Theoretical and Methodological Bases of a New School Model in Russia: Cultural-Historical Psychology and the Activity Approach as the Foundation of Educational Practice

To overcome the crisis of the modern school institution, it is necessary to qualitatively rethink its foundations and to design fundamentally new approaches to implementing the educational program. The theoretical and methodological bases of the concept of a new type of school as a development practice, based on the provisions of Russian cultural-historical psychology and the activity approach are presented. The purpose of the work is to consider in the modern context the key theoretical provisions of Russian psychology and to formulate the methodological principles arising from them, which set the conditions for organizing the educational process, thus ensuring the transition from theory to practice. The key concepts of the school model are ‘development’, ‘agency’ and ‘collaboration’: ‘infinite development’ is formulated as the supreme goal and value of the school, the development of the position of agency is considered as the main productive process, and collaboration is the main professional principle. Eight basic principles are formulated as follows: intent - implementation - reflection as a methodological scheme for organizing school processes, the principle of multidimensional development, the principle of equal importance of school activities, the principle of congruence, the principle of organizing the educational space as a space for growing up, the principle of fellowship of practices and the development-oriented approach to evaluation. Thus, the article presents the authors’ view of the school as a scientifically grounded anthropological practice. The implementation of the concept, which has already begun in Russia, is an experiment that will make it possible to verify these theoretical and methodological provisions.