The basic trends of honors education in universities worldwide

Abstract

The basic trends of honors education in universities worldwide Russian universities start to follow the tradition of creating special educating areas for talented students with high academic achievements, i.e. honors students. However few studies in Russia have examined the phenomenon of honors colleges, as well as the principles of honors education's theory and the turning points of its history. The aims of the study are to analyze the reasons institutions of higher education worldwide invest significant financial and human resources into the talent development in various honors programs and to assess the perspectives of applying international standards to the development of the elite undergraduate education in Russian universities. The current study uses the methods of qualitative research including phenomenological method to examine the honors college phenomenon, the content analysis of fundamental texts produced in the context of honors education theory and the case study method to describe several outstanding honors programs in American, European and Russian universities. The author focuses her attention on cases of the honors programs in

Highlights of the 2019 honors session at the International Students’ Conference in Siberian Federal University, Russia

“…With SibFU Honors College being one of the pioneers of honors education in the Russian Federation (Tarasova, 2019), the results of the discussion that took place at the honors session allowed the college to define the strategies and tactics of applying international educational honors standards to the practices of Russian universities and understanding the overall importance of honors programs for both individual development and personal enhancement of gifted and talented students. Among the topics suggested for discussion in various presentations are game technologies in honors education and best practices for developing skills of the twenty-first century (for instance, leadership and decision making, critical thinking, skills of effective communication, negotiation skills, creativity, etc.…”