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DEVELOPING AN INNOVATIVE MODEL OF VOCATIONAL TEACHING FOR ADULTS IN TODAY'S COLLEGE
E. A. Tsarkova
Against the background of the reform and restructuring of national education, caused by Russia's desire to join the unified European educational space, the grounds have become increasingly clear for determining the need to implement integrated measures aimed at developing a national system of continued professional development and training of specialists (CPD).
The CPD system is a complex conglomerate of various kinds and programs of training for broad categories of consumers of educational services sold by providers based on a wide variety of educational institutions with different levels and profiles, among which colleges occupy a respectable place in terms of logistical and personnel resources of the educational process. Professional training and retraining programs carried out in Moscow colleges are designed to meet the intersecting needs of potential recruiters of employees, consumers of educational services in the form of various categories of people, and their major suppliers in the form of educational institutions providing related CPD services.
At present Russia's regions are experiencing a drastic increase in the total number of organizations providing educational services in the field of CPD and implementing professional development and retraining programs for a wide range of target groups of users. In this regard it is essential to develop solid theoretical and methodological bases and to form a common model that describes the principles and procedures that could guide educational institutions in the implementation of training. The current situation brings to the fore the issue of the discrepancies between existing mechanisms for selecting the content of training (retraining) of workers, the requirements of employers to determine the criteria of professional activity of workers, and the ability of educational institutions to implement innovative reforms in carrying out these educational services. In these circumstances it has becomes increasingly important to improve the traditional techniques of designing the content of specialist retraining in the workforce.
Involving employers in creating the groundwork for an objective assessment of learning outcomes, currently requires involving them in the development of professional standards. The most important thing that sets
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professional standards apart from a whole series of other regulatory acts, is that in addition to establishing requirements for the content and conditions of work, they provide a description of the qualifications and expertise of the different qualification levels, which are the basis for shaping the content of both the federal state educational standards (FSES), as well as innovative professional training programs (including training programs for personnel in manufacturing). The role of professional standards in the regulation of vocational education and training activity includes: (a) establishing requirements for professions according to qualification level, to create a quality assessment system based on them; (b) the implementation of professional standards requirements in the development of FSES at all levels of vocational education and CPD training programs, the formation of sets of teaching materials, in choosing the forms and methods of teaching in vocational education and internal training of personnel; (c) rapid updating and improvement of training content, (d) determine the trajectory of learning throughout a person's career growth, etc.
However, it is not only the absence of professional standards for all types of economic activity that slows the creation of criteria for professional activity. There is a serious gap in Russia between demand and supply of labor, whereby the skills of the employees do not satisfy employers, and the vocational education system continues to evolve according to its own logic, not connected to that of the labor market, due to the lack of a national system of qualifications that would facilitate co-ordination of mutual requirements for qualifications on the part of employers, as well as the education and training system. Such a system should include a sectoral framework for qualifications, a classification of professions/occupations, professional standards according to economic activity, a list of levels and directory of qualifications, a list and directory of training programs (training modules), procedures (rules and mechanisms), recognition (registration) of professional standards, evaluation system, validation, certification, accreditation of education and training outcomes(qualifications) at a national and international level.
Obviously, where there are no requirements for criteria of professional activities that define the indicators of quality of potential employees, different approaches and different mechanisms are needed to develop vocational training and retraining, that satisfy an employer's requirements. In this case, the key principle behind innovative approaches to designing the content and the procedural component of vocational education in general, and vocational training in particular, is a focus on the objectives that are relevant to the workplace. These benchmarks can be
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achieved by the transition of educational institutions to techniques of structuring CPD programs based on a modular principle of constructing the content and organization of training.
The model developed in the Research Institute of Vocational Education of the Moscow Department of Education for implementing a modular competency approach in adult vocational retraining programs contains a two-tiered structure that defines the mechanism for determining the requirements of employers and the design principles of CPD programs both when professional standards exist and in their absence. The model is based on a deep functional analysis of the workplace(profession) through a description of its functions and outputs. The advantage of this approach is that it allows changes in technology and work organization in the field of supply and demand for labor in a region to be taken into account quickly.
The functional analysis begins with the establishment of employer requirements for the standards of activities within a given professional field (profession) with the aim of identifying actual and prospective demands of branches of industry for various categories of workers. This phase of functional analysis is called "Analysis of skills requirements". The employers' requirements are their expectations regarding the skills of workers in a particular profession at a given level of responsibility.
Information about these requirements can be obtained by analyzing the labor market, requirements for skills through direct questioning and interviewing of employers, describing the type of economic activity, the content of wage-rate guides and other sources. Functions identified in the process of analysis (real actions performed by an employee in a given profession at a particular level of qualification) and those competencies that are required for carrying out this professional activity, will become the basis for the development of modular courses, since they specifically represent a set of essential requirements, identical to learning outcomes. After determining the range of professional modules comes the time-consuming stage of integrating the didactic elements necessary for the formation of professional competencies for professional content modules.
The characteristics of using the modular competency approach model in adult vocational retraining programs is reflected in three core principles: the tier structure model matches the actual professional activity; the functional analysis of professional activity determines the range of vocational modules; the content of individual vocational modules is determined by a system integrating didactic elements depending on the functional requirements of each type of professional activity in independent and complete educational information contents.
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The experience of developing an innovative model of pilot vocational training(retraining) programs, based on a modular principle of constructing content, shows a range of obvious advantages of this approach: (a) the possibility of rapid upgrade or replacement of specific modules when requirements for the employee are changed as a result of changes in technology and labor organization to ensure quality management systems for training; (b) improving the individualization of training based on the level of knowledge and skills obtained during previous training (or work experience) by transferring or combining the required modules, and separate units of modules; (c) convenience of using the same modules as elements of several training programs at once. With the gradual development and accumulation of educational modules, taking into account international experience in implementation of credit unit system, the likelihood increases that trainees will receive a qualification whose requirements for different levels (in relation to specific trades and professions) are currently regulated by the relevant accreditation and appraisal documents.
Along with the traditional procedure of attestation, the most effective option is to create systems of training quality assessment external to the direct service providers in the form of certification of professional qualifications by industry associations of employers (when they exist), which allows for the modernization of state certification, licensing and accreditation of educational institutions and programs in accordance with the priorities of the state educational policy in the area of retraining, as well as creating mechanisms for their regular renewal.
The flexibility of a modular approach gives it the broad potential to be used in training and retraining of various social groups, including the unemployed, developing human resource capacity of manufacturers, persons with disabilities, and other categories of people; it can form an individual learning trajectory in line with the concept of lifelong learning and expand the scope of intellectual freedoms of all parties involved in the educational process.
The innovative nature of the change entails further development of a scientific-methodical and organizational-legal framework for the training, retraining and upgrading skills of personnel, and developing a set of regulatory documents to implement the modular competency approach to CPD, vocational training and retraining for adults. This determines priorities for the further development of CPD and training in Moscow and identifies strategic directions for improving the training and retraining of personnel using the resource capabilities of integrated educational institutions.
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