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20Journal of Siberian Federal University. Humanities & Social Sciences 11 (2012 5) 1694-1706
УДК 371.255
Practical Psychologists' Training: Difficulties and Prospects
Victor E. Pakhal'yan*
Moscow Institute of Open Education 6 Aviatsionny side st., Moscow, 125167 Russia 1
Received 04.11.2011, received in revised form 11.11.2011, accepted 23.11.2012
The article presents the author's view on the problem of practical psychologists' training in its present state. Analysis of the state of normative legal and methodological base of higher vocational education system serves the basis for dwelling upon the difficulties in practical psychologists' training which are connected with formal requirements to professional activity and future specialists' personal preparedness. The issue of the necessity to develop a new area in the sphere of practical psychology - preventive psychology of development - is given a special attention in the article.
Keywords: practical psychologists' training, educational result, personal preparedness, types of the tasks that are solved in various spheres ofpsychology, preventive psychology of development.
Normative legal aspects of specialists' training in the sphere of practical psychology and the problem of educational result quality
Analyzing problems of practical psychology, quality of psychological services in the sphere of education and development prospects of the Service of practical psychology of education in our country, such aspects of the Service as content of syllabi and curricula of specialists' training and methodological provision of educational process should be given a special focus of attention. The main aspects here are the following: the extent they conform to the contemporary ideas of an individual's development as well as to the tasks solved by a practical psychologist in his / her work at the difficulties in children's development in different
educational environments. Organization and implementation of extra higher vocational education in psychology clearly display all sides of such a task.
The sources of existing difficulties can be found in juridical base of higher vocational education1.
1. Comparison of the main documents, and namely "Law on Education" and "Federal Law on Higher and Post-Graduate Education" shows that the primacy of an individual's needs in getting education is obvious. It is clearly seen in the content of the text of the articles and in the rank of these wordings:
- "Content of education ... should be focused on ensuring an individual's self-determination, provision ofconditions for his/her self-realization" (Law on Education, Article 14 Clause 1.);
* Corresponding author E-mail address: vicp2003@rambler.ru
1 © Siberian Federal University. All rights reserved
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- "The aim of higher professional education is training and retraining of specialists of the level required, satisfaction of an individual's needs to extend and broaden his/her education2 ..." (Law on Education, Article 24 Clause 1.);
"Extra educational programmes and extra educational services are provided in order to thoroughly satisfy the citizens' educational needs.." (Law on Education, Article 26 Clause 1.);
- "The main objectives of a higher education institution are: 1) satisfaction of an individual's needs in intellectual, cultural and moral development by means of getting higher and (or) post-graduate vocational education" (Federal law on Higher and Post-graduate Education, Article 8 Clause 2).
2. On the other hand, the text of "The Conception of Federal Target Programme for Education Development in 2006-2010" makes it possible to notice new emphasis and reveal new tendencies in the national state policy concerning higher vocational education. The aspects connected with economy, labour market, an employer's needs, etc. are manifestly distinguished in it.
The following wordings make this clear:
- ".absence of institutional mechanisms, ensuring the connection of human capital development with the growth of the citizens' wellbeing, in the sphere of education leads to the situation when the system of education reproduces the citizens' parasitical attitude to the state, doesn't form but suppresses an individual's activity on the labour market now and then" (Section IV).
- "Successfulness of educational content and technologies development is to a great extent connected with the effectiveness of reduction of growing disparity of education quality and employers' demands to it. This lag manifests itself, first of all, in the absence of an adequate reaction
of vocational education system to the labour market's demands. More than a quarter of higher vocational education institutions' graduates and about a third of secondary vocational education institutions' graduates do not become employed and fill the vacancy of a specialty they have been trained in an educational institution. And in case they do they are not good at modern and efficient activity methods at the place of employment" (Ibid.).
- "A strategic aim achievement and fulfillment of the Programme's tasks are ensured by the implementation of the system of policy measures grouped according to the main activity areas. Fulfillment of a strategic task of educational content and technologies improvement are ensured by the implementation of the policy measures in the following activity areas:
<> introduction of a new list of training areas (chief subjects) and trades of vocational education and corresponding state educational standards, worked out on the basis of competence approach, in order to develop curricula adequate to the world trends, labour market's and an individual's needs" (Section VII).
- ".higher rate of the employers' role in professional personnel's training (growth of number of both primary, secondary and higher vocational education institutions that passed through the employers' examination of curricula and vocational education institutions that provide their training in compliance with new educational standards developed with the employers', social and professional associations' participation)" (Section IX, Clause 3).
The analysis of the materials of numerous forums (conferences, workshops, etc.) shows that not all the specialists involved in training, retraining and advanced training pay serious attention to the trends that are outlined nowadays in the change of the national higher education content. Some of them are still sure that
vocational education and market have almost no connection as education belongs to the sphere of culture while market is included in the sphere of economy, thus, they hardly relate to each other. But the analysis of the national labour market and statistics break this illusion. It is vividly shown in various publications (M. Gladkova 2007; O.M. Zheleznyakova 2006; O.G. Kukosyan 2007; O.N. Oleinikova 2006, etc.).
Discussing the issues of practical psychologists' training, in extra vocational education system including, it is necessary to agree upon the meaning of the "educational result" term. It is appropriate to discuss the issue of what ensures "educational result" in practical psychologists' training and how it is done. The example below will be a slight digression though.
In the report of the International bank for reconstruction and development in 2007 it is stated that:
In Turkey improvement in pre-school education system has resulted in students' higher examination marks, growth of number of higher education institutions' graduates, lower level of juvenile delinquency. In private sector productive capacity of secondary and higher education has increased especially in the countries with almost total pre-school education. So, what should be regarded as educational result in the term's broad meaning? Perhaps, "being educated" means such individual's inner resources that help him/her establish adequate relations with the world and other individuals and meet the society's requirements to an individual's status he/she has got by the present moment?
In particular, such kind of a definition is given by I.A. Zimnyaya:
"It's a human him/herself who has been trained in a certain educational system. It's his/her experience being a set of developed intellectual, individual, behavioral qualities, knowledge and
skills that makes it possible to act adequately ... in any situation" (Зимняя И. А. [I.A. Zimnyaya] Педагогическая психология. - Ростов-на-Дону: Феникс, 1997).
In the context of the topic discussed it can be generally stated that an educational result in practical psychologist's training is a person ready to provide professional psychological services (with due level of proficiency) adequately to a client's requests.
In search of formal confirmation of the defined above we'll appeal to normative legal aspect of the issue once again. In the text of "Law on Education" it is stated that:
Education under the present Law is understood as a purposeful process of upbringing and education in the interest of a human, society, state accompanied by the statement of a citizen's (a person being trained) achievement of educational levels (educational qualifications), set by the state.
Getting education by a citizen (a person being trained) is understood as achievement of a certain educationalqualificationandits acknowledgement certified by a certain document. There is a concept of aim understood as a desired result. In "Law on Education" this aspect is designated the following way:
Article 14. General requirements to the content of education
1. The content of education is one of the factors of the society's economic and social progress and must be focused on:
- ensuring an individual's self-determination, providing the circumstances for his/her self-realization;
- development of the society;
- strengthening and improvement of a legal state.
2. The content of education must ensure:
■ the level of the society's general and professional culture adequate to the world one;
■ formation of a citizen's worldview adequate to the modern level of knowledge and the level of a curriculum (stage of education);
■ an individual's integration into the national and world culture;
■ upbringing of a person and a citizen (set off in bold by me - V.P.), integrated in modern society and aimed at the society's improvement;
■ reproduction and development of the society's human resources potential.
3. Vocational education of any level must ensure getting a profession and a corresponding qualification by a person trained.
4. The content of education must contribute to mutual understanding and cooperation between people, peoples irrespective of racial, national, ethnical, religious and social belonging, take a variety of world outlooks into account, favour the realization of a trained person's right on a free choice of opinions and convictions.
As it is seen from the mentioned above, there are many multi-aspect targets for education to be oriented to.
The analysis of monographs and professional periodicals that exist nowadays makes it possible to conclude that there is no single approach to the definition of this concept like in many other cases. Some specialists consider that these results comprise:
♦ "subject" (knowledge, abilities, skills, experience of creative activity, etc.);
♦ "metasubject" (activity methods, mastered during the course of one or several subjects, that are applied both in educational activity and real life situations);
♦ and "personality" (system of value preferences, interests, motivation, tolerance) components .
Others include:
♦ state of health;
♦ academic success;
♦ satisfaction of the educational process subjects;
♦ individual progress in assimilation of universal abilities;
♦ age (psychological) maturity.
It is also written that it is an integral characteristic comprising:
♦ subject and extra-subject knowledge and skills of a competence oriented character (i.e. focused on activity methods);
♦ key competences;
♦ social experience acquired during a course of getting education, etc.
Thus, difficulties for definition of educational results in the whole are already built into normative legal base. In the context of the discussed issue it is appropriate to mention that the state, being a client in respect of the educational results in this specialty, has defined only the criteria of the level and content of mastering the curricula, presented in educational standards (State educational standards of higher vocational education).
Another aspect of the issue is the quality of educational results3. I have failed to find a single document in which the criteria of all possible results of vocational education were enumerated. The documents of recent years mainly dwell upon the conditions of educational result achievement (in most cases - upon standards and financing). That's why we can judge about the quality (if we rely on normative documents only) chiefly on the basis of the results of mastering curricula. It's important here to understand a specific character of the connection between being educated and the quality of a specialist's training for efficient practical work.
Alison Wolf, professor of London University, in her book "Does Education Matter? Myths about Education and Economic Growth" mentions that if a higher rate of getting education is achieved without much thinking the connection between
being educated and economic growth may be weakened. Another danger distinguished by the author is the following one: excessive anxiety about economic growth narrows and distorts the society's idea of being educated. In the UK the quantitative growth of specialists (their enrolment and graduation) resulted in worsening the quality of university education. This is one of losses. Moreover, employment of a large number of lecturers to high school badly affects secondary school as the best teachers leave it. But the worst thing is, perhaps, that the leading universities start experiencing the lack of resources. As a result they can't train the most brilliant students for leading roles in science and technology as it previously was.
***
"Expert" magazine dated 03.09.2007 Lack of correspondence between what is taught and what is required by social-and-practical situations can be characterized as a global crisis in the sphere of higher education: education system train people to "going away" economy. This crisis unfolds against a background of worldwide tendencies. Firstly, large scale involvement into education is growing. This gives grounds to speak about the transition to general higher education in economically developed countries. The number of students in our country is the largest in the world: in 2005 495 students was the share of each 10 thousand residents of Russia. In the USA the share was 445, in Germany - 240, in the UK - 276, in Japan - 233. At that the education system itself has been functioning on the basis of the pattern adopted decades ago: the content of academic courses is often based on outdated economic, social, natural science and technical conceptions. And as for Russian students, they associate training in a higher education institution with competitiveness on labour market less and
less seldom. Being educated is a sign of social normality for the majority of them. Thus, we face the following state of affairs: if our compatriot has mastered curricula in psychology and stood the qualification tests designed to check the level of mastering them, he/she can provide professional psychological services to a client. Both a graduate and a lecturer responsible for professional training can show a client the document certifying the educational result and the quality of mastering the curricula (differential mark). But as for functional, real, practical suitability of a result of education, a client will be able to get it only after a certain period of time when a specialist starts practising and getting definite practical results. In the system of state institutions this moment will be formally registered only at the date of a specialist's qualifying evaluation.
The situation nowadays is the following: the state doesn't directly regulate the relationship between labour market and specialists' training4. It only provides the conditions for the system's existence and development. In this respect the excessive number of institutions training practical psychologists on higher education market is not the state's policy but a response to the people's needs, a peculiar fashion on careers, etc. A client and a consumer are the same person here. It should be noted that the complexity in identification of a client of an educational result is determined by the fact that the result might not have a direct assignment. For example, the students of the system of additional higher vocational education are mainly motivated not by direct expectations of the result (to work as practical psychologist) but by its accompanying (additional) quality: additional diploma, additional profession, being extra resources of efficient professional activity. These provide with quite pragmatic advantages under the conditions of competition and shortage of vacancies.
Thus, at present the main (direct) clients of higher vocational education are labour market and a person getting education - "a student" (or his/her parents). It is they who lay claims to an educational result and evaluate it5.
The fact that the bases of this or that quality of vocational education are built in the system of general education is also obvious. There they develop various systems of mastering curricula and criteria of an individual's preparedness to his/her independent life and to continuation of his/her education at a secondary or higher level. At a forum of the Institute of pedagogy and psychology of development (IPPD, Krasnoyarsk), held several years ago, they discussed what is termed as "certain deficiencies of the students of different courses". One of the participants wrote:
"... a part of deficiencies result from the drawbacks of general education. ... when I ask myself: "Why must they ALREADY be able to do this?" ... I answer myself: "They had to learn this at school". For example, to read, write, speak, make speeches, listen and hear, analyze, argue, work in a group, etc." The author's sufficiently large experience in training practical psychologists in education makes it possible to assert that the number of "deficiencies" is greater than it is expected. It especially strikes while working with people who have already graduated from higher vocational education institutions and come to get additional education. The difficulty here is that quite often there is nothing to "add" or it's impossible to do at all as there are "blank spaces" and "gaps" in their minds. But time resources of the curriculum are not enough for teaching up to the proper level or re-teaching.
Participation in state certifying commissions in many higher education institutions of our country gives me grounds to say that in the majority of cases the qualitative
educational result in a practical psychologist's training is mainly defined in such characteristic as "broad and deep professional training". In some cases "high proficiency in traditional means of psychological services" can be added to it.
But it is also evident that in careers, that help, the preparedness for efficient activity definitely presupposes a personality preparedness of those who will provide services. This component can neither be left aside nor "torn away from the whole". This is mentioned only in works of experienced practitioners and outstanding specialists in this sphere. They unambiguously emphasize that a personality in practical psychology is both a condition and a result of vocational education (A.F. Bondarenko 2000; M. Bowen 1992; I.V. Dubrovina 1991; E.A. Klimov 1998; R. Kochunas 1999; VYa. Lyaudis 2000, et al.). But nowadays this aspect is not reflected in the documents specifying a specialist's training in the Russian Federation. It is not regarded as a criterion that defines the quality of vocational education.
The analysis made makes it possible to state that the educational result of training people in practice-oriented psychological professions directly depends on availability of the following possibilities:
1) practical implementation of differentiated approach to professional selection, matching and training in the sphere of careers that provide help that is based not only upon the criteria of being educated but upon the criteria of a personality preparedness to work with people;
2) providing with specific conditions of training that are qualitatively different from the conditions of traditional academic education not in respect of the curriculum mainly but regarding a) special practice-oriented training of professorial and teaching staff; b) educational and occupational base that makes it possible to
arrange practical activity of full value that is as much close to real professional activity as possible and c) evaluation of educational and occupational practice results that corresponds to a client's requirements (criteria).
As for the questions "who determines urgent consumer qualities of educational result of practical psychologists' training" and "how is it done", the following should be mentioned:
1. The state (its laws on education first of all provide with juridical terms of getting education and requirements to its content specified in state educational standards).
2. Educational institutions and their specialists (they implement the requirements to curricula, their contents and procedures of qualification acknowledgement specified in laws and state educational standards).
3. A future specialist (or persons who take the responsibility for this) (they choose an educational institution and specify the aim of such a training (a student; his/her parents; those who assign to training, etc.).
4. A client on behalf of those structures that include such kinds of vacancies in their staff list and open corresponding vacancies.
The result we face nowadays, as a rule, doesn't suit the market developing in Russia (a client). That's why a client feels the necessity of establishing special structures that provide with a required educational result. Introduction of in-house training, personnel training outside Russia, etc. give evidence of it.
All the mentioned above gives us grounds to dwell upon those difficulties and opportunities to overcome them that are revealed in the course of analysis of working experience in practical psychologists' training and re-training. The example of additional higher vocational education for the "practical psychology" qualification will serve the basis for the analysis of this.
Difficulties in practical psychologists' training and re-training and possibilities to overcome them
The present situation in home psychology and consequently in psychologists' training and re-training is far from ideal. Methodological problems peculiar to the transition from "ideologized" to "professional" psychology are still reflected in both organization of higher education and additional higher vocational education system and its content6. In the context of the discussed issue it should be noted that recent decades are marked with sufficient activity in respect of practical psychologists' training and re-training. But nevertheless many problems of organizational and substantial character are not solved here yet as well as in higher vocational education in the whole. As it is mentioned at the beginning of the article, in the first place it concerns standards, syllabi and curricular of higher education institutions. Unfortunately, their content is a "hostage" of that methodological mess mentioned above. Practical psychologists' training and re-training show that one of the most important aspects of this problem is failure to distinguish the types of the tasks solved in various spheres of psychology. The experience of expert examination of curricula, syllabi, textbooks for psychologists' training shows a non-differential character of such tasks as:
1) scientific (research) tasks proper;
2) scientific-and-applied tasks;
3) tasks of applied practical psychology;
4) tasks of psychological practice. Keeping within the limits of the topic of the article and taking genre restrictions concerning its volume into consideration, we shall not dwell upon the specificity of the tasks of types one, two and four but concentrate on the difficulties typical for practical psychology. It should be noted here that the problem highlighted by us is aggravated nowadays by the transition to a new
system of training including various possibilities of getting vocational educatin - via bachelor and master courses or "specialist's" training. A set of recent works shows the main aspects of the issue discussed (Yu.M. Zabrodin 1982, 1990, 2002; V.A. Ivannikov 2006; E.A. Klimov 1992, et al.). Such context makes it clear that practical psychologists' training must be based on the specificity of the tasks of type three that presuppose their own subject and tools. It should be noted here that practical psychology is viewed upon as the applied area of general psychological knowledge as well as a peculiar type of a psychologist's activity focused to solve a definite professional task in accordance with the requirements of the sphere he/she (a specialist) serves and whose request he/she fulfils (I.V. Dubrovina 1991; V.A. Ivannikov 2006; A.G. Karayani, I.V. Syromyatnikov 2006, et al.). In this respect its subject area is determined by a specific character of psychological knowledge proper, on the one hand, and certain special features of the sphere a psychologist works in, on the other hand.
The variety of tasks and forms of psychological knowledge application determines the main functions of practical psychology. As a rough approximation they can be divided into two groups: according to a method and form of a psychologist's activity and according to the way of psychological knowledge application for solving certain tasks:
1) enlightener, advisory, expert, designing, normative and standardizing, etc.;
2) psychodiagnostics, psychoprognostics and psychological help (joint management).
Considering the issue of specificity of a practical psychologist's working methods, it's important to note that the methods of practical psychology are mirror-like in respect of the methods of scientific research: the latter presupposes the direction from a real object to
scientific knowledge about it, the former implies a different direction from scientific knowledge to a real object when an object's particular specific character and conditions of its real existence are taken into account. Here we can state that the methods of practical psychology must ensure an effective "movement" in the "subject - subject" system and take a client's specific requirements into consideration, never exceed the limits of concrete conditions of a client's activity (Yu.M. Zabrodin, V.E. Pakhal'yan 2010).
In this context it's possible to state the following:
1) the system of a practical psychologist's methods is inseparably connected with a specific character of concrete tasks a specialist faces in the course of his/her work in this or that sphere of human activity;
2) this system is a system of three main groups of practical psychology methods:
♦ methods of psychological expert examination;
♦ methods of psycho-prognostics and psychological design;
♦ methods of psychological help (joint management).
Each group comprises specific ways of work (methods, techniques, etc.) that correspond to the character of the tasks set for a practical psychologist.
Another, no less important aspect of practical psychologists' training, is connected with the problems ingeniously close to an academic process. It's not a secret that the problems with the staff often give no choice to the administration of educational institutions in which training is not always carried out by professional lecturers but by any specialists with diploma in a corresponding subject7. Moreover, according to V.Ya. Lyaudis's true point of view,
".. .The process of teaching any scientific
knowledge very often remains in the periphery
of conscience or even outside it because of a lecturer's direct belonging to science. Being conscious of his/her experience in research, he/ she very slightly realizes those stereotypes and clichés he/she follows in the organization of an educational process when he/she works out the content of education. Such a discrepancy in the degree of conscious awareness of scientific content proper and teaching practice makes the latter rigid, non-alternative, that is true for psychologists as well" (V.Ya. Lyaudis 2000. P 3). One more aspect of a specialist's training is connected with a specific character of the subject itself, its content. This aspect becomes extremely important for practical psychologists' and psychologists-practitioners' training. It is meant here that in teaching psychology "the primacy of the object to learn - content of knowledge - to the subject" is still vivid (V.Ya. Lyaudis 2000). Constant participation in expert examination of the materials that provide the content of future specialists' training in the sphere of practical psychology shows that a considerable part of curricula, their content and teaching methods neither address to a future professional's personality nor presuppose actualization of a personality's potential (V.Ya. Lyaudis 2000). This, in its turn, doesn't create "the zone of a personality's perspective development".
Traditionally home psychology treated a human as a living being whose selectivity and activity, choice of activity, actions and ways of their realization are connected with the ability to carry out them taking the consequences for other members of his/her community into account and taking the responsibility for the choices made. So, a personality is meant here. It implies a certain stage of psychological maturity of a human who is not isolated from other humans but grew up under specific conditions - culture - and acquired it in a certain volume and quality by this or that way. The latter undoubtedly comprises acquisition
of "psychological tools" (L.S. Vygotsky) with the help of which a human starts making these or those choices and taking responsibility for them. Such understanding makes it possible to adequately interpret the expressions like "a criminal's personality", in particular.
The ideas of modern humanistic psychology, and, in particular, the proposition about a human's natural need in self-actualization which is the main "mechanism" of his/her positive changes, personality growth (C. Rogers) also become the basis for working out the curricula for a practical psychologist's training. It should be noted here that the problem of the resources of a personality's changes is solved by establishing specific relationships between a specialist being a facilitator and a person in his/her care. Such relationships can't be the result of a contact of a professional who is good at the influence technique. It is because a specialist in such work manifests him/herself as a human and a contact is carried out as a contact of a human with a human. This means that such work can't be regarded as "an expert's manipulation". It shouldn't be also forgotten that a person under a facilitator's care has the right to stop the process at any moment and get from this care as much as he/she can. That's why one of the most significant conditions of a personality's change in the course of this work is a personality's readiness to this change.
All the mentioned above directly refers to the mechanism of interaction between a person trained and a person training in the system of future psychologists' vocational education as well. In particular, the pattern of a practical psychologist's training, designed on this basis, will ensure not only the knowledge of "artificial devices" focused on one's own inner world acquisition but their "in-growth inside" that means acquisition of proper attitude to people, for whom help will be given, by a personality of a future specialist. Following these ideas we
can design the process of practical psychologists' training so that it is addressed to a personality of a future specialist, presupposes actualization of his/her potential that, in its turn, will create "the zone of a personality's perspective development". More than that, the aspects highlighted can become the criteria of work efficiency not only in the course of vocational guidance, vocational choice and matching, subsequent tracking of a practical psychologist's professional career, advanced training but in the course of retraining for work in this professional sphere.
Specialists' psychological health is undoubtedly one of the significant aspects of the approach discussed. In this respect the system of practical psychologists' training, advanced training and retraining presupposes its support by such principles as "psychological ecological compatibility", "psychological safety". As a matter of principle, organization of a person's training understood humanistically excludes the possibility of destructive impacts of educational environment on his/her development. This, in its turn, presupposes certain personnel policy in respect of "forming figures" (tutors, lecturers). Being precisely conscious of the complexity of such a task it is difficult to imagine a different way but establishment of criteria of psychological safety of development of all the subjects of educational environments on the basis of already existing knowledge about the regularities of a personality's development and newly gained knowledge in this sphere. A list of these criteria is provided in almost any student's textbook in practical psychology. But in reality these criteria are not applied. It is this that gives us grounds to speak about reasonability of working out a new area in psychology - preventive psychology of development understood as the area in applied psychology in which the subject of research and practice are supposed to be psychological phenomena, regularities and
factors that determine the state and dynamics of a personality's psychological health, ensure his/her psychological safety under the conditions of these or those activity spheres the knowledge of which provides the possibilities of timely prevention of unfavourable tendencies of its development.
Foreign practice shows that this issue is quite urgent nowadays. At the same time M. Perrez and U. Baumann mention low efficiency of prevention in medicine:
"Prevention hasn't led to considerable structural changes at social and economical levels so far. The structure of modern supporting system is systematically strengthening in respect of therapeutics that is far from being so in respect of prevention; it also concerns single persons who want to individually improve their own "healthy behaviour" as well as people professionally involved in prevention. It is almost impossible to expect any changes of our "healthy behaviour", focused on a disease, without decisive shift of structural accents in our present supporting system in favour of prevention (Перре М., Бауманн У. [M. Perrez, U. Baumann] Клиническая психология. -СПб., 2006, p. 493).
In the system of psychological personnel's advanced training and retraining apart from the problems general for higher vocational education there are problems specific for this area only. The most evident and, as practice shows, quite important are the following ones:
1. Unlike the students of main higher vocational education, the audience of retraining and advanced training departments is people with higher education. That's why their syllabi and curricula presuppose predominance of content and subjects, which are ingenuously connected with a professional area chosen and have applied and practical character. However, even in case the curricula nominally reflect this correspondence the real content of the subjects taught (which is
noticed both in curricula and in teaching process itself) is often no much different from the content of curricula for main higher vocational education;
2. The picture of demands for these or those specialists by recruitment agencies and employment services and a real result of the system of psychological personnel's advanced training and retraining is rather conflicting. On the one hand, it is obvious that the society's demand for these or those specialists who are suggested retraining for the profession needed nowadays by recruitment agencies and employment services becomes lower in some sphere. But the absence of a stable state policy in this sphere results in financial limitation and prevents from effective use of this personnel resource. Commercial structures behave in this market insufficiently actively so far. They are not eager to invest in this sphere but prefer either to buy "the product prepared" or to establish "in-house system of personnel's training and retraining" which is of a different quality and focus and doesn't correspond to the market's demands. This situation is quite well presented in a set of materials we have mentioned before8.
Modern psychology is ever more moving towards solving the tasks of design and action. This changes the focus on status, role and prospects of fundamental areas of psychology. In this respect, following a great number of experts, it should be mentioned that a serious revision of the whole system of advanced training and retraining that exists nowadays, working out differentiated standards of higher vocational and additional vocational training, the system of psychological personnel's advanced training and retraining is needed. Such work can be built on
1 The necessity to improve the normative base of higher vocational education is mentioned in a number of articles. In particular, see: Барбашин И.В. [I.V. Barbashin] Современное состояние и проблемы системы высшего профессионального образования в Российской Федерации // Образование в социально-гуманитарной сфере Российской Федерации. Аналитический вестник Совета Федерации ФС РФ. 2003. № 2 (195)
the basis of singling out professional tasks that are solved by a psychologist of one or another qualification and specialization. The present state of affairs in this area of Russian education is far from required. At the same time a set of positive things, that have projected recently, can be mentioned if the stated above could be viewed from the point of availability of objective conditions for provision of psychological safety of development of the subjects of educational environments by present Russian higher vocational education. In particular, the draft of Federal state educational standards of higher vocational education (2009) highlights very important ideas: the idea of a higher role of educational institutions in curricula design and their focus on real demands of practice; the idea of an active role of a subject him/herself. The "personality qualities" parameter (competence is the ability to apply knowledge, skills and personality qualities to successful activity in a certain area) in psychologists' training has been singled out in an official document for the first time. But the matter of an individual's "personality preparedness" for mastering this profession is still open.
To crown the discussion of the topic chosen, it is worth mentioning that practical psychologists' vocational education, advanced training and retraining significantly determine the quality of work at the problems of a personality's development under the conditions of one or another environment. It is this fact that should be a starting point in determination of the state's policy in respect of objectives of education, its content and results, including objectives and results of higher vocational education in the sphere of professions providing care.
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Perhaps, the wording of the aim ("training and retraining") is not quite proper. A more adequate wording here might be the following - "satisfaction of an individual's needs to extend and broaden his/her education".
See in details in: Вербицкая Л.А., Касевич В.Б. [L.A. Verbitskaya, V.B. Kasevich] О модернизации российской высшей школы: сегодняшние проблемы и возможные решения. // Вопросы образования 2004. №4, с. 10-22; Гладкова М. [M. Gladkova] Качество высшего образования в рыночном обществе предмет дискурса. // Журнал социологии и социальной антропологии. Спецвыпуск.. 2007. Т. 10, с. 50-65; Железнякова О.М. [O.V. Zheleznyakova] Взаимодействие базового и дополнительного образования как условие полноты и целостности образовательной траектории. // Дополнительное профессиональное образование. 2006. №12; Кукосян О.Г. [O.G. Kuko-syan] Образование взрослых как важнейшая самостоятельная часть системы непрерывного образования. // Дополнительное профессиональное образование. 2007. №1; Пахальян В.Э. [V.Ae. Pakhal'yan] Каким должен или каким может быть психолог, работающий в условиях современного образования? // Вопросы психологии. 2002. №6, et al.
The relations between the higher education system and labour market are described in, for example: Клячко Т. Л., Мау В.А. [T.L. Klyachko, V.A. Mau] Тенденции развития высшего профессионального образования в Российской Федерации // Вопросы образования 2007. №3, с. 46-64.
See in detain about their evaluation in: Гладкова М. [M. Gladkova] Качество высшего образования в рыночном обществе предмет дискурса. // Журнал социологии и социальной антропологии. Т. 10. Спецвыпуск.. 2007, с. 5065.
See in detail in: Асмолов А.Г. [A.G. Asmolov] XXI век: психология в век психологии. // Вопросы психологии. 1995. №1; Василюк Ф.Е. [F.E. Vasilyuk] Методологический смысл психологического кризиса. // Вопросы психологии. 1996. № 6; Забродин Ю.М. [Yu.M. Zabrodin] Основные проблемы становления практической психологии в СССР. // Психологические условия профессионального становления личности. - М., 1990; 29. Юревич А.В. [A.V. Yurev-ich] Методологический либерализм в психологии. // Вопросы психологии. - 2001. - № 5, et al. A qualified specialist (candidate or doctor of science) is a qualification that shows that a person has formal data for successful involvement in scientific research but it doesn't specify the level of teaching ability. Practice shows that there is often no direct connection between having a scientific degree and being successful in teaching.
See, for example: Employers' requirements to the system of vocational education. М., МАКС Пресс, 2006; materials of "Additional vocational education" (Дополнительное профессиональное образование) journal and the site of Higher school of economics - http://isek.hse.ru/part2.html.
References
Василюк Ф.Е. [F.E. Vasilyuk] От психологической практики к психологической теории // Московский психотерапевтический журнал. 1992. № 1.
Выготский Л.С. [L.S. Vygotskiy] Инструментальный метод в психологии // Собрание сочинений в 6 т. Т. 1. (М., 1982) с. 103-108.
Забродин Ю.М. [Yu.M. Zabrodin] Проблемы разработки практической психологии // Психологический журнал. Т. 1. 1982. № 2.
Иванников В.А. [V.A. Ivannikov] Проблемы подготовки психологов // Вопросы психологии. 2006. № 1.
Климов Е.А. [E.A. Klimov] Гипотеза «метелок» и развитие профессии психолога // Вестник Московского ун-та. Сер. 14. Психология. 1992. № 3. С. 3-12.
Кукосян О.Г. [O.G. Kukosyan] Образование взрослых как важнейшая самостоятельная часть системы непрерывного образования // Дополнительное профессиональное образование. 2007. № 1.
Ляудис В.Я. [V.Ya. Lyaudis] Методика преподавания психологии (М., 2000). Роджерс К. [C. Rogers] Становление человека (М., 1994).
Слободчиков В.И. [V.I. Slobodchikov] Что развивается в образовании, что образуется в развитии? // Развитие и образование особенных детей: проблемы, поиски (М., 1999) с. 20.
Требования работодателей к системе профессионального образования [Employers' demands for the system of vocational education] (М., , 2006).
Юревич А.В. [A.V. Yurevich] Системный кризис в психологии // Вопросы психологии. 1999.
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Подготовка практических психологов: трудности и перспективы
В.Э. Пахальян
Московский институт открытого образования Россия 125167, Москва, Авиационный переулок, 6
В статье представлен авторский взгляд на современное состояние проблемы подготовки практических психологов. На примере анализа состояния нормативно-правовой и методологической базы системы высшего профессионального образования обращается внимание на те сложности подготовки практических психологов, которые связаны как с формальными требованиями к профессиональной деятельности, так и с личностной готовностью будущих специалистов. Выделяется вопрос о необходимости разработки нового направления в сфере практической психологии - превентивной психологии развития.
Ключевые слова: подготовка практических психологов, образовательный результат, личностная готовность, типы задач, которые решаются в разных сферах психологии, превентивная психология развития.
