Digitisation is a multidimensional phenomenon having direct and indirect impact on all aspects of human activity. The sphere of science and research, especially comparative education research, is being inevitably affected. The dizzying pace of socio-economic changes complicated by COVID-19 pandemic made it obvious that we are dealing with the digitisation of shock, rather than phased, character. The article states the lack of serious scientific reflection on the currently witnessed "shock digitisation" of science, complicated with growing digital illiteracy of researchers. The latter is demonstrated through rigorous literature review and SciVal Scopus analytics. The article is concluded with the idea that the field of comparative education research requires future profound rethinking of assumptions and agenda priorities in several aspects. They include general qualification requirements for modern comparative education researcher and comparative research procedures, functional and digital literacy of comparativists, changes in their research career potentials and prospects.

The paper studies questions dealing with development of inclusive education in Russia at the current stage. The main approaches to the way inclusion is understood in the present-day post-Soviet space and its particularity as for the higher school are described. The essential and content-related characteristic of this term is discussed in detail. Comparative analysis of various approaches to the understanding of multi-dimensionality of inclusion as a pedagogical phenomenon has been performed. The review of scientific and academic literature by the Russian and foreign researchers who have touched on this range of problems is presented. The main focus areas of development in the process of understanding inclusive education are outlined. Key advantages of implementation of inclusion are systemized. An attempt is made to identify mechanisms that are able to ensure the equality of applicants to the higher-level educational institutions in full. The experience of using inclusive education in Russia is analyzed. With regard to this, main obligations and approaches of the state in relation to applicants and students having disabilities are considered, and conditions, principles and mechanisms of implementation of the current state policy as for the higher professional education are detailed. However, there remains a number of problematic points due to which not all advantages of inclusive education can be made use of to the full extent. The prevailing difficulties and possible ways of resolving them are also noted by the authors.

At present, IT have become an indispensable condition for the quality of education, but they are rarely applied in education of senior citizens and their range is quite narrow. An exception is the methods of teaching computer literacy to older adults, which is much narrower than IT in education. Meanwhile, they are no less essential both for adaptation of the elderly to the contemporary conditions of life and for the young generations. The authors prove that application of these technologies can change the quality of life for older adults and enables them to extend their professional activity, to broaden their scope of communication, and to raise their level of social adaptation to the environment and daily life. It has been found during the research conducted that the use of IT in education of senior citizens has some essential features and requires special conditions of application. In the research, questionnaire survey and testing, indepth interview, expert survey, and participant observation methods were used that allowed studying the senior citizens' demands for educational services, computer literacy improvement, as well as barriers and risks in their getting the education, conditions for enhancing its efficiency. During the research, disadvantages in development of IT and software products targeted for education of the aged have been found. The results obtained allow contributing to the development of concepts of thriving old age, active longevity, and higher social and professional engagement of older adults. They are of great importance both for the very senior citizens and for education providers, as well as for developers of educational software products needed by older adults and their teachers.

This research deals with an important state and public problem concerning the expertise of higher school teachers; according to the authors, the latter is determined by their formation level of the social dimension of personality. In the paper, issues are discussed touching on the essence and content of the social dimension of personality in relation to teachers of modern higher educational institutions in their professional activity. The paper covers requirements set for teachers of modern higher educational institutions, problems, and controversies preventing Russian higher school from developing efficiently, etc. The objective of the research consisted in providing grounds for the necessity of making the focus area associated with the formation and development of higher school teachers' social dimension relevant within the Russian education system (in terms of theory and practice). Conceptual statements on the development of consciousness and worldview of higher educational institution teachers within their professional activity are substantiated. Similarly, so are provisions on adoption, acceptance, and inclusion of meanings and values of the Russian culture into the educational process, as well as on the teachers' understanding their state and public mission as serving their Motherland.

The digital society having gained quite a momentum in the Russian Federation in the recent decade has brought along some new trends in “problems-shaping” not only for the producing, but also for the non-producing strata of the population. The new “non-producing classes” get formed in a situation of new historical conditions the coordinates of which cover the entire global world, and it can be spoken definitely that problems of the Russian society are determined, among other things, by trends of the “world information community”, with the former being a part of it nowadays. The paper outlines the main vectors of the problem of socialization of the disabled children in the contemporary Russian society within the context of information economy forming. Particularities of integration of children having disabilities are shown in the logic of development of the world social inequality processes based on the “digital divide” approaches. Proceeding from the Russian statistical materials, some suppositions are made about possible negative development scenarios of the present-day cohort of children having functional limitations who can become outsiders of the digital revolution and man the strata of non-producing classes if there are no state programs, education strategies, pedagogical personnel and focused work with parents.