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THE DEVELOPMENT OF METHODOLOGICAL APPROACHES FOR THE SELECTION AND STRUCTURING OF THE CONTENT OF PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION
A. A. Kiva, A.V. Kapitonov
T. A.Vasilkova, E. E. Kapitonova
A top priority for the Russian educational establishment is to move from the current main educational programs, implement the requirements of the state educational standards toward the new generation of the main educational programs, and meet the federal state educational standards. The conceptual core of the federal state educational standards is competency, which underlies the selection and structuring of the content of professional education and the development of appropriate educational programs. At the same time, the leading principle in the development of a new generation of the main educational programs is a principle of succession, according to which the main professional educational programs are not developed from the very beginning, but “readjusted” in accordance with the new competency format of the federal state educational standards. An implementation of this principle requires investigating the succession of the methodological approaches to the selection and structuring of the content of professional education that play the leading parts at the different stages.
The genesis of approaches to a determination of objectives and content in theory and practice of professional education can practically be reduced to the three successive stages: the knowledge stage, the activity stage and the competency stage. Each of them has its specificity regarding selection and structuring of the content of professional education. So, in the case of the knowledge stage - knowledge, skills and abilities act as a main objective of education and underlie the development and assessment of the content of education. An implementation of the activity approach is connected with the comprehension of the necessity to estimate the quality of training not in a form of knowledge, skills and abilities, but in the form of the ability to perform certain professional activities. In the frameworks of the activity approach the objective and the content of professional education were determined, based on a real manufacturing activity, represented in a form of a range of functions (work operations, methods, activities, motions). In accordance with these functions the content of education was determined - the amount of skills and knowledge which are necessary for a worker in order to implement each function. The ideas of the competency approach started
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developing when the labor market demanded, with the employers’ requirements, for absolutely new results of the educational process: readiness for teamwork and lifelong self-learning, abilities to solve various problems and to work in both typical and nonstandard situations, etc. Therefore, the competency approach is an attempt to bring education into accordance with the requirements of the labor market. Ideas of an open order for the content of education from the side of the developing labor market and potential employers are associated with this approach. The system of knowledge, skills and abilities in the frameworks of the competency approach is considered as a basis for various competencies. In connection with this, there is a visible reorientation of the educational result assessment from the terms "knowledge, skills, abilities” towards the terms "competence/competency” of the students.
Competence is a general, integral characteristic of a person, describing the level of a person’s development in terms of "readiness” and "ability”. In order to have competence, one has to acquire the number of competencies, enabling one to perform both non-professional and professional tasks. The competencies, in their turn, are also described in terms of "readiness” and "ability”. In a person’s activity, different aspects and sides can be specified. The acquisition of any aspect or side of activity means the acquisition of a corresponding competency.
An analysis of the psychological-pedagogical literature has shown ambiguous opinions about the structure of graduates’ competencies in pedagogical science. The two most commonly identified groups of competencies are those associated with a successful implementation of professional activities and those that enable the performance of tasks common to many kinds of non-professional and professional activity. The differences between the approaches to structuring the competencies occur when their further components are determined. The competencies enabling the successful implementation of professional tasks include technical, general, multi-professional, general professional, special and specialized competencies. The competencies enabling successful implementation of tasks common to different types of professional activity, include extraprofessional, key, universal and basic competencies. In the context of our investigation it is necessary to specify the two types of competencies - professional and common that are officially approved by the federal state educational standards.
Therefore, professional competency is a readiness to successfully carry out tasks and solve the problems of professional activity on the basis of knowledge, skills and experience. The common competency is
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an ability to successfully carry out tasks common to many types of professional and non professional activity on the basis of knowledge, skills and experience.
To organize an educational process on the competency basis, when the objective of study is an acquisition of a set of certain competencies, leads to the specification of independent units of a program that serve as a tool for the development of competencies. Such a program unit is a module. The definition "module” includes completeness, independence, and complexity as to the necessary components. Subsequently, the comprehension of module also includes such semantic components as didactic purpose, a logically complete unit of teaching material, methodical guidelines and a system of control - all combined in one organizational-methodical structure. Following P. A. Yutsiavicene, we specify in the module teaching of cognitive (gnoseological) and operational (functional) purposes. Therefore, the module programs can be divided into two types: cognitive and operational. The module programs of the cognitive type are developed with an objective to form the students’ system of knowledge. The content of modules is composed according to a gnoseological principle, i.e. around the basic notions and methods of teaching discipline.
Module programs of the operational type are developed most often for professional education. The content of a module is formed according to a functional principle, i.e. around certain functions of professional activity. Considering competency as an indicator of successful implementation of certain work, one can say that in the case of the application of the competency approach to the organization of educational process, we deal with the module programs of the operational type. Besides, the set of modules in a program enables the formation of a set of professional competencies which are defined as the meaningful results of education in a certain profession. Therefore, in the pedagogy of professional education the competency approach is transformed to a module-competency one.
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