Педагогика ПЕДАГОГИКА УДК 371.133 A. V. Kourova, O. P. Mikhanova INTERNATIONAL EDUCATIONAL EXCHANGE PROGRAMS: A BRIEF HISTORICAL OVERVIEW Abstract. <...> International exchange and training programs play a significant role in the development of international cooperation between educators from different nations. <...> The article deals with the brief overview of historical development of international exchange programs in the USA in the 20th century. <...> More and more teachers and school administrators participate in exchange programs and implement new curricular and instructional practices in their institutions. <...> A review of literature and documents helped to analyze the background of educational, curricular, and cultural aspects of international exchange programs in education. <...> The brief overview of historical development of international exchange programs revealed the role that those programs played and the place that they took in achieving goals of American foreign and domestic policies in different periods of the 20th century. <...> A. V. Kourova, O. P. Mikhanova INTERNATIONAL EDUCATIONAL EXCHANGE PROGRAMS: A BRIEF HISTORICAL OVERVIEW Аннотация. <...> Современная геополитическая ситуация во многом зависит от кросс-культурных образовательных проектов, где огромную роль играют образовательные программы обмена преподавателями, студентами, учениками школ. <...> And that’s where progress begins” – remarked President Barack Obama at Student Roundtable at Tophane Cultural Center in Istanbul, Turkey [1]. <...> His words emphasizes the idea that international exchange enhances the effectiveness of the United States in dealing with other nations by building the global competencies of U.S. citizens and others skills increasingly important in the world of the 21st century. <...> Moreover academic and cultural exchanges is a bridge that leads to a greater human understanding and world peace. <...> How It Started: Missionaries and First Programs The idea of promoting American interests, values, and ways of life to foreign elite and later to broader circles of general public through exchanges and educational exchanges in particular, has always enjoyed a variety of interpretations. <...> Until 1948 when the Information and Education Act (the Smith Mundt Act) passed the Senate, the terms “educational exchange” and “cultural relations” had been used interchangeably. <...> The first examples of such cultural education were missionaries in the 19th century who believed that by spreading evangelical Protestantism they were bringing progress to Asia <...>