MOTIVATION TO LEARN: THE PEDAGOGICAL NEXUS IN THE RUSSIAN

COMMON SCHOOL: SOME IMPLICATIONS FOR TRANS-NATIONAL POLICY

BORROWING

NEIL HUFTON AND JULIAN ELLIOTT

School of Education, University of Sunderland

Paper presented at the British Educational Research Association Conference, University of

Sussex, at Brighton, 2-5 September, 1999.
Since proposal to BERA for a conference paper, an article providing a fuller discussion of the pedagogical nexus
and possible significance for English education has been accepted for publication in Educational Studies, 26(2),
to appear in Summer 2000. This paper therefore supplies a condensed account of the nexus, considers
implications for research and indicates projected further inquiries.

Abstract: Analysis of fieldwork conducted in St Petersburg suggests that high pupil motivation may
be in part attributable to a ‘pedagogical nexus’ - a set of linked, interactive and mutually-reinforcing
influences on pupils’ motivation to learn within and because of the schooling process. Elements of
the nexus are outlined. The role in research of identifying a nexus is considered. Differences
between explanation, correlation and causation are drawn out. Error in taking elements of
explanation to be causative factors is considered. The nature of the kinds of implication that a
Russian nexus could have is discussed with reference to English compulsory education.

Introduction: This paper reports work in progress as part of a larger project of

comparison of pupil motivation in Russia, the UK and the USA. In an earlier phase
(Elliott, Hufton, Hildreth and Illushin, 1999) Russian pupils were reported to be
relatively well-motivated to attend in class, to undertake substantial out-of-school
homework and to value education. Remarkably, this was achieved in the context of
providing a successful academic education to a very high proportion of pupils, in all-
ability classes, in neighbourhood comprehensive schools. Further, schools
appeared to serve as enclaves. Despite intense social, economic and ideological
change and insecure funding, there seemed little impact on pupils’ and teachers’
attitudes, or practices in schools. This follow-up paper explores possible Russian
schooling-related factors, which have persisted despite social turmoil and which may
partly explain continuing high motivation.

Method: The main mode of inquiry for this paper was audio-taped, semi-structured
interview. Unstructured classroom observation was also conducted in each school.
Data was not considered plausible unless it was repeatedly confirmed from many

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sources and not disconfirmed by any. Data was also checked for compatibility with
our (1999) survey of 1324 15-year old pupils’ responses to a questionnaire and
reports of comparable studies in the literature, including: Bereday, et al. (1960),
Grant (1972), Dunstan (1978, 1992), Shturman (1988), Muckle (1988, 1990), Ispa
(1994), Holmes, et al. (1995), Schweisfurth (1996, 1998) and Webber (1997).

Sources of evidence: 40 15-year old pupils, representing a range from high to low
attainers, were interviewed for 45-60 minutes, 10 in each of 4 St Petersburg schools,
chosen to represent the range of variation in neighbourhoods. Questions explored:
deployment of time; volume of, value set upon and parental interest in homework;
leisure; attitudes to discipline and learning in class; attributions for success and
failure; value set upon grades; value set upon education; career and future
aspirations. 50 teachers were interviewed for 50-60 minutes, 10 in each of 5
schools, 4 of which were the same as used for pupil interviews. Selected teachers
taught the beginning (7+) and end (10+) of the primary phase or were subject
teachers of 15-year olds for Russian (including Literature) Maths, Science and one
of History/Geography and Music/Art plus two other subjects. Teacher interviews
covered the same areas as pupils but also contained questions about teachers’
tasks and role and the impact of recent change. 3 Directors of Schools, 18 teacher-
trainees (in groups of 3), a group of 8 teacher educators and 2 senior staff in the
University of Pedagogical Mastery were also interviewed about recent change and
relations between law, rhetoric and practice. Elucidation of specific questions and
clarification of contexts was sought opportunistically with other knowledgeable
informants.

A Pedagogical Nexus: Study of the history of Russian schooling suggested that

continuity and stability, over three generations, had enabled fine-tuning of a
sophisticated pupil management system. Field inquiry suggested that schools
situated pupils at the centre of a complex interplay of states of affairs, processes,
procedures and pressures likely to facilitate, or generate high motivation. This led
us to enlarge the scope of the term ‘pedagogy’ beyond what takes place directly
between teachers and classes to the concept of a ‘pedagogical nexus’ – a set of
linked, interactive and mutually-reinforcing influences on pupils’ motivation to learn
within and because of the schooling process. Elements of the nexus, were:

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Continuity of school, class and teacher which fosters: a fluent age-phase transition,
between lower- and higher-grade styles and expectations; a highly individual-
teacher-specific audit of accountability; high pupil dependency on teachers
reinforcing compliance with expectations; a degree of solidarity between teacher and
class in meeting external curricular demands; and, a class peer-culture, pervaded by
a sense of inclusiveness, solidarity and mutuality, which took for granted that
learning was the purpose of schooling and that this would involve work.

Inter-generational continuity (between 1932 and the late 1980s) in habituation to a

schooling which has retained basic practices and procedures, with an evolving
rather than radically revised curriculum and pedagogy, a 1943 disciplinary code
which remains essentially visible in the 1990s classroom, and a classroom
assessment system, in place since the Tsars. Parents know how to check their
children’s learning, understand school reports and share perceptions of work-rate,
behaviour and progress with teachers.

Home-school relations marked by a partnership, in which teachers keep parents up-

dated on children’s progress, outline aims and past and future learning and ways in
which parents can help. Parents have ready access to teachers. Parents’
committees draw parents into the life of the school. Parents of disruptive pupils may
find themselves in embarrassed discussion with other parents.

Readiness and preparation for schooling: Starting aged seven, most children are
amply ready for the disciplines of schooling. Teachers report that almost all learn to
read well enough to manage other curriculum demands by the end of their first term.
A third to a half have attended kindergarten from 3+, though the number is falling as
the state withdraws funding. Kindergartens develop personal independence and
prepare socially, aesthetically, emotionally, morally and in oracy for formal schooling.
The main method is teacher-led group play. As children approach school age, this is
increasingly interspersed with two or three twenty-minute periods a day of more
formal learning, involving individual answering up and calling for close attention and
concentration. The early and rapid acquisition of adequate literacy minimises
demotivation, both to reading, itself, and to wider curriculum participation.

Curriculum, pedagogics and texts: The national curriculum of general education has
evolved since 1932, with a largely stable emphasis on finding effective methods for
teaching most subjects in the all-ability, neighbourhood comprehensive school.
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Collaboration between teacher- innovators and university pedagogy specialists has
led to the development of a critical pedagogical expertise, importantly expressed in
the writing of school text-books which articulate the curriculum into a series of lesson
topics and homework exercises for a year’s work. Teachers’ pre-service training also
centres on the textbooks, deepening personal understanding of topics, explaining
pedagogical reasons for their selection, framing and formulation, and considering
their teaching in practice.

Lesson styles: 5 or 6 lessons a day, occupy the first 45-50 minutes of an hour, the
last 10-15 minutes being a break. Lessons are highly disciplined and intensive.
Except when asked to write or speak, pupils pay attention. If asked to speak, they
do so with poise, in well-formed sentences, showing discomfort, if not able to
perform satisfactorily. Breaks are rowdy, but barely supervised. There are intimate
links between textbook, lesson, homework and assessment. Textbooks serve as
resource packs. Homeworks relate closely to the particular lesson which they
precede, or follow. Much assessment is oral. Individual pupils are called upon
throughout the lesson and the teacher’s estimate of their success may be entered in
a daily record which parents see. A 45-minute lesson can contain between five and
ten changes of activity – all teacher-led, or directed. Lessons include a mix of
listening, to the teacher, or fellow pupils, brief silent reading, focused reflective
thinking, and brief interludes of writing. Teachers also introduce ‘relaxation pauses’.
Lessons also have a deeper three-part structure: rehearsal of previous learning,
particularly from the immediately foregoing homework; introduction of new material;
rehearsal of new material and relation to previous learning and guidance on
appropriate homework to consolidate new learning.

Assessment styles: Any pupil may be called on at random in a lesson and the
requirement for a full and clear answer, together with the use of the daily record,
place a high premium on doing homework thoroughly and following lessons closely.

Curriculum structure, pitch and pace: although learning is very much lesson by
prescribed lesson, continuity of contact makes it possible for teacher and class to
reanimate shared experience of prior learning, and connect it with new, so that key
ideas can be retaught, many times, in new contexts, or with new extensions. Oral
review in class reinforces the habit of organising developing understanding for ready
presentation. Pupils have frequent opportunities to draw on whole-class feedback to

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improve initially imperfect understanding so that, although apparently linear, the
curriculum may operate rather as a kind of Brunerian ‘spiral’. Since all-ability pupils
share lessons cheerfully, the curriculum must be pitched and paced to make an
accessible demand, despite the fact that studies of the Russian curriculum suggest
that it may be rather more ‘difficult’ than the English National Curriculum.

Dependence on Memorisation as a key learning process. Where success in

learning is equated with memorisation, it will also correlate quite highly with effort.
Western observers have tended to deprecate memorisation, as though it had
inevitably to tend to ‘rote’ learning, but more recent studies (Biggs, 1994; Gow, et al.,
1995, Kember, 1996; Marton, et al., 19976) have argued that learning that combines
understanding with memorisation may not be superficial, especially if supported
through a pedagogy which relates new material immediately and frequently to
previous learning. Further, in the Russian school teacher grading allows effort, and
so memorisation, to be warmly rewarded, right across the ability range, whilst still
enabling learning for understanding to be most rewarded and the use of oral
assessment enables pupils to hear for themselves what is being rewarded and by
how much.

On current evidence (May 1999) despite wider political, social and economic turmoil,
Russian schools have served as enclaves for the preservation of a ‘pedagogical
nexus’ which has so far maintained high pupil motivation, through a transition from a
focus on state service, to a concern for personal survival and individual economic
viability.

Issues in Trans-National Research

Preliminary qualitative modelling: The experience of researching an educational

question in a highly evolved unfamiliar society has persuaded us that explanatory

progress is most likely where it involves the successive correction and extension of

initial and then ongoing attempts at a complete explanatory model. Although this

process contains obvious risks, it is preferable to test a series of intended-as-

complete models, even if initially rather unrigorously, than to test hypotheses which

do not form elements of a model, or form elements of inexplicit, or unexamined

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models,1 or of general theoretical models which pre-specify what will count as

evidence,2 rather than seek to explain ‘local’ states of affairs. If the general

theoretical implication of a hypothesis is not to be misconstrued, its ‘local’ meaning

and implication must first be identified. In these terms, the nexus represents a set of

variously mutually-implicatory hypotheses, which taken together may partly explain

high motivation in the observed schools.

Explanation v. causation: From the point of view of learning from Russian

experience, it is important to note that the elements of the nexus are explanatory

hypotheses, not causative factors. For an English researcher, Russian schools

impinge as complex and micro-detailed states-of-affairs. In order to conduct

research, it is both permissible and necessary to select a feature - in our case

motivation - and seek explanation of it by reference to accompanying features. But

this does not make motivation an ‘effect’, nor other features ‘causes’ . Rather

motivation correlates with other features, which are themselves complex, subsuming

many practical phenomena which could be otherwise construed, given different

research interests. Any outcome of interest to us is, in effect, an aspect of the state-

of-affairs and we cannot be certain of reproducing the aspect unless we can

essentially reproduce the state of affairs. Equally, although we tend to evaluate

deliberate changes in states-of-affairs as ‘causes’ of outcomes of interest to us, it is

rather the case that change creates a new state-of-affairs which may, or may not

exhibit our desired new aspect, and also other unanticipated and variously desirable

aspects

Policy borrowing: As an explanation of a state-of-affairs, the ‘pedagogical nexus’ can

illustrate what is in play in a developed schooling process. It gives no warrant for

the transnational adoption of elements of schooling practice. Rather, it points up the

importance of understanding schooling as an interactive set of partly consciously

valued but also partly embedded practices in which ‘improvement’, on some

rationale, in some part, may generate unwanted change, overall.

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Possible Questions Raised for English Education:

1. How well articulated is the current relationship between the curriculum and

textbooks? To what extent do textbooks render the curriculum as a pedogically-

warranted sequence of both maximally educative and maximally accessible

topics, ideas and activities? At present, we have little machinery for expert

consultation about the design, developing, trialling, evaluation and refinement

of textbooks.

2. There is pressure for more ‘whole-class interactive teaching’ and for a larger

volume of homework, but neither of these seems conceptualised within a notion

of offering pupils regular and frequent guidance for a personal study

programme, in which lessons and textbooks play specific supportive roles.

Should there be a much higher integration between lesson, textbook and

homework?

3. There is a tendency to demean memorisation by assimilating it solely to ‘rote’

learning. However, the relationship between kinds of memorisation, forms of

support for different kinds, outcomes of consequent learning, their relative

desirability and overall implications for the development of personal qualities is

insufficiently understood. If memorisation could play a more explicit role in

worthwhile learning than is currently imagined, might that enable an academic

curriculum to be more meaningfully accessible to more pupils than at present?

4. Is the existing assessment system well framed to preserve the motivation of those

who perceive their progress as too slow to represent meaningful achievement?

Unlike the Russian system, where a pupil can be daily rewarded, to some

encouraging degree, for building on immediately previous learning, the English

system constantly implies as fully worthwhile only that which a few are

expected to attain by the end of compulsory schooling.

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5. Is whole class interactive teaching compatible with differentiation of learning

tasks, as, for example, advocated in the National Literacy and Numeracy

Strategies? Differentiation by task has been a rare phenomenon in Russian

classrooms and teachers, in our survey, found the notion of differentiation

exotic and difficult to assimilate. Reynolds and Farrell (1996) argued that the

English emphasis upon individualisation has resulted in children demonstrating

a far wider range of performance than is typically found in those Asian

countries, where all children in a class are expected to take part in lessons

together. It may be that implications of the relation between whole-class

teaching and communality of learning task have not been fully recognised in

the English context.

6. Is our current management of continuity in schooling problematic? In the Russian

school, pupils need be socialised, effectively once only, to the necessary

disciplines for effective learning as a member of a school class. Would an

alignment of class routines across phases minimise the disruptive effects of

age-phase transition.

7. Would a later start to formal learning prove a significant factor in both early and
continuing success and motivation? Should we not earnestly research the

experience of those countries, of which Russia is merely one, which start formal

schooling at six, or seven, and also the form and function of their pre-school

preparation?

REFERENCES

BEREDAY, George Z. F., BRICKMAN, William W. & READ, Gerald H. (eds) (1960) The Changing
Soviet School. London: Constable & Co..
BIGGS, J. (1994). What are effective schools? Lessons from East and West. Australian Educational
Researcher, 21(1), pp. 19-39.
DUNSTAN, John (1978) Paths to Excellence and the Soviet School. (N.F.E.R.)
DUNSTAN, John (Ed.) (1992) Soviet Education under Perestroika. (London, Routledge).
ELLIOTT, Julian, HUFTON, Neil, HILDRETH, Anthony & ILLUSHIN, Leonid (1999) Factors influencing
educational motivation: a study of attitudes, expectations and behaviour of children in
Sunderland, Kentucky and St Petersburg. British Educational Research Journal, 25(1), 75-94.
8
GOW, Lyn, BALLA, John, KEMBER, David & TAI HAU, Kit (1995). The learning approaches of
Chinese people: a function of socialisation processes and the context of learning? In M.
BOND (Ed.), Handbook of Chinese Psychology, pp. 109-125. (Hong Kong, Oxford University
Press).
GRANT, Nigel (1972) Soviet Education. 3rd edn. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
HOLMES, B., READ, G.H. & VOSKRESENSKAYA, N. (1995) Russian Education: tradition and
transition. London: Garland.
ISPA, Jean (1994) Child Care in Russia - in transition. Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey.
KEMBER, David (1996). The intention to both memorise and understand: another approach to
learning? Higher Education, 31, pp. 341-354.
MARTON, Ference, WATKINS, David & TANG, Catherine (1997) ‘Discontinuities and continuities in
the experience of learning: an interview study of high-school students in Hong Kong’,
Learning and Instruction, 7(1), pp. 21-48.
MUCKLE, James, Y. (1988) A guide to the Soviet curriculum : what the Soviet child is taught in
school. London/ New York: Croom Helm
MUCKLE, James, Y. (1990) Portrait of a Soviet School under Glasnost. Basingstoke: Macmillan.
REYNOLDS, D. & FARRELL, S. (1996) Worlds Apart? A Review of International Surveys of
Educational Achievement Involving England. London, H.M.S.O..
SCHWEISFURTH, Michele (1996) Portrait of a Russian School: School 143, Perm. Unpublished
paper. Warwick: University of Warwick Institute of Education.
SCHWEISFURTH, Michele (1998) Report on Visit to Perm: 2 - 24 April, 1998. Unpublished paper.
Warwick: University of Warwick Institute of Education.
SHTURMAN, Dora (1988) The Soviet Secondary School. Trans. Philippa Shimrat. London:
Routledge.
WEBBER, Stephen Lawrence (1997) All Change? School Reform and Society in Russia, 1991-1996.
Unpublished PhD. thesis, Exeter: University of Exeter. British Library No. DX196630.

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Contact:
Neil Hufton, Julian Elliott
School of Education, University of Sunderland, Hammerton Hall, Gray Road,
Sunderland, SR2 8JB, United Kingdom.
Tel: +44 (0) 191 515 2395
Fax: +44 (0) 191 515 2629
Email: <neil.hufton@sunderland.ac.uk> and joe.elliott@sunderland.ac.uk

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1
In the early stages of researching in an unfamiliar culture, one can only make any kind of sense of what one is seeing and
hearing by assimilating it to prior understandings developed in one’s familiar context. One effect of conducting qualitative
research in an unfamiliar culture is to raise one’s awareness of gaps and inconsistencies in the ‘domestic’ understanding
which one brings to the task. If one is not to flounder in a morass of one-to-one mismatches, it quickly becomes clear that
gaining an understanding of social interaction in the terms of the unfamiliar culture is a necessary preliminary for any
kind of valid comparison.
2
For example, a number of authors in Schwalb & Schwalb (1996) illustrate the inappropriateness of unreflectively
applying North American psychological and psychiatric concepts and ideas to researching Japanese child rearing. See
especially Vogel (1996, 177-200).