Development Of Value And Semantic Competences Of Bachelors In Pedagogy

Abstract

Being an open system, currently the pedagogical education is undergoing great changes caused by globalization and internationalization, the nature of social priorities and the place of a student and a teacher in this process. In the history of Russia the education has always been a carrier, a transformer of culture, a moral system of values. The education is presented as a fundamental social institution, which explains the basis of pedagogical education to preserve pedagogical traditions. The tendencies which are observed in society, among children and young people aimed at the search for new ideals and new life priorities, the problem of choosing a path that would determine the future, ambiguously understood by both children and parents, actualize the problem. The paper describes that the pedagogical education as a carrier of values and meanings developed by generations of people in the context of modern social and cultural reality is an effective tool of preserving cultural values. In order to fulfill the mission entrusted to it, the future teacher must be prepared to defend the idea of harmonizing personal and social, human and personal values and meanings in the life of each student. In the article, the main approaches to the study of the problems of professional training of bachelors of pedagogical education at the university are defined. They determine the theory and practice of modern pedagogical education from the point of view of its value priorities and sociocultural meanings, as well as from the standpoint of social and cultural reality.

Keywords: Formationvaluessemantic competencebacheloreducation

Introduction

Currently the Russian education faces on the acute problem related to training of future teachers, i.e. the bachelors of pedagogical education. The pedagogical community faces the “eternal” question: What is implied by modern schoolteacher? Should a teacher be someone who would lead children into the world of knowledge or a person providing pedagogical support for school children in the process of finding his/her life path and professional priorities? Education facilitates the development of a person, achievement of benefits, and ensures success achievements in life. This seems to encorporate both the goals and the outcomes of education. Therefore, as a strategic reference point in modern education, scientists consider a social and personal approach that contributes to achieving “harmony of social requirements and personal development in all spheres of life, harmonious combination of universal, state and regional values, and aspirations of a person and a family” (Zagvyazinsky & Strokova, 2011, p. 102).

The main task set by the state in the field of education is to provide on obligatory amount of humanitarian knowledge that forms the basis of self-identity (from the article by Vladimir Putin Russia: The National Question). This provision is reflected in the most important principle set forth in the Law on Education of the Russian Federation, which is expressed in the education of not only educated, but also cultured member of society, who takes care of historical heritage, natural wealth and social values. The implementation of this principle fully complies with the mission of education, i.e. the development of students’ life value bases, emotional and volitional qualities for building a system of relationships where the values and meanings are set as vital guidelines. In this case the main reference points are the value dominants of modern pedagogical education among which are such dominants as ethnocultural (traditional spiritual values of the people); social and ethnosocial (interethnic tolerance, humanistic base of pedagogical activity); social and cultural (educational mission of teacher); professional and pedagogical (establishment of a safe and conflict-free language, and mental environment of student as well as pedagogical arrangement of students’ leisure activities) (Morova, Kuznetsova, Lezhnina, & Talanova, 2015). In this regard, the educational process at pedagogical university should be aimed at the acquisition and interiorization of social and cultural values by future teachers.

Problem Statement

The goal of modern educational system is defined as a transformation from the “educated person” to the “cultured person”, which substantiates the strategic role of culture and its spiritual foundation in education at all levels, i.e. from general to higher professional one. The cultured man is becoming the goal and means of overcoming the crisis of spirituality, the revival of domestic (national) social and cultural traditions, the spirituality of the people. This is the transformative role of education facing the country’s future. Basing on this concept one can advance a culture-congruent and culture-forming educational process.

Nowadays there is a great need to train a bachelor teacher in the conditions of new time and new education requirements. The content of the training should be aimed at ensuring that young teacher is capable of value and semantic self-determination and, being a carrier of culture, is ready to perform professional and social functions. Thus, the problem of identifying value and semantic dominants and the scientific substantiation of the development of value and semantic competence among bachelors of pedagogical education at university in the context of modern social and cultural reality is becoming topical.

The identification of the research problem is caused by the following circumstances:

- first, pedagogical education in modern conditions reflects the needs of both educational institutions and the student’s personality, his family, as well as established traditions and attitudes that cannot exist without being changed;

- secondly, when training bachelors of pedagogical education, it is necessary to take into account the peculiarities of modern social and cultural reality, which can be described as the replacement of idea “Motherland come first” with the idea “new time - new music”; promotion of pedagogical thesis “nurturing a successful personality”, and the perception of education (not only additional) as a “service industry”;

- thirdly, pedagogical education as a social and general cultural phenomenon cannot exist without the reliance on domestic traditions, Russian pedagogical traditions and significant experience in implementing the following motto ‘Disseminate sense, kindness and eternal values’;

- fourth, value and semantic competence, as the dominant of educational activity of a teacher is manifested in the development of such content of the educational process at university, which will allow the future bachelor to organically and unobtrusively introduce children to the world of universal human values and meanings, to ensure the acceptance of these values that form their positive sense of reality, confidence in the future, faith in the transformative power of education.

Research Questions

The changes that have taken place in recent years in society are largely connected with social and cultural transformations in social relations, which affected such an important social institution for every Russian as education. The response to the challenges of time was the introduction of a new standard into the university practice (FSES HE) where competence-based approach is the dominant one; among general professional competencies it determined the arrangement of educational environment. All this sets the requirement for the bachelor to develop an ability to provide spiritual and moral education of schoolchildren based on national values.

The value and semantic competences as a complex phenomenon and as a pedagogical phenomenon has to be considered in the system of philosophical and psychological and pedagogical sciences.

Aristotle and Plato defined values as “good”, while Aristotle defined virtue and virtuous person as a measure of true value; German philosopher Rudolf Hermann Lotse considered value as “meaning”, appealing to the fact that value is everything that has meaning for a person (as cited in Ambrosi, 1912); the German philosopher Menzer (1923) defines value as that to which one can strive, contemplate, treat with respect, recognition, reverence; which is an essential property of the object, the essence and condition of its being. Thus, value is understood as a benefit and significance, to which a person needs to strive, i.e. it acquires a value and semantic characteristics.

According Fichte an absolute value is life, while the criterion of this value is activity: “Nothing but life is an unconditional value and meaning; all other things like thinking, creativity and knowledge are somehow valuable as they relate to the living itself, come from it and seek to find the way back to it” (as cited in Slastenin & Chizhakova, 2003, p. 64). Thereby, the active nature of value is asserted, which is important for the development of professional values of future teacher.

Understanding of values in relation to culture is contained in the study of Rickert (1998), where, asking the question of what culture is, he proposes the following definition “A set of objects related to generally valid values and cherished for these values” (p. 37). At the same time, he did not give this phenomenon any more precise material definition. He also writes: “Values constitute neither physical nor mental reality. Their essence lies in their significance and not in their authenticity” (Rickert, 1998, p. 45). This definition emphasizes the role of the significance of value, that is, its semantic orientation.

Much attention is paid to the problem of values in modern foreign sociology and psychology, the nature of values, their universalism (Schwartz, 2007), the transformation of the values of modern youth (Thomson, 2007) are analyzed.

In national pedagogy, the study of pedagogical values is reflected in the works of Zimnyaya (2004), Isaev (2004), Slastenin and Chizhakova (2003). In the works on ethnopedagogy Volkov (2004) singled out 7 commandments of upbringing in the Chuvash, which he regards as traditional and the most effective traditional values in upbringing children and youth: hard work, health, intelligence, friendship, kindness, honesty, chastity. The disclosure of values in education, as well as the value foundations of the strategy for the development of national education are described in works of Gershunsky (2002) Zagvyazinsky and Strokova (2011) and others.

Based on the developed classification of a teacher’s professional values, i.e. values-means, values-goals, values-relations, values-qualities (Isaev, 2004) we consider the process of development of pedagogical culture of a teacher from the point of view of personal values of pedagogical activity. Basing on the same traits Slastenin and Chizhakova (2003) defined the pedagogical values as specific reference points of consciousness, actions, and teacher behavior, highlighting the dominant, normative, stimulating, and related values that form a system of value and semantic orientations that determine the meaning of the educational aspect of educational activities. The implementation of these guidelines can be achieved by teachers’ knowledge in the subject area, as well as provision of morale building activities for children, knowledge of the theory, methodology and practical skills of formation of not only value and semantic reference points of pedagogical activity, but also value and semantic competences of teacher.

An important role in the study of the problem of development of value and semantic competences in students is played by the factor analysis of modern social and cultural reality, which demostrates the following outcomes:

- intense influence of mass media, which promote mass culture (often with aggressive content), calls for the priority of individualism and the detachment of an individual from burning problems of human community;

- separated relations in the families, leading to destruction of nature-aligned life optimism of children and young people, psychological instability when choosing life and professional priorities, which are based on value and semantic objectives;

- underestimation of teacher’s status and mission; humbling wording like “educational services”, when it does not refer to the issue of development of a growing person (cultured man).

It is clear that these factors have a definite influence on the professional choice of future bachelors making it difficult for them, as students, to accumulate that valuable experience, i.e. the basis for their future profession.

Purpose of the Study

The main goal of this article is to provide a scientific substantiation of the process of development of value and semantic competence among bachelors of pedagogical education at a higher educational institution in the context of modern social and cultural reality. During the study there were solved the tasks of determining the main components of value and semantic competencies, identifying value and semantic dominants of future bachelors of pedagogical education, scientific substantiation of the process of development of value and semantic competences in the integral educational process.

From the perspective of Federal State Educational Standards of Higher Education in the field of Pedagogical education a graduate, as a future teacher, who has his/her own clear understanding of values within their field of study must have the ability to solve problems of upbringing and spiritual and moral development, the ability to carry out pedagogical support of socialization and professional self-determination of students. Besides, he/she should have such professional skills as determining the value dominants of his/her educational activities; decision making and responsibility taking for the consequences of this decision, the ability to act in accordance with the target and semantic attitudes; building an individual educational path of a student on the basis of local (university) and general educational requirements and standards.

Thus, the most important task is the adoption of those values by future teacher that are crucial for him/her in life and are the basis of spiritual and moral development and socialization. That is how the features of professional values, meaningful activities of a teacher reflecting ideological, professional, moral, social and cultural as well as personality-shaping competences is defined..

Research Methods

The following approaches are defined as the main approaches to solving the problem of development of value and semantic competencies in bachelors of pedagogical education:

- evolutionary approach to identify and determine the constant and dominant positions of key definitions of the study in the historical and pedagogical conditionality;

- axiological approach necessary to consider the value foundations of the basic concept of the study “value and semantic competences” from the point of view of timeless and modern social and cultural pedagogical reality;

- cultural approach, which substantiates the culture-congruent and culture-creating mission of modern teacher;

- a regional approach that allows to consider the values of modern pedagogical education through a prism of time-tested ethnic and cultural spiritual traditions of pedagogical education based on the commandments of national education and demanded in the Russian multicultural educational space.

In general, these approaches determine the consideration of the theory and practice of modern pedagogical education from the point of view of its values and social and cultural meanings, as well as from the position of a new social and cultural reality.

The following methods are identified in the course of study:

- theoretical, i.e. the analysis of philosophical, general pedagogical, historical, pedagogical, ethnopedagogical literature (disclosure of basic research concepts in a wide philosophical and cultural as well as professional pedagogical contexts), government documents in the field of education, including pedagogical one (substantiation of competence-based approach as a universal basis for designing Bachelor programs of pedagogical education, updating target value and semantic competencies of a teacher); bachelor programs (research of potential and real possibilities of formation of value and semantic competences of bachelor), synthesis (generalization of theoretical ideas about the process of development of value and semantic competences of bachelor);

– empirical, i.e. obtaining and changing the results of the educational process, questioning students and analyzing the results of questioning, talking with students and teachers of educational institutions, pedagogical experiment.

Findings

The studies in the field of philosophy and pedagogy show that all scientists emphasize the urgency of the problem of developing the value and semantic competences of future bachelors of pedagogical education in the context of modern social and cultural reality at university.

The teacher’s value and semantic competences are considered as world-outlook (life, humanity, nature, truth, citizenship), professional and moral (good, justice, freedom, honor and dignity, cooperation, tolerance), social and cultural (beauty and harmony, friendship and mutual understanding, respect for the diversity of other cultures), personality-forming (work, family, health, mind) values manifested in the teacher both as universal values, goals and individual ones depending on cultural and professional level of teachers.

Conversations with students, the nature and direction of our ethnic and cultural dialogues, design of virtual sightseeing: Motherland in the Planetary Dimension, Humanist Educators of the Past and Present, The World of Childhood in Artistic Images, etc., the analysis of projects People should be judged not against the lowest, but the highest level developed and implemented by children in the course of pedagogical internships became a weighty reason for the need for a creative approach to the process of development of value and semantic skills of future teachers.

Students’ pedagogical internship is a creative laboratory that may test social and professional readiness for work aimed at the development of student’s personality. Under the conditions of situational or designed dialogue, in the situation of freedom of moral choice based on experience and reflection the values are updated.

The development of intellectual, moral, emotional and volitional field on the basis of awareness, attitude, evaluation of meanings and values, serving as the most important target guide for working with students, shows that the internalization of value experience of self-creation as a teacher is the most important condition for the formation of their value and semantic competences.

Conclusion

The problem of identifying value and semantic dominants and scientific substantiation of technological support for the development of value and semantic competences in bachelors of pedagogical education at a university is considered in the context of modern social and cultural reality, which is a problematic educational domain in the centre of which there is a student with his/her mentality, aspirations, cultural needs, which is quite understandable from the point of view of the age, life experience, educational status, etc. Accordingly, when getting a pedagogical education at HEI a future bachelor must be attached to the values and meanings of his/her profession that have been verified by the teachers of the past and present. Besides, as noted by Gershunsky (2002) this profession should be addressed to the state, society. The content, spiritual and moral vectors of value and semantic competencies of bachelors of pedagogical education proceed from this idea. In this context, the educational environment is of great importance as a part of modern sociocultural reality, where the future teacher, his world view, and professional aspirations are developed.

Thus, the study confirmed the idea that the development of value and semantic competences ensures the professional advancement and development of bachelors of pedagogical education in changing social and cultural conditions.

References

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