Higher education practice: the crisis of the development paradigm

Abstract

The article examines the development paradigm in educational practice and substantiates the need for its critical reconsideration in the context of accelerating technological transformations and increasing non-linearity of social processes. Educational paradigms are defined as a set of established concepts, ideas, approaches, and methods of interpreting and organising education. The study demonstrates that the emphasis on development, intellectual growth, professionalism, individualisation, and technologisation of education has been largely shaped by techno-economic approaches to social progress. However, rapid technological changes and the growing complexity of social processes create conditions for revising existing paradigms and questioning their explanatory potential.

The article provides a detailed analysis of the development paradigm, revealing the complexity and multidimensional nature of development, the diversity of its contexts, temporal variations, and the contradictory consequences of technological advancement for both technologies and human beings. The methodological limitations of the sustainable development concept are discussed, along with the issue of growth boundaries and the necessity of preventing the exceeding of critical thresholds beyond which development may result in the loss of essential systemic properties. Particular attention is paid to the transformation of human–technology relations, the advancement of artificial intelligence, the emerging concepts of the “cyborg” and the “posthuman”, and the prospect of technological singularity. It is argued that these tendencies raise fundamental questions regarding the limits of traditional pedagogy, its subjectivity, and its humanistic foundations. The article proposes considering development in education not as an unconditional objective, but as a complex problem requiring analysis of its objects, contexts, dynamics, boundaries, and consequences. It concludes that strengthening humanitarian criteria for evaluating technological innovations in education and ensuring the priority of human values are essential in the context of technological transformation.