Errors in the Interpretation of the "Occasion / Event" Concept in Pedagogical Research

In the days of the "post" - post-industrial society, postmodern culture, post-non-classical science -a constructive research position coincides with the "everyone-is-right" point of view. This optimism of modern epistemology is restricted only by the limits of applicability of the theories, concepts and teachings the researcher chooses to the solving of the problem. It will be an error to ignore or violate the limits of applicability. The consequence of the error will be the lack of proving and of evidence in answers to questions posed in studies. In recent years, in the publications of Russian researchers, the notion of an "educational event" has appeared; it denotes a kind of an innovation proposed for introduction into the educational practice: from the teaching and rearing of children to the educating of adults. In the article, the trajectory of introducing the concept of "educational event" is retrospectively traced. It is established that there is an equivocation in the use of the different interpretations of the concept "occasion/event", which are homonymous in the Russian language. The consequence of this equivocation is a mixture of interpretations of the "occasion / event" concept presented in Martin Heidegger's and Alfred North Whitehead's metaphysics and in Mikhail Bakhtin's philosophical conclusions. As a result, there is a mixture of interpretations of the "occasion" given by Whitehead and interpretations of the "event" in the psychology of child development. In turn, in different directions of developmental psychology, the concept "event", given by Heidegger and Bakhtin as, respectively, the event-ritual and the event-dialogue, received their own interpretations. The article successively examines the limits of applicability of the "occasion", the event-ritual and the event-dialogue in pedagogical practice. The limits of applicability are constituted by the unpredictability of the "occasion" consequences and by the purpose of the event-dialogue for individualised rearing and education. It has been established that supporters of "educational events" follow the tradition of the organization of the event-ritual that limits the novelty of their suggestions. Thereby, there are the following errors: (1) ignoring the limits of applicability and extrapolations of these interpretations of the concept "occasion/event"; (2) unpredictability of the consequences of the majority of "educational events", which indicates the existence of the problem of evidence and proving in Russian pedagogical research.

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