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ECOLOGIZATION OF PROFESSIONAL PEDAGOGICAL EDUCATION
L. Borovikova
According to V. Vernadsky, “man has realized that he is a resident of the planet for the first time in history and, therefore, is able, and should, think and act from a new perspective, which is not only with respect to an individual, family or family line, states, or their coalitions, but also with respect to our planet” [1, p. 28]. However, over the course of time man has not fully realized his mission and, consequently, the oncoming global environmental disaster is caused to a large extent by his own activity. Today the imminent global crisis is not only associated with environmental and social factors. It is now taking a new, anthropological shape being called a crisis of humanity. Changes which mankind undergoes are the significant consequences for global events, and can no longer be regarded as secondary effects of social and historical processes. Human nature and man’s notions of the world and cultural values are being reconstructed in present day society, and along with that there is a crisis of a person’s national, social and professional identity. This is the main cause of mental illnesses, aggression, violence and fear for people’s health, so to keep existence with a “human way” is an essential task of modern society. Thus, this is the source of the problem of human ecology.
Professional education comes laden with the traits of the human ecological crisis as well, since it often clashes with humanistic values, and is not related to actual problems of people and a search for meaning, and does not promote the development of an individual’s spiritual culture. This tendency is especially dangerous for pedagogical education. Not every person can identify himself or herself as a teacher; the personal and professional aspects being layered or substituted end up being rejecting the occupation, or fully merge to it. Subsequently, negative experiences are shifted towards interaction with children or to personal relationships with one’s loved ones, concurrently with the professional communication style being used.
Considering man as a part of the ecosystem, science represents a person as an integral system. According to J. Royce and A. Powell, the relations established between human individuality as a source of multiple concepts of reality, and the cultural images of human nature are a fundamental base for the system. An individual person tries to find or construct his or her “ego”, whereas culture tries to create a sensible image for social reality [2, p. 448]. A person, as a set of multilevel hierarchical systems, embodies the mechanisms of environmental adaptation, self-identification, self-organization and patterns of interaction with the environmental invariants or other systems.
The second half of the 20th century is notable as being a turning point in the professional sphere. Changes in material culture and business organization have projected a gap between actual human expertise and new social demands. Thus, not just occupational proportions and contents were required to be changed, or new educational and training technologies to appear, but man himself was affected as well. It is essential for continuous professional pedagogical education, as an
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integral science of “spiritual” arts of a person (after V. Vernadsky), to preserve human existence and make it more ecological, and saturate education with spirituality, which requires its basics to be re-adjusted. The environmental task of modern professional education has top priority and involves identifying a person and his or her professional image, training an expert along with preserving and protecting human existence or, in fact, a “human image”. Vocational pedagogical education is unconceivable without environmental culture being mastered by a human. Ecological literacy does not address only environmental knowledge, but the emotional and value sphere of human existence as well, and determines one’s worldview and, eventually, one’s spirituality, regarded as the inner world, the moral attitude towards nature and man, and responsibility for the latter. The basis for ecologization of continuous professional education is the creation of a comprehensive view of the world, modern concepts of a person and his or her place in nature, and a collective sense of all humans, other living creatures and the biosphere in general, and the humanization of human activity and comprehension of its meaning. Educational efforts should be mainly applied to continuous personal development, and are crucial for vocational training in any sphere, especially in pedagogical education.
Thus, equal relations between a Person and the World, which include moral and aesthetic relations, as well as love, respect and adoration for life, should become the basis for professional educational systems today. Ecology today features the concept of “an environmentally friendly person”. Likewise, we can speak of an environmentally friendly teacher and expert developing himself or herself throughout his or her life, and constructing new forms of life, people and their mentality by means of education, which can continue human evolution.
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