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SUPPLEMENTARY EDUCATION AND ADULT EDUCATION: NEW FORMS OF ORGANIZATION AND TECHNOLOGY
PROBLEMS AND PROSPECTS FOR DEVELOPMENT
OF POSTGRADUATE EDUCATION
IN THE SYSTEM OF CONTINUOUS EDUCATION
T. Kh. Deberdeeva
The article considers problems of postgraduate education, its inability to meet the challenges and trends of continuous open education development from the viewpoint of the main actors of advanced training.
Key words: Open continuous education, postgraduate education, self-creation, meaning forming, value aspects.
In the report of the Internationa! European Commission on Education for the 21st century, Jacques Delors maintains that education should be based on four principles: learning to live, learning to know, learning to do, and learning to co-exist (UNESCO, 2006) [quoted from 8, p. 51]. Which of these principles is the present system of postgraduate education ready to implement? The fundamental principle of advanced training both historically and in the present realities is the third principle: learning to do. Postgraduate education is practice-oriented, especially in the epoch of rapid changes. UNESCO, however, focuses attention on other tasks, pointing out that “in educational needs the focus shifts from teaching knowledge and actions to teaching life and co-existence” [1]. If we turn to the system of postgraduate education of teachers, we can see the obvious dominance of “teaching knowledge” and “teaching actions” in the programs, with obvious insufficiency of these components.
The psychological burnout of teachers, loss of the meaning of life and pedagogical activities ... the need to meditate ... These and many other phenomena of contemporary education urge the system of advanced training (hereinafter AT) to direct its activities towards teaching life and assimilation of the fundamentals of co-existence.
“Knowledge is conveyed by instructions and answers the questions starting with the word “how”. Understanding is conveyed by explanations and answers the questions starting with “why” [2, p. 22]. Analyzing the teachers’ AT educational programs, one can notice that they mostly aim at assimilation of knowledge. Even those aimed at development of teachers’ competencies are practice-oriented, etc. Which percent of the course time is spent on explaining “why”? At my estimate -about 5-7 %. However, no advanced instruments, especially those applied in manmeasuring systems, can be effectively used without apprehension. Otherwise AT in its extreme form of manifestation will narrow down to coaching and drilling, will fail to become an integral part of modern continuous education.
According to L. Pukhovskaya, “the world community has realized that teaching is not just “a variable” necessary for successful reforming of educational
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systems but “the most outstanding agent of change” in implementation of reforms” [6]. As “the agent of change” the teacher needs a different level of education (AT), and organic integration into the system of open continuous education.
The relevance and significance of the concept of continuous education is influenced, according to P. Jarvis [quoted from 7, p.47], by four key trends of modern time: (1) the futuristic trend - the increasing value of knowledge in society; (2) the planning trend - education as a guarantee of the specialist’s competitiveness; (3) the reflexive trend; (4) the market trend - education as goods. Which of the named trends are “working” for modern teachers? Today, the most obvious trend (at least, in conditions of FSES implementation) is the third (reflexive) trend. The former educational practices appear (suddenly!) to be impossible. It is necessary to assimilate new ones. Hence, knowledge and actions. Hence, the apprehension: the need to answer the questions “How?” and “Why?” as well.
Lifelong learning can also obviously be understood in the institutional aspect as an organized system of institutions providing relevant educational services (vocational training and retraining, advanced training, internships). However, lifelong learning can be also considered in the informal aspect - as the life strategy and mindset towards self-learning and obtaining information, of existence in the mode of ongoing renewal of knowledge. V. Ya. Rushanin [7, p.46] stresses that both levels are interrelated and complementary: it is formal education that “teaches to learn”, i.e. forms the value of knowledge, imparts the skills of self-learning, and readiness for further educational practices. It should be noted that both in the institutional aspect and in the informal aspect of understanding of continuous education it is, as such, impossible without self-education and self-design of oneself in the future, which is the sphere of responsibility of man himself. Man must move to the critical-reflexive position regarding his available condition and then implement the self-design, which involves creating the image of the desired future and developing the means for its achievement. And finally, one must leave this position for the activity-related educational position. “Self-design becomes the key moment determining achievement of the desired condition by man owing to his integration in the process of self-change through continuous education. Self-design can be considered to be the ultimately humanized form of diversification in education, when the man himself and for himself develops... the program of activities making his conscious, free and responsible choice” [9, p. 309]. The shift of the focus to “oneselfness”, independence and one’s own teacher’s trajectory of one’s professional and personal development is in demand (and probably can be carried out) already today.
However, for the shift to take place, both teachers (with manifested oneselfness) and the flexibly organized AT system must be ready for it. The variability existing in this system today (the system of specialized courses, shortterm courses at one’s option, accumulative AT system) must be deepened and extended.
Today there is a demand for development and implementation of individual plans of advanced training with account of the possibilities of self-education.
According to N.A. Lobanov, in 10-15 years the specific weight of professional self-education in the subsystem of extended professional education may reach the mark of 50% of the total volume of hours stipulated by the
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curriculums of professional education. “This trend will grow steadily. And this “quiet revolution” will change the educational landscape” [3, p. 37]. The system of advanced training must get thoroughly ready for the coming changes. It must provide for the possibility of managing self-education and correcting it, and elaborate new AT models. Thus, the main idea of open education will be implemented: “To learn in a convenient place, at a convenient rate, in accordance with one’s needs and possibilities...” Will we be ready for such changes? Depending on the answer to this question, our future will be built, as “professional self-education will become of the major characteristics (indicators) of assessment of the activities of educational institutions of extended professional education” [3, p. 39]. Furthermore, the future of teachers - “agents of change” - depends on that. Practice shows that the optimal system for the system of education management is a closed, clearly predictable, rigidly assigned, sized up system built by it (by the management system, regulators). Existence in an open system (including continuous education) is perceived as disastrous. This position today also prevents building individual strategies of teacher’s advanced training.
It is obvious that to work on oneself, to focus on self-education and selfdesign, the modern teacher must understand the significance of this work, and be highly motivated to work on oneself. But the main thing is that the person must have goals-values-meanings lying in this space - the space of self-creation.
A number of present scientific publications [4] expound on the relevance of the axiological function dominating in the system, which has not been fully implemented in postgraduate education today. The shift of the focus in the field of education from ethical objectivism (the values are determined by the teacher) to ethical relativism (the values are chosen by the learner) affects both school and higher and postgraduate education. The values are chosen by the learners, no matter what they are: students, teachers, professors. However, focusing the attention only on the instruments which the teacher must learn to use we “have tossed the baby out with the bath water” by “clearing” the system of advanced training both of meanings and values. It is evident that shifting towards individual trajectories of self-learning and self-education of teachers, differentiating and individualizing the supply (educational programs), the AT system will have to change (develop) the system of diagnosis as well diagnosing not only what is deemed meaningful today, but what is deemed valuable in the long-term prospect. Diagnosis of the value-meaning component of the teacher’s personality becomes mandatory.
Building the sequence of components of immanently open education, N.N. Peretyagina [5, p. 91] defines them as follows: (a) the goal and tasks of education - development of a holistic (self-conscious) personality in the process of socialization; (b) strategy - individual educational trajectory of the subject of education; (c) mechanism of implementation - self-design; (d) content of education -present social being of the subject of education; (e) primary way of implementation of education - universal activities; (f) result of education - educational product, including the increment in competencies, transformation of qualities of the personality, and products of creative work - a man of a different quality.
One should note that none of the positions has been implemented in the contemporary postgraduate education for “a mass teacher”. Will the system of postgraduate education be up to the challenges of continuous education? Time will
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show. But the vector and destiny of changes in society as a whole is likely to depend on this. It depends on whether society will be able to create the system of postgraduate education as really continuous education. Not in terms of the formal place of advanced training in the educational landscape (continuous, lifelong, for all ages) but in terms of its essence, its functional purpose (“the function of mobilizing the efforts of the man of the modern culture to conform to the new conditions in which he lives”) [7, p. 47].
References
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Translated from Russian by Znanije Central Translastions Bureas
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