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SOCIAL PARTNERSHIP WITH INDUSTRY AS A BASIS FOR CONTINUOUS VOCATIONAL EDUCATION IN AN EDUCATIONAL CLUSTER
R. S. Safin E. A. Korchagin
The article determines the bases and identifies the fields of social partnership between an education cluster and industry, determines opportunities for the education cluster, and defines functions of the cluster on the basis of socio-economic, territorial, national and multicultural peculiarities of the region.
Key words: education cluster, industry, social partnership, continuous professional education.
The available experience of social partnership development permits us to speak about refocusing the "education-industry" system to shaping a specialist's competence and development of his/her personality traits that are meaningful from the perspective of his/her profession. The need for developing a human, personal factor of industry was used as a basis of creating the continuous education system as a strategic goal of the education competent and qualified specialists.
In our view, the trends in social partnership between the educational institutions comprising an educational cluster and industry are as follows: (a) employer-sponsored training of specialists under contracts; (b) organization of practical, on-the-job and pregraduate practice training for students; (c) establishment of research laboratories and tertiary school departments at production facilities; (d) polling employers in order to identify a need for specialists and to shape the most important competences of a specialist afterwards; (e) discussions within the framework of joint events (research-to-practice conferences, roundtable discussions, business meetings); (e) meetings of representatives of enterprises and organizations of various business patterns with students and graduates; (f) carrying out contract work on commissions of enterprises; (g) employment of graduates; (h) implementation of career development and supplementary vocational education, etc.
Social partnership of vocational education and industry in a cluster is based on the following factors:
(1) Common purpose. Indeed, the objective of vocational education and industry is the same - it is educational institution graduates being competent specialists that have a certain qualification and certain socio-professional characteristics. Alongside earning profit, the goal of any enterprise is to have highly skilled personnel, and the purpose of an educational institution is to train sought-after specialists. Such a purpose permits building an educational process "from the result", thus overcoming the traditional cognitive orientation of education. Another goal is the establishment of a comprehensive system of multilevel training of specialists for enterprises on the basis of social partnership between educational institutions and employer enterprises, ensuring quality training, optimization of training time, long-term employment of graduates at enterprises, promotion of
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problem-oriented, fundamental and applied scientific research, and the creation of a flexible system of specialists' professional development [2].
(2) Common substance. Education and industry have common substance because manufacturing processes, equipment and production engineering are sources for forming the substance of vocational education. The substance of vocational education: knowledge, expertise, skills and personal professional competences shaped on their basis are adequate to the substance of a specialist's professional activity on the shop floor. The processes, machines, equipment, etc. mastered at educational institutions are the same as those used in industry.
(3) Common activities. Common activities manifest themselves as students undergo practical training and fulfill practical tasks on the shop floor using manufacturing equipment in compliance with the process procedure adopted at the factory.
(4) Common values. Common values presume parity of technical and technological, social and humanistic values without which a contemporary specialist is impossible. These are the values of labor, production, science, engineering, society and the person. The parity of values presumes their equality in the process of functioning when none of them is a part of another. Technical, technological and humanistic values can be classified depending on the role they play in industry and education, and can be used as a base for the mechanisms of education-to-industry social partnership.
Thus, social partnership of professional education and production is an important factor of modernization of training competent and competitive specialists sought after by the industry.
An educational cluster affords the opportunity to: (a) improve
competitiveness of all cluster participants through introduction of new technologies; (b) reduce costs and improve the quality of the respective services; (c) change over to a qualitatively new level through introduction of innovative educational and high-end technologies; (d) develop a method of comprehensive training of specialists possessing professional competences and able to introduce innovations in the activities of federal, regional and municipal commercial and state organizations; (e) develop a two-tier system of Bachelor and Master training in the sphere of high-tech innovations; (f) train highly qualified and competitive specialists whose information and communication competence meet the standards required by employers; (g) optimize growth of expenses in the process of training specialists whose competences meet up-to-date requirements; (h) expand the environment of reproduction of knowledge and intellectual property and introduce them into economic circulation; (i) protect the interests of the cluster participants at various public authorities.
A cluster built with regard to socio-economic, territorial, national and polycultural peculiarities of a region performs the following functions: (1) joining efforts of all structures, organizations and institutions in forming an efficient workforce for the region; (2) expanding educational, scientific and production space at the Federal District level; (3) reducing unemployment, providing jobs for the population of the region; (4) providing an influx of young personnel into education, science and industry; (5) reducing national and ethnic tensions among young people; (6) ensuring intellectual, labor, scientific research, leisure and other types
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of activity; (7) increasing the efficiency of utilization of intellectual, material and information resources in the process of training specialists and performing scientific research in priority areas of education, science, technology and culture development in the interests of industry and the social sphere; (8) training personnel and significant improvement of the region's intellectual potential for innovative activity in the spheres of management, education and science; (9) introduction of high technologies and development of high-technology products (10) improving competitiveness and investment attractiveness of each educational institution on the goods/services, capital and labor markets; (11) arrangement of conditions for social partnership in vocational training of personnel; (12) improving competitiveness of the regional economy, ensuring innovative development of enterprises in the region as a whole; (13) ensuring efficient functioning of the region's enterprises and organizations, improving their financial and economic situation for accounting for using qualified personnel at all levels; (14) building mutual trust and educational services provider/user (higher educational institutions/employers) relations; (15) improving the quality of training socially and professionally mobile highly qualified specialists.
We should note that an educational cluster as a part of the continuous vocational education system strengthens ties with educational institutions of various levels, improves the quality of students' practical training, permits introducing new teaching technologies in the teaching process, speeds up the process of education through pooling resources, realizing the principle of continuity and social partnership in the "vocational education/industry" system.
An educational cluster affords independence in the choice of vocational education program, and introduces continuous education plans comprising the principal areas and specialties of personnel training for the region. Diversification of education in a cluster permits taking account the needs of the regional labor market, and to provide conditions for training creative, multifunctional and highly professional specialists.
Bibliography
1. Сафин Р. С., Корчагин Е. А. Образовательный кластер: взаимодействие вуза и предприятий: моногр. - Казань: КГАСУ, 2012. - 165 с.
2. Смирнов А. В. Образовательные кластеры и инновационное обучение в вузе: моногр. -Казань: РИЦ «Школа», 2010. - 102 с.
Translated from Russian by Znanije Central Translastions Bureas
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