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DEVELOPMENT OF THE CULTURAL COMPONENTS OF A PROFESSIONAL’S QUALITY AT HIGHER VOCATIONAL EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS
I. G. Vasilyev
The article views development of general culture, moral qualities, psychological stability and emotional and volitional qualities of specialists in higher education institutions as a prerequisite of self-realization.
Key words: cultural component of education, moral values, education, emotional and volitional stability, patriotism.
The theory of continuous education by definition includes consideration of requirements for the ethical values of education as an imperative. The essence of the ethical content in continuous education is reflected through the humanitarian dimension of social life and the special value brought by human culture to continuous education. The theory and practice of continuous education not only “inherits” the ethical content of the historically preceding stages of general and professional education and the whole multi-national experience and traditions, but also generates new values and senses.
The ethical content of continuous education is a dynamic, ever changing, rational idea of the ideal of service to the chosen profession and ways to achieve a balanced combination of all components of professional activities: professional, competence and ethical. The latter ones have a humanitarian and axiological nature, and are based on a socio-cultural basis. The spiritual and ethical content of continuous education reflects the integrity and social focus of education. If education lacks focus and integrity, it disintegrates and dissipates, and links between parts are destroy and separate components lose their sense outside the whole. A review of pedagogical studies in issues of personality development for the last decades shows that newly born approaches take into account the needs for development of citizenship as a component of integrity and morality of a personality. Personality development as the rebirth of a citizen, a person of culture and morality is considered to be a requirement for socialization of the individual, and is an economically and socially determined process playing innovational and stabilizing roles in the society.
Continuous education as an institution of additional and advanced training inherits integrity of the process of education and individual development in higher school institutions. Vocational training in higher school education is a complex set of requisite and various conditions for balanced development of an integral personality. In a sense, it is a motivational framework for development of a sustainable attitude for continuing education during one’s whole professional life. To ensure sufficient performance of this attitude, one must act in a purposeful and systematic way relying on the best historical traditions and persistent creating thinking in the current environment of the higher school institution. Plato said, “... we regard personal development as the most important part of education” [1]. Therefore, let us proceed from the premise that the main component of education is personality development, defined as a priority in the public education policy. The
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RF Law “On Education” emphasizes the relationship between education and development of a citizen as an integral social structure struggling for selfimprovement and social transformation (Article 2). The main objective of personality development is creation of conditions for intense activities of students, civil self-identification and realization, and the best satisfaction of students’ needs in their intellectual, cultural and ethical development.
The most relevant and concrete objectives include: development of personal properties required for professional activities; development of good citizenship and patriotic mentality, legal and political culture; development of teachers’ attitude to students as subjects of their own development (pedagogy of collaboration); development of moral properties, culture; development of a focus on universal human values and high humanist ideals of culture; development of skills in team leadership in different types of students’ self-administration; preservation and improvement of cultural traditions of the institution and succession; development and improvement of health, maintenance of a healthy life. N.F. Maslova and P.G. Anisimova say that a practically important objective of social personality development and personality self-development includes the sustainability of the future specialist as a whole, and its individual emotional and volition culture as a key component of personal sustainability.
According to empirical studies based on a representative sampling of 1400 students from Orel civil higher education institutions, and students of the Russian Academy of the Federal Security Service, the pursuit of self-improvement of the emotional and volition aspects is featured in not more than 46% of the participants. A range of qualities requiring systematic social and pedagogic stimulation and differentiated development can be identified according to the type of individual issues of cultural development of the personality at the certain stage of personality development in the higher education institution. For example, for students of the first and second year, the following qualities are not sufficiently developed: sense of purpose (for 70%); focus on and drive for success in training (for 67%-64%); self-esteem, self-dependence, countenance (for 63%-60%). Only one of three students is persistent in the development of his/her promptness and good organization of training activities; only one of four students is ready to trust his/her fellows and shows no proneness to conflict; only one of five students strives for leadership in the students’ team [3].
Therefore, under conditions of the transitive society, the social practice of personality development sets a certain vector of development of the personal mentality of the future specialist, not always meeting the goals of successful training. Therefore, it is required to develop a special spirit of personality development that can guide the process of self-improvement of a person’s general culture, and building the professional culture of the future specialist.
The value of the emotional and volition culture of the future specialist is reflected in individual capacities, the ability to keep self-control in the emergent situation, perform ethical duties, act according to set objectives, keep one’s selfconfidence, and responsibly solve issues of activities and communication in society. The personal ability for spontaneous concentration and purposeful problem-solving, for adaptation, responsible and socially mature self-regulation of one’s own actions, stable and constructive behavior, and improvement of
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emotional and volition properties is the major qualitative indicator of successful development of emotional and volition culture. Their content integrates basic relationships and activities of any specialist [3].
Personality development can be regarded as a driver of successful modernization processes in Russia as a way of self-improvement which is an urgent need of the coming information civilization. It is higher education institutions that must give to students an experience of organizing personal development. This supposes not only the creation of an environment for personal development in the higher education institution, but also a general atmosphere to contribute to development of skills and talents of the youth.
Personality development is a dynamic, ever developing and improving process, but is also a relatively understood and well-directed breeding of a person according to the specifics of groups, goals and organization where this process is conducted. The major task is assessment of performance of personality development. It can not have absolute criteria, and many years are needed for the results of personal development to appear.
Bibliography
1. Платон. Соч. в 3 т. - Т. 3. - Ч. 1. - М., 1968. - 186 с.
2. Якушева С.Д. Интеграционная модель воспитания в образовательном процессе ВУЗа, обеспечивающем появление нового качества при подготовке специалиста // Научный Вестник Оренбургского филиала Института бизнеса и политики: сборник статей преподавателей. - Вып. II. - Оренбург: Издательский центр ОГАУ, 2005. - С. 103-108.
3. Маслова Н.Ф., Анисимов П.Г. Воспитание эмоционально-волевой культуры в системе формирования жизнеспособности будущего специалиста // Образование и общество. Научный, информационно-аналитический журнал. - 2005. - № 4. - С. 100-110.
Translated from Russian by Znanije Central Translastions Bureas
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