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TEACHERS’ SELF-IMPROVEMENT AS A DEVELOPMENT RESOURCE FOR MODERN SCHOOLS
O.N. Machekhina
The advancement of the national priority, which is to upgrade the quality of school education, is conditioned on how well educational institutions are able to mobilize their development resources. One such resource would be an organizational framework for the self-educational activity of educators. The teacher’s high level of culture, professionalism, and ability to constantly improve as a person and a professional will parlay into quality education for students, their better preparedness for life’s many challenges. We believe that the current educational context makes it imperative for educators to realize the need for self-improvement and professional growth.
As a component of lifelong learning, self-education is viewed as the core of a system. It is a component that makes the system of lifelong learning work in all human endeavors and at all the stages of human life. In Russian pedagogical science, the organizational aspects of self-education were studied by such researchers as A.A. Bodalev, A.P. Vladislavlev, A.V. Darinsky, Y.N. Kuliutkin, K.M. Levitin, V.D. Lugansky, G.S. Sukhobskaya, V.N. Turchenko and others. We agree with E.D. Beznisko that, for a teacher, self-education is a voluntary, active, meaningful, motivational and creative effort to keep pace with contemporary pedagogical thought and teaching methodology. It is an activity that fuels the teacher’s personal and professional advancement, thus contributing to the quality of the education the teacher delivers to the students. A teacher will grow and improve professionally as an educator when he/she independently seeks conversance with pedagogical values, ideas, modern techniques, creative situations and cultural background. In our view, the purpose of the professional selfeducation of a teacher is professional and personal selfimprovement aimed to attain a higher level of culture, professional competence, more effective teaching, better teaching skills and a creative attitude to work.
Some of the most widespread formats of additional training for teachers are: (a) retraining courses typically offered by retraining institutions for educators; (b) group meetings to discuss books on education and psychology; (c) the work done in preparation for employee evaluation; (d) participation in scientific or field research conferences; (e) writing to clarify one’s own work experience, and having those writings published; (f) learning to use IT for teaching, followed by active usage of IT in teaching practice.
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Contemporary education researchers such as N.V. Kuzmina, M.V. Nikolaeva and others note that teachers usually intensify their independent learning when their school sets up an organizational framework for desktop and field research for all teaching staff. In this environment, innovative methods themselves become a stimulus for self-education, and students can benefit from the fruit of the teacher’s self-improvement work. This goes to show that for self-education to be productive and meaningful, the schools need an environment in which the very fact of self-improvement is viewed as a development resource not only for the educators, but for the whole school. The schools could assist teachers in their self-improvement work in several ways: (a) seminars devoted to the different theoretical aspects of upgrading education quality and the quality of teachers’ work on personal and professional self-improvement; (b) talks on self-education and upgrading education quality at the meetings of the methodology council, teachers’ methodology groups or issue groups; (c) creative studios for education researchers; (d) work under personal self-education programs; (e) individual counseling by scientists and methodology engineers; (f) preparation and staging of desktop and field research conferences; (g) preparation of research materials for publication, and so on.
It is perhaps worthy of note that, given the conditions in which different types of educational institutions operate, self-education for teachers should be phased in to be more effective. Here are the phases and their brief descriptions:
1. Diagnostic Phase: the study and analysis of teachers’ personal and professional growth effort and of the challenges they encounter in their professional work and personal growth; inclusion of the teachers by impelling them to analyze their own level of fitness for self-education by studying the interlinked components of their personal and professional growth.
2. Organizational and Practical Phase: an active quest to master the whole system of professional pedagogical knowledge and skills; group and individual strategy and tactic planning for teachers’ personal and professional growth; securing the personal inclusion of every teacher in selfeducation work, driven by positive inner motivation and the actualization of meanings and goals in tune with the nascent self-educational activity; design of educational programs with tasks geared to a specified level of selfeducation activity; personal and professional growth "project” design for teachers, building on their self-awareness and self-definition as a prerequisite for self-organization and self-fulfillment.
3. Independent Creative Phase: crystallization of the personal experience of self-identification, fulfillment, empowerment and self-education; in-
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centives for teachers’ personal and professional growth; teachers developing skills in creative self-educational work as a key component of their personal and professional growth on a highly productive level; realization of teachers’ more active role in the school’s educational process; teachers joining the creative quest to master new educational know-how; encouragement of the manifestations of "self” in the personal and professional self-improvement of the teacher.
4. Analytical and Evaluative Phase: analysis and evaluation of teachers’ preparedness to fulfill their creative potential in practical work. In the process of evaluation and self-evaluation, the self-analysis techniques and methods are tested with teachers evaluating their own classes and extracurricular activities, critiquing their own teaching skills and qualities as a teacher and a person, analyzing their self-control performance in pedagogical interactions.
By way of conclusion, we would like to say that our view on teachers’ self-educational activity as a development resource for a modern school is prompted by the need to identify and comprehensively study those factors that may have a meaningful positive impact on teachers’ professional improvement, which would necessarily translate into better quality education for the students.
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