Implementation of Creative Education Policy in Russian Higher Education Curricula

Abstract

An ongoing restructuring of Russian higher education prioritizes development of a “creative educational system” as one of its policy directions. Following this recent policy mandate, Russian universities have been introducing new curricular models, which they adopt from the Western academic school of teaching and learning. However, Western-designed curricular novelties and methodologies that support creative educa tion policies have been criticized for lacking success in Russian HE due to key differences in traditional cul tures of educational systems. How do faculty facilitate curricular changes in support of the creative educa tion policy? This study addresses this question by exploring the implementation of a specific curricular module in the field of creative education—the Sustainability project in two Russian universities. The re sulting descriptive model comprises antecedents, processes, and contents of the project implementation under three broad categories of the university restructuring: organization, environment, and relation. I discuss the findings in terms of the two important characteristics of the resulted curricular implementation model: (1) the culturally sensitive nature of creative education curricular adaptation in post-Soviet higher educa tion, and (2) non-linearity of the curricular education policy enactment in Russian university classrooms.