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11Tcherkashyn Sergiy Volodymyrovych CREATING A NEW PARADIGM ...
pedagogical sciences
UDC 378
CREATING A NEW PARADIGM OF UNIVERSITY EDUCATION AS A COMPONENT PART OF REFORMING GERMAN UNIVERSITIES
© 2018
Tcherkashyn Sergiy Volodymyrovych, candidate of philological sciences, assistant professor of the department of German philology Kharkiv National Pedagogical University named Grigori Skovoroda (60000, Ukraine, Kharkiv, Valentynivska Street, 2, e-mail: tscherkaschin@ukr.net)
Abstract. The given article informs on a course of realization of program positions of the Bologna declaration in the German higher education system. The author specifies the most important preliminary result of reforming: absence of appreciable quality improvement of German higher education and decrease of professional training standards. The author lists several problems with which the given reform collides, and allocates the most important of them - chronic under financing of educational branch by the state. Suspense of this problem breaks the promotion of reforms, including because of the position of direct participants of Bologna process: teachers, scientists and managers of higher schools. It is connected, as the author of the given article specifies, with inconsistency, ambiguity and crudity of measures authorized by the competent ministries and departments. The problems of reforming the sphere of German university education arise not so much because of insufficient funding of this sphere by the German state or due to the lack of political will in the implementing reforms. The need for their implementation does not cause doubts in the German academic environment and German society. The German academic community is also aware of the need to develop and introduce a new paradigm of university education, which also does not exclude the emergence of new problems, primarily because of the complexity of the modern stage of civilization development, which very quickly changes the nature of university education and presents to it more and more new and high requirements. To prevent possible threats of destruction of European and German universities or their transformation into fabrics producing good qualified executors of international corporations' will, universities and the whole society should take into account the fact that the complication of the modern world leads to the complication of the cognitive process, requires the application of new approaches to the organization of university education based on anthropologization and discursive knowledge, the main characteristics of which are its variability, fluidity, inconsistency and heterogeneity. The rejection of linearity, reproduction in education also implies the rejection of «ready-made» knowledge. On the contrary, the task of the participants in the educational process (of students and teachers as its subjects) is their joint search and joint creation of knowledge, which does not contradict the neo-humanistic concept of German university education, authored by V. von Humboldt. It means acquiring knowledge, which becomes what it is, in the process of searching for truth.
Keywords: modularization, accreditation, curriculums, professional suitability, professional aptitude; professionalism; forming competences
УТВОРЕННЯ НОВО1 ПАРАДИГМИ УН1ВЕРСИТЕТСЬКО1 ОСВ1ТИ ЯК СКЛАДОВА ЧАСТИНА ПРОЦЕСУ РЕФОРМУВАННЯ НШЕЦЬКИХ УН1ВЕРСИТЕТ1В
© 2018
Черкашин Сергш Володимирович, кандидат фшолопчних наук, доцент кафедри шмецько! фшологп Харювський нацiональний педагогiчний yuieepcumem iM. Г. С. Сковороди (60000, Украша, XapKie, вул. Валентитвська, 2, e-mail: tscherkaschin@ukr.net)
Анотащя. Дана стаття повщомляе про хвд реалiзацii програмних положень Болонсько! декларацп в CTCTeMi ви-що! освгга Шмеччини. Автор привергае увагу до найважливших попередшх результата реформування, а саме: ввд-сутносп ввдчутного зростання якосп ушверситетсько! освгга в Шмеччиш та зниженш рiвня професшно! пвдготовки фахiвцiв. Автор перераховуе проблеми, з якими стикаеться дана реформа, i видме найважливiшу з них - хрошчне недофшансування освпньо! галузi державою. Невиршешсть ще! проблеми гальмуе просування реформ, в тому чи^ через позищю безпосередшх учаснишв Болонського процесу: викладачiв, учених i керiвникiв ушверситепв. Це пов'язано, як вказуе автор статл, з непослщовшстю, двозначшстю i непродуманютю санкцюнованих мшстер-ствами i ведомствами заходiв. Одна з основних причин тако! однобiчностi в реалiзацii' реформ полягае у ввдсутносп достатнього обсягу фшансових кошпв. Зб№шення цього обсягу може дозволити ушверситетам здшснити велико-масштабш i дороп проекти, яш дшсно здатш наповнити реформоваш структури ушверситетсько! освгга ФРН новим змютом. Це призведе до змши традицшно! парадигми ушверситетсько! освгга вщповвдно до вимог, що бурхливо розвиваеться сустльства знання i забезпечить повною мiрою конкурентоспроможшсть шмецьких ушверситепв i шмецько! ушверситетсько! науки на глобальному ринку освгтшх послуг. В умовах здшснення технократично! за сво!м характером Болонсько! реформи перед нiмецьким, впм, як i перед будь-яким европейським унiверситетом виникае, з одного боку, загроза його загибелi як шституту або, принаймнi, його перетворення в транслятора вже не актуальних i фрагментованих знань. З iншого боку, юнуе також небезпека перетворення ушверситету в фабрику з виробництва освгтнього продукту iз заздалегiдь визначеними властивостями, в наявносп яких зацiкавленi мiжна-роднi корпорацii. Для запобiгання вах цих загроз унiверситети i все суспшьство повиннi враховувати той факт, що ускладнення сучасного свiту призводить до ускладнення процесу його тзнання, вимагае застосування нових тдхо-дiв до органiзацii унiверситетськоi освiти на основi антропологiзацii i дискурсивно! знання, головними характеристиками якого стае його мшливють, плиншсть, суперечливiсть i рiзнорiднiсть. Вiдмова вiд лiнiйностi, репродуктив-ностi в освiтi також передбачае вщмову вiд «готового» знання. Навпаки, завданням учасникiв освiтнього процесу, студента i викладача як його суб'екпв, стае його спiльний пошук i спiльне створення, що аж шяк не суперечить неогуманiстiчнiй концепцii шмецько! унiверситетськоi освiти, автором яко! е В. фон Гумбольдт. У цш концепци, яка наразi не втратила свое! значущостi для нiмецькоi ушверситетсько! освiти, iдеться саме про сприйняття всiх учасник!в освiтнього процесу в якосп суб'ектiв набуття знання, яке стае тим, чим воно е, в процеа пошуку iстини.
Ключовi слова: модуляризацiя, акредитацiя, навчальнi програми, професiйна придатнiсть, професiоналiзм, формування компетенцш
Statement of the problem. Currently, quite detailed studies of the implementation of the program provisions of the Bologna Declaration and other international agreements, which have been adopted in the framework of this process, allow us to conclude about the success achieved in the field
of German university education. However, it should be noted that this success has affected, above all, the formal side of the reforms. That is, German politicians and officials working in the field of higher education ensured the reform of outdated university structures and contributed to the creation of
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Черкашин Сергш Володимирович УТВОРЕННЯ НОВО1 ПАРАДИГМИ ...
new ones. However, the filling of these structures with new content, expected by reform participants, did not happen.
One of the main reasons for such one-sidedness in the implementation of reforms is the lack of sufficient financial resources. The increase in this volume may allow universities to carry out large-scale and expensive projects that are truly capable of filling the reformed structures of German university education with new content. This will lead to changes in the traditional university education paradigm in accordance with the requirements of a booming knowledge society and ensure the full competitiveness of German university education and German university science in the global market of educational services.
The chronic underfunding of German universities, observed over many decades, is accompanied by universal cost savings and does not allow German universities to fully develop and attract the best specialists to carry out their daily functions and carry out successful and effective reforms. In addition, the training and research quality requirements become increasingly high, the list of functions performed by university scientists expands, and their workload increases. All this makes them blindly perform tasks imposed from the outside, does not allow them to participate actively in the process of reforming higher education, show their own initiative, defend their professional position and suggest the best solutions of actual problems.
All these consequences of ill-considered and in some cases incompetent reform leads to the outflow of university scholars to other activity spheres, what causes a general decline of the level of research and teaching activities at German universities. These problems are aggravated by the outwardly successful introduction of new, shortened and accelerated forms of professional training of young specialists, what does not always lead to a significant increase of its quality, in particular, in undergraduate studies. There is a feeling that the Bologna reform, the basic component of which is the introduction of market mechanisms in all areas of university activity, is perceived by the German educational establishment as a measure aimed solely at solving university financing problems, and not at improving the teaching and research quality.
Analysis of recent research and publications. It is obvious that the need to reform the German higher education system and the urgency of improving strategies and tactics of its implementation, suggesting a constant diagnosis of the current state of affairs and forecasting possible errors and failures in the future. This task find understanding and support in the German academic environment. The inevitability of the reforms and the novelty of the tasks facing the society force German teachers, psychologists, sociologists, politicians to closely follow the process of the Bologna process in Germany. The relevance of this topic has stimulated the emergence of a sufficiently large number of critical publications dealing with the creation of a common European scientific and educational space [1]; problems of preserving the principle of the scientific nature of European education [2]; introducing new forms of education into the university reality [3]; creating new structures of university education [4]; inculcation of a specific set of competencies in young professionals [5]; prospects of the implementation of educational reforms in Germany universities [6]. The works of German scientists also reflected the implementation of the quality standards of university education [7], [9]; the implementation of various software educational concepts at German universities [8]; perceptions of the Bologna reform in German employer circles [10]; professionalization of German university education [11]; determination of the nature of modern university education and its goals [12]. But a rather detailed mapping of various aspects of the reform of the German university education neglects the need of ensuring the anthropologization and humanization of university education and university science, which is the key to successful transformations in this area.
Purpose of the article. The purpose of this study is to
compile and systematize data on the implementation of the Bologna process in Germany, which are of interest to Ukrainian specialists, politicians, officials and teachers and will allow them to make certain adjustments to the national strategy for implementing the program provisions of the Bologna process. Achieving this purpose involves the following tasks: 1) to outline the range of problems facing the sphere of German higher education at this stage of its reforming; 2) to identify the shortcomings of reforming German universities; 3) to offer an own vision of solutions of existing problems in the field of university education.
Presentation of the main material. As mentioned above, the main problem of reforming the field of university education in Germany, German scientists see in the absence of adequate funding, which leads to shifting the problems on the shoulders of universities themselves and their employees. The reform process is complicated by the fact that German universities often show unnecessary perfectionism in the implementation of reforms, which is manifested in «duplication of measures» [9, 25]. These measures are carried out in those areas of university reform that have already exhausted their reform potential and require additional financial costs for the state to restore it or renew it. This forces university staff that previously fundamentally supported the implementation of reforms in the framework of the Bologna process or was more than restrained in their efforts to search for ways to minimize the costs caused by its intensified and non-rational boost.
The progress of the reforms, the main motto of which was the introduction of the procedure of external and internal accreditation of universities and a unified system of assessing academic progress of students, led to further bureaucra-tization of universities, but not to improving the quality of university education, which is the main goal of the reform. In addition, the increased and sometimes rather absurd demands of higher authorities placed on universities and their staff caused a consolidation of supporters and opponents of the reforms, who joined together to resist the imaginary reforms. As the reasoned criticism of decisions made by federal and land ministries and departments intensifies in the academic environment, a professional discussion of these decisions and their possible consequences takes place. As the discussion proceeds, the implementation of odious decisions made by higher authorities is hampered.
The answer to the verbal and practical opposition to measures taken by federal and land ministries and departments was the development of a number of instructions for universities, formulated and approved at the regularly held Conference of Ministers of Education. These instructions were by their nature political decisions that acquired legal force through their implementation into land legislation. Adopted by the Conference of Ministers of Education these decisions contributed to the unification of the reform activities of universities, but did not identify the sources of additional funding necessary for universities to carry out the planned reforms. These reforms exacerbated the problems existing in the field of German university education, and also led to the emergence of new ones. These problems include: 1) a marked decline of the teaching and research quality at German universities; 2) trengthening the bureaucratization of universities in the context of the introduction of expensive and inefficient, according to German specialists, procedures for the implementation of internal and external accreditation; 3) increasing the academic load of students and reducing their individual space for professional and personal development, as well as for forming a broad scientific outlook of young specialists; 4) the outflow of highly qualified specialists (teachers and scientists) out off the field of university education to other activity fields; 5) averaging the quality of professional training of teachers, scientists and students; 6) destructing the basic principle of academic education due to the accentuation of imparting core competencies to students instead of scientific competence.
In addition, the modularization of the educational process
Tcherkashyn Sergiy Volodymyrovych CREATING A NEW PARADIGM ...
pedagogical sciences
caused the loss of the opportunity to study at the university in accordance with students' individual curriculum, taking into account their individual educational needs and priorities. The new curriculums of the 3-year period of study at the undergraduate program, squeezed into a fairly rigid framework of the credit-modular system, have virtually eliminated the possibility for students to do practical work and study at other universities, including abroad. The German teachers had the impression that the authors of manuals on the modularization of educational material clearly overdone the development of instructions for German universities, which contained all the known and supposed goals of professional training of specialists. Training programs that imply the achievement of 500 or even 800 goals of professional training of young specialists, cause bewilderment among the majority of the universities' teaching staff [4, p. 76]. Of course, this fact shows not only the opportunism of some officials and executors of the reform plans, but also their insufficient competence level, since the expediency of choosing individual priority objectives of the educational process and simultaneously ignoring the remaining secondary ones is obvious [4].
One of the goals listed in these curricula is to inculcate the «labour market» competitiveness to university graduates. An excessive accentuation of this competence caused an unwarranted focussing undergraduate study programs on professional suitability of young professionals in the labour market. The postulate on the professional suitability of bachelors in individual study programs that presupposes an early specialization of training, for example, in medicine, law, engineering, pedagogy and theology, creates insurmountable barriers for students for a successful professional career. This is due to the fact that the bachelor's training course, compressed to three years of training, causes considerable caution to employers, since they cannot entrust the bachelors with a fairly wide range of duties as a doctor, teacher, or lawyer. These duties, according to German employers, can be performed only by persons with complete higher education.
The goal of the Bologna process, which is to create conditions for increasing the international mobility of students through the introduction of a phased university education system, the modularization of the educational process and the introduction of ECTS, has not been achieved yet. The promised facilitation of interregional and international recognition of student academic achievement has not occurred. Measures aimed at ensuring international comparability of diplomas and grades have led to the development of curricula that cannot be compared even at the interregional level in Germany.
In general, the following results of the reform can be summarized: the universities and their structural units implemented the planned reforms formally by introducing a two-stage gradual training system, modularization, the ECTS, accreditation, and unified documents confirming the academic performance of students. Analysis of the scientific works of German scientists devoted to the problems of reforming universities allows concluding that there are significant discrepancies in the assessments of the three main groups of specialists who have a different vision of the prospects of the German university education development. These groups are
1) adherents of the Humboldt model of university education,
2) supporters of the universal educational idea and 3) supporters of the university education marketization.
Humboldtians (conservatives) and Universalists (supporters of providing equal educational opportunities for all members of society) perceive «competitiveness in the labour market» as a kind of «professional suitability», that is, the ability of specialists to perform their work within a limited remit. Humboldtians and supporters of the idea of introducing market principles into the field of university education (liberals) support the «particularistic» understanding of education: they perceive individuals as citizens, «who have the freedom of self-development, have certain talents, but at the same time have significant resistance to receive education,
first of all, due to the lack of necessary academic abilities» [6, p. 19].
According to P. Pasternack, the course of the Bologna process in Germany is similar in some form to the implementation of the project of a multidisciplinary higher educational institution in the 1970 s. As in those years, the modern reformers have different motivations, diametrically opposite visions of problems and pursue different goals at the current stage of university education reforming. The practical benefits of implementing the program provisions of the Bologna declaration are visible only in general terms and are hardly predictable. A particular academic mentality is not very compatible with the mentality of politicians, and the planned activities face the problem of insufficient funding.
However, there is one important difference between the plans of implementing the model of a multidisciplinary higher education institution and the Bologna process. A multidis-ciplinary university was originally a project aimed at widespread implementation, just like the Bologna process. The first was implemented pointwise both in content and in the form, that is, at several higher educational institutions. The Bologna process, on the contrary, is formally implemented everywhere, although pointwise in its content. Such a comparison makes it possible to realistically assess the chances of implementing the Bologna process. The new form, filled with still old content, can be adapted to reformed structures without great expense by rejecting all that hinders the creation of powerful and effective universities, and by preserving all that seems useful.
Therefore, the urgent task of reforming German universities is to eliminate a number of negative consequences of curriculum reform. These include: 1) too small fragmentation of educational material into modules, 2) unnecessarily detailed instructions on the sequence of implementation of modules, 3) a large amount of verification activities, 4) the inability of students to individually select the speed of educational material mastering, 5) excessive specialization of training programs, on the one hand, and too extensive interdisciplinary connections in curricula, on the other hand [3]. Eliminating these shortcomings can compensate for the loss in the quality of German university education.
The obviousness of their removal made the participants of the Conference of Education Ministers, held in 2009, to put on the agenda the question of the adequacy of the new curricula content for training young specialists in the framework of two-stage training. Conference participants came to the conclusion, that curricula for some specialties introduced at the initial stage of reforms are not in demand in the educational services' market. In addition, at its meeting in 2012, the Scientific Council, a collegial body representing the German scientific community, formulated a new topical task for universities: improving the quality of university education by reforming the learning process and filling it with new content.
Whether this happens in the short term depends on the formation of an adequate balance between scientific and professional training young specialists at German universities, as well as on the realization of an optimal balance between research activities of universities and the organization of the educational process. Studying at an university that does not correlate with the culture of the scientific knowledge production calls into question the very essence of university education. In the traditional sense, a professional should recognize the causal relationships between events, separate the essential from the insignificant, analyse solutions, outline the best ways to solve problems, draw up the order of execution of decisions made and manage the process of their implementation.
In order to acquire the ability to make such complex decisions related to the risk to surrounding people and society as a whole, students must develop a competence based on scientific knowledge, i.e. have a broad scientific outlook and use a certain methodology for critical assessment of the situation, making decisions and determining priorities. The
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Черкашин Сергш Володимирович yTBOPEHM HOBOÏ ПAPAДИГMИ ...
purpose of obtaining a university education is the acquisition of scientific competence and competences based on it. Therefore, only preparation for participation in competitive labour market and the inculcation of social and communicative competencies (meaning conflict management skills, communication skills, etc.) in this situation are clearly insufficient measures.
It is the unity of research and study in higher education that serves the purpose of training professionals beyond the framework of all disputes that are currently taking place around the «idea of the university». A closer look at the nature of key competencies that determine the availability of professional competence (critical and analytical intelligence, the ability to argue, the ability to work and learn independently, the ability to solve problems and decision-making, planning, coordination, management skills, ability to cooperate, etc.) allows to conclude that the traditional Humboldt virtues of mutual fertilization of research and teaching are surprisingly relevant even with the perspective willow today [1, p. 41].
Despite the exaggerated emphasis on the principle of «unity of research and learning», there is a growing awareness of the relationship of research and learning, with which students are, inculcated «spiritual needs and intellectual discipline necessary in research practice» [1, p. 39]. It is important that the ongoing reforms do not destroy this important link, but strengthen it in every way.
Successful promotion of higher education reforms in Germany requires a realistic assessment of the situation in the field of university education and science, the widespread approval of changes in which must be reflected in a reformed academic culture and suggest a change of generations of scientists and teachers that cannot come quickly. Therefore, a more realistic way of reforming the university education system is to expand the circle of reform advocates, which is one of the most important and difficult tasks of this stage of transformation.
Conclusions. The problems of reforming the sphere of German university education arise not so much because of insufficient funding of this sphere by the German state or due to the lack of political will in the implementation of reforms. The need for their implementation does not cause doubts in the German academic environment and German society. The German academic community is also aware of the need to develop and introduce a new paradigm of university education, which also does not exclude the emergence of new problems, primarily because of the complexity of the modern stage of civilization development, which very quickly changes the nature of university education and presents to it more and more new and high requirements. The Internet community, which has arisen under the influence of the rapid development of communication and information technologies, contributes to a significant increase in each individual's access to knowledge and information, and also makes it possible to diversify the development of individual and creative abilities and meet the most diverse educational needs of people. In the field of university education, there is a need for the development and implementation of new forms of education, built on a personality-oriented approach, as well as the need for the active use of tools and opportunities for distance learning and information support of the educational process.
Under the conditions of the Bologna reform, technocratic in its nature, the German and the rest of European universities confront, on the one hand, with the threat of their «death» as institutions or, at least, confront with the threat of their transformation into translators of no longer relevant and fragmented knowledge. On the other hand, there is also the danger of the university becoming a factory, which produces educational products with predetermined properties that international corporations are interested in. To prevent all these threats, universities and the whole society should take into account the fact that the complication of the modern world leads to the complication of the process of knowledge production, requires the application of new approaches
to the organization of university education based on anthro-pologization of educational and research process and on discursiveness knowledge, the main characteristics of which are its variability, fluidity, inconsistency and heterogeneity. The rejection of linearity and reproduction in education also implies the rejection of «ready-made» knowledge. On the contrary, the task of educational process participants, the students and the teachers as its subjects, asserts joint search and joint creation knowledge, which does not contradict the neo-humanistic concept of German university education, authored by W. von Humboldt. This concept means active participation of teachers and students in acquiring knowledge, which becomes what it is, in the process of searching for truth.
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