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DEVELOPMENT
OF A COMPETITIVE SPECIALIST IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE LESSONS IN THE SYSTEM OF CONTINUOUS PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION
S. V. Efimenko
This article is about the qualities of a modern specialist, such as creativity, ability to work in creative groups, and ability to carry out research in a foreign language. Today's graduate is a person with high moral standards and motivated to practice lifelong learning.
Key words: competence approach, creative groups, cross-disciplinary,
humanitarization, humanization, value-conceptual orientations, independence.
A change in the paradigm of higher education is taking place due to the transition from education in the “teaching” format to education in the “learning” format, which means that a person nowadays studies independently. “Within this paradigm,” according to L. Grebnev, “a person learns all his life, and we help him/her, but only partially, within due limits, and taking into account his/her personal interest” [3, p. 42]. New educational policy is designed to be a radical means in life today, which will ensure the development of the country in a more progressive way. Given the realities of the time, the educational sector should develop in two directions: “vertical” (presence, practically, in all age groups of the population), and “horizontal” (advanced, additional education) [2, p. 101].
Knowledge, learning tools, educational methods, and techniques that contribute to the steady development of the potential of students and ensure systematic learning of phenomena and development of competences should take a leading position in the educational processes. Competence is a necessary condition for the development of competitiveness of a future expert. Let us give the definition of the competitiveness of a student, a graduate, a specialist, given in the monograph of E.V. Tkachenko, E.G. Safonova, L.P. Panina, O.A. Fischukova [7]. From the authors’ point of view, professional competitiveness means achievement of success in professional activities in the competitive environment on the basis of professional knowledge, skills, and mobilization of a resource for individual-personal qualities. The “competence approach” is now becoming an integral part of the national education policy. Problems of education improvement were discussed even in the Soviet era, since there were signs of the lack of its effectiveness. Those problems usually included the following: disciplinary construction of educational programs and a lack of science-based mechanisms for formation of interdisciplinary connections in the educational programs of higher educational institutions, low level of student independence in the learning process, lack of experience in using the acquired knowledge to ensure graduates solve practical tasks. In this context the competence approach appeared, as a supposed tool to eliminate deficiencies discovered in Russian education.
In the mid-1980s, the famous British psychologist John Raven offered a rather broad interpretation of the concept of competence, using it to characterize the so-called effective behavior in organizations, functional groups, and society as
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a whole [6]. According to Raven, competences can be defined as motivated abilities. Here, the conceptual “focus” of such a notion as “competence” on human motivation is very important. The law “On Education in the Russian Federation” defines education as “a set of acquired knowledge, skills, values, experience, and competences of a certain volume and complexity...” This definition means that the volume and complexity of knowledge of a higher school graduate should correspond to the acquired experience of educational activity at the time of graduation. However, in reality students and recent graduates are facing significant challenges. Therefore, the employer must ensure training of a young specialist’s skills necessary for further successful professional activities. There may be many options: training may take place on site under the guidance of an experienced specialist, or by means of studying one or several additional professional programs. The important thing is that in all these cases a decision is made by the employer, as a person interested in obtaining a specialist with the required professional qualifications. Higher education institutions in the current situation should solve their main task: to prepare a specialist with an excellent university education, realizing the need for professional adeptness in future work.
The main strategic task for Russia today is to ensure innovative breakthrough with the prospect of joining the global leaders. In this case, a key factor contributing to success is creativity. Education is precisely the institution within which the framework for reproduction of a given society’s creative potential takes place [1]. However, the “module of creativity” worldwide today includes not single individuals, but rather their creative environments, where people are developing and ideas are generated, where creative teams are crystallized, and creative experience is expanding.
For the modern scientific and technological civilization, the connection of education and science is a backbone. For education, as an institution where the initial formation of a scientific mentality takes place, the phenomenon of so-called trans-disciplinarity is very important, where a new integrated problem field is built over the traditional network of “sectoral science” and in which disciplinary differences are eliminated.
The opportunities for foreign languages in the formation of a competent professional are significant. We may invite engineers or other leading experts to foreign language lessons. Students who can speak a foreign language well enough and who can carry out professionally oriented foreign communication can work as translators in the enterprises of the city, and then tell the group about their experiences. Foreign language in high school makes it possible to create cohesive creative teams both within the same group, and among students of different grades, to prepare projects in a foreign language, and to participate in the roleplaying or business games. Foreign language as a subject is designed to inherently humanize the learning process of students, which introduces elements of interdisciplinarity in the process of learning a foreign language in high school. This also helps to look at the world of “instruments and devices” differently, i.e., from the point of view of the common human values. A competitive specialist in today’s labor market must not only possess professional competences, but also be a highly moral person, a great human. The well-known Russian philosopher
L.P. Karsavin once attracted our attention to the following in thinking about a “high-
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quality specialist”: before you do something, or become engaged in a certain activity, you should be a well-shaped man from the point of view of ideology and spiritual and moral values. In his opinion, this is a condition under which a person is capable of responsible, useful activity. One of the reasons for significant professional success, such as of prominent statesmen and politicians or military commanders, is the high level of their ideology and worldview [5].
Nowadays the problem of formation of a system of values is indicated in the context of the competence approach as “the reality of modern education.” Among the key competencies the following are mentioned: competencies of value-conceptual orientation in the World, i.e., the value of life, culture, science, industry, the history of civilizations and religions. The value-conceptual area in the national psychology is studied by many authors and is considered a functional system, which forms the meanings and purposes of human life and regulates the ways of achieving them. The content of students’ value-conceptual sphere is treated as a set of value orientations and meanings. The value-conceptual development of students in foreign language lessons takes place on the basis of texts, the content of which is directed to the formation of high moral ideals in the outlook of students, to help them understand the contradictions of the modern world and to determine their attitude towards them. There are various types of communicative practice: dialogues and case methods provide for the exchange of values in foreign language lessons; and development of reflexivity, as a subjective ability to research their own lives, activities, and its processes (correction of different kinds of errors, work in small groups, performance before an audience) will allow students to cultivate their abilities and develop their value-conceptual sphere.
This approach to development of a competitive specialist is extremely important in our time. Not accidentally, UNESCO launched the concept of lifelong education, which is dictated by the changing social roles of a human being throughout life. In our opinion, it is expedient to design and develop in the system of university education such qualities and features that will help students to become competitive in their future activities: (a) intellectual and cognitive abilities (learning potential); (b) working capacity (psycho-physiological potential); (c) creative abilities (creativity); (d) ability to cooperate and exercise collective interaction (communicative potential), etc.
Development of competitiveness consists of a system of targeted, pedagogically sound teaching methods, choice of means, and design of conditions. This is a purposeful process, based on thorough and comprehensive analysis and reflection, professional self-knowledge, and self-government. It is based on the internal motives that appear in the pursuit of professional growth, and desire to take the right place in society.
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Translated from Russian by Znanije Central Translastions Bureas
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