Social Values of Students in Conditions of Digitalization of Education and COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly accelerated the processes of global digitalization of education in many countries owning to the total transition to online learning. This is a necessary and preventive measure in education systems of many states. During the COVID-19 pandemic, online learning became a main form of knowledge and experience transfer to young people, which served as a motive for the research topic on the social values among students in conditions of digitalization.

Knowledge in the life of a young person becomes the most important asset that is subjected to constant alteration. Education is a natural process of traditions and cultural values transfer to the younger generation. The upbringing of a young person passes through several stages of socialization as a result of which he becomes a person. At present, it can be concluded that the pedagogical community is for the first time faces the fact that formation of instrumental values among young people takes place in a virtual environment, and this is a new challenge in pedagogical practice, which requires comprehension.

The relevance of the present research is determined by three main factors. The first factor is the global digitalization of education, which leads to formation of the new didactics of education in the 21st century, which is based on the figure. Teachers in their educational activities are gradually moving away from the traditional didactics of Y. Ko-mensky when moving to digital educational platforms and developing new methods and principles of virtual pedagogy.

The second factor is teachers who perform a socially important axiological function, who are carriers of values and are guardians of traditions and customs of society and its culture. Teachers provide the transfer of knowledge and values from one generation to the next one, but they found themselves in remote from modern students during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, pedagogical practice shows that the transfer of cultural norms requires appropriate socio-pedagogical conditions such as direct communication with young person and emotional coloring of each educational situation and then the onset of reflection concerning social and professional experience gained.

The third factor is that the education system in the world is not yet focused on educating and upbringing young people in online form only without active communication and emotionally colored constituent in the educational process. Therefore, all of the features and problems of virtual teaching of students are not completely defined yet. In particular, the major factors of global digitalization of education are not fully revealed, positive and negative aspects of the global digitization of education are not completely identified as well as the influence of these factors on formation of social values in students of higher education.

The aim of the present research is to determine factors of global digitalization of education and their impact on transformation of social values of high school students in conditions of the COVID-19 pandemic.

To achieve stated objective following tasks were necessary to be solved:

• -    to analyze sources devoted to theoretical and practical aspects of social values formation among high school students;

• -    to evaluate the level of elaboration of the issue of social values formation in high school students;

• -    to propose a definition of the global digitalization of education on the basis of Russian and foreign experience, to identify major factors of the global digitalization of education and to propose their classification depending on their impact on educational process;

• -    to conduct a research of higher school studentsʼ attitude to learning in a distance format only;

• -    to study the formation of instrumental values among students using educational services in online format during the COVID-19

pandemic by implementation of M. Rokeach method.

The hypothesis of research was formulated as following: the global digitalization of education in conditions of the COVID-19 pandemic can influence the formation of instrumental values of higher school students while virtual transfer of knowledge and experience by teachers. For confirmation of this hypothesis factors of global digitalization of education should be defined and their impact on formation of instrumental values among higher school students as young and most active part of modern society should be investigated.