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LIFELONG EDUCATION OF YOUNG STUDENTS AS A FACTOR FOR DEVELOPING THEIR LIFE VALUES
A. S. Mischenko
The materials of sociological surveys conducted in vocational high schools and colleges in St. Petersburg from 1994 to 2010 served as an empirical basis for scientific analysis of lifelong education. We have examined students’ graduation rates in this socio-pedagogical monitoring; over 900 respondents participated in the research.
In the first (theoretical) phase of the study we formulated statements revealing the essential aspects of lifelong education. We considered lifelong education to be a special multi-dimensional tool that allows students to implement various aspects of their social and professional development: the need to express an interest in “horizontal” professional development, provide "vertical” mobility, and shape and implement their value orientations. We assumed the following in our study: first, a professional school and college are a particular area of social reality. They form a good balance of basic socio-economic factors and educational and the pedagogical environment. Therefore, the effect of the basic socio-economic factors on individual students is mediated, and “transforms” the nature of their training in vocational schools, secondly, socioeconomic and political changes occurring in the country are always reflected in a particular personality as a particular “prism” of the movement of the total material and real socio-economic and spiritual value bases that form the vital content of specific human individuals, and thirdly, lifelong education of young people makes a powerful impact on the value orientations of students by changing their personality.
At the second (application) phase of the study, we looked in more detail at the most important parameters of influence of lifelong education in the development of values. First of all, we found that in conditions of deep social and economic transformation of Russian society it is most correct to assume that initial and secondary vocational schools should educate a competitive and professionally mobile worker, a meta-professional, regardless of whether a person will work in their acquired profession or continue professional education in a different way. As many years of research showed, this is the reality of professional growth. So, one of our surveys of people involved in various industries who graduated at different times from primary and secondary vocational schools showed that only 42% of respondents were working at the time of the survey in their original blue-collar occupation, that 43% of respondents were involved in similar blue-collar occupations, and 15% of workers were employed in non-blue-collar professions (they graduated high schools and technical schools). This means that about 60% of respondents are participants of life-
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long professional education at the time of the survey in one form or another, at one time or another.
Next we found out that if we analyze all the data of socio-pedagogical monitoring, we can clearly distinguish the following two stable groups of respondents among students of vocational schools and colleges. The first group (its share ranges from 43.5% -51.3%) is distinguished by a focus on lifelong professional education and self-development. The second group of respondents (its share ranges from 56.5% -48.7%) is characterized by educational and professional motivation to meet the standards of social production, which does not require lifelong professional education from employees. In the study we were able to establish that an objective basis for the division of adolescents into two social groups is the character of their occurrence in the real market economy. Students in the first group used the organizational forms of state-controlled entry into the market; the respondents of the second group used the so-called natural market. Thus, it was revealed that in reality there are qualitatively different structures of the socio-economic factors that determine the factorial interaction of lifelong education and development of values of students, schools and colleges.
By establishing the above stated facts, we managed to distinguish those characteristics from all the value orientations of respondents that most correctly explicate a factorial influence on the development of students’ values, and their motivation for lifelong education. In the group of students focused on lifelong education, respondents attributed the value of success in life value to the following characteristics: having a higher education (the increase as compared to the second group of respondents was no less than +33.0%), to be a professional (21.0%), have broad erudition (20.0%), and have a flexible mind (+ 13.0%). In the group of students not focused on lifelong education, the following positions took on value: to belong to the criminal community (the increase over the first group of respondents was 16.6%), to be a shrewd operator (11.9%), and have a lot of money (11.5%). The meaning of these relationships is as follows: among students, firmly focused on lifelong professional education, there is a clear motivation not only to improve knowledge and skills, but also improve their socio-economic status in society (however, the high personal needs for self-improvement and self-respondents were in some cases poorly mediated by basic social and work values). The fact is that economic reforms (1991-2010) in many cases detached vocational lyceums and colleges of their former production facilities, where young people could get initial positive value orientations for lifelong professional education. At the same time there has been a reduction in the ability of vocational guidance of adolescents don by the family (more than 40% of stu-
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dents failed to name a specific profession of their parents and only 5% of students choose a profession that somehow corresponds to their parents’ occupation).
These facts, as established in their time by our colleague A.I. Skiba, suggest the following: lifelong education for high school pupils and college students influences development of their values from three perspectives. These are the perspectives of their socialization, professionalization and individualization. The relative independence of these processes comes in the following differences. The socialization process raises such questions for young people as: "Is the occupation prestigious?”, "What future social status is best to choose (worker, engineer)?” etc. The process of professionalization proceeds under the motive of such questions as: "How should I acquire this profession?”, "Shall I stop or go to study another profession?”, "What benefits will this or that profession provide?”, etc. The process of individualization makes teenagers answer the questions: "Who should I be?”, "What should be my civil and social ideals in order for me to become a personality?”, etc. All these processes take place simultaneously and are interconnected. Primary socialization in the family and secondary socialization in school form socio-cultural values among young people. Professionalization, beginning at school, leads to a system of professional values. Personalization throughout life creates a special system of personal values. These values are reflected in professional culture, identity, and the form of social and professional orientation of students. The result is a special type of professional culture of students, which requires (or assumes) their focus on lifelong professional education. In this regard, the issue of radical schemes to overcome the deadlock in education and socialization of young people seems very topical, not giving them the knowledge and skills to fully realize their rights to receive quality professional education throughout their lives [1, pp. 105 - 106].
These mechanisms, in our view, should include a system of social, economic, educational and pedagogical factors, as well as personal characteristics of students. In particular, we have constructed a system of factors that determine the value of lifelong education among students of vocational schools and colleges. We included 70 social, economic and educational factors: (a) basic socio-economic factors (the characteristics of the productive labor of students, the transformation of production relations and the prevailing forms of property and social-class stratification of individuals, the political structure of the state, etc.); (b) factors of the learning and teaching environment (indicators of individual potential of specific schools and colleges, the characteristics of the pedagogical environment and production practices, as well as social and cultural potential of students’ free
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time, etc.), (c) personal characteristics of students (percentage of creatively oriented students, the tendency of students towards social mobility, their personal ideals, attitudes toward the phenomenon of "new Russian”, gender characteristics of the respondents, etc.).
Analysis of these factors enabled us to identify a few basic parameters that determine the development of students in lifelong education. These parameters were closely related to the threefold paradigm for learning and education: firstly, through their personal characteristics (self-improvement, the availability of high erudition) and, secondly, through the professional traits of individuals (the degree of integration of the profession, the level of skills by profession of economic interest when choosing a specialty), and thirdly, through the civil position of the respondents (the degree of development of democratic views of individuals, their social activity, students’ creative and leisure activities). As a result, we have identified a mechanism of influence of the factor of lifelong education of high school and college students on their development of values: lifelong education of young people determines its development through the formation of individual students, their economic interests and professional competence, and through a change in creatively filling their free time and leisure. This objective determines the formation among respondents of their professional and value dispositions. New personal constants, in turn, according to the laws of feedback, through a change in employment orientations of students, actively influence the intensification of their continuing self-development not only as professionals, but also as active citizens in society.
Analysis of the impact of continuing education on the value orientations of students of lyceums and colleges can draw the following conclusions:
Firstly, the most effective determinants of the impact of lifelong education on the development of students’ values are within the competence of teaching staff of specific vocational schools and colleges, but their potential is not used on a full scale;
Secondly, a more full-scale advantage of vocational schools and colleges depends on their transformation into real subjects of the market economy, on their deep integration into modern industry, with leadership objectively interested in a quality work force, by training teachers and trainers, and on improvement of the educational process and manufacturing practices;
Thirdly, the inclusion of the processes of improving lifelong education as a factor in development of values among students in real activities of professional schools and colleges in contemporary social and economic conditions will help to improve the training of young workers and profes-
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sionals, to cultivate not only their high creative and innovation potential, but also the desire for lifelong education throughout their lives.
In our view, the identified relations are to be considered for the improvement and modernization of the teaching process in primary and secondary vocational schools (it should be seen as an important element of lifelong education). It is objectively explained by the evolution of the modern economy and the formation of institutions for lifelong vocational education in Russia. In the future this trend should systematically identify further effective development of primary and secondary vocational schools as an educational institute of Russian civil society.
References
1. Скиба А.И. Социологические аспекты непрерывного профессионального образования учащейся молодежи // Х Царскосельские чтения: междунар. науч. конф. / под науч. ред. Н.А. Лобанова; сост. Н.А. Лобанов (Санкт-Петербург) 25-26 апреля 2006г.). T.V. СПб.: ЛГУ им. А.С. Пушкина, Изд. дом «Петрополис», 2о0б. С. 103-1 об.
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