Education and Inclusive Development: Puzzle of Low-learning Equilibrium

Abstract

The aim of the chapter is to develop some approaches to turn education, predetermining the quality of human capital, into the most important factor of national inclusive development. This problem is titled by the World Bank Report (2018) as “Learning: to realize education’s promise.” There has been revealed a fundamental contradiction between the two processes: the training technology is improved, the treasury of knowledge is enriched, the scientific progress accelerates, on one side, but on the other side, according to the international Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) study (2015), about 28% of the Russian 15-year-olds, for example, did not master the minimum necessary skills in at least one area of the three (natural science, mathematics, and communication in their native language). Meanwhile the correlation between educational and economic “failures” is high. Reduction in school failure in half (up to 15%) corresponds to the growth of the country’s GDP by 2% at the perspective of 10 years, by 5–6% – in 20 years, and by over 10% – in 30 years. The authors identify and substantiate the most important factor of the low basic knowledge of schoolchildren: it deals with the phenomenon of stable psychological and cognitive barriers in their minds. As a result of this theory, a model of educational consciousness has been developed, which makes it possible to overcome educational failure and to form algorithms for successful learning.