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TEACHER TRAINING IN THE CONTEXT OF CONTINUOUS EDUCATION:
A METHODOLOGICAL ASPECT
M. P. Zinovyeva
The modern state and society specify new requirements for educators leading to changes in the educational paradigm in teacher training. The article shows the basic principles and approaches of identifying the elementary school teacher's professional portrait in the context of continuous education.
Key words: continuous education, professional competence, teacher training.
Life-long education becomes a thing of paramount importance. At present, 22% of Russia's adult population obtains new knowledge annually (within the framework of improving skills, mastering new professions, self-education, etc.). In Europe, this figure reaches as high as 48%. The foundation for such "educational behavior" can be laid only at school.
The implementation of continuous education tasks is impossible without the key figure in the educational process. Even self-education cannot always do without the figures of an educator or teacher. A. Disterweg justly stated that "the most important phenomenon at school, the most instructive subject, the most living example for a schoolchild is the teacher himself. He is a personalized teaching method, the very embodiment of the upbringing method" [2]. According to V.F. Chertov, the groundwork for the fundamentality of education is laid at elementary school. Accordingly, elementary school teachers’ training must undergo the most radical changes [6].
What personal qualities of a future educator must be shaped in the process of his or her university training so that he or she meets the requirements of contemporary society aimed at modernization of the educational system? When answering such a question, one must take into account the personal and professional aspects of continuous professional education of highly skilled specialists. Let us take the most important aspects into account: the professional ones, competence and creativity, and the personal ones, charisma and individuality. Competence (professionalism) is the sum of necessary professional and general cultural competencies. The ability to act successfully on the basis of practical experience, skills and knowledge in the process of solving professional tasks within the context of a socio-cultural situation characterizes the contemporary educator as a highly qualified specialist. Creativity or creative abilities signify preparedness for producing new ideas and offering non-standard approaches and solutions. Professionalism and creativity presuppose an educator's intuitive understanding of the dangers of maximum standardization and total modeling. M.A. Rybnikova proposed a formula of a teacher's success - "reckoning and inspiration". Therefore, a special role should be given to the emotional feedback of a lesson, to a positive experience that may and must be acquired during school time, especially at the first stage of basic education. Charisma is the ability to prepossess and attract attention. The particular features of an educator's personality are one of the most important stimuli for the shaping of personal results
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of education connected with self-development, learning and knowledge motivations, and axiological attitudes. Individuality is an integral property of one’s personality, the totality of its individual psychological peculiarities that make it unique and inimitable. It manifests itself in the ingredients of temperament and character, in the specificity of an individual’s interests, intellectual qualities, needs and abilities [5].
The above characteristics promote shaping an individual style of an educator's educational work that manifests itself in the relation between tasks, facilities and methods of educational activity and communication of a specific teacher. This requires understanding a teacher's role in the contemporary educational process, and therefore, changing approaches to his or her training in the context of continuous education. We shall proceed from historically changing attitudes towards the educator as a professional.
In the 19th century, F.I. Buslayev, a well-known Russian philologist and educationist (1818-1897), highlighted the following types of teachers: (a) scholastic teachers that adhere strictly to the devices of old rhetoric; (b) teachers-philosophers enthralled by new aesthetic theories that have not become established in science yet, and who are ahead of their time; (c) teachers-historians who speak mainly about facts, and tell schoolchildren about antique tragedies, Dante and Shakespeare (in summary, and poorly translated into Russian); (d) teachers-practitioners who focus extensively on written work; (e) teachers-systematists, a type that is rather an ideal than actually exists [1].
During the Soviet period, the conventional partition of teachers was into subject teachers (at the extreme, lesson-giving teachers) and fosterer teachers. At the second half of the 20th century, the movement of innovative teachers arose. Among them, there were both good subject teachers and talented fosterer teachers. In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, the typology or teachers was updated. The competition "Teacher of the Year of Russia" notably contributed to this. There were special categories of "teacher-researcher", "teacher-fosterer", "teacher-psychologist", etc. It should be noted that no matter what the grounds for eliciting a specific type of educator, the aggregate of a teacher's professional and personal qualities and the requirements of the state and society towards a teacher play a significant role.
Depending on the type of school targeted by the state, teachers training level and the forms of their professional competence improvement will be different.
V.A. Karakovsky thinks that all schools can be divided into three types: "The first type is the school of knowledge, whose main purpose is profound and durable knowledge. The cult of knowledge makes children prisoners of this all-consuming idea. The second type of school is the one for which the main objective is the human being, the child, and his or her development and happiness. The rest (and learning first and foremost!) is a condition of the child's development at school. The dominant type of activity at such schools is upbringing. The third type of schools is made up of schools-institutions. Such schools have no concept of their own pedagogical attitudes. The main goal for them is to fulfill the social mandate (social order)" [4]. It is hard to view the third type of schools as innovative educational institutions. The first type of schools also cannot be the dominant one in the contemporary world because it contradicts A. Disterweg's concept, according to
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which "development and education cannot be conferred or communicated to anyone. Everyone who wishes to partake in them must achieve this through his own activity, his own resources, and his own effort" [3]. Therefore, we second V.A. Karakovsky and consider that only a school of upbringing can meet all the requirements of the contemporary information society which must be met to some extent by both teachers and pupils.
Since a teacher is a key figure in the educational process, it is necessary to capitalize on the requirements for his or her professional training. We rely in our practice on the requirements of the Federal State Educational Standards of Higher Professional Education, the Professional Standard of Educators, and the Federal State Educational Standard of General Elementary Education. These regulatory documents determine the principal objectives of training of specialists in the sphere of elementary education. However, the concept of life-long education formulated in the Faurre Commission report "Learning to be" becomes of paramount importance. The vector of future teachers’ training is directed towards four "pillars of education": (1) teaching how to learn and use knowledge; (2) learning how to do work;
(3) learning how to live together; (4) learning how to be [2].
Accordingly, the following objectives are for the higher professional school in the process of training educators: continuous education as a goal (a teacher always learns!), the ability to work in-depth in one's particular area while having sufficiently extensive knowledge, learning within the framework of both formal and informal social experience how to handle various situations and work in a team; live together, developing and understanding other humans and their aspiration for independence (while implementing joint projects and learning to navigate conflicts); to protect pluralism, mutual understanding and peace; to develop one's personal qualities and ability to operate with greater independence, following one's own opinions and personal responsibility. Education must not ignore any of the aspects of human potential: memory, reason, sense of beauty, physical potential and communication skills. It should be remembered that a future educator (and a practicing one as well!) gains professional skills and educational activities more intensely if his or her personality holds an active stands, if his or her individual practical experience is understood and connected with social and professional experience, if the collective supports and encourages individual creative professional endeavors. Students must be involved in such forms of activity as professional and personal growth training sessions, festivals of pedagogical excellence (such a festival at the Saratov State University is the competition "Step to the Profession"); educationist readings, demo lessons, creative reports, master classes, participation in the activities of various internet communities, etc.
Thus, a 21st century teacher is not just a bearer of a certain amount of knowledge who has mastered teaching and character building methods, but a partner, a companion and a provider in this huge, developing, global information space, an indicator and a guide for children. K.D. Ushinsky's words: "Only a creative teacher, a creative person can educate a pupil of the same kind" are still relevant in this respect.
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Translated from Russian by Znanije Central Translastions Bureas
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