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THE CONTINUOUS EDUCATION SYSTEM OF THE UNIVERSITY: PRINCIPLES,
FUNCTIONS, AND ITS PROSPECTS FOR DEVELOPMENT
V. N. Skvortsov
The article describes the principles of the continuous education system of the university, and its internal and external determinants. It considers the need to develop new professional standards of training for the continuous education system of the university, as well as qualitative changes of competencies and roles of qualified professionals.
Key words: continuous education system of the university, principles for the university continuous education system research, function of the university continuous education system.
In this report we consider three groups of questions: firstly, the research principles of the university continuous education system (such as globalization and internationalization principles, computerization and internetization principles of society, as well as the points which reflect the humanitarian and professional character of its development); secondly, the functions fulfilled by continuous education system of the university, where it acts as an important component of modern Russian society; thirdly, the development prospects of the continuous education system with relation to training of specialists as subjects of production and civil society in the new century. All the listed aspects of continuous education of the university are naturally interconnected with each other and determined not only by internal factors, but also the external factors of its development. On the one hand, they express requirements and standards of global (including European) professional education of specialists, and on the other hand, they show economic, social, scientific, and technological factors of production and our social life.
The globalization principle of the continuous education system of specialists shows that in its modern development, the social and educative interdependence of different countries has increased appreciably. It manifests itself most vividly when our country is forced to take into consideration modern European development laws, changes in the labor market and capital market, and other worldwide trends having a significant effect on its educational subsystems. This points to the fact that the structure, content, and standards of domestic specialist retraining start getting not only into their national dimension of development, but also into the strongly marked international (at least all-European) dimension. Based on the globalization principle, universities can take into account in the course of the continuous education system modern trends of professionalization, intensification, and computerization of educational processes as much as possible, as well as see the real needs and interests of domestic firms, enterprises, and companies in a new light.
The internationalization principle of the continuous education system for specialists directly joining the globalization principle and defining concretely globalization matters of the continuous education system makes it possible for the university to stimulate in practice academic teaching staff to put the interlinkages
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and interdependencies of Russian and international market structures and organizations, including the education standards accepted in the Bologna system, into practice in the educational programs of specialist postgraduate education. Development of the domestic continuous education system for highly skilled specialists in the meaning of internationalization leads to the qualitative change of its content and nature. Based on the international educational standards, it draws nearer to European education not only in the sphere of educational process organization, but also in the field of its final results - specialists with a certain set of professional and humanitarian competences.
The computerization and internalization principle of the continuous education system. Inclusion of these principles into the mechanism of its functioning essentially changes the content, methods, and organizational forms of specialist retraining, enables creation of the united educational information environment, and to ensure its high quality based on usage of advanced information and network technologies. This principle improves the life activity efficiency of the modern university, as regards expansion of the spatial and temporal accessibility of educational resources for people, efficiency enhancement of the management system, and quality improvement of educational innovations, information, and telecommunication technologies. Implementation of computerization and internetization principles for the continuous education system of specialists makes it robust, flexible and variable. This enables the university to use new resources for their training, to develop new competences, knowledge, and skills linked to teamwork, adaptability to the dynamic activity environment, and so on. These skills, in turn, make it possible to develop specialists’ abilities to resolve their working and professional issues efficiently.
The humanitarian and professional integrative development principle of the continuous education system of the university is the primary component of its organization and functioning. Based on this principle, professors and lecturers of the university begin to take an active part in modification of the educational process: they arrange it on the principle of a dialogue (and a polylogue), enhance its educational effect due to mutual stimulation of mental world development in their students, and transformation of sociocultural and value preferences for their continuous professional education. This gives an opportunity to essentially change civic, social, and professional characteristics, behavioral priorities, as well as to influence the actions and ideals of specialists, thereby successfully affecting new capabilities for development of total human capital in Russian society. This principle presupposes that the continuous education system of the university is based on the producible meanings and value relations which are reproducible by its subjects in an extended sense. Therefore, involvement of humanitarian components into the continuous education process enables a decrease in the imbalanced ratio of pragmatic and value aspects of specialist retraining. This, in turn, enables interaction to be transformed between scientific and educational components of the continuous education system of the university, to change dynamically its structure with respect to branches of knowledge, issues, objectives and subjects, as well as to redefine promptly the set of informative and educational techniques for research, algorithms for their development, and practical realization.
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However, it should be noted that the above-listed development principles of the continuous education system of the university become urgent and effective only when it - the system - gains sharp outlines, when the basic regularities which control it are professionally formulated, conscious, and practically mastered. Only in this case will these principles be implemented in practice and help the university increase the efficiency of continuous education organization, strengthen and speed up processes of interpenetration and mutual change of its scientific and educational, spiritual, and marketing complex.
Continuous education of the university, as practice shows, realizes the following key functions: (a) the social and economic function; (b) the function linked to transformation of scientific information into an economic development resource of regional production; (c) the integration function of the technical and organizational environment of regional production; and (d) the function of social production of intellectual capacity development and social experience broadening among subjects involved in its system. We also qualify as the continuous education system functions: (e) the uncertainty reduction function and stability of external environment towards one’s activity; (f) the control function over development of productional, educative, and leisure regional environment; (g) the support and creation function of continuous flow of a highly skilled specialist; (h) the function of balanced interaction between technical and social subsystems at the regional and federal level; (i) the function of balance between interests and objectives of subjects - organizations interested in continuous development of their staff competences. Of course, this list of functions is not exhaustive.
To fulfill the aforementioned functions, the continuous education system of the university should proceed from the perspective, strategy, and stages of the domestic economy’s transition to an innovative type of development. Reliance on these components enables the university to fix adequately all the functions which are to be ensured with the continuous education system acting as an important component of Russian society. Such functions rest on objective economic, social, and culturological grounds which determine the content of these functions, as well as the progress of the modern regional continuous education system and professional competences of highly skilled specialists. First of all, the social, economic, and technological policy of our state appears to target dogmatic functional components of the continuous education system development of the university; this policy enables the state community to join social reproduction structures, to define strategic areas of its activity, and to reinforce relations with commercial and production entities, as well as with capital markets, parts of the regional administrative system, its innovative structure, etc., to become a comprehensive subject in the competitive market of new developments and innovations at the level of the specific territory and country in general. The basic character of the listed continuous education system functions is determined by the market structures’ needs for workers with the appropriate high-level qualification and professional competences capable of rationalizing production and organization of production within the framework of a firm, an enterprise, and an organization. Their implementation makes it possible for the continuous education system of the university to solve complex problems regarding the retraining of specialists interested in gaining the broad range of fundamental knowledge, abilities, skills,
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and professional competences which they need for efficiency enhancement of independent creative activity, rapid adaptation at the modern place of production, and on the tough labor market.
Development prospects of the university continuous education system present the necessity of specialist education as subjects of production and the civil society of the new century. Within the context of situation and the assigned task, they have recently begun to speak about the coming of the technological singularity era and development of many spheres of human society life activity (about the beginning of such a moment after which, according to expert opinion, technological progress will become so fast and difficult that its further regularities and tendencies will prove not to be ununderstandable to us). Accordingly, many researchers are of the opinion that in the coming decades such a scenario of technologies and scientific research development will make educational systems reach a whole new level of specialist education. These will be professionals capable of a broad range of competence in different branches of knowledge and activity. In the late 21st century, the spheres of education, science, and real work practice will apparently become the deeply integrated interdisciplinary fields of life activity both of an individual citizen and the entire society. At the same time, the university continuous education system of such specialists will be considered a quality factor and major result of its development. As for the personal aspect, such a specialist will be: (a) oriented toward the humanistic structure of society; (b) indulgent and tolerant enough, seek to fulfill himself/herself as person (c) open to innovations and changes; focused for the future; (d) motivated to obtain qualitative education and to achieve high occupational status; (e) mobile in the context of culture, territory, social, economic, and professional life. At the same time, his/her personal habitus will be based on the national traditional guidelines and values of national culture. That is, the development perspectives of the continuous education system of specialists, as we believe should be naturally linked to the humanitarian aspect of their formation as a multiple personality; to culture-centric increase of the present social production; to their transformation into a subject able to think productively apropos of technological, economic, and culturological problems of the certain production change. At the same time, the specialist who passed the specific series of training will become a qualitatively different individuality: he/she will be able independently to define his/her further educational path, to evaluate adequately the opportunities he/she has, as well as personal requirements and needs.
On the one hand, future specialists can become in the professional context a determinant of high profit, an actor of technologically and organizationally advanced market structures if they have a quality system. They need this system both for successful mastery of their profession and for the function of quickly increasing work places inside the modern production. On the other hand, their activity with respect to its knowledge and competence-based structure should combine a multilevel, integrated, technologically all-purpose, differentiated, and customized character at the same time. This will enable them to implement in practice - and the university in the continuous education system - many different kinds (by their configuration) of professional paths and development strategies.
During its progress, the continuous education system of the university (according to expert studies submitted to the RF Presidential Agency for Strategic
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Initiatives) should be sensitive to the fact that in the period up to 2030 the necessity for hybrid-type professions appears in domestic production (for example, of manager engineers and entrepreneur engineers). New groups and professional types of workers will gain new professional competences, knowledge, abilities, and skills which will be connected with the work in a network management team, administrative, and management problem solving by automated control systems and maybe even by artificial intelligence, with control of technologies’ overall lifecycle, etc. Therefore, the continuous education system will be need to develop three-dimensional and strategic thinking among specialists, the ability to plan development of production structures for fifteen or twenty years ahead, to work with cross-sectoral projects in the logic of the international context and supranational control systems, to use effectively in their activity the specific character of one or another location of a production site and an enterprise, and so on.
In summary, the following should be noted here.
To meet the challenges of the 21st century, continuous education progress at the university should base itself upon its development principles, where not only its internal determinants are summarized but also the external economic, social, and culturological ones. They include the moment of its linkage to the practice of Russian university-building into European education, along with improvement and creative development of the intercultural content of continuous education study programs.
The principles of such an interaction make it possible to find optimal solutions in the field of highly skilled specialist retraining, enable our educational system to rest upon various regulations, values, and traditions from different countries and peoples, and to realize our own educational practice in the context of modern intercultural cooperation. Accordingly, in the coming years the universities improving the continuous education system will be need to look for new points, mechanisms, algorithms, and forms of growth which enable it to reach a whole new level of functioning. The last will necessarily be expressed in the institutional and structural transformations of social production, in modernization of technical and humanitarian relations and highly skilled specialist activity, and in the structure of production and extended reproduction of the country’s national wealth, etc.
The fundamental supposition of these processes is development of the universities’ continuous education system closely interlinked with perspectives for making and establishing the postindustrial potential of our state. Meaning, content, and mechanisms of these processes are internally connected with the satisfaction of modern and future economic real needs for multilateral, multilevel, and continuous specialist retraining.
To achieve this objective, the continuous education system of the university should have a long-term development strategy allowing connection of the best time-proven practices with modern innovations in the sphere of teaching of present highly skilled specialists. It is necessary to make educational premises for resolution of post-crisis economic redevelopment issues in our country. This can be done with the help of effective educational policy adequately built by the university and aimed at the education and retraining of Russian specialists in all the kinds of its organizational levels. Due to this policy, they will form a new type of work behavior: creativity and high-intensity qualitative labor.
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The humanitarian grounds of the continuous education system will make it possible to use dialogical technologies for professional education and personal enhancement of specialists. Based on such humanitarian grounds, the university will be able to work out the optimal methods of highly skilled specialist education. They include the new professional standards of education and activity, the qualitatively changed competences and production roles. In that regard, these can include the following positions: maintenance of the spirit and traditions of the organization as the basis for development of new values, ethics, and integrity of the organization; taking into account not only market demand but also the personal qualities of one’s staff; stimulation of innovations and a creative approach to solving production issues; forming and building the active relationships between “teams” and separate workers; focusing the interests and motives of one’s staff on the production of high-quality products, on forming adequate processes and relations in the work collective; encouragement of all the colleagues to fulfill themselves; ensuring a variety of communication types at the personal and organizational level; reinforcement of the ability to renew one’s personality and the organization in general; and so on.
Translated from Russian by Znanije Central Translastions Bureas
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