UNIVERSITIES IN THE KNOWLEDGE SOCIETY: MODELS OF GENERATIVE LEARNING ENVIRONMENT

This work proposes a theoretical approach to the problem of designing the creativity-active and cognition-enriched environments of a modern university that are intended for education of professionals capable of producing knowledge, their materializing and integrating into life of the society. It is based on the idea of generativity that they are a prompting agent to cognition knowledge, creation of new knowledge, and its socio-economic application. This approach is in opposition to the tradition of treating the learning environment as an adaptive phenomenon. The empirical and theoretical material summarized in this paper is collected as a result of studies of cognitive environments at universities, including in the scientific and cognitive space of the "Step into the Future" Program - one of the most powerful systems of research education in present-day Russia. As a result of completed studies, the concept of generative learning environment at a research-type university and its constructional and creative models are developed. The constructional model is presented in the form of a learning-scientific innovation environment containing components of structurally complex epistemic surroundings. The creative model is described as a system of creative spaces of a cognitive-generative type. Key points of the methodology used in the structural-functional analysis of creative spaces at the university, that has been verified in practice at the Bauman Moscow State Technical University are defined. A conclusion is drawn that a modern university is structurally and functionally complex, and its learning environment should be formed as a generative rather than an adaptive system. (C) 2019 Published by Future Academy www.FutureAcademy.org.UK