Russian Preschool Education Policy Change Research (1991-2010),

As is known to all, preschool education not only has a direct influence on the physical and mental development of individual children, but also has important value to the future national development. And the development of preschool education relies heavily on the formulation and implementation of preschool educational policies. Since December1991-the Breakdown of the Soviet Union, the Russian Federation has been in the process of social transformation for over twenty years. With the social transformation and the reform of economic and educational system, the preschool education is emerging new trends and demands. The paper, referring to ZhaoDingdong’s scholarly work "The Study on the model of social transformation in Russia", divides the20years from1991to2010in transitional Russia into2stages:1991-1999,"the stage of overall privatization" and2000-2010,"the stage of preliminary formulation". To show the evolution of russian preschool educational policies during the20years and analyze the current problems and the development trends of these policies, the paper compares the differences between fundamental preschool educational policies in the2stages and generalizes the value orientation of them under the russian social and economic transitional background. This paper is written to provide some experience and enlightenment for the formulation and development of preschool educational policies in our country.The paper is divided to the following3parts except the preface:The first part summarizes and analyzes the preschool educational policies on the stage of overall privatization. Firstly, it reviews the development of preschool education in Russian before1991and the major preschool educational policies in Soviet Union. Secondly it briefly introduces the background in which the preschool educational policies were formulated from the aspects of politics, economy and education and extracts the fundamental policies. Then based on these policies, this part analyzes the value orientation of them.The second part makes a comprehensive analysis of the adjustments to the preschool educational policies and their value orientation on the stage of preliminary formulation. First of all, generalizing the obvious problems arising from during the process of social transformation, this part enumerates the difficulties faced by preschool education. Then it elaborates the revisory preschool educational policies and the adjustments to their value orientation on this stage. The third part at first illustrates the current situation of preschool education in Russia with diagrams and the data, and then discusses the policies’shortcomings and problems arising from them. At last, the part concludes the development trends of russian preschool educational policies in the coming years.