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SHAPING SECONDARY SCHOOL GRADUATES'
PROFESSIONAL PREPAREDNESS FOR CONTINUING EDUCAITON AT A PROFESSIONAL COLLEGE
L. R. Raupova
The career guidance methods applied for decades are not relevant to the new conditions. The general vocational education of youth considers the problem of development of school students' readiness for continuation of their education in the system of SSPE (special secondary professional education) to be of great importance.
Методы профориентации, применявшиеся на протяжении десятилетий, не подходят к новым условиям. Всеобщее профессиональное обучение молодежи нацелено на формирование готовности школьников к продолжению образования в системе ССПО.
Key words: college, profession, career guidance, educational institutions.
Ключевые слова: колледж, профессия, профориентация, образовательные учреждения.
Socio-economic reforms in our country connected with a transition to market economy, and the introduction of compulsory secondary vocational education (hereinafter, CSVE) have engendered a multitude problems including a conscious choice of profession and employment of the CSVE educational institutions. The emergence of these problems caused the necessity of a new approach to solving the tasks of personal self-realization and self-determination in professional activities, adequate choice of career and the sphere of application for one's personal potential in agreement with certain abilities, and aptitudes to the chosen profession.
According to the majority of scientists, students start choosing a life path and profession in secondary school, and continue it at all stages of vocational training. This is a condition for personal self-determination, ensuring the high level of a young person's professional mobility under current conditions. Career guidance work is potentially one of the best forms of psychological and pedagogical aid to students at the present stage of social development, when a dynamic socio-economic situation may hinder making professional choice that is rather difficult as it is.
The "School-CSVE" system contributes to the improvement of career guidance activities. This system is a multilevel structure, opening new opportunities not only for the interaction between general educational institutions and the CSVE, but ensuring the more successful development of a harmonious and well-developed personality. State importance and the socio-economic significance of the problems connected with the self-determination of youth have caused a great deal of activity within researchers and practicians working in various spheres of knowledge over the development of a number of aspects of career guidance work.
The analysis of pedagogical research literature devoted to the problem of organizing career guidance work at general education schools, as well as taking its actual state into account, allow one to define a number of stable contradictions between: (a) the existence of need of the socio-economic development situation for
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highly qualified professionals capable of educating themselves and improving their skills throughout their lives, and a lack of professional orientation in the majority of general education school students; (b) the existence of socio-pedagogical requirements for the consciousness and independence of choice of one's profession, and insufficient awareness in the young generation about the complex world of professions; (c) a person's objective need for self-determination, including in a professional sphere, and nonconformity of the traditional forms and methods of career guidance to the socio-economic requirements of society; (d) the degree of exploration of the problem of continuity of secondary and tertiary education and the practical implementation of this approach in the circumstances of a general educational school.
One of the complex problems in a person's affirmation of his or her individuality is his or her self-determination, i.e. the choice of profession and the ways of mastering it. Ensuring the efficiency of this process fully depends on the career guidance purposefully created at a certain stage in social development. The concept of "career guidance" seems clear to everyone who came in contact with it even for the first time - this is the orientation of secondary school students to some professions. It is defined in approximately the same way in methodological guides, where career guidance is viewed as helping young people in the choice of their profession. Besides, career guidance is often understood as a system of measures helping a person who starts his or her life to choose his or her profession scientifically and reasonably.
As we can see, there are many interpretations of this concept. In our opinion, it is connected with the development of career guidance activity, with changes in the society's ideas of the goals, tasks, methods, forms and the essence of career guidance as a whole. Each of the existing concepts reflects some aspects of career guidance: the functional, practical or theoretic level of its development, or the pedagogical or psychological one. In connection with the above, it seems appropriate to refine the idea of the principal components of career guidance: "activity", "profession" "guidance". Activity is defined in the philosophical dictionary as "a specific human form of active attitude to the outside world, the content whereof amounts to its purposeful changing and transformation". The introduction of a category of "activity" in the concept under study, allows us to present career guidance as a theoretical activity, and as an interdisciplinary scientific field. Having emerged as a practical activity, career guidance is gradually enriched by theory. This fact permits us to view it in conjunction with theoretical and practical activity.
Profession (derived from Latin profession, an officially stated occupation specialty, from profiteer - declare as one's business) - "a kind of labor activity, occupation requiring certain training and being a source of income". The concept of "orientation" is used in a number of sciences in connection with finding one's bearings, and choosing the direction of movement. The concept of "orientation" (fr. orientation (literally, direct eastwards) is defined "both literally: the ability to find one's bearings in the present situation and figuratively: directing scientific, public and other activity in a certain direction". The Pedagogical Encyclopedia offers the following definition: "career guidance" is, "primarily, informing youth about various professions and their particularities, instilling stable and deep interest to a certain
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profession or a group of professions with regard for students' personal dispositions".
In spite of a multitude of interpretations of the concept under consideration, we have defined the term "career guidance" as follows: career guidance is a deliberate set of socio-psychological and pedagogical activities, aimed at preparing youth for a conscious and reasonable choice of profession, in compliance with personal dispositions, interests, abilities, as well as public needs for certain professions, and being a combination of practical activity and interdisciplinary theory.
Irrespective of how the concept of "career guidance" is defined, we presume that all those definitions are connected with the activity aimed at choosing one's profession. If a young person tries to find his or her bearings in the world of work, and starts finding out actively how some specific professions correspond to his or her aspirations in life, in this case we should better speak about his or her orientation towards a profession. However, if such a person becomes an object of pedagogical or other impacts with the goal of choosing a profession that is suitable both for him or her and society, we should better speak about orientation in the sense of orienting him or her towards a profession. The absence of a single point of view regarding the career guidance concept is explained by other causes as well - for example by the fact that is a complex problem and therefore approaches to its definition can be different. If career guidance is viewed through the prism of pedagogical practice (for our country it is the most traditional option), in this case the latter is a conceptual and methodological foundation of youth career guidance. If we view this process from the perspective of psychological science, psychological concepts explaining the peculiar features of making a choice will come to the fore.
Within the framework of sociological sciences, the process of career guidance is viewed as a part of the general process of the social orientation of youth in the context of socio-economic transformations, and the choice of profession, as an act determined by the general orientation in life, and by a person's striving to occupy a certain place in social structure or in a social group. The essence of the "psycho-physiological approach" to career guidance is the utilization of various kinds of instrumental methods for evaluating the properties of the nervous system and sensomotor qualities, and questionnaires for assessing the individual-typological abilities. Proceeding from this, we can conclude that career guidance as a department of knowledge accumulates the achievements of a multitude of sciences about a person and society: Psychology, sociology, medicine, economics, philosophy, etc., allowing one to compare various definitions in order to find out the most essential characteristics of this concept.
This rich psychological and pedagogical heritage, which reflects the sense of the whole career guidance activity in the present situation, requires deep scientific rethinking.
Translated from Russian by Znanije Central Translastions Bureas
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