The website of an educational institution as an indicator of patriotic education practices: Macroregional and institutional analysis

Introduction. The article explores the problem of using websites of schools and other types of educational settings to serve as an objective indicator of real practices of patriotic education. The purpose of the study is to analyze the diagnostic potential of educational institutions’ websites as tools for monitoring patriotic education practices and identifying institutional and regional factors affecting the informativeness of moral education contents Materials and Methods. Comparative and analytical review of sources, quantitative, qualitative and interpretative methods were used as research methods. The main research method was the content analysis of 612 websites of educational institutions representing all federal districts of Russia. The methodology included quantitative and qualitative data analyses with an emphasis on identifying institutional and macroregional differences in the representation of different types of patriotic events on websites of educational settings. To compare the obtained results with the focus on types of educational institutions and federal districts, data from online surveys of school students, students of pedagogical universities and colleges, and newly-qualified teachers of educational institutions (n=16,800, aged between 14 and 35 years) were used; the sample was multi-stage, with all federal districts of the Russian Federation, including new ones, serving as the first-stage selection units. Results. The article has analyzed and summarized the research of Russian and international scholars devoted to evaluating the effectiveness of Internet resources (including websites) of educational institutions in the field of patriotic and civic education. The author substantiates the place of the website as an important element of the media environment of an educational institution, which is an indicator of real practices of patriotic education and has the potential to transmit civic-patriotic values and meanings to students. Based on the data obtained, quantitative indicators of the representation of all types of civic and patriotic events on the websites of schools, pedagogical universities and colleges, as well as statistically significant differences between the types of educational settings and federal districts in all areas of moral education, have been identified. Conclusions. The research has revealed statistically significant differences in approaches to patriotic education in different types of educational institutions and federal districts of Russia; imbalances in the implementation of state policy in the field of moral education were found, and the need for a diagnostic monitoring system for patriotic content posted on educational institutions’ websites was substantiated.