The pedagogic discourse is regarded as the means of organization of higher school students’ reflexive work. Taking place in the educational space of a higher school, this discourse may appear as a regulator of the reflexive work of students. In the course of this work the events and circumstances are connected in the situations significant for their professional development based on the experience and knowledge level.

There is determined the phenomenological comprehension of “care about oneself” as the basis of ancient Greek pedagogy of the classic period founded by Socrates and developed by his followers - Plato and Xenophon. Their heritage is considered through the prism of human’s attitude to one’s own education in the particular historical and cultural context. There is substantiated the significance of study of “care about oneself” for historical and theoretical pedagogic researches.

There are determined the pedagogic contents of the antique and modern notion “care about oneself” connected with person’s attitude to one’s own education in a particular historical and cultural context. There are revealed the origins of etymologic ambiguity of the notion “care”, the consequences of which are considerable differences in comprehension of “care about oneself” as anthropological and pedagogic project in the domestic and foreign pedagogic traditions.

There is revealed the essence of the phenomenon of “care of yourself” of the antique pedagogic thought and substantiated the logic of its historical development in the aspect of the origin of the idea of higher education and self-education.

The anthropological discourse “care of yourself” of the western pedagogic thought is concretized through pedagogic concepts “mentor”, “city”, “body” and “thought” that reflect the changes in pedagogic reality in transition from the premodern to the modern and then to the post-modern.

Methodological and heuristic potentials of discourse as a pedagogical notion are considered on the basis of the three main approaches to understanding the discourse reflected in the modern pedagogic researches.

Выявлены основные подходы к пониманию дискурса, нашедшие отражение в современных педагогических исследованиях. Обозначена специфика уточнения определения дискурса в педагогическом контексте в условиях формирования дискурсивной онтологии.