Educational trajectories as a basis for the typology of Russian university students

The experience of Russian and foreign studies testifies to the perspective and relevance of analyzing students’ educational trajectories as part of their life world from the point of view of the constructivist paradigm. Developing the ideas of Zh.T. Toshchenko’s constructivist concept, the authors of the article propose to consider studies at university as a stage of educational trajectory, which is part of the student’s life path. Taking into account the provisions of G.G. Tatarova’s typological analysis we attempt to identify modal types of students with educational trajectory inherent in each of these types. This typology is based on temporal and value dimensions/properties of the student’s life world and their dynamics in the process of movement along an individual educational trajectory within the boundaries of the university institutional space. The empirical basis for approbation of the methodology was the data of two stages of the monitoring research on “Educational path of UTMN student in the conditions of individual educational trajectories” (2022-2023). The methods of factor and cluster analysis were consistently used to identify modal types of students. Factor analysis was built within the boundaries of temporal logic on the basis of three components (groups of factors): 1) significance of past events; 2) value of current learning practices; 3) anticipation of the future. The groups offactors were considered as independent empirical indicators and were used as typological features for further differentiation of respondents into clusters. The results of data processing revealed four modal types of students (“conformists”, “excellent students”, “activists” and “nihilists”), each of which corresponds to its own educational trajectory. The identified modal types of students have an important applied value for the effective management of the space of a modern Russian university. The obtained empirical results provide an opportunity to make managerial decisions on the development of educational trajectories desirable for the university and the labor market (“excellent students” and “activists”) and correction of the undesirable ones (“conformists” and “nihilists”), as well as the possibility of further monitoring measurements.