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TRAINING OF TEACHERS IN EDUCATIONAL ACTIVITIES IN THE SYSTEM OF ADDITIONAL PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION
N. A. Savotina
At the end of the 20th century, mankind entered a new stage of their development. It is referred to as the "information revolution" and increasingly clearly highlights the growing crisis of the existing system of education. In Russia, a vivid manifestation of this crisis is that 50 to 80 percent of graduates in some areas of professional training do not work in their profession. The reasons behind this lie either in the crisis of overproduction (where a specialty is not in demand) or in the crisis of the quality of education (where the level of qualification does not allow a specialist to perform respective functions in a professional way). Therefore, a modern specialist faces the challenge of continuously updating his/her acquired knowledge. At the rational-pragmatic level, overcoming functional illiteracy and permanent updating of knowledge may be regarded as the need for continuous education of every individual. The idea and practice of lifelong education have existed for a long time. Back in the 1970s, UNESCO regarded lifelong learning as the main principle of the education policy of the future. It is no accident that in the late 20th century, the UN put forward the slogan, "Learning for Life, Work, and the Future."
The quality of development of professional teachers in many respects determines the nature and fate of the modernization of Russian education. This creates an urgent need for developing new theory and practice of the content of additional professional education (advanced training and professional retraining) aimed at building a new generation of teachers for schools of the 21st century. Positive experiences of receiving the second professional education as part of advanced training and professional training are found in a number of regions of Russia (Barnaul, Belgorod, Kursk, Moscow, Novosibirsk, Omsk, Saratov, Stavropol, St. Petersburg, Khabarovsk, etc.), providing an objective background for the development of the content of training of teachers in educational activities.
The phenomenon of the content of additional professional education (hereafter APE) in the context of training of teachers in educational activities is that it is designed to make a notable contribution to self-development of an adult whose personality has been formed, who has received a professional education in teaching, and has experience in creative educational activities and, usually, experience working as an educator. However, the main focus in the content of APE is still placed on functional teaching activities. The content of APE is often formed without the active involvement of teachers, which has an adverse impact on motivate to obtain professional training. The passive role of teachers in the creation of the educational space, where they act as so called "course attendees" instead of being active actors of the educational activity, by no means contributes to the development of educational competence of teachers. Therefore spiritual, moral, legal, creative and other resources of a teacher that can "start" mechanisms of continuous professional and personal self-development in the content of APE are
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often not in demand. The traditional approach to defining the content of APE does not take into account the acute need of each teacher for building subjective personal experience in self-design, self-organization and self-implementation of their own path of self-development, of ascending to the "acme" of professionalism. The lack of such experience adversely affects the definition of their own educational mission in educational activities and, ultimately, the quality of solving professional problems.
Learning experiences in the modernization of teacher APE leads to the idea of new requirements for designing its content:
A. Designing the content of the additional professional education of teachers should contribute to the advanced, integral formation and self-development of the personality of professional teacher to reaching the peaks of professionalism by nurturing designers of the educational space from among the students, and to building and implementing individual routes of professional and personal selfdevelopment.
B. The content of teacher APE should be based on perceiving a teacher as an agent who is capable of self-organization of his/her ascension to the "acme," the peak of professional and personal self-development through self-actualization of educational potential (existing spiritual, moral, psychophysiological, socio-cultural, creative and other resources) that underlies the development and enrichment of professional competence and culture.
C. The content of APE of teachers should be based on methodological grounds dictated by system-activity-based, professional-competence, sociopedagogical and andragogical approaches that ensure that the focus of the content is on professional and personal self-development of the teacher.
In order to apply a qualitative approach to the development of priorities in the training of teachers in educational activities in the system of additional professional education, we had to study the major areas of modern research in the field of training in educational activities. An analysis of dissertations on Specialty 13.00.08, Theory and Methodology of Professional Education, completed in the period between 2006 and 2010 has led us to the following conclusions: (a) the most common area of current research is improving the system of APE with the use of information and computer technology, and training of specialists in patriotic and military-patriotic education; (b) areas of training of teachers in the course of additional professional education that remain outside the wider scope of research include labor nurturing, moral and sexual education, and the organization of selfgovernment of students and young people; and (c) a new area of research is Tutoring in the System of Advanced Training.
The areas of teacher training in educational activities in the system of additional professional education that become relevant in this context include: (a) the development of monitoring training of teachers in educational activities; (b) the content and organization of training teachers in the APE system of informatization of the educational process; (c) the legal framework for preparing teachers for solving educational problems; (d) training of teachers in the APE system in effective professional activities aimed at developing social competence in schoolchildren; (e) educational techniques in the professional training of teachers; (f) humanization of educational activities by deploying health-preserving
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techniques, developing self-government, civic, patriotic, moral and aesthetic activities; and (g) the socio-pedagogical problems associated with the education of children in a small rural school, etc.
Giving due consideration to these trends in the development of the content of teacher training in educational activities will contribute to the advanced, integral formation and self-development of the personality of a professional teacher through self-actualization of educational potential. This content will actualize the level of a teacher as an agent and personality, enhance the integrity of the content of teacher APE, making it more open for considering and realizing professional and personal needs of learners and preventing early emotional "burnout" of teachers.
References
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2. Демакова И.Д. Функционально-деятельностные характеристики воспитательной деятельности педагога // Воспитать человека: сб-к нормативно-правовых, научнометодических, организационно-практических материалов по проблемам воспитания. - М.: Вентана-Г раф, 2002. - 384 с.
3. Подчалимова Галина Николаевна. Теория и практика проектирования содержания дополнительного профессионального образования руководителей школ: дис. ... д-ра пед. наук: 13.00.08 : Курск, 2001. - 560 с.
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