The article presents the results of the international study of the professional identity of schoolteachers of Russia and Latvia. In the study, the six component model of the content of the teacher professional identity (TPI) is used. According to this model, in 2017, the questionnaire “School Teacher Professional Identity” was created and international survey organized, in which 437 schoolteachers from Latvia and the Smolensk region of Russia participated. The aim of this article is to analyze the data of the two national samples for the 6th component of TPI: “Professionally Determined Social Behavior”. This behavior is not connected with the implementation of direct professional duties, but corresponds to the philosophy of the profession: taking up the mission of educating community, active involvement in social life, participation in formulation and solution of social problems having pedagogical aspects and unselfish professional help to those who need it. To process the data, statistical methods were used. On the whole, items of the component received relatively high scores in both national samples. Certain differences in the data of Latvian and Russian teachers as well as urban and rural subgroups of both countries are observed. High dispersion of data shown in this component indicates that the professionally determined social behavior is the most acute and controversial aspect of TPI; therefore, the elaboration of optimal ways and tools to strengthen TPI should be based on an in-depth study of social behavior of schoolteachers.

The article presents the results of the international study of the professional identity (PI) of schoolteachers of Russia and Latvia. The six component model of the content of the PI is used in the study. According to this model, the questionnaire “School Teacher Professional Identity” was created and international survey organized in 2017, in which 433 schoolteachers from Latvia and the Smolensk region of Russia participated. The aim of this article is to analyze the data of two national samples for the first component of the schoolteacher PI: Philosophy of the Profession. The data in both samples show very high support for the basic values and beliefs of the profession. The answers of the teachers of the two countries are well agreed, however certain differences in the data of Latvian and Russian teachers are observed. Some problems of the schoolteacher PI are identified that require attention of teachers, school administrators and education officials.

A good professional education is a prerequisite for successful functioning of the state system of labour resources management. For improving the educational process efficiency, a comprehensive study of motivation for learning is necessary. The article presents the results of the Russian-Latvian research project on the learning motivation of university students. The aim is to analyse and compare the learn-ing motivation of students of the first and last courses of the universities of Riga and Smolensk, and to examine the correlation between motivation and the psychological atmosphere in the student group. The data were obtained by the survey in which 230 students of the EKA University of Applied Sciences (Riga, Latvia) and Smolensk State University (Russia) took part. The leading groups of learning motives are identified, and the correlations between them and certain aspects of the psychological atmosphere in the students’ group are found out. The ways of increasing students’ motivation are proposed.

Abstract. The strengthening of professional identity (PI) of teachers of higher education institutions (HEI) is one of the ways to improve the quality of educational process. Performance of professional role(s) can be identified as the key component of PI. The contemporary university teacher performs many professional roles: she/he is a lecturer, researcher, supervisor of students' research works, expert, and so on. Multi-role activity of a teacher is considered as a characteristic feature of the profession by the colleagues in Latvia, Russia and other countries. This research is based on the data obtained during the implementation of the Project 'Professional Identity of Contemporary Pedagogue' in 2014-2016 by the researchers from Riga (Latvia) and Smolensk (Russia). In the realization of the project, the six-component structural model of the content of HEI teacher's PI was created and the survey was carried out using the questionnaire 'HEI Teachers' Professional Identity' developed by the project participants. Overall, a total of 198 teachers were surveyed in Riga and Smolensk. The aim of this article was to analyze and compare the data obtained for the PI component 'Professional Roles' in the samples of HEI teachers of both the countries. The data were analysed using statistical methods. The results showed that teachers of both the countries perform their professional roles at a high level. Overall, the answers of teachers of the two countries were well agreed. However, some peculiarities in the data of Riga and Smolensk were observed, and some problems of PI of HEI teachers were identified, which require attention of executives of the education reform and teachers.

The paper deals with one of the fast developing modern educational approaches – the pedagogy of dialogue. The structure of main dialogical skills elaborated by the author makes it possible to concretize the tasks of dialogical education. The main dialogical skills (which are at the same time the main preconditions of dialogical interaction) are: a) the skill of dialogical attitude; b) the skill of antinomian thinking, c) open-mindedness and creativity. An effective dialogue teaching requires a clear comprehension of the dialogismorientated/non-dialogism-orientated views, statements and reactions of students. In this paper the materials of cross-cultural research are used, which was carried out in Riga and Moscow schools in 2010-2011. The gained results allowed assessing the results of the dialogical development of students from Form 9 to Form 12 (Form 11), to observe the problem points and to establish more precisely the pedagogical tasks and directions for dialogical upbringing