The article analyzes the scientific and organizational activity of one of the leading specialists in this field, Honorary Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Chairman of the Moscow Branch of the Russian Psychological Society (RPO) D. B. Bogoyavlenskaya against the background of the evolution of the study of thinking, abilities, giftedness, creativity in Russian human studies. The relevance of the article is determined by the need to study the history of the Russian psychology of creativity and determine the contribution to its development of D. B. Bogoyavlenskaya with the participants of the scientific school of diagnostics of abilities and development of giftedness and creativity created by her. The novelty of the article lies in the fact that for the first time in the institutional and personological plan, the periodization of D. B. Bogoyavlenskaya’s life creation was constructed and a system—holistic analysis of the logic of the development of her cognitive research and scientific and social activities was carried out according to the 30-year leadership of the Moscow Branch of the RPO, the Laboratory of Psychodiagnostics of Creative Abilities of the Psychological Institute of RAO and Inter.

Philosophy for Children as a branch of practical philosophy is actively developing in Russia nowadays. “In Search of Wisdom” club at the Faculty of Philosophy of Lomonosov Moscow State University exists for more than 10 years under the guidance of Doctor of Philological Sciences, Professor Larisa T. Retyunskikh and has a significant impact on the development of the “Philosophy for Children” movement and various areas of philosophical practice with children (clubs, summer camps, philosophical balls, etc.) in our country. The focus of the article is to study the possibilities of philosophical practice with children as an educational technology that allows the formation and active development of critical thinking, emotional intelligence and other soft skills of school children.

At the turn of the XX–XXI centuries, G. M. Andreeva, an outstanding worldclass Russian scientist, made a fundamental contribution to the development of theoretical and applied sections of social and psychological and philosophicalsociological knowledge. In connection with her centenary, it is relevant to study the life experience of G. M. Andreeva as one of the founders of post-war Soviet sociology and as the creator of social psychology as an innovative scientific and educational discipline. The novelty of the article lies in the scientific analysis of G. M. Andreeva’s interdisciplinary searches — from social philosophy through empirical sociology and social psychology to higher education pedagogy. By means of institutional-personological and subjective-activity approaches, both the main achievements of G. M. Andreeva’s 65-year scientific and pedagogical activity at Moscow State University and a number of universities, as well as the psychodidactic means of teaching social psychology in higher education developed by her, are characterized.

The article considers the need to transform the modern education system due to excessive information availability and violation of the basic principles formulated in the Russian philosophy of education, which postulates an inextricable link which the central element of the productive transformation of modern education is the formation of the skill of critical thinking, which occurs when using a certain methodology of teaching philosophy, which assumes not “filling memory”, but the development of an algorithm of mental action in the joint work of the teacher and the student.

The article analyzes the origin and evolution of such an innovative trend in Russian human studies as a reflexive semantic approach to the study of the properties and mechanisms of the development of thinking and personality in education. The historical and scientific prerequisites for the formation of life-meaning psychology are revealed, and the logic of its development in the Silver Age of Russian Culture and in modern human studies in interaction with philosophy, acmeology, and pedagogy is explicated. Against this background, the role of the outstanding humanitarian M. M. Rubinstein in the development of meaningful pedagogical psychology in the first third of the twentieth century is shown, the levels of his cognitive activity are characterized for the first time, and the importance of creative heritage for modern science and education is summarized.

The article deals with the problem of the transformation of the education system in the conditions of the spread of artificial intelligence technologies and digitalization. It is demonstrated that the problems identified as key for modern education are not specific problems of modernity. In this regard, it is proposed to consider the necessary transformation of modern education not as a radical transformation and the creation of a fundamentally new system, but as a deconstruction of its foundations. The author points out that the term “deconstruction”, introduced into modern philosophy by J. Derrida, suggests, on the one hand, an appeal to the origins, to the tradition at its very foundation, and the identification of the most significant components of this tradition, and on the other hand, a critical revision of the current state of the problem from the point of view of these origins, which seems to be the most adequate state of affairs in modern education and the its tasks.

The article briefly presents the main directions and results of the scientific research conducted by the renowned Russian scholar M. A. Lukatsky. His achievements in addressing pressing issues in contemporary education, pedagogy, and psychology, as well as his organization of interdisciplinary comprehensive research in semiology, are highlighted. His monographs and educational manuals, which are widely used in higher professional education, are characterized.