Discource on students’ participation in international projects on inter-ethnic tolerance formation in multicultural environment

Abstract

The article aims at clarifying whether international educational projects offer a real assistance in developing the students’ personal, spiritual and moral qualities such as interethnic tolerance as well as at analyzing the character, dynamics, and direction of interethnic communication. From the standpoint of pedagogy, international projects are viewed as an opportunity to show an individual’s ethnicity in professional and interpersonal spheres and a step forward to interethnic interaction based on international cooperation. The results of the empirical research prove efficiency and productivity of international projects as a powerful mechanism of personal growth, development, and self-perfection. They also make it possible to trace the perspective ways of development of interethnic cooperation between Russia and its European partners in the educational sphere. To sum up, international projects enhance teaching and learning opportunities, enlarge the sphere of professional and interpersonal communication, and provide a real support in the production of a new type of specialist – a person with a planetary way of thinking, able to work and study in a multicultural educational environment, flexible and ready for dynamic changes in a globalizing world.