City as a Textbook: Building Urban Educational Environment

• Main Author: Victoria Goncharova
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Pensoft Publishers 2021-05-01
• Series: ARPHA Proceedings
• Subjects: textbook; city; national cultural self-determinati
• Online Access: https://ap.pensoft.net/article/22740/download/pdf/

The idea to regard the city as a textbook rests on the belief that present-day educational tools get utmostly interactive and immersive so as to soon expand the boundaries of simple textbooks and embrace the complex educational environment. The article substantiates the thesis about the possibility to consider the city as a textbook from the standpoint of building the experience of national and cultural self-determination for a learner in the innovative context of educational urbanistics. As a key point, the author highlights the rationale that it is regional culture which is the only one available to the student to abide and understand by their national native culture. At the same time, the city (for example, the city of Moscow) is grounded as a resource space for such self-determination, being: a) a place to design social environment and communicative relations, b) a center of the regional level of native culture, c) a place to take an active part in real life situations, which involve both intercultural and communicative contexts. The author defines the related educational urbanistics as interdisciplinary field of designing socio-humanitarian knowledge and experience in the context of mutually enriching integration of urban space and value-specific (educational) trajectories of personal development of the citizen. As a result, the basic principles of building an urban educational environment in the context of national and cultural self-determination of students are formulated.