Dr. Hab., Professor S.V. Novakovsky¹
Dr. Hab., Professor I.V. Bryzgalov²
Professor Kim Seon Jong ^3
1 Ural Federal University named after First President of Russia B.N. Yeltsin, Yekaterinburg
² Ural State University of Economics, Yekaterinburg
³ Myongji University, School of Sports and Arts, Seoul, Republic of Korea

Keywords: management, student, educational service, innovative educational service model, educational establishment, physical education, diverse educational environment.

Background. Ongoing reforms in every tier of the national education system demonstrate benefits of a proactive educational establishment management models. At the same time, timeframes for the management solutions have become so limited that it is no more possible for the top management to effectively control the implementation processes. This means that many management responsibilities, including the strategic ones, have to be delegated to the lower-level management tiers including the deputy directors and rectors responsible for specific operations, plus the faculties and pedagogical teams of every level, and even the academic group curators and individual leading educators.

The latter is possible in the innovative educational establishment with the larger management teams than in the standard educational establishment, with part of the administrative responsibilities (degrees of freedom) delegated to independent creative teams, associations and/or leading individuals. This is the way to form the so-called diverse educational environment with its extensive ‘multivariate’ decision-making opportunities, governed by its specific synergetic (self-management and creative dynamic chaos controlling) laws that generate new goals, meanings, values, priorities ​​and creative impulses. Such a new diverse educational environment requires a special sensitive and delicate management model to be efficient. A management entity in such a diverse educational environment is delocalized and inseparable from the educational service actors at the same time – and this is what may be called a synergetic diverse educational environment design which, as we believe, is the most appropriate and potentially beneficial educational service management format for the modern educational system.

As far as the ideologists and founders of the synergizing approach are concerned, we should mention first G. Haken, I. Prigozhin and S. Kurdyumov. It should be emphasized, however, that many synergetic ideas had first appeared in humanities before were accepted by our psychologists, physiologists, pedagogues, philosophers (A. Ukhtomsky, M. Bakhtin, L. Vygotsky, G. Leontiev, G. Shchedrovitsky, V. Stepin) and came into the post-neoclassical science and practice-prioritizing and developing learning models [3, 4].

Objective of the study was to theoretically analyze benefits of the innovative synergetic educational service management model for a physical education university.

Methods and structure of the study. Our experiments (traditional pedagogical and micro-level economic focused on the “theoretically grounded labor, production and management processes”) were designed to include the following stages: theoretical (problem identifying, subject matter and goal setting for the study, missions, and hypotheses); methodical (practical research method, plans, programs, data processing tools etc.); practical experimental stage with its modeled experimental situations, observations and experimental process controls; and the analytical stage with the quantitative and qualitative data analyses, interpretations, findings and practical recommendations.

Results and discussion. Innovative activity may be defined as the qualitative stage of the educational service actor’s personality self-controlled progress with the relevant self-actualization, self-formation and reflection elements. Therefore, the educational establishment undertaking innovative projects shall give a special priority to the teachers’ and students’ self-organizing initiatives to create stable structures (creative task teams/ associations) to facilitate activity of the creative process leaders striving to form a new personality-centered move, regardless of the prior specific social experience. These collective and individual activists will change and activate the educational establishment environment, with changes in the relationship of the educational establishment contributors [2], and with the innovative management models evolving to the system-forming factor critical for progress of the system. Due attention should be given to the self-management and administrative management mechanisms being well harmonized to keep the system reasonably integral and at the same time allowing well-measured degree of a controlled chaos as a source of self-organization and order in the educational service.

It should be mentioned that such self-organizing processes in an educational service are always natural and inevitable [1], with their quantitative and qualitative specifics determined by the internal conditions of the system including the available resources and the outside impacts on the system. To pursue the educational establishment development strategy, its top management (rector, director) will assume the key responsibilities to: (1) respond to the educational establishment self-organization process by a reactive (catching-up) management style; or (2) initiate and lead the required innovations – by a proactive management style.

Social and governmental attitudes to such innovations normally differ, since a society tends to demonstrate a demand for the educational service reforms to encourage the self-organizing initiatives; whilst the top governmental agencies in charge of the educational system tend to conservatively keep the system unchanged and integral being not always sensitive to the social demands. The traditional governmental conservatism may be insensitive, therefore, to the progress needs of the educational system as a “complex evolutionary whole” that includes multiple elements and subsystems that may widely differ and lag behind in their progress paces.

In the former (most conservative) case, the governmental administration will generate and control standards and regulatory guidelines sticking exclusively to its homeostasis functions to suppress the grass rout initiatives of the teaching teams. Such initiatives in this case may be limited to a few locations, with a good case in point provided by the individual innovative teachers and their education models popular in and acknowledged by the Russian school. Such administration is virtually innovations-proof i.e. insensitive to the lower-level initiatives and is governed by the strict centralization logic typical for the Soviet period. As things now stand, the educational service management system increasingly evolves towards the public-private format endorsed by the latest provisions of the Law on Education.

It should be confessed that the educational establishment Boards widely established nowadays in the vocational educational system and geared to channel the feedback from the faculties, teaching teams, students and families to the top management to help the latter make decisions sensitive to the local self-organization needs – are still largely ineffective. Our economic experiment found that this system is only by the look of it seems sensitive to the internal and external social demands and development trends; but in fact it takes too long time for it to take necessary managerial decisions, implement them and make adjustments based on the feedback from the grass route level. This means that the management system operates in fact in a reactive “catching up” style, and in many cases hopelessly lags behind the progress expectations; with the adjustments often coming via a trial-and-error method, and when the best option is finally found, it is usually already outdated and fails in the new reality. Such a management system with its slow reacting solutions-making style is gravely ineffective in responses to the modern and future challenges.

We believe that an innovative-synergetic management system is much more effective and beneficial today since the management functions in such a system are no longer passive. The top management is no more a passively waiting contributor to the innovative process chain responsible for only the stimulus-response action. The management responsibilities in this model evolve from the purely homeostatic functions in response to the lower-level initiatives to proactive management functions geared to generate parallel/ alternative gravity fields for potential initiatives coming from whatever educational service actor. Such initiatives and functions will no more be limited by the homeostasis-permitted corridor to give room for the new progress options generated by the educational service self-organization process – for example, in the academic curriculum revision domain.

The synergetic management concept for education and pedagogy offers a great heuristic potential and not only a new language for interpretation of the well-known provisions and terms (it would unlikely be reasonable to restrict it by this mission only) but also an evolutionary educational service management methodology sensitive to the self-organization processes within the educational service. We should consider in this context, however, issues of the process synergizing principles for the new management models to make it harmonious and efficient.

It should be emphasized that the self-organizing processes are not limited by the above initiatives as they generate many other educational service progress opportunities, with the wide range of emerging options making it possible to prudently and timely select the best ones. Such proactive innovative educational service management model gives the means to step up the educational service adaptability and responsiveness to every challenge in the rapidly changing social environments. It is also important that such a synergetic system that models to a large extent the current social environment can be of a developmental effect on the latter, since an educational system, as no other social field, is focused on the future routed in the present.

Conclusion. The new innovative synergetic educational service management model tested by the economic and pedagogical experiments at the Institute of Physical Culture, Sports and Youth Policy of Ural Federal University was found beneficial. It is recommended being implemented using the modern Internet technologies for the academic progress tests, teaching and tutorial service rating and competence qualification purposes, and for the academic progress data processing and analyzing in the academic database to facilitate progress in the educational service quality. The model helps, on the one hand, to effectively prevent human errors in the admissions, tests and examinations, and, on the other hand, develop the student’s thinking qualities as required by the modern personality development agenda. As far as the academic educational service management system is concerned, it will have every opportunity to solve every problem coming up in the educational service management on a systematic and timely basis.

References

1. Bryzgalov I.V., Sazonov I.Yu. Management of organization of physical education and sports. Textbook. Yekaterinburg: Ural Federal University publ., 2016. 236 p.
2. Bryzgalov I.V., Chermit K.D. Continuous formation of personal economic culture. Yekaterinburg: Ural Federal University publ., 2010. 452 p.
3. Prigozhin I., Stengers I.; Arshinov V.I., Klimontovich Yu.L., Sachkov Yu.V. [ed.] Order out of chaos: A new dialogue between man and nature. Transl. from English. Moscow: Progress publ., 1986. 432 p.
4. Haken G. Synergetics. Moscow: Mir publ., 1980. 405 p.

Corresponding author: s.v.novakovskiy@urfu.ru

Abstract

Objective of the study was to theoretically analyze benefits of the innovative synergetic educational service management model for a physical education university.
Methods and structure of the study. Our experiments (traditional pedagogical and micro-level economic focused on the “theoretically grounded labor, production and management processes”) were designed to include the following stages: theoretical (problem identifying, subject matter and goal setting for the study, missions, and hypotheses); methodical (practical research method, plans, programs, data processing tools etc.); practical experimental stage with its modeled experimental situations, observations and experimental process controls; and the analytical stage with the quantitative and qualitative data analyses, interpretations, findings and practical recommendations.

Study results and conclusions. The article covers the issues of innovative (electronic) management of the educational institutions. We theoretically substantiated the necessity and looked into the managerial measures to introduce into the process of management of the physical education and sports institutions a unified electronic rating system for assessment of students' knowledge and staff expertise level as required by the professional standard and academic curriculum of this program, the didactic basis of which is the innovative-synergetic management system that causes changes not only within the range allowed by the homeostatic functions but also through the processes of self-organization in the educational environment of the educational institution.