The paper is devoted to the pilot implementation of CPD programs for universities academic staff advanced training in the International Computer Science Continuous Professional Development Centre of Tomsk State University. The Centre was created within the framework of the project “Human Resources for the Digital Economy” of the national program “Digital Economy of the Russian Federation”. The article presents the structure of CPD programs by tracks: research and development, advanced educational technologies and academic programs of a new generation in the IT field. The authors discuss the results of online training of more than 1000 academic stuff members from more than 100 universities for 4 months in the second half of 2020. 

 A relatively new approach to teaching students of non-linguistic areas of education and specialties in a foreign language and profile specialty is Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL). The uniqueness of the approach lies in the fact that in the course of one integrated course students simultaneously master both a professional foreign language and a specialized discipline or specialty. However, the implementation of this approach in practice requires the  formation of a number of professional competencies in an integrated course teacher: foreign language communicative competence, competence in a  specialized specialty, competence in the methodology of teaching a foreign language and the specialized specialty. This paper presents the experience of the Derzhavin Tambov State University in developing a personnel reserve program aimed at training teachers of integrated courses. 

 The article addresses the current issues of pedagogy of higher education that should be presented in skills development programs in consideration of aerospace education specifics. According to the contemporary Russian and foreign researches, current issues of pedagogy are concentrated in such areas as the development of education in connection with the formation of learning and teaching processes. It is feasible to discuss systematically these  problems in teacher training and professional development courses and formulate scientific and practical recommendations.
The article dwells on the three research areas in pedagogy of higher education: 1) features of the modern educational process; 2) student as a subject of educational activities; 3) university teacher as a subject of pedagogical activities. A student as a subject of learning is characterized not only by criteria of his cognitive and motivational development, but also in the context of mental health risks in the conditions of challenges and threats of the digital world. The analysis of modern student’s value orientations is an important aspect of higher education pedagogy in order to influence teaching and educational processes.
A teacher as a subject of pedagogical activity is studied from the standpoint of his professional success. Such factors of his professionalization as motivation, pedagogical communication, stress resistance in various working conditions are considered. 

 The pandemic period revealed the shortcomings of distance learning, which do not allow it to be used as a basic form of education in the main educational programs. The most effective form of organizing the educational process, in the context of its digital transformation, is seen as blended learning, which involves alternating online and face-to-face learning  formats. The subject of this article is the pedagogical aspects of blended learning related to the organization of the process of mixed learning in an educational institution and its implementation in the joint activities of the teacher and students. The analysis of existing approaches to the identification and classification of blended learning models is carried out. The authors justify an approach to the typology of blended learning models, which can be implemented at different levels: curriculum, subject, section or topic (within the framework of the discipline), training session, extracurricular learning technology. The proposed methodology is based on the joint work of the network of experimental sites of the Ranepa Federal Institute for the Development of Education in the direction of “Digital Didactics”. The article shows the connection of the proposed  typology of organizational and didactic models of blended learning with other typologies and individual models presented in foreign and domestic  publications. 

 Innovation is the main source to remain competitive in today’s environment. As well as other employees, the lecturer is also required to do innovative teaching. But, encouraging lecturers’ willingness to do innovative teaching is challenging due to the dual roles as teachers and researchers. This study explores the predictor of innovative teaching by applying the job-demands resources model as a theoretical anchor. This research used the online questionnaire to collect the data from 233 samples taken randomly  from nineteen universities in Indonesia. This study uses structural equation  modeling (SEM) to examine the research model. The result indicated that  teacher-researcher role conflict negatively predicted the innovative teaching of the lecturer. Besides, occupational well-being plays a mediating variable to explain the influence of teacher-researcher role conflict on innovative teaching. This study provides critical insight into the related stakeholders, such as the universities and related ministry, regarding the negative predictor of innovative teaching. They should discover approaches to reduce the negative effect of teacher-researcher conflict on the innovation behavior of lecturer teaching activity. The universities and  related ministries have to ease the issue regarding job role conflict. 

 The development of practice-centered education is attributable to the needs of widely understood social practices, framed as a demand of the economic sphere in highly qualified personnel with certain skills and qualification profile. Today, the employers expect from educational organizations more than just graduates familiar with industry and having a  good theoretical background, but the employees who are able to perform  various tasks relating to production, design or organizational issues from the first days of entry on duty. Therefore, the educational process in the engineering university should be organized to ensure the conditions for students to perform certain types of work (professional tryouts) related to future professional activities. It is necessary to develop and build on practical skills and competences in line with the educational program. The student’s professionally oriented activity is viewed as a type of educational and work activity aimed at the professional development of a person achieved though gaining experience in using means and methods of professional activity in the social environment. The basis of this educational process is practice-centered education. The article examines the existing models of practice-centered training (PCL) such as dual education, sandwich courses, social partnership between university and enterprise, learning through volunteering,  project activity, analyzes their merits and possible risks. 

 The review article summarizes the results of foreign and Russian studies of imitations in higher education and the understanding of their causes and consequences. The first section is devoted to the results of the analysis of university management imitations caused by the bureaucratization of the higher education management system and critical gaps between its strategic  objectives and resource deficits. The second section examines the research strategies of the scientific and pedagogical community, which have a forced imitation character. The third section deals with the generalization of the experience of studying students’ imitation practices in a wide range – from academic fraud to the consumption of educational symbols. The end-to-end lines of analysis of the research results of the problem are imitations in the educational and scientific activities of universities, as well as in the “zones” of interaction of educational communities, in which they are  mutually conditioned.  

 The article compares measures to support female teachers in universities in the UK, Germany and Russia with gender statistics from the OECD. An ambiguous correlation was revealed: the broader the measures to support  female university teachers, the lower their share in higher education. The purpose of the work is to identify the reasons for this relationship. Within the framework of the hypothesis, the following thesis was put forward: high  competition in higher education affects the decrease in the proportion of female teachers and forces the states to introduce a wide range of support tools to achieve gender balance. Comparison of the specifics of the spheres of higher education in the studied countries: R&D expenditures in the field of higher education and the working conditions of teachers (average salary, mobility, a specificity of contracts, hours worked, career opportunities) made it possible to identify the level of competition in universities. The obtained results confirmed the hypothesis about the direct influence of the level of competition on the share of female teachers in higher education. In conclusion, the relevance of the experience of European countries in building a gender balance among university teachers for Russia is considered. It is concluded that significant differences in the specifics of the sphere of higher education in Russia and the studied European countries, as well as the dominant share of female university teachers in our country, are not a sufficient reason for refusing to study foreign experience. On the contrary, the measures taken by the Government and the Ministry of  Education and Science of Russia in recent years, if successfully implemented,  will significantly increase the level of competition in the field of domestic higher education and the issue of gender balance will become relevant. In order to prevent a possible generational gap among female  university teachers and the aggravation of the problem of gender balance in the future, it is necessary to study and adapt foreign experience, avoiding mistakes. 

 Challenges related to the COVID-19 pandemic require structural analysis and sociocultural comprehension, which has and will for quite a while have multi-aspect and systemic nature. All elements of the social system have been forced to function in the stress regime in the absence of any basic patterns and tried-and-true methods to solve the arising problem. The overall uncertainty in the organization of the social life and the enforced and, at times, very contentious steps taken at various levels of management have caused polarization of opinions as to the functioning of all social institutions. Special pressure has been put on education, since it is this  institution that is mainly responsible for the social system’s stability. 
In this regard, it has been important and significant to comprehensively  study the problems and limitations associated with the functioning of the  higher education system in Russia during the pandemic, as well as to analyze the change in tone and attitude both on the part of the public and the teaching corps, as a response to the transition to the new forms of work at higher education institutions.
The article was prepared using the materials of two stages of the  sociological research “The opinion of teachers of Russia’s higher education  institutions on distance learning during the pandemic” conducted in May, June and December 2020. The volume of sample sets made up 3431 people at the first stage, and 6006, at the second. An analysis of research data covers the following areas: organizational problems of transition to distance  learning; resources used, organization of lectures and seminars, assessment  of the positive and negative aspects of distance learning; perspectives,  limitations and trajectories for the implementation of distance learning in Russia’s higher education institutions, as well as a set of social problems aimed at studying social well-being and assessing possible changes in the life and career of teachers.
The research data are compared with the data of similar works by Russian and foreign analysts. On the basis of the analysis done and the conclusions obtained, the authors propose practical steps to optimize the work of the higher education system in stressful situations, to use distance technologies in the learning organization. Also, possible forms are considered that  combine distance and full-time education, and recommendations are proposed on how to change the tone in perceiving inevitable informational and communication transformations on the part of teachers.
This research was performed according to the Development program of the  Interdisciplinary Scientific and Educational School of Lomonosov Moscow  State University «Mathematical methods of complex systems analysis». 

 The fact of the Japanese economic miracle is rarely associated with the environmental crisis. Getting out of this crisis might be considered as another Japanese miracle – the ecological one, which turned the country into an area of a harmony between man and nature. This unique  phenomenon is usually associated with traditions of Shinto, but this is only  one part of the national realities. Another part is connected with the  beneficial effects of the eco-cultural revolution of recent decades. Development of environmental education was the most important component. This article presents the results of a study of higher environmental education in Japan, which has acquired a nationwide scale and has become an important link in the state environmental policy. This is precisely the mission of environmental education – to be the most important tool for ensuring the ecological culture of environmental professionals and the entire population of the country in a whole. The empirical basis of the study is provided by thematic publications in Japanese, English and Russian, materials from targeted surveys and interviews of Japanese universities’  teachers within the framework of the project of the Russian Geographical  Society, as well as a diverse authors’ experience of communication with employees and students of Japanese universities over the past 10 years. The aim of the study is to identify the features of the development of higher environmental education in Japan and the specifics of its current stage. The  most important of these features are the development of universal environmental education in the country; systematic “greening” of higher education; a synthesis of national cultural traditions and scientifically based innovations; creation of an attractive image of environmental specialties; using environmental education as a platform for the paradigm  of an education for sustainable development. The revealed features convince that Japanese society is aware of the high price of environmental costs, while considering environmental education as a decisive factor in its optimization.  In this regard, the original Japanese practice of higher environmental education is of undoubted interest for other countries of the world including  Russia. 

 The article analyzes the transformation of higher education system in Turkmenistan. The aim of the research is to evaluate the prospects of Russian higher education export to Turkmenistan taking into account the  peculiarities of Turkmen higher education system and the main trends affecting it. The role of the state and the influence of global trends on  Turkmen higher education system in 1991-2020 are estimated based on the coordination model and the concept of higher education  internationalization. Since Turkmenistan as well as many other countries  aims at increasing its universities’ popularity in the world, the article also considers the degree of internal and external higher education internationalization. Taking into consideration the peculiarities of the national economy of Turkmenistan, the political system, and the power balance in Central Asia, the author seeks to forecast the development of Turkmen higher education system. The article concludes that there is a significant potential for increasing the export of Russian higher education services to Turkmenistan.  However, Russian universities need to explore the peculiarities of the country  and elaborate suitable methods of work with Turkmen school-leavers.  

 The purpose of this study is to analyze the results of the professional development program “Digital Pedagogy of the Modern University” held at the Philosophy Department of Moscow State University. In today’s increasingly mediated everyday life by digital technologies, the Internet, and virtual communicative environments, traditional education is getting a new  lease of life. While digital devices have long been an integral part of modern  life, social, cultural and educational institutions are struggling to keep up with the rapid pace of change. As the coronavirus spread across the world, universities moved classes online to prevent coronavirus spread. The program “Digital Pedagogy of the Modern University” was aimed not at the permanent movement from face-to-face to online education but the desire to implement an interim solution for emergency remote teaching and  discuss the challenges. During the program, the organizers considered both  methodological issues of creating courses and current trends in educational development, psychological aspects of network communications in a distance learning, and much more. The emphasis was made on the reflection  of moving to online teaching. The survey on the results of the program showed that the impact of the experience of distance learning was a complex phenomenon. This study may serve as a basis for further  discussion.