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MODERNIZATION OF ADDITIONAL PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION:
THE SOCIAL AND PEDAGOGICAL CONTEXT
Е. V. Kukanova
Organization of additional professional education for social workers is considered in the article.
Key words: additional professional education, expectations of employers, social workers.
We understand the modernization of the system of additional professional education (hereinafter - “APE”), first of all, to be a policy of accelerated development of this educational structure in order to overcome congestion and provide for the level of education that meets the national interests, goals and strategies of progress. The reforms of the Russian economy actualized the problem of the quality of professional staff, and, as a consequence, an increase in the requirements of employee competence. In this context, we can see a change in employer expectations as concerns the result of advanced training of specialists -they are focused on developing the core competencies in a particular professional sector that are necessary for carrying out the activities under the new conditions. However, it is necessary to take into account the specific features of the system of postgraduate education, which is aimed at adult consumers of educational services, who, as a rule, have a well-shaped view of life, a professional credo, and a prevailing worldview. Therefore, modern APE cannot be viewed in isolation from the social and psychological and social and pedagogical contexts.
In connection with the foregoing, it is important to analyze the reasons for modernization of the system of additional professional training. The modern social and cultural situation is characterized by high rates of social, economic and axiological transformation. If, during the life of previous generations, stability in professional activities was valued, and most people were working at one and the same company throughout their lifetime when professional dynasties were highly esteemed, nowadays, both changes in one’s workplace and change of profession are recognized as a quite common phenomenon, and futurists predict that future generations will change their field of professional activity 4-5 times during their lifetime. Under such circumstances, additional professional education becomes the leading type of education, a resource for development of individual freedom.
By 2015, the share of the employed population aged 25 to 65 that have passed upgraded training and retraining should reach 37%. According to the expert estimate of N.M. Zolotareva, in developed European countries the share of the economically active population engaged in further professional education is 60-70%1. Only 5% to 11% of the working population is working in all directions of APE in Russia (according to the Federal State Statistics Service and the Ministry of
1 N.M. Zolotareva. On the priority directions of the state policy in the field of additional professional education //Additional professional education in the country and the world. 2013. № 1. Pages 2-3.
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Education). This concerns mainly the representatives of the information, economic and engineering professions. Social professions are far behind these indicators.
In the Decree of the Government of April 15, 2014 No 295 “On approval of the state program of the Russian Federation for 2013-2020” 1 there is a goal: to form a flexible, system of continuing professional education that is accountable to the public, and which develops the human capacity, providing for satisfaction of the current and future needs of social and economic development of the Russian Federation. The educational system faces the task of covering the adult working-age population in the age of 25-65, providing for the availability of lifelong education programs.
We consider additional professional education to be a social and pedagogical phenomenon, since it creates conditions for continuous learning and development, including a person’s self-development. Its goals and content are not provided for by the state educational standards, but are important for the development of the individual and the society, allowing an adult to fulfill the needs arising in the course of life, and to satisfy new interests. A trend for the orientation of education towards socialization of a person is fundamentally important for understanding the context and objectives of additional professional education. As an object of study of various sciences, socialization in the interdisciplinary context is understood to be the process of integration of the individual into society. At the same time, there are some differences in the assessment of the role of the activity of a socializing personality in this process. A fairly complete analysis of socialization concepts was given by A.V. Mudrik, whose works have two reasonable approaches to the interpretation of the content of this phenomenon. The first approach is called the “subject-object” approach, which recognizes the priority of activity of society over the activity of a person in the process of socialization, treating the process of integration of the person into the system of social relations, primarily, as adaptation to the existing rules and regulations. The second approach is called the “subject-subject” approach, focused on the preferential activity of the individual itself. Within the framework of this approach, socialization is considered to be a process of interpenetration of individual and social attitudes. In our opinion, both approaches are quite applicable to the explanation of the essence of the process of socialization of a child, but when it comes to socialization of an adult, here one has to take a “subject-subject” interpretation of the nature of social development as a basis. However, in our opinion, trends of globalization, internationalization and integration of education, and a significant increase of humanitarian aspects in global education, shift the emphasis in adult education from material and social organization of the educational process to its value-based and subject-based component. In the context of the idea of continuing education, additional professional education can be defined as a social and pedagogical phenomenon associated with creating the necessary conditions for a free and conscious manifestation of a person in education.
The Law “On Education in the Russian Federation” states that additional professional education is aimed at meeting educational and professional needs,
1 URL:http://www.consultant.ru/document/cons_doc_LAW_162182/#p15
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and a person’s professional development, ensuring compliance of the person’s qualification to the changing conditions of professional activity and the social environment. Thus, the law provides for the basis for the target orientation of the system of APE to meet the existing social demands. However, no modern system can develop unless it is ahead of the curve.
The resulting component of APE includes not only the growth of professional competences of students, but also a number of social effects. An individual’s mobility, being one of the values of the postindustrial society, is a significant social effect of additional professional education. Modern society needs people prepared for life in a constantly and rapidly changing environment. Only these professionals will be able to successfully develop and feel comfortable in modern society. With regard to social education, this means that, initially, training should be focused on the formation of professional readiness to change one’s professional status, to rotate in the professional environment, and on the ability to successfully switch to new activities and working conditions.
Traditionally, the formation of opportunities for improving an individual’s social status has been considered to be the main effect of education of any level. Education helps to reduce marginalization. However, a modern employer pays less attention to where, what and how much time a potential employee spent to receive education, and even the availability of professional education is gradually transformed into the imperative category. The concrete definition of the requirements of employees, the priority of the question “What can you do?” over the question “What did you study?” becomes a trend in development of the labor market. In this regard, many people mention the decrease of the role of education as a social elevator. In our opinion, mass education, including higher education, rather plays a role of a “foundation” today than an “elevator”, because the very existence of a higher education certificate has ceased to be a competitive advantage. However, without it, the value of an employee in the labor market is minimal. It is important to emphasize that additional adult education, in this sense, does not lose its positions.
The development of the personalities of the attendees of additional professional education courses has an equally important effect. It seems that the relevance of personal growth declines with age: a person who filled some professional niche strives to keep the existing position rather than to acquire a new position, however, the conditions of modern culture dictate the priority of prognostic development. Modern man is forced to “live to be proactive”, to be able to draw a perspective, to plan changes of the social and cultural, professional and personal situation. And additional professional education, in our opinion, can be a powerful source of personal growth of education. Value-based and essence-based professional and personal self-development (transformation of the old, and generation of new, higher professional and personal meanings and subject-based orientations), being a function of APE, provides for the potential of constant development, self-renewal and self-improvement of an individual’s professional and essence-based nature by defining his/her ability for sense-bearing creative activity.
Additional professional education, among other things, involves another effect - social compensation. In our opinion, APE also provides great opportunities to compensate for the deficiencies of professional communication. As our
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experience shows, training courses for many listeners, first of all, are valuable due to the opportunity to communicate with colleagues, share experiences, and expand the range of the professional community. And if we design the content of courses for APE listeners as a system of problem situations and issues close to the realities of the professional environment to its prototype set in the model of activity of a specialist, the social content of education implemented through forms of joint activity becomes a compensating resource which involves the exchange of professional experience, professional and personal communication.
Thus, additional professional education has a number of social effects: (a) it promotes the development of a person’s professional and academic mobility; (b) it plays the role of a “social elevator”; (c) it creates conditions for social development and filling the “gaps” of previous stages of socialization. But all these effects become obvious only when the process of additional professional training is far from formalism, and is determined by important social and economic and individual psychological determinants, based on one’s personality, in demand, and is a source of self-development.
Thus, under the influence of the above trends, a new social reality that defines and transforms the goals of additional professional training has developed. A new type of personality is in demand in society: not an individual who is globally and harmonically developed according to a certain ideal model, but rather a person with self-identity, with an imprint of personal qualities in all relations with the surrounding world. All this entails not only a review of the content and form of education, but also a rejection of many established values in education. The conditions of the prevailing cultural situation require developing and enriching the value orientations of adult learners, and above all, the value orientations of adults, and first of all, value-based orientations in educational (and self-educational) activity.
Translated from Russian by Znanije Central Translastions Bureas
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