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TRAINING OF HIGHLY-QUALIFIED SPECIALISTS AS ONE OF THE IMPORTANT TASKS AND FUNCTIONS OF LIFELONG VOCATIONAL EDUCATION
V. N. Skvortsov
Highly-qualified and competent specialists as an entity of new-generation experts and efficient modernization of real manufacturing are the most important factor and condition for the influence of a higher school, universities, institutes and lifelong vocational education system, which play a crucial part in innovation development of the domestic economy. Thus, regarding the training of highly qualified specialists within the system of lifelong education, we shall consider the fundamentals for our social modernization, the industrial potential structure of domestic manufacturing, the national and regional need for new specialists, and everything else which enables efficient and consistent creation of an innovative, postindustrial economy.
To meet modern manufacturing demands, lifelong vocational education is objectively interested in the development of new professional knowledge of a specialist as a person and organizational entity who strives for implementing positive and efficient changes for manufacturing. Teachers must be focused on a new image of the specialist who assumes long-term development of the company in his / her activities, employs new efficient models of professional behavior, and doesn’t expect any hints from the company bosses.
What are the specialist’s qualities to be formed in the university learning process and lifelong vocational education so that a specialist can conform to the new manufacturing demands and modern civil society, become an efficient employee after the studies and retraining courses, properly comply to professional and business culture standards, so that the higher-education teaching staff can consider their task accomplished? To answer the question, we shall regard personal and professional aspects of the lifelong vocational education for highly-qualified specialists.
Personal aspect. To provide the expected dynamic changes set by the state and society, many personal qualities of students must be considered in lifelong education. However, these qualities are not obvious and do not derive from the activities of social and industrial institutions, yet they indicate a fast-paced modern life and personal diversity of the life strategies among Russians. In the circumstances, as marked by V. A. Yadov, to properly meet the challenges, lifelong education for highly-qualified specialists must focus on a modern person’s model, which includes at least 8 basic person’s qualities: (1) openness and readiness for experiments, innovations and changes; (2) ability to accept freedom of speech of the modern society as a value and be tolerant to it; (3) urge expressing oneself and one’s own individuality as a certain worthwhile value; (4) deep drive for the future rather than the past; (5) inner control dominating the external, social regulation; (6) readiness for cultural, geographic, social and professional mobility; (7) urge for socially-oriented organization; (8) motivated urge for a quality education and high professional status certified by a diploma of an exclusive domestic or foreign
educational institution. These qualities fully express the basic genotype and drive of a modern person for lifelong personal and professional development. According to V. A. Yadov, the stated features form “a nest”: “...Each 2 or 3 qualities brace the other personal features, thus forming a personality as a unique sustainably-developing social and professional entity” [6, p. 29-30].
In recent decades, as shown by sociological surveys, the stratum of people who can be called “social innovators” has already formed, and equals almost 15% of the adult population in Russia. Its representatives often participate in lifelong vocational education, actively use new technologies, creatively act in financial and other spheres, are open-minded, and rationally use their lifetime and regard their health, etc. As surveyed by the Public Opinion Foundation in 2009, 65% of social innovators are ready to aid unfamiliar people in solving their problems. Only 52% of other people responded similarly. The primary motivation for their educational behavior is improvement of own expertise and self-improvement; they are focused on their qualification and career progression in their professional development. In interpersonal communication, they usually support other people emotionally. [See: 5]. Being a part of the lifelong education, social innovators consider their time as a resource and therefore they spend a significant part of their leisure time for innovative daily practices: extended education, sport, fitness, traveling. They not only consume, but also produce cultural practices. In other words, social innovators as the most active part of lifelong education deliberately plan their future, manifest their ability for the intended accumulation and mobilization of social and material resources, and show independence and social sustainability in various life situations. They are constantly ready to explore innovations, easily adapt to a new life environment, are open and responsive to economic, social, political and cultural development changes. Thus, importantly, in the increased volatility due to the economic crisis, the lifelong education entities, i. e. social innovators, adhere to active life organization, and actively seek to obtain new competences and “capitalization” of the existing resources [5].
Professional aspect. The results of this aspect are directly connected to increasing qualifications of specialists obtained within lifelong education. Career growth is essentially bound by the companies’ activity. This is clear since modern companies must occasionally update their staff and activity so that they meet the demands of competitive manufacturing free from a constantly increasing development. In this case, the modern situation is new for lifelong education, as a common highly-qualified employee is gradually replaced by a specialist following a new corporate culture which develops little by little in the modern economy [1, p. 4041]. These and other circumstances force the universities to more actively elaborate the new contents and quality of lifelong education which meet the requirements of modern social partnership, educational institutions, employees, the state, and business. Training of social and professional competence of specialists who could, on the one hand, conform to the home-economy prospective needs, and to the established national system of lifelong advanced training, on the other hand, is placed in the foreground.
This requires from the lifelong vocational training a corresponding thinking and creation of personal models for specialists which include synthesis of knowledge and practice-oriented competences, organization of reliable communication channels for
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feedback between manufacturing and the higher school, between the lifelong vocational education and manufacturing, as well as scientific monitoring of the learning results in manufacturing at both applied and fundamental levels. This cannot be done without understanding and rethinking the former fundamental ideas for development of a person as a manufacturing entity, i. e. all that contributes to a further improvement of lifelong vocational education for specialists employed at enterprises to modernize and develop them. Indeed, a former highly-qualified specialist as an administrative command part of economic and industrial activity was required to manage and support the manufacturing system and structure, and thoroughly control the subordinates which complied with the established model of their professional relationship. Thus, such a specialist has often performed formally without thinking of novelty and competitive ability of the goods or services produced. This has been naturally manifested in the specialist’s mindset and professional activities within a particular manufacturing enterprise. Such a state of affairs often remains unchanged to this day. Experience has proven that specialists rarely have an opportunity for retraining or advanced training at special courses or manufacturing within corporate training. The main quality standard for a specialist’s work in many organizations and educational institutions is still a lack of failures rather than innovations; as a result, specialists are more interested in working according to the established rules rather than searching for new solutions and risking wisely.
Professional aspect: new specialist’s qualities. With the recent experience in training of highly qualified specialists, scientists and researchers more often speak of a consistent understanding of an employee’s personality as a part of the general and professional culture capable of switching from a one-dimensional management to self-regulated organization. [3, p. 252-264] The idea that to develop such a person within lifelong education, the system must be based on human- and culture-oriented training technologies is confirmed more and more often. They develop as a counter to the real educational practice, which is dominated by the contrary trends. Thus, influenced by modern differentiation of managing labor, development of management caused its broad and branched diversification and educational specialization. The latter consequently changed training of managers at the higher school as well as lifelong vocational education. Presently, there are the following educational subjects and specializations in management: state and municipal management, accounting management, quality management, organization and production management, strategic management, investment and innovation management, crisis and anti-crisis management, international management, operation management, project management, risk management, etc. In this situation, the lifelong vocational education must refocus on training a highly-qualified specialist with diverse competences who is required and expected to deal with much more than is envisaged by the educational programs. The specialists must be capable of acting as an expert as well as a person. Their activities must comply with principles of cooperation, democracy and self-regulation which were not assumed by the former training. The lifelong vocational education must regard certain retraining for students: only after a certain stage can they become efficient leaders with new ideas, principles and career positions.
E. g., the expertise of a highly-qualified specialist at the enterprise, organization or its departments assumes that such an employee can use the
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innovation potential of colleagues and generate ideas for achieving the important organization development goals. In its turn, using modern corporate principles ensures positive motivation for specialist’s subordinates and makes them strive for goals of a higher, organization level. Such a form of organizational activity assumes highly-qualified department managers to constantly share their authority with their subordinates. With this in mind, lifelong vocational education must envisage a special course for developing a professional competence of organizing “self-regulating teams” in the departments and managing them. Such activities enable the colleagues to develop a unique sharing culture, create efficient connections in the departments and mutual trust between the employees, and avoid disintegration and organize the integrated performance. Innovation projects as well as organizational and technical changes are carried out more successfully and consistently with such organization of production. Organizational connections of a new level are created in the department. They transform structures, systems and processes while preserving them, support and determine a transfer from the managerial speech to search for a common solution, from a destructive rivalry to cooperation. The formalized, rigid and strictly structured organizations are changed into mobile, flexible and creative systems with a relatively free connection structure. In other words, the lifelong vocational education shall focus on development of new competences and role skills for highly-qualified specialists as a unique part of manufacturing.
New educational tasks set for lifelong education enable developing professional and communicative competences which are inseparably connected with abilities to listen to and understand information, find adequate solutions for new, innovation issues, elaborate efficient group interactions, communicate with “troubled employees” and lead subordinates in a crisis. The ability to gain employees’ trust, avoid and solve conflicts and be friendly with colleagues can be referred to as well. In a certain way, such specialist must be teachers and tutors and be able to reasonably share with their subordinates and employees their views on problems, support their expectations, boost their confidence, improve interpersonal relationships, inspire employees to fulfill their creative potential, and be responsible for them. Thus, within the lifelong education, the trained specialists must develop a paradigm that the labor organization of employees as individuals cannot be efficient automatically. While a structure is important for individual labor, a social and corporate environment is essential for common production. As noted by V. A. Kolpakov, certain interactions in the external, socio-professional environment and their sequence rather than a shared understanding of the aim, develop the corporate production entity out of the individual employee [2, p. 182-183].
Speaking of new roles and functions for highly qualified specialists, to organize their lifelong vocational training, their competences for the following functions must be primarily developed: (a) support of a company’s esprit and traditions as a foundation for new values, ethics and company integrity; (b) stimulation of innovations and a creative approach of subordinates for solving production issues; (c) development and organization of active connections between “the teams” and individual employees; (d) focus of their interests and motives on searching for new solutions in the established production; (e) consistent development and advancement of one’s own and subordinates’ qualifications and other qualities essential for the production.
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So far, we have only considered the tasks of lifelong education directed inwardly into the production or company. However, there is another direction connected with establishment of the socially-oriented market economy, expansion of intercultural, civil and political practices of the individuals, the need and interest of the Russian society for improvement of a labor and professional culture. This creates the need for development of new traditions in interactions between the lifelong educational institutions, organizational business structures and daily labor life. The interactions must be developed with a constant increase in the economy, production capacity and professional performance as well as with drastic changes in the technological and intellectual intensity of production. As noted by Russian economist V. M. Simchera, in the forthcoming century, humankind will be able to increase the efficiency of its resource use by 2-3 times, and performance - by over 100 times, with current total rates of social production - by 400 times [4, p. 366].
All these aspects are considered by Russian universities and lifelong vocational education more or less efficiently. It is development of the creative potential of a new quality in a modern person and adjustment of the training standards with perspective labor and professional requirements which are common for the postindustrial economy, etc. Success fully depends on the cultural potential of education for highly-qualified specialists achieved by us within the higher school and their lifelong vocational training as well as on a profound understanding of current training and retraining tasks.
Conclusions. To finish the article, we shall note 3 important positions.
(1) Solving issues in lifelong vocational training of highly-qualified specialists assumes the creation of organizational, social and economic conditions for every student to be able to develop professional competences which aid him / her to creatively and intensively perform their future job. This can be affected through the development tools of modern Russian higher education aimed at the development of a new employees’ labor behavior, their inclusion in the professional differentiation and integration and development of new social and economic features of production. Thus, the given tools must be regarded with relation to the history, culture studies, economics, and social studies, as well as didactic contents of lifelong vocational education.
(2) Lifelong vocational education must be developed within a certain long-term strategy and logical and mature contents enabling connecting the time-proved theoretical and empirical knowledge with the intercultural formation of modern, highly-qualified specialists and encourage teachers to elaborate the integrative development of various educational subsystems suitable for our country’s economic situation. This will organize an efficient educational policy at all levels of retraining for specialists, which is the essential foundation for the economic and social modernization.
(3) Efficient development of a modern Russian higher school, including its teaching practices in lifelong vocational training for highly qualified specialists is obviously connected with organized integration of Russian universities into the European education system. These processes are linked to our real possibilities for improvement and creative deployment of the intercultural contents in educational and training programs of lifelong vocational education. The intercultural interaction enables finding certain boundaries when the urge for diverse and consistent training escalates into the opposed, boundless relativism unacceptable for our society. At the
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same time, the mentioned process provides an opportunity for the educational institutions to use certain home and foreign methods based on various standards and traditions, which allow a Russian higher teaching staff to understand its value and place in a theory and practice of the lifelong education.
References
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2. Колпаков В.А. Социально-эпистемологические проблемы современного экономического знания (экономическая наука эпохи перемен): науч. монография / В.А. Колпаков. - М.: «Канон +» РООИ «Реабилитация». - 2о08. - 208 с.
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4. Симчера В.М. Развитие экономики России за 100 лет: 1900 - 2000, Исторические ряды, вековые тренды, институциональные циклы / В.М. Симчера. - М.: Наука, 2006. - 587 с. (Экономическая наука современной России).
5. Социальные инноваторы (Люди - XXI): устойчивость на фоне волатильности внешней среды // ФОМ: http://community.livejournal.com/fom_info
6. Ядов В.А. Проблемы российских трансформаций. - СПб.: Изд-во СПбГУП, 2006. - 52 с. - (избранные лекции Университета; вып. 40).
Translated from Russian by Znanije Central Translations Bureau
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