STATEMENT OF SCHOLARSHIP AND RESEARCH ACTIVITY

Following the Russian tradition of pedagogical science, I was trained to view education as a field of rich theory and research endeavor where the role of the academic was to translate concepts into applications that can be tried in the field in the region served by the University. We were intellectual leaders. Our inspiration and models could shape the educational direction of thousands of teachers. We were thus concerned with the production and dissemination of knowledge to both our peer pedagogical scientists, but also to the teachers who could apply these ideas directly. The best analogue I can suggest here is the work of Cornell University as a center of both scholarship and outreach.

Our young professors are hired based upon their masters level work and the focus of their early scholarship is directed toward the completion of their doctorate. Having entered education through my work in the Pioneer movement, I was closely connected and very aware of the work of this major social institution in Russia. Unlike the scouting organizations here, nearly all children participated in the Young Pioneers, and the organization served as a major testing ground for identifying natural leaders and channeling them toward Komsomol and eventual party membership. The Pioneers also set the stage for the social development of all children within a collectivist society. It was natural, then, that for my dissertation, I turned to the influence of the Pioneer movement.

As my city of Volgograd is in reality the Stalingrad of the famed World War II battle, all children of Volgograd grew up shrouded in the historic sacrifice made by our parents generation in this epic defeat of the German army. In fact only one building of the pre-war city still stands; all else was destroyed. Pioneer groups were sometimes involved in the task of searching for artifacts of the battle, conducting archeological expeditions throughout the city. My research followed the children involved in this effort and compared their feelings of patriotism with those not involved. Not surprisingly, perhaps, I found that the children engaged in helping to document the horrors of this battle were deeply moved. Every artifact found, after all, had been in the possession of either a Russian hero or one of our enemies. Their experience was found to amplify feelings of attachment to our country, for which so many had sacrificed. What we now would term an experiential learning exercise proved to not only motivate participation and spur learning, but was able to influence children at the level of values development, as well.

Thus, in my Russian career, surrounded by masters and Ph.D. candidates and in the midst of a school of pedagogical scientists, I was oriented to traditional scholarship and capable of very high productivity. During my twenty five year career, I published more than seventy articles in peer reviewed publications. These articles spanned the areas of my research and practice interests, including innovative education at the elementary (emphasizing Montessori education and training), high school and college levels, curriculum development and academic program design, methods of language instruction (including Intensive Language Development), critical thinking, character development, effective teaching and learning methods, Educational Psychology with an emphasis on cognitive development, culture and cultural diversity in modern education, extracurricular, outdoor and recreational Programming, Ecological Literacy, and philosophy of education (emphasizing the need for a child-centered approach).
Of the fields that dominated my work, however, the theme of greatest importance to me has been that of comparative and global studies in education. In Russia, I was a pioneer in this area, emphasizing innovative integrative processes in cross cultural (Russian/American and other International) Comparative Education, including humanistic approaches in eastern and western countries, integrative processes in the world educational environment, and comparative studies of Montessori Education in the US and Russia.

I also authored several monographs and books. These addressed the Montessori method, topics of children’s’ play and use of vacations, innovative education, and the experiment in social work that I developed with the Dutch colleagues. I also routinely spoke at conferences in my region, as well as national conferences and occasionally international ones as well England, USA, The Netherlands (see my vita). This period of high traditional scholarly productivity is noted in the letters from Rector Danielchuk, Dr. Vladimir Karasik , and Dr. Tatyana Andruschenko my Russian colleagues. Unfortunately, the copies of few of these articles survived my move (there are copies in Russian) and most are not translated.

I have attached a few letters of my colleagues translated into English.

Scholarly work since coming to the U.S.

During my two years at Ramapo College, I had the opportunity to give a number of talks to the college community. In addition, in April 1999, I spoke at Penn State University to mark the twentieth anniversary of the Three Mile Island disaster. My talk addressed my two brothers, both officers in the Russian chemical and radioactive disaster response corps. One of my brothers died from his exposures. I emphasized the experience of my brother at Chernobyl.

I also participated in the writing of two grants. The first was a project developed for USAID called “From Global War to Global Warming: the Experience of Three Generations.” This project, later funded in modified form, proposed a cooperative program between Ramapo and VSPU involving co-investigation across many disciplines about the periods of World War II, the subsequent “cold war,” and the period since Perestroika. The second project was a grant to the Trust for Mutual Understanding entitled Environmental Decision Making: Comparing Environmental Impact Assessment in Russia and the U.S. Although the environmental focus was somewhat new to me, I quickly discovered that my interest in pedagogy and some of my detailed experiences were indeed pertinent. The successful grant was carried out in 1999 and 2000, was upgraded and supported by the Foundation in 2003 and a new proposal is in progress now in 2005. In Russia, I arranged and ran the visitation to key sites in the Volgograd region. My particular contribution to this project was the development of a case study of the Volgograd Ecological Gymnasium, an educational site that in my prior work in Russia I helped to sponsor and develop as a unique effort to create an educational context for children growing up in a highly contaminated environment. Two published papers later grew out of this project:

1. Smirnova, Ludmila, “Educational Foundations for Anticipatory and Participatory Social Learning: A Case Study in Ecological Literacy.” Journal of International Affairs, Towson University, January, 2002.
2. Smirnova, Ludmila, Ph.D. and Michael R. Edelstein, Ph.D “Educational Foundations for Anticipatory and Participatory Social Learning: A Case Study in Ecological Literacy.” In Jonathan Reisman, Polina Agakhaniants, Maria Tysiachniouk and Michael R. Edelstein (Eds.), Public Participation in Environmental Impact Assessment in Russia and United States. Publishing Group of the Research Institute of Chemistry of St. Petersburg State University, 2002.

In progress:

• Smirnova, Ludmila, “The Impacts of Pedagogical Recidivism in Teacher Education and Future Teaching Practices,” submitted August 2, 2005 to 2006 Annual AERA Meeting Friday, April 7- Tuesday, April 11, 2006, San Francisco, Theme Education Research in the Public Interest
• Smirnova, Ludmila, Barone, JC, Spielhagan, Francis, Lucy DiPaola, “Creating Social Presence in Online Environments to Enhance Teaching and Learning,” submitted August 2, 2005 to 2006 Annual AERA Meeting Friday, April 7- Tuesday, April 11, 2006, San Francisco, Theme Education Research in the Public Interest

Chapter and book:

Edelstein, Michael R., Ph.D, Maria Tysiachniouk, Ph.D., and Lyudmila V. Smirnova, Ph.D. Eds., “Cultures of Contamination: Legacies of Pollution in Russia and the U.S.” Forthcoming as Vol. 14 of Research in Social Problems and Public Policy, Elsevier, 2006.

Smirnova, Ludmila, “ The Impacts of Contaminated Disasters on the Education Decisions in Russia , ” a chapter in “Cultures of Contamination: Legacies of Pollution in Russia and the U.S.” Forthcoming as Vol. 14 of Research in Social Problems and Public Policy, Elsevier, 2006.

While I was in the U.S, I continued the active supervision of my doctoral students by e-mail. I arranged for American professors to serve as outside readers and, in the case of a project examining the influence of Jerome Bruner on Russian pedagogy, I arranged to meet and interview Dr. Bruner. During my year long return to Russia in 1999-2000, I resumed my scholarly work with my graduate students. During this period, two of them successfully defended their work.

3. Olga Skryabina “The Development of Informational Technologies in the USA Education,” June, 2000.
4. Inna Bessarabova “The Influence of Jerome Bruner on the Development of Educational Systems in Russia and Abroad,” June, 2000.

Ten masters theses were also completed during this time. I also participated in two conferences.

Invitational participant at the workshop for Deans of Foreign Languages on Curriculum Development for Masters and Bachelors certificate programs, Moscow Linguistic University, May, 2000.
“Comparative Education as a Science of Intercultural Communication.” Paper presented at the research conference “Linguistic Personality: Issues of Intercultural Communication.” Volgograd. February 3-4, 2000.

Upon my return as visiting professor in 2000-1, I presented my ecological gymnasium work at three conferences: one addressing ecological literacy, one for school psychologists, and one on grass roots community action.

5. “Using Environmental Pedagogy as a Tool for Forging NGO-University Partnerships.” Paper presented at the Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action,” November 16-18, 2000. New Orleans, Lo.
“Educating in a Hyper-Contaminated Environment: The Case of the Volgograd Ecological Gymnasium.” Paper co-authored with Michael R. Edelstein and presented by the lead author (i.e., Smirnova) at the New York Association of School Psychologists: 2000 Conference Mastering the Millennium, Adam’s Mark Hotel, Buffalo, New York, October 20, 2000 and included in the conference proceedings as pp. 102-109.

“Educational Foundations for Anticipatory and Participatory Social Learning: A Case Study in Ecological Literacy.” Paper co-authored with Michael R. Edelstein and presented by the lead author (i.e., Smirnova) as a poster session at the Second Nature Northeast Regional Workshop: Shaping a Sustainable Future: Best Practices in Higher Education, Trinity Conference Center, West Cornwall Connecticut, October 12-15, 2000.

I also participated as a guest in the working conference of U.S. and European Environmental Sociologists entitled “Risk: Searching for Vocabularies that Work,” New Orleans, March 9-11, 2001.

As a continuing effort on comparative Russian and U.S. environment, a second proposal was made for a project addressing comparative approaches to environmental contamination in Russia and the U.S., which we were awarded in the Spring 2002. This project involved another exchange program. In the summer of 2002, a group of American specialists came to Russia to study the experience of dealing with the environmental issues. I worked on the project in June in Russia. I also helped to host a group of Russian scholars who came in October of 2002 as part of this project. I am currently working on yet another piece on the Ecological Gymnasium for the book project connected to this grant.

During the summer of 2002, I had several new opportunities to present my work before peers. On July, 2002 I presented a poster paper at the International Congress of Applied Psychology entitled “Educational Environments as Adaptations to Contaminated Environments.” There was a wonderful response to this effort, and I spoke to many psychologists from around the globe. Later in July, I co-presented a paper at the XV World Congress of the International Sociological Association in Brisbane, Australia, entitled “Thoughts on 9/11 and the Cultural Acceptance of Risk: Cross Cultural Considerations of Americans and Russians.” In this paper we explored our mutual observations about how Americans and Russians think about risk issues and how fatalism or its opposite appear in the respective languages and vernacular use of language of the two cultures.

6. “Educational Environments as Adaptations to Contaminated Environments.” International Congress of Applied Psychology, Singapore, July 2002.
7. “Thoughts on 9/11 and the Cultural Acceptance of Risk: Cross Cultural Considerations of Americans and Russians.” the XV World Congress of the International Sociological Association in Brisbane, Australia, July 2002.

Finally, I ran a Workshop on Book Binding at a Literacy conference, held in April, 2002 at the Mount.

Course Development as Scholarship

During the period of 2002 – 2005, I have concentrated my efforts on designing what for me were an entirely new array of courses. Thus, my scholarly efforts were devoted fully to syllabus design and execution. I believe that a review of my course plans and supporting materials demonstrates a high level of research and creative development. I do not believe in doing anything half measure; I believe these courses represent first rate academic effort.

As I discuss these efforts in detail under teaching, I need only summarize here.

I have thoroughly researched and updated in the literatures pertinent to my courses. Often staying up all night, I have integrated the literature, web materials and my prior experience and knowledge, to design materials that I hand out to my students the next morning. Illustrative of this ability to delve thoroughly into material and produce responsive applications is the issue of state teaching standards. Early in the fall 2003 term, our program made a decision to rigorously expose students to these standards. That night, characteristically, I created a summary chart of the standards designed to help place any instructional activity into the relevant section. By the next day, my students were being drilled in the standards in a manner that created a model for the program and that has now been copied by schools were I do student teaching supervision for active use by their teachers (a copy of my work is appended). Additionally, every one of my syllabi was modified to align division program learning outcomes with INTASC (Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium) standards. To my knowledge, these materials represent a new innovation, at least for Mount St. Mary.

I have learned an ever-increasing number of complex computer skills that I never encountered previously (Power Point, WebCT, webquesting, making webpages, etc.) not only to the point of use, but also of instruction. In some cases, I have been among the first or the first to employ these skills among our education faculty. Such technological applications have become central to my instruction, bringing my courses up to the state-of-the-art in teacher preparation.

During my five years, I have also made contributions to a series of ongoing efforts that reflect continued scholarship. These can be grouped according to my ongoing collaborations in Russia, in the U.S., and in the development of a plan for a new major scholarly project in comparative education. I will discuss each in turn.

Ongoing scholarly work with colleagues in Russia.

Over the past years since I left Russia, including the fall 2002, and spring 2003, a key focus has been the completion of the doctoral work of a group of students whose doctoral and masters theses I supervised over the past several years, but whom were not prepared to finish before my departure. While I was technically replaced as chair of these committees when I left VSPU, I continued to comment upon drafts and to encourage candidates, as they made requests. Since a great deal of my effort over the past decade went into my thesis students, helping to see this work through to completion was a major step toward finishing unfinished business. In all cases, these projects reflected student collaboration in what was my own work. These collaborations involved the following dissertations and theses:

8. Ann Mitina. “Individualized Instruction in U.S. Middle Schools,” Masters Thesis, VSPU, October 2001.
9. Larisa Vedeneyeva. “Development of College Students’ Empathy in the Process of Their Teaching Educational Courses.” Ph.D. Defense, September 2001.
10. Oxana Korenkova. “The Ways of Improving the Quality of Training Specialists in U.S. Higher Education. Ph.D. Defense, October 2001.
11. Olga Penkova. “Developing Business Skills in University Students through the Process of Teaching Foreign Languages.” Ph.D. Defense, December 2001.

In addition, my first Ph.D. student, Olga Lomakina, defended her second doctorate dissertation on Educational Technologies in Teaching Foreign Languages.

The grant I won for VSPU from Character Development International has continued after my departure. Although I am no longer involved directly, I continue to be consulted by the sponsoring foundation and to offer support for this continuing effort. I have kept open the potential to play a future role in global character development education efforts. I have been involved in the development of an international conference on character development to be held at VSPU in the end of 2003.

Also, I prepared a journal chapter at the request of a colleague at VSPU. It was published in the Spring, 2002:

12. Smirnova, Ludmila. “Intensive English Instruction Through Intensive Communication.” In Alla Tomakhina, The Center of Intensive Studies of Foreign Languages; 10 Years of Existence. Volgograd: VSPU, Peremena, 2002.

Finally, following the visit to MSMC of my former Rector from Russia, and other colleagues there appears to be interest in the part of MSMC in developing some kind of international effort which has not yet taken shape. One possibility involves a project that I co-developed when teaching at Ramapo College of New Jersey. Although not initially funded, the project was modified and simplified subsequently by colleagues, funded, and is now underway. My former team at Ramapo and VSPU want me to join in an effort to now expand this project back to our original conception. The others are quite open to including MSMC in the resulting partnership.

The Main Scholarly Plan---The Comparative Education Project

Beginning with my efforts of past decades to study Montessori education, I became deeply invested in the comparative study of innovative approaches to childhood curriculum and instruction. Additionally, my interest in the work of American theorists such as Jerome Bruner allows for interesting contrasts to such Russian theorists as Leo Vygotsky. With my graduate students, I have explored these two comparative themes, as well as other points of comparison, such as the use of technology in the classroom.

When I left Russia, I was given the status of candidate for a second dissertation. Russians, along with some other Europeans, use the second dissertation as a tool for scholars having some twenty years work past their Ph.D. who show promise to become senior full professors. While I do not plan to return to teach in Russia, I would like to use the second dissertation format to achieve the next plateau in my career, the completion of an advanced research project and publication of resulting scholarly work.

As my project has begun to take shape, I foresee a broad effort to describe the educational approaches which dominate and represent innovative threads in the respective pedagogies of Russia and the U.S. and their mutual influence. For example, in my conversations with Jerome Bruner, he freely acknowledges the influence on his thinking of Vygotsky and other Russians and describes his opportunities to travel and study in Russia. In turn, he has himself had a major influence in Russia, as I studied with my doctoral student, Inna Bessarabova.

The project I contemplate will not merely be historical, but will address the basic issue of whether the respective systems have areas of learning and growth where collaboration would allow for productive mutual influences. I do not assume, by the way, that the U.S. is the educational leader, although in areas such as technology it certainly is. There are dominant qualities and elements of the Russian approach that may well be educationally preferential to U.S. practices, as well.

As a further step in this project, I hope to describe the attributes of what a global education would entail, drawing from primarily Russian and U.S., and perhaps other national and cultural influences over time, as well. My goal is not to create abstractions, but rather to lay out the curriculum for a new integrative system of education. I have had offers in Russia to create my own private school to experiment in this new system. Perhaps, a campus or charter school project here would eventually mirror a parallel Russian school project, putting the principles into practice and evaluating them in a cross cultural cooperative context.

To date, there are only two tentative products of this project. First, I wrote a draft of an article I am entitling “Pedagogical Recidivism.” This piece frankly explores the comparative readiness to learn of Russian and American students. In particular, it attempts to explain the resistence of American students that I encounter in my classes to critical thinking and independent skill-developing efforts. I have rarely encountered such resistence in Russian students. I have attached the current draft. Second, I have started designing a textbook for the course “Basics of Curriculum Planning.” This project is based heavily upon the work that I have done to develop this course. I previously devoted effort to a book on “Reading in Content Areas,” but I was reassigned from this course before I could move past an early draft. Instead of looking back, I started over with my new, hopefully long term, course focus. I am willing to share my work on both this project if requested, however, I consider it to be an early work product at this time.

I am also interested in identifying grants and other means of support to assist with the effort, to which I intend to turn as soon as my course requirements are stabilized and my energies are not absorbed in preparation.

Other Scholarly Pursuits

I continue meeting periodically with Dr. Jerome Bruner to test my views on the American education and comparative aspects of education in general. An encouraging and inspiring three hour meeting with him occurred in the Spring of 2003, 2004. His fresh and unusual views on education and teaching inspire and renew my personal thinking.

Pictures of my meeting with Jerome Bruner

Recently, I was invited to teach a course for the Master’s Program in Curriculum Design and Development at the Middletown Teacher Center, which is part of New York Institute of Technology. The students in this program tend to be experienced teachers returning for course work. Moreover, the nature of the educational program is based on the interface of technology with the classroom in a well developed fashion. This teaching experience presented me with an opportunity to broaden my perspective on teaching and the usage of technology in education, with the result that I am further developing skills that I can bring back into my MSMC classroom.

Summary and Conclusion—Much Achieved but Much Yet to Do

These collective endeavors amount to a major scholarly initiative focused upon instruction and technology. In the more than two years I have now been at MSMC, I have spent some forty hours per week outside of my time on campus on the preparation and development of course curricula and assignments, experiential projects, and the like. I have read works and surfed the web for the latest information on each subject, often leaving trails for my students to follow in webquesting or other research. I have experimented with computer technologies until I have mastered them well enough, not only to use them, but also to teach others.

I have very high expectations for myself. I am now ready to imporve my progress in more conventional areas of scholarship. The comparative education project is of great importance to me. There has just been no time for research not directly related to my courses. Working on this comparative project is a major goal for the near future.