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SELF-EDUCATION IN THE SCHOOL SYSTEM
N. Yu. Dudnik
Self-education is an integral part of a modern lifestyle, without which it is impossible to move forward. It is particularly important for a teacher to acquire the skills necessary for self-education, because he plays the decisive role in the formation of a student’s personality.
The main task of higher education is to help the future teacher create a stable orientation for lifelong self-improvement, self-education and selfdevelopment. Achieving this goal involves a shifting of the center of the training onto a student's personality, his interests, needs and abilities, creating conditions for professional development. V.A. Sukhomlinsky emphasized that the development of someone’s personality is highly influenced by the formation and development of the necessity for self-education [2, p. 162]. Unfortunately, school teaching methods for the most part, rely on the organization of work of the students in class and on systematical monitoring of their activities by the teacher. However, post school education methods presuppose that students have certain skills necessary for individual work, the ability to properly and creatively use knowledge, and to solve practical problems. Investigations conducted by different authors at different times, show that the majority of freshmen have not formed such personality traits as a commitment to learning and independent activities, and have acquired poor basic general learning skills (work with notes and books, budgeting time planning, self-organization and self-management, etc.).
In order to determine how well freshmen are prepared for independent academic work at university, specialists from the Krivoy Rog Pedagogical Institute conducted a study, which involved first-year students of the Geographical, Natural Science Faculties and the Faculty of Ukrainian Philology.
At the beginning of the second semester the freshman were offered a questionnaire, which as its basis included questions developed by N.A. Berezovin and L.M. Morozova [1]. The analysis of the questionnaires showed:
37% of the respondents believe that school prepared them to study at university (“the school has given me good training for further education because it taught us to be independent,” “at school I received the knowledge necessary to study at a university,” “thanks to school I learned to be focused and responsible.” 54% of freshmen believe that the level of school preparation for university studies can be assessed as average or low (“at school, only in the higher grades was more time given to individual work, and at university this is the main form of study,” “at school we had little to do, and at university we have a lot to do”);
9% of the respondents indicated that school gave them poor preparation for university, and therefore “it is quite difficult to study.”
It should be noted that half of the students (51%) evaluate the meaning of their school preparation for university studies in only one or two words: “good”, “not good enough”, “fine”, “weak”, “bad”. Some of the freshmen focus their attention only on its formal external characteristics - the certificate quality. 17% of the respondents emphasize their lack of skills to work individually. Among the skills
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of organization of independent work that the students have mastered at least partially in school, we can single out the following: the ability to work with literary sources (textbooks, supplementary literature) - 44%, the ability to take notes -32% and look for supplementary literature on the subject - 26%.
One of important issues for the first year students is: to master skills of working with a bibliography (37%); to efficiently plan and allocate time for studies and recreation (14%); 21% of students seek to acquire the skills necessary for independent academic work, 12% of freshmen want to learn how to work with a book and 9% want to learn “the ability to properly take notes in a lecture” and “create notes easy for further use"; 5% consider it necessary to learn how to listen carefully, and to understand the lecture and lecturer. Among the main difficulties faced by students in the 1st year of study, we can single out difficulties connected with the transition to the new (lecture and seminar) form of education (“it is hard to get used to seminars so far”, “it is difficult to focus on academic material throughout the whole lecture”); the growing role of students’ self-work in the learning process (“sometimes it is difficult to study topics individually”). Almost 14% of the 1st -year students experience difficulties connected with the perception of academic information. The reason for this lies in an incomplete understanding of the content of the material of the lecture (“The meaning of some words and terms is not clear”), in the speed of the lecturer’s speech and connected with this, the low level of formation of the students' ability to perceive the course material “by ear”. Thus, high school graduates are inadequately prepared to accept the high school program material. They do not have time to independently interpret information, and analyze it, to express their views, argue and defend them.
As early as 1969 V.A. Sukhomlinsky said: “With each passing decade the task of education to develop love for self-education and the ability to independently acquire knowledge comes more and more to the fore.” Yet our research has shown that over the past few decades, the level of preparedness of high school students to study in high school has not actually changed, and is quite low.
Modern students of pedagogical universities - future teachers - can change the current situation that was being formed over decades. To achieve this, the whole educative process in pedagogical institutions of higher education ought to generate in students an experience of self-education activities, and the acquisition of skills of future self-searching and processing of information.
Bibliography
1. Березовин Н.А. Адаптация первокурсников к педагогическому процессу вуза /
Н. А. Березовин, Л. И. Морозова // Педагогика высшей и средней специальной школы.
Вып. 2. - Минск: Университетское, 1988. - С. 26-40.
2. Сухомлинский В. А. Рождение гражданина / В. А. Сухомлинский. - М.: Молодая
гвардия, 1971. - 336 с.
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