems in a really functioning system of developmental education, in cooperation with methodologists (active teachers) at the stages of lesson design, implementation, analysis, and evaluation (V.V. Rubtsov et al., 2011).
The UNESCO Department of Cultural and Historical Psychology at the Moscow State University of Psychology and Education has developed a master's program, "Cultural and Historical Psychology and the Activity-Based Approach in Education," which provides activity-based and collective-activity-based immersion in the theory and practice of developmental learning. The training is based on master's students' work with learning problems, which they encounter during their internships in educational institutions (V.V. Rubtsov et al., 2015).
The program includes four practicums, where master's students are presented with specific research, practical, and analytical tasks. The result is a report and/or a developed work product.
Description of practicums
Practicum 1. Analysis of the educational environment of School No. 91
This Practicum is held at the beginning of the first year of study and focuses on the educational environment of Moscow's School No. 91, where the DL curriculum for the primary and secondary schools has been developed, tested, and advanced for many years. Master's students study the school's environment: it’s structure, the interactions between participants, become familiar with the teaching staff and administration, and communicate with students and parents. While tools for systematically describing the characteristics of the educational environment exist, these tools are not offered to master's students "off the shelf." They are introduced at the final stage, when observation results are compared, refined, and discussed in terms of organizing joint learning activities between adults (teachers) and children, as well as the children themselves.
Practicum 2. Analysis of the lesson
This Practicum aims to develop and refine the tools for qualitative lesson analysis: observing and recording the lesson using an analysis framework, discussing the results, and identifying lesson characteristics related to:
- features of subject content;
- the teacher's methods for organizing students' learning activity (interaction and collaboration);
- the nature of the teacher-student relationship.
Particular attention is paid to the presentation of the content: setting the learning problem, addressing problematic issues, organizing research activity, as well as the means for developing students' independence and initiative, and their readiness for dialogue and interaction in group work. Group discussion of the results of the lessons’ analysis by master's students leads to the identification of lesson characteristics specific to the DL system
Practicum 3. Diagnosis of meta-subject outcomes
This Practicum is devoted to the diagnosis of meta-subject outcomes in primary education (I.M. Ulanovskaya, 2015). Master's students gain the opportunity to observe and evaluate the effects of learning in the DL system in terms of students' cognitive, personal, and social development; master psychodiagnostic methods, as well as data processing and analysis procedures. This Practicum allows students to correlate the theoretical propositions of cultural-historical psychology with empirical results of educational practice of the DL school, and demonstrate specific manifestations of the thesis on the leading role of learning in development: the characteristics of the educational environment (Practicum 1) and the specific features of the educational process (Practicum 2) are associated with the development of significant new developments in children by the end of primary school—the ability to learn, cognitive reflection, planning, assessment and self-assessment and readiness for productive interaction with peers.
Practicum 4. Design and implementation of a lesson fragment scenario
Practicum 4 is the final workshop. It involves a creative solution to a professional problem: independently developing a scenario for a lesson fragment in the form of group work by students and implementing it in a concrete class.
In terms of content, Practicum 4 requires:
- deep immersion in the subject matter, as the scenario must be integrated into the actual learning process and consistent with the logic of the topic being studied;
- practical mastery of the principles of developmental learning, which allows one to identify the core of the learning problem in the subject content and determine those actions that can be deployed as a joint solution;
- close interaction with the teacher, as it is necessary to consider the age and individual characteristics of the class, learning motivation, established forms of interaction, and the pace of work.
This Practicum is also conducted in a group format for master's students: this gives them the opportunity to "live through" the scenario as participants, clarify the instructions, and check the clarity of the materials and the appropriateness of the difficulty.
A lesson fragment scenario as a project for organizing joint learning activity
Within the framework of Practicum 4, a "script" is understood not as a sequence of teacher remarks, but as a project for organizing joint learning activity—with a specific learning problem, a system of conditions, a distribution of actions, and mechanisms for reflection and evaluation of results (Rubtsov et al., 2021). The script includes the following mandatory components:
- Subject content and educational concept:
- what concept/method of action is being mastered;
- what essential relationships should students discover;
- what constitutes a "substantive increase" based on the results of the fragment.
- Learning objective (problem situation):
- formulation of the problem as requiring research, hypothesis testing, and comparison of methods;
- indication of conditions/constraints that make simple reproduction of existing knowledge impossible;
- criteria for successful solution that are clear to students.
- Organization of group work:
- Reasons for grouping (different results, different roles, different pieces of information, etc.);
- Method of distributing actions/operations/functions (analyst, recorder, speaker, "conditions controller," "criteria expert," etc.);
- Interaction regulations (time frames, discussion rules, recording proposals).
- Materials and resources:
- Texts, cards, diagrams, data fragments, tables, outline maps, etc.;
- Means of recording a common solution (poster, general diagram, argument table, route sheet);
- Indication of what is the group's product.
- Dynamics of the stages:
- Introduction to the problem and its problematization;
- Group search;
- Presentation and comparison of group solutions;
- Development of a common method/generalization (under the guidance of the teacher as organizer);
- Reinforcing/transferring the method to new material (microtask).
- Reflection and evaluation:
- reflection questions (what was difficult, what helped, how did they come to agreement);
- evaluation of the result, but also of the method of joint work (how the tasks were distributed, how the hypotheses were tested, how a common solution was reached);
- recording the result in the "language of concepts" (what exactly was discovered/established).
- The role of the teacher:
- the teacher acts as an organizer and moderator: sets the framework, supports meaningful discussion, helps maintain criteria, and "returns" to the conditions of the problem;
- direct communication of the message of a ready-made solution is allowed only at the end of the problem solving process at the generalization/recording stage.
It is this structure that ensures the transition from "group activities" to joint learning activity as a means of mastering the content.
Research hypothesis and objectives
Research hypothesis: The system of master's degree practicums ensures mastery of the basic concepts of cultural-historical psychology and the principles of organizing learning activity. This is reflected in the students' productive work—the development of lesson scenarios implemented as a joint solution of learning problems by children (Practicum 4).
Research objectives:
- To identify and assess the level of proficiency in the basic concepts of the DL system based on an analysis of reports for Practicum 1;
- To identify and assess the level of proficiency in the basic concepts of the DL system based on an analysis of lesson fragment scenarios (Practicum 4).
Materials and methods:
- Content analysis of texts (100 reports for Practicum 1 and 100 reports for Practicum 2);
- Expert analysis of lesson fragment scenarios.
Sample: Master's students of the UNESCO Department of Information and Communication Technologies (2017–2025 cohorts).
Results
Objective 1. Content analysis of reports for Practicum 1
To evaluate the reports, a content analysis was conducted on 100 texts from a random sample of reports prepared by Master's students over nine years of program implementation. Below are typical judgments demonstrating the master's degree students' focus on the external manifestations of the "atmosphere" of the DL school, while insufficiently analyzing the factors that ensure the developmental nature of the educational environment.
According to the results, 100% of the texts highly praised the psychological climate: "The teenagers' voices expressed interest, energy, and a feeling that school was part of their lives, not an obligation." 72% of the reports noted that "lessons are noisy," with half concluding that "this distracts children, and they may not hear the teacher." 53% of the reports noted that the teacher "rarely makes comments," "is open to dialogue, ready to listen, discuss, and support." 64% of the reports used the category "mistake"; a common formulation was: "children have no fear of making mistakes." 84% of the texts included the category "evaluation" related to errors: "no evaluation - no fear of being punished by parents or ridiculed by peers; the child has the opportunity and desire to ask questions." Negative evaluative judgments often fall under the category of "visual aids" (21% of reports): "homemade, sloppy diagrams," "why not buy large, beautiful aids?" The remaining 79% of texts contain no comments about visual aids, even though the graduate students attended lessons and were able to observe the emergence of diagrams as a result of group discussion and joint recording of content development.
Some studies (33%) contain judgments demonstrating a willingness to interpret observed features within the logic of the learning process (for example, an indication that the teacher acts as the organizer of the study). However, such judgments often remain abstract: it is unclear what specific observable characteristics and mechanisms of learning activity underlie them. One report asserts that "the main method of work is posing problematic situations," which is theoretically correct, but not always supported by an analysis of specific episodes of the lesson; sometimes, theory is "superimposed" on fragments of observations without revealing the psychological meaning of the situation. Overall, the distribution of judgments and the modality of assessments allow us to conclude:
- Master's students confidently identify the external characteristics of the educational environment at School No. 91 and positively evaluate the psychological climate;
- Factors associated with the organization of the educational process as a developmental learning system are interpreted primarily at a mundane level and are related to the observer's individual experience (for example, group work is described as "noise," and collective diagramming as "sloppy pictures");
- 33% of reports use scientific categories characterizing a developmental learning environment; however, these categories rarely serve as a tool for analyzing a specific learning situation and do not reveal its psychological mechanisms, functioning as a set of terms.
- Thus, immersion in the theory of learning activity through lectures and seminars and the study of relevant scientific literature by Master's students does not ensure the active mastery of the principles of developmental learning and their "recognition" in the practice of the real educational process.
Objective 2. Expert scenario analysis (Practicum 4)
Practicum 2 – lesson analysis – immerses master's students in the mechanisms that shape the educational environment of the DL school: specific educational content, presented as a constant problematization and search for solutions; specific forms of child-adult relationships in which the teacher organizes and directs the students' search activity; and specific interpersonal relationships manifested in supporting and considering the actions of others when constructing their own learning activity. Practicum 3 allows master's students to discover the connection between the educational tools they observe in lessons and the new psychological developments at the meta-subject and personal levels that emerge as a result of students' immersion in the educational environment of the DL school. Therefore, only after mastering the content of Practicums 1–3 can master's students be offered the following creative work. In Practicum 4, master's students were presented with a task requiring a logical-subject and logical-psychological analysis of the content, defining a system of basic concepts, and designing problematic situations that involved collective discussion by the students themselves, trial-and-error activities, hypothesizing, analysis, and reflection. This task can only be solved in collaboration with an experienced teacher familiar with the subject matter and methods for organizing joint work of the students. Over the course of the program, more than 50 scenarios for organizing student joint problem solving were proposed.
An expert evaluation was conducted at a methodological seminar for teachers at School No. 91. Thirty scenarios for lesson fragments organized as collaborative work among student groups were analyzed. The following were the subjects of the assessment:
- determination of the subject content of the learning problem and the possibility of its disclosure in the form of a group search and research task;
- Method of distributing actions/operations/functions/roles among participants;
- Validity of the need for group interaction to solve the problem;
- Appropriateness of the task to the age, individual, and motivational characteristics of the students. The analysis revealed that the proposed scenarios implement two basic models of interaction organization, differing in the ways in which functions are divided and, accordingly, in the specifics of communication in the overall problem-solving process.
Model 1. Individual search → group comparison and coordination
In the first stage, students perform orientation and search activity individually and obtain their own results. In the second stage, the teacher forms groups of students with different solutions; the group's task is to compare the results, identify the reasons for the differences, formulate criteria, and reach a common decision. In this model, communication is primarily included in the stages of monitoring, evaluation, and reflective analysis.
Example 1: constructing a "word schema." Students individually analyze a compound word morpheme-by-morpheme; then, in groups, they discuss the differences in the schemas and develop a coordinated solution based on the criteria and rules.
Example 2: the "trial" of Peter the Great (history lesson, summarizing the topic "The Main Directions of Russia's Foreign and Domestic Policy in the Late 17th Century"). The class is divided into roles: prosecutors, defense attorneys, judge, jury, and spectators. Restrictions on arguments and rules for presenting evidence encourage meaningful discussion, student engagement, and the need for coordinated action (including appealing to the "audience" as a resource for argumentation). The product is not only a "verdict" but also a comprehensive system of arguments and criteria for evaluating historical actions.
Model 2. Joint search as a solution prerequisite (distributed information/joint actions)
The group is given a problem that fundamentally cannot be solved individually, since the information, materials, or functions are distributed among the participants. The solution is generated through meaningful communication, mutual requests, and coordination of actions. In this model, communication is the mechanism for organizing the activity itself and serves as a means of constructing a common method of action.
Example 1: composing a text based on questions with distributed fragments. The text is divided into sentences/fragments based on the characters, with each participant assigned to a "personal" character. Based on the content of their "personal" character's remarks, each participant must develop a hypothesis about the content of the text as a whole and test it by asking other participants a limited number of questions. The group's product is a coherent, logically consistent text and the basis on which it was compiled.
Example 2: "Natural Zones" (Geography, 7th grade). Groups receive sections of a contour map with coordinates and must identify the climate, topography, soils, vegetation, and fauna of the region. A shared "bank" of flora and fauna images becomes a resource and a subject of competition; disputes over the "belonging" of images provoke meaningful discussions between groups, in which the characteristics of the concept of "natural zone" are clarified and connections between coordinates, altitudinal zonation, and natural complexes are discovered. The result is a finalized map of the continent with the distribution of natural zones, corresponding flora and fauna samples, and a system of selection arguments.
Conclusions
The analysis of the scenarios created by the master’s students groups allows us to draw the following conclusions:
- Master's students master the fundamentals of designing forms of joint educational activities, which is reflected in the quality of the scenarios presented;
- Developing a scenario for a lesson fragment in the form of a joint solution to a learning problem is impossible without the practical mastery of educational technologies for organizing a lesson (Practicum 2) and understanding the connections between educational technologies of the lesson and their meta-subject and personal outcomes (Practicum 3);
- Organizing Practicum 4 through ongoing communication with teachers and methodologists improves the quality of scenarios: cyclical feedback allows for the clarification of the educational task, criteria, roles, and interaction regulations;
- Scenario-based presentation of a lesson fragment in the form of a joint solution to a learning problem requires practical mastery of the following research methods:
- logical-subject analysis of the educational content on which the lesson is based, with the goal of identifying gaps and contradictions that should become the basis for the future problem;
- logical-psychological analysis of the activity, the organization of which can enable students to discover the sought-after contradiction;
- transforming highlighted aspects of the subject content into a problem for collaborative solution. This is a complex stage that can only be mastered through practical work, as it requires consideration of the age, motivational, and social characteristics of a particular class, as well as the level of subject matter proficiency that should enable students to identify and overcome content contradictions through a collaborative search for a solution.
- Based on the results of the lesson segment, the master's degree student receives feedback in the form of a discussion with the teacher and methodologists, as well as the results of the children group work. This allows the master's degree students to conduct a reflective analysis of their work and evaluate its success. The main criterion here is the students' engagement in the joint search for a solution and progress in mastering the educational content.
- Master's degree students' immersion in the educational environment of the DL school through specially organized research activity ensures not only a deeper understanding of theoretical concepts but also the development of the competencies necessary for solving practical developmental learning problems based on the design and simulation of collaborative forms of learning activity.