SOCIAL PROFILE OF MODERN SCHOOLERS AS EDUCATIONAL RESOURCE FOR MUSEUM PEDAGOGY Elena Polyudova 1 , Elena Olesina 2 1 Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center (UNITED STATES) 2 Institute of Art Education and Cultural Studies (RUSSIAN FEDERATION) Abstract Although education is perceived as a process of getting knowledge, social adaptation of school students as one of communal skills that must not be underestimated. Social adaptation, or socialization, in modern Pedagogy, generally is considered as a process of instituting a person into social environment by understanding and acquiring social roles and skills. Socialization process in the context of school years is a long period of educating, upbringing, and forming a person. To outline the socialization from personal perspectives, the authors demarcate a special area of the socialization - a “social profile” of modern school students as a set of personal characteristics students have and also competencies and skills students have to develop. This perspective divides the term into two parts: determining modern school students traits, and defining areas of the zone of proximate social development. Outlining these two parts of socialization, the article considers them from perspectives of Museum Pedagogy, connecting museum environment and activities as a representational part of socio-cultural heritage. It is considered as one of factors that impacts socialization. Though the range of museum activities could be resourceful for the process of socialization, it is hard to pursue without understanding personal traits of modern students. To delineate this intangible area, the article defines a specific term, “social profile” of school students, applied to Museum Pedagogy. The term includes different components that help museum educators and curators to understand where to apply resources to include museums into social environment. The article relates the social profile with museum activities that could be organized as special “social fields” in museum environment; and describes possible areas of social application for museum visits. The article was made as a part of the State Assignment of Federal State Budget Scientific Institution “Institute of Art Education and Cultural Studies of Russian Academy of Education”: “Socio-cultural portrait of a modern child at different stages of childhood: age and individual characteristics of the formation of artistic perception and thinking” (Publication number: 27.7452.2017 /8.9). The views presented are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of Department of defense or its Components. Keywords: museum pedagogy, socio-cultural environment, social profile, zone of proximate social development, socialization, modern generation. 1 INTRODUCTION The concept of social profile is not a firsthand idea because traditionally educators have a system of measuring students’ ability to perceive information. The traditional approach includes certain education-related categories, such as age, type of education, psychological characteristics of the age, and, as a result, educational characteristics of pupils. School educators keep this traditional system in mind when plan a visit to a museum for a certain group of school students. At the same time, museum curators and educators also consider different educational and social traits when prepare tours and handouts for school visits. Moreover, modern museum pedagogy works on the issue of defining different aspects of social background to specify the picture of the school audience: “Historical framing, comparisons between science museums and other types of museums, creation of a specific statute for seconded teachers, critical analysis of the mechanisms for evaluating the knowledge acquired during the visit to the museum, but also questioning the status of the pupil at the museum, these works are generally characterized by a proselyte presentation of the class's visit to the museum and by a critical discourse often quite virulent about the alleged lack of communication between these two emblematic institutions of the secular and hegemonic conception of knowledge and culture” (Cohen-Azria, 2000) [9]. To illustrate even more current set of problems existing in the field, let us analyze recently developed concepts. Modern scholars elaborate a system of societal aspects Proceedings of EDULEARN19 Conference 1st-3rd July 2019, Palma, Mallorca, Spain ISBN: 978-84-09-12031-4 4758