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FORMATION OF PROFESSIONAL LEADERSHIP QUALITIES IN THE LIFELONG TEACHER TRAINING SYSTEM
A. A. Petrenko
The development of domestic education in the early 21st century, characterised by globalisation, has lead to the emergence of a new educational philosophy and new educational values, a mighty wave of innovations covering the educational system at all levels. Time is setting new tasks for the system of lifelong teacher training, stipulating the content of the theory and the practice of the formation and development of professionalism in the teacher-organizer as a subject of the development of the educational system. All the above needs not only well-developed personal and professional qualities in teachers-organizers, but also their professional abilities for the introduction of justified innovations in the educational system of various establishments, and predictive and projective pedagogical activity with due account paid to changing trends in the educational system of Russia.
The growth of scale and the difficulty of integrating Russia into the world educational space leads to modernizing changes in Russian education. The above activates the problem of training the pedagogical staff able to provide the efficient management of the development of education. At the same time, the actual situation of the modernization of Russian national education is characterised by a mismatch between the goals of education and its contents and technologies, the insufficiency of the scientific-conceptual solution to the problems of training professional pedagogical staff for the new dynamic conditions, and the discrepancy between the quality of education and the employers' requirements which does not allow for the adequate performance of innovative tasks in education as a whole.
The authoritarian style of management in education that has developed over many decades has resulted in the fact that the typical head of the educational systems of municipal educational institutions, including institutes of higher education, schools of various levels and research and pedagogical centres of the region, is not ready to take account of the changes taking place in society and education, and amend his organizational and pedagogical activity accordingly.
The Concept of the federal target program for the development of education for 2006-2010 emphasises that the absence of full-fledged connections between vocational training and research, and practical activities, leads to a situation where the content of education and
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educational technologies become less and less adequate for modern requirements and the task of maintaining the competitiveness of Russian education in the world market of educational services. This has a negative influence on the readiness of the Russian educational system to integrate into the world educational and economic space. At the same time, the training of teachers at institutes of higher education still abounds in attempts to provide the students with as much knowledge and information on changes in the structure, content and technologies of education as possible, whereas the development of an ability to adjust to the changing educational space, world trends in the integration of educational and economic space and to making timely and independent decisions about the development of education in the municipal educational space get only minor attention.
Under present-day conditions, a leader's functions differ strikingly from earlier ones both in targeting and content. They assume various innovative activities: administrative and pedagogical, providing entrance to the European and world educational space; research and didactic, adequate to the requirements of present-day society and the individual; methodological and organizational, improving the efficiency of education; predictive and projective, providing the implementation of models and content of lifelong education; reflective, contributing to objectivity, reliability and transparency of assessment of the teacher's activity at the educational institution. At the same time, the multifunctional leadership activity assumes finding solutions to some difficult and changing educational challenges and requires a high degree of professionalism expressed in the following: the ability to carry out scientific and pedagogical research on topical problems not only in the educational process, but also in the entire regional and municipal educational system as a whole; a readiness to introduce innovations in line with world trends in the development of education and their implementation in the changing educational space of the region; the ability to master the technologies of predicting regional tendencies in the development of education and projecting the respective professional activity etc., in the pedagogical and managerial staff. In addition, insufficient targeting of the needs of upbringing, development and self-development of the teacher's and leader's personality in the education system constrains development of innovative processes in the changing types of educational institutions and educational systems of various levels, including regional, municipal, institutional ones.
Over decades and under conditions of pedagogical uniformity, professional pedagogical training of educators used to have a clean-cut world outlook. Anthropological and culturological knowledge was considered unilaterally, avoiding the spiritual and moral sphere of the
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person. Soviet pedagogics treated the formation of professionalism in the teacher and the leader a little bit unilaterally as the spiritual and moral sphere of the person was not the subject of research and education. The governmental educational programs of institutes of higher education and schools were mainly focused on the formation and development of educational/intellectual abilities in students, while education of the spiritual sense was replaced with education in the values of art and morals. So, the Section Qualifying Characteristics of the Positions of Educators in the Order of the Ministry of Health and Social Development of Russia of 14.08.2009 No. 593 On Approval of the Single Qualifying Directory of Positions of Leaders, Specialists and Employees, does not contain any criteria or indicators of the development of his/her spiritual and moral sphere. Meanwhile domestic scientists consider the spiritual and moral sphere of the person to be pivotal to the personality. The theory and practice of domestic pedagogical culture in Russia as represented by
N.I. Pirogov, V. A. Sukhomlinsky, K. D. Ushinsky, etc., has proved to have some positive experience in the development of the human ability to "form oneself” as a spiritual, moral, independent, creative person with the capacity for self-improvement and selfless service to the Fatherland and other people.
As a rule, current government documents stipulating the modernization of the present-day education identify the problem of the spiritual and moral formation of teachers and the leaders; however, the problem itself is not disclosed either in setting the tasks of its implementation or in its content. The content of education is first of all aimed at the satisfaction of the citizens' needs for “high-quality education and provision of effective conditions” for self-determination and self-actualisation of the person in society. At the same time, the question arises if education can be high-quality when the core of the teacher's personality, viz. his/her spirituality and morals, is ignored. According to Y.P. Belozertsev, V. A. Belyayeva, Y. V. Bondarevskaya, Y. Y. Yermakova,
N. A. Koval etc., moral qualities are derived from the spiritual sphere of the person. At the same time, they are pivotal for the formation of the teacher's professionalism.
It is especially difficult to teach students to form a world outlook, views and beliefs in professional work and accordingly self-determine themselves as creative people. Formation of the teacher's and the leader's professionalism is still considered from the point of view of its content and workability irrespective of personal values. As a result, the formation of the leader's professionalism on the axiological basis in the system of lifelong pedagogical education in the changing regional and municipal educational space has been little studied
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