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SOCIO-CULTURAL QUESTIONS OF CONTINUOUS EDUCATION AS THE PREREQUISITE OF THE FORMATION OF A SPECIALIST AND MORAL AND SPIRITUAL PERSONALITY. PROBLEMS OF SOCIALIZATION IN CONTINUOUS EDUCATION
THE SOCIAL AND CULTURAL CONTEXT OF LIFELONG PEDAGOGICAL EDUCATION
Т. G. Navazova, Е. P. Shebolkina
The problem of pedagogical competence of parents, tutors, teachers, and higher school lecturers seems strictly work-related only at first glance. When trying to understand social problems and the low level of culture in society in general, we found that the reason lies in the imperfection of our educational system, in the low pedagogical culture of the society, a failure to adapt training materials to life’s problems, the unwillingness of teachers to study the advanced pedagogical technologies, and the failure of parents to clue their children in on personal and professional identity. That is why the pedagogical competence of social communication actors may have large-scale social effects, although the Russian trends in this field are very contradictory.
Management of a child’s personal development starts from birth. However, in the majority of cases, parents lack pedagogical knowledge, since there are no such subjects as pedagogy and psychology in general education school, and similar higher school courses are too formal. The result is that children of young parents are “going with the flow”, because their parents do not know how to test their children’s abilities, and create a nurturing and creative environment in their families. A child who is put into an unattended environment without any motivational effect will soon forget how to use his or her potential, and as a result, will be cautious, conservative and passive. Meanwhile, in a motivational, creative environment, a child can achieve his or her full potential. There is a clear and deep interdependence between the development of civilizations and the abilities and qualities of an individual built in the process of his education. For example, by the age of 11 a child already has either a creative or conventional way of thinking, which has an impact upon all further activities. Authoritarian parents set low standards of personal identity to a growing child by making him or her choose a profession which will support him or her, thus, forcing their child to do an unexciting job, which results in frustration, stress, problems, complexes, and consequently, unhealthy, inharmonic social communications.
Thus, on the one hand, the family lays the foundation for the entire future system of lifelong education (in effect, for the whole future life of the child), while on the other hand, parents cannot be forced to meet the same requirements and to obey the forms and methods of “professional training” developed and used by educational system specialists. Unlike such specialists, parents are an absolutely different “instrument of children development”, and it is necessary to have a relevant system of preparation and adjustment of this pedagogical instrument.
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Consequently, there should be efficient techniques for “coupling” (transferring the child from the family to the lifelong education system). These tasks may only be solved based on parents’ continuous participation in the whole system starting from their preparation to parenthood. Such an approach is based on consistent patterns of ontogeny of the parents’ community, which will make it possible to naturally “complete child production” in a ring-type model, within which it will be possible to sustain continuity in development of different generations and restore the cycle of “reproduction of parents - producers of children” (G.G. Philippova).
A traditional teacher is ready to work with a child mainly as with an individual, not as with a personality, which means that the teacher focuses on a child’s intellect, operational achievements, and fulfillment of a set functions, not on the personal self-organization and personal functions of a child. A teacher should be able to explain the training material as an important clue for the student’s life self-fulfillment, to incentivize the subjective, ideological attitude to the subject of study, to teach how to recognize education as a basis for satisfaction of a student’s needs and requirements, to encourage discovery learning, to teach how to independently interpret facts, and develop creative thinking. If this doesn’t happen, then fulfilling a standard becomes a profanation, and the school continues to be, according to G.K. Selevko, a talent and personality killer. Moreover, according to
Y.S. Turbovsky, who investigated the reasons of juvenile delinquency, poor academic progress is not only evidence of the efficiency of training, but also one of the main factors that malforms a child’s identity, morally and spiritually. “Another object approach” developed by the author, which makes it possible to evaluate the activity of a school from the social point of view and from inside the other environment, in particular, from inside a juvenile prison, made it possible to irrefutably prove the negative destructive effect of poor academic progress as a fact of unsuccessfulness and inconsistency realized by a person. This, in any case, will show itself in the relationships, feelings and behavior of a person.
Higher professional school has its own problems. Monologues of a professor or a lecture are the norm in higher education, and the “settled down” nature of teachers is one of the quality criteria of education. One can be a good scientist, or researcher, but can lack pedagogical skills to transfer the methods of scientific activity. Focusing on one’s own subject of teaching and niche specialization is one of the factors that encourage development of tunnel vision and dilettante thinking. As a consequence, graduates of higher education schools are not able to provide for the necessary level of modern production culture and the necessary quality of their future life. That is why gross ignorance, short sight, irresponsibility in politics, business, and management are the real product of our education, and our mentality with deep-rooted dual standard strategy, rigid and formal thinking, and conformity in behavior are laid down by our home school practices. That is how the conceptual defects of education distort the production, social and cultural spheres, and pedagogical defects indirectly influence the state of affairs in society.
In order to launch the modernization processes in the Russian educational system, it is necessary to develop new models for specialists’ preparation: to switch from the model “specialist - professional” to the model “professional -creative individual”; regional and corporate programs of specialists’ preparation must start working. The advanced training system also needs to be modernized. In this regard, the strategy of social and cultural modernization of education, as an institute of socialization, proposed by A.G. Asmolov, is of certain interest. The
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discussion also focuses on the need to take record of social and cultural modernization effects of education as a factor of growth of competitive ability of a person, society and the government. Along with this, it must be stated that, despite the outlined vector in the state policy towards society based on knowledge, collective consciousness resists accepting the connection between the education and social effects of public development and mentality of the Russian population.
The mega project “Innovation-based education with a contemporary teacher (professor) for development of the powers of each child (student) for the innovation-based economy of the Komi Republic (with an ethno-cultural element)” may be proposed as a model project for development of the lifelong pedagogical education system as one of the important institutions for the modernization of society. The project is focused on the regional educational environment and covers such institutions as the family, mass media, traditions and cultural innovations that determine society’s development. The project is based on the proactive public development strategy, and has an open “above-departmental” character. The mega project (as a system object) includes the interrelated subprojects: 1. “Up-to-date infrastructure and conditions for innovation-based education” (Educational infrastructure - 2020); 2. “Modernization of the pre-school education municipal systems” (Pre-school educational establishment - 2020); 3. “The unified system of identification, support and development of capable and talented children and young people” (Talents - 2020); 4. “Modernization of a regional system of support, preparation, advanced training and retraining of pedagogical and management staff”. This includes modernization of the municipal methodical institutions, foundation of independent legal entities based on methodical departments -“Municipal autonomous educational institutions for additional professional training” (A teacher and manager of an educational institution- 2020); 5. “Modernization of the regional system of professional education” (Integration - 2020); 6. “Supply of innovative specialists for enterprises and organizations” (Specialist - 2020).
It is expected that implementation of this project by 2020 will result in renewal of the teaching staff by 50% on average, and the average labor experience of a teacher will be 12-15 years, which corresponds to the law of acmeology, according to which the most creative age for innovation-drive growth is the age between 28 and 42. This new standard gives all of us a new format for education management, a new format of structural and informative system changes of educational institutions, as well as a new model of training, retraining, and advanced training of teaching staff in order to provide for full-scale changes in accordance with the up-to-date state policy of education in Russia.
References
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2. Селевко Г.К. Современные образовательные технологии. М., 1998.
3. Турбовской Я.С. Почему школьники плохо учатся, или неуспеваемость как закономерность // Образование и общество, 2012, № 6 (77), с. 66-76.
4. Филиппова Г.Г., Проблемы преемственности от планирования рождения ребенка до поступления в дошкольное учреждение http://preemst.e-2a.ru/index.php/novyj-nomer/11-fgt-a-fgos/80-problemy-preemstvennosti-ot-planirovaniya-rozhdeniya-rebenka-do-postupleniya-v-doshkolnoe-uchrezhdenie
Translated by Znanije Central Translations Bureau
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