Management Of Professional Development Of Teachers In Higher Education

Abstract

The intensity of changes in various spheres of human activity defines the importance of quality requirements of modern education. The upgrade of the education system to competitiveness and efficiency is possible not only by modernizing its organizational, procedural and substantive aspects, but also to optimize the professional activities of teachers. With all the diversity of means and forms which are constantly discussed and proposed today to the teacher for professional development through additional vocational education, the main mechanism for the promotion of professional development to a qualitatively new level, is a conscious continuous education and self-education of the teacher. The aim of our study is to examine the need for and commitment to self-education and self-development of University teachers. All expectations from the professional activities of the teacher due to the fact that a professional should carry out their activities not only in operating mode as in continuous and systematic development. It promotes the need to design not only processes of functioning, but also to manage their own professional and personal development. The result of the activity of the University teacher for the management of their professional growth may be the implementation of long-term and short-term professional development goals based on the semantic of emphasis in various aspects of professional activities that are implemented in the modeling, design, constructive, informative, career guidance and communication skills. The purpose of the research is to solve the problem of optimizing the process of self-education and self-development of teachers of higher education.

Keywords: Teacherdevelopmentqualityself-educationmanagementassessment

Introduction

One of the priorities of Russian educational policy in the twenty-first century is providing high quality education at all levels, the successful implementation of which depends on the objective quality of professional training of teachers. Therefore, the problem of professional training of teachers is a key, because scientifically grounded ways of modernization of education are closed to the Central figure of the educational process – the teacher is able to successfully implement new educational paradigm that focuses on the achievement of personal, meta-subject and subject results of education. Achieving the designated educational outcomes requires improving the basic directions of pedagogical activity, optimization of the Arsenal of forms, means and methods of work, profound and comprehensive understanding of the pedagogical innovation. The need to change approaches to training and education, development of working programs on the subject, the implementation of modern pedagogical technologies creates objective difficulties for the modern teacher.

Problem Statement

Work to improve the assessment of the quality of the teacher in higher education is currently in the process of refinement: psycho-pedagogical portrait of a teacher, from a position of obligation; ways to assess results of pedagogical work; methods to improve teaching skills; procedure and contents of certification, methods of wage payment; assessment criteria skill level; working conditions, nature of work, prospects of development of educational organizations. All expectations from the professional activities of the teacher due to the fact that a professional should carry out their activities not only in operating mode as in continuous and systematic development. In this case, it is necessary to consider that the development of a teacher is today, in a constantly changing objective reality, captures the importance of the teacher not so much to keep up with innovations much ahead of them. It promotes the need to design not only the processes of functioning, but also to manage their own professional and personal development.

Research Questions

Questions that need to be addressed in the process of studying the problem of the necessity and obligation of self-education of University teachers: the definition of pedagogical conditions promoting professional development of teachers to a qualitatively new level ; questions are necessary and possible assistance to teachers in designing their professional growth ; definition of the requirements and criteria of professionalism of teachers on the set functions ; description of the specific activities of the teacher, which are implemented in the modeling, design, constructive, informative, career guidance and communication skills.

Purpose of the Study

The purpose of the research is to solve the problem of optimizing the process of self-education and self-development of teachers of higher eduction.

Research Methods

Research methods are the content analysis of scientific-methodical literature on the problem of improving the professionalism of teachers, the classification of functions and types of pedagogical activity; included observation of teachers; interviewed; organization of discussion platforms and round tables with professors of Moscow and Moscow region. The analysis of the various studies professionally necessary qualities of the teacher showed the existence of a large number of approaches to the definition of the evaluation criteria for the teacher (Burlakova, 2014): personnel profile analysis approach (Klimov, 2005, 2012); acmeological approach (Derkach, Selezneva, & Mikhaylov, 2008); socio-psychological (Nevdakh, 2013; Tyunnikov & Maznichenko, 2014).

Findings

The analysis of the phenomenon of "profession" leads to the conclusion that the profession not only maintains the characteristics of meaningful professional activity of the employee, the profession which the person develops, the area of application, its physical and spiritual strength that is specified in this specialty, but assumes the existence of qualitative characteristics of mastering this profession. The quality is due to the promotion of a person to the heights of professionalism, and with the improvement of the individual professional. In addition, the mere presence of professionals with different levels of professionalism entails recognition of a certain professional evolution, in which a person can change the qualitative indicators of professional life.

Such changes, if considered as the result of deliberate human activities on the formation of self-image as a professional, the image of the reality, which is the subject of the profession, are, in fact, the content of continuous professional education. Therefore, identifying optimization opportunities for professional development through continuing education, must be considered as basic conditions, the specificity of the profession, especially the professional, the specific content of additional professional education system.

Fundamental determinants of the specificity of any profession is the quality of items of work (the scope of application of force), quality of subjects of work (the qualities of the person defining the extent of proactive activity in professional activities), the quality of the professional activity as the process of implementation of labor functions.

The uniqueness of professional activity of a teacher is expressed in a dichotomous nature. On the one hand is a sphere of human life, which is enshrined in the subject matter of a particular scientific area ; on the other is an educational activity of the student. The fact that the subject of professional activity of teacher of higher education institution presented by the dichotomy of "subject of scientific research and educational activity of the student", is fundamental for determining the specificity of not only the profession, but also continuous professional education and self-education of the teacher.

All expectations from the professional activities of the teacher due to the fact that a professional should carry out their activities not only in operating mode as in continuous and systematic development. In this case, it is necessary to consider that the development of a teacher is today, in a constantly changing objective reality, captures the importance of the teacher not so much to keep up with innovations much ahead of them. It promotes the need to design not only the processes of functioning, but also to control the development process.

It is obvious that University teachers with a strong effect of professional polyphony in need of proper formation of the professional development programs, enable us to harmonize all aspects of their professional life due to the reasonably set strategic and tactical objectives. Analysis of the specificity of the profession allows us to formulate the key problems of the subjective development of the teacher:

- professional consciousness of the teacher professional is overloaded with myths, stereotypes and clichés that impede their professional growth;

- professional evolution of a teacher is often spontaneous in nature or permanent external controllability;

- lack of or insufficient experience of managing own professional development to be accompanied by a blur of internal criteria of success and effectiveness of their own professional activities, which leads to dissemination in a professional environment effect of professional aberration;

- functional diversity of types of activity of the teacher in the absence of the experience of constructing their own professional and educational path has led to inconsistent, sporadic updating various aspects of their professional activities, often initiated from the outside, i.e. to the low level of professional subjectivity of the teacher.

Continuing professional education of teacher is a key mechanism of professional development draws attention to the potential of modern domestic system of additional professional education. Today, still remains the massive practice of the lack of special basic education "high school teacher". Postgraduate education of the teacher is carried out in a variety of formats (postgraduate, doctoral studies, participation in projects, conferences etc.)

Strategic goal should be the task of supporting teachers in designing their own development. Such support will allow to increase the motivation for lifelong professional education, aimed not on status changes, and competency increment of professional qualities of personality; the interpenetration of subsystems of cultural educational professional activity of the teacher; management of educational resources. Reflecting on the possibility of technological support to solve this task, it is necessary to refer to the rapidly developing practice of corporate training of teachers of the University. Leading corporate forms of training are forms of workplace learning (coaching, counseling, training), training outside the workplace (lecture, seminars, conferences, case studies, e-learning, trainings, etc.).

Productive working teacher is the teacher developing the educational system, it needs to have a holistic structured knowledge in the field of teaching of the subject, philosophy, psychology, physiology, pedagogy, sociology, etc. In different scientific and methodical sources this refers to indicators of pedagogical skills and (or) professionalism of the teacher. Currently, pedagogical literature, these concepts are getting a divorce. If professionalism is often understood as a set of professional knowledge and skills owned by the teacher, then the teaching skill refers to the level of their use directly in the educational process. In other words, professionalism is considered as a certain level of pedagogical skill, i.e. as a concept narrower. Assessment of professionalism can be carried out according to the degree of formation of skills of professional and pedagogical work, which are provided with the knowledge and skills of the teacher. The knowledge of the teacher can be evaluated from the position of realization of the main functions of education which are teaching, educating and developing. Also we have identified certain areas of activity of University teachers:

-educational activity (actual instruction or academic work);

- research activities; methodological activities (educational-methodical, scientific-methodical, organizational-methodical);

- organizational and managerial activities (including administrative work);

- social activities;

- socio-communicative activities.

The vast majority of teachers interested in successful teaching. Development and improvement of pedagogical work of the teacher begins with the ability to diagnose your own work. In our opinion, assessment of professional activity of the teacher should be made in each of the above areas. However, the work on improvement of the evaluation of the quality of the teacher in higher education is currently in the process of refinement: psycho-pedagogical portrait of a teacher, from a position of obligation ; ways to assess results of pedagogical work ; methods to improve teaching skills ; of the procedure and contents of certification, methods of wage payment ; criteria for assessing the level of skills ; job conditions, nature of work, prospects of development of educational institutions etc.

The skill of the teacher can be evaluated from a position of full mater of core activities in which knowledge has a practical embodiment. The activities of the teacher are implemented in the modeling, design, constructive, informative, career guidance and communication skills.

To modeling skills may include: the use of pedagogical ideas and guidelines in practice ; teaching students to apply theoretical knowledge in practice ; analysis of pedagogical situations in accordance with the selection of pedagogical technologies ; the vision of strengths and weaknesses in their work and the work of students ; forecasting difficulties of the students in the process of training.

The design is the skill of the teacher to foresee the course of the learning process in accordance with the requirements of the FSES and the work program and possible study groups depending on the level of its preparation. The most important skill is the ability to define the didactic objectives of the educational process in General and individual training sessions, in particular, to adjust the goals depending on the success of the educational process.

Constructive is the ability of the teacher to determine the educational information is the most significant, important; to systematize the learning material using additional sources of information; to develop teaching and learning material, the system of indicators of successful learning of the material.

Information skills are the vision of the teacher directions for the development of their academic discipline. They are presented as knowledge about knowledge, its development and prospects in the development of the content of educational material in this specialty, the need for more detailed and informative study of this discipline. The most important of these skills is the knowledge inside the subject and in subject connections, their use to improve the efficiency of the learning process, so these skills require special attention, as their indicator is the density of the information flow, which determines the teacher in the learning process and which ultimately determines the quality of learning .Vocational skills attracted more and more attention. This is due to the fact that the abundance of educational information, the imperfection of the structural division of the content of educational material, its congestion with secondary information, the introduction of compulsory grading of the educational process highlight the need for a more clear understanding of the professional orientation of the learning process in any academic discipline.

Communicative skills are determined by how the teacher implements the design and constructive skills in working with students. Communicative activities are presented in the form of various types of activities: reproductive; adaptive; modeling creative. In our opinion, a communicative activity because it is no longer only the activity of the teacher directly in the learning process and becomes a joint activity with students.

The professionalism of the teacher - is a generalized index, the most important of which is the ability to diagnose not only the work of the students and the whole educational process, but its activity in this process.

In general we can say that the constructive activity of the teacher directed on foreseeing (determining) the success of the educational process, the formation of students' creative attitude to work and the fulfillment of educational goals training sessions aimed at achieving not only substantive results, but meta-subject and personal results of education. The design activity of the teacher is associated with the ability to use a variety of information and pedagogical technologies in the educational process depending on the learning objectives. Communicative activity of the teacher is directed to select appropriate ways of presenting information to students with the aim of maximizing the achievement of learning outcome.

In the aggregate estimates of each of the above activities you can conclude about the level of professionalism of the teacher, his qualifications, and the rate of implementation of these activities can be adopted as evaluation criteria.

Mastery of all activities allows the teacher to gradually acquire pedagogical skills. Its essence is defined as an exceptional ability, and as art, and how self-education and self-education of the teacher. In this case, the characteristics of its activity are: scientific-theoretical, methodical, psychological and communication skills.

In the characteristic activities of a teacher focused on improving the methods of training, education and development of trainees, and the formation of skills. In this regard, the method of communication is manifested as a kind of conductor values of the teacher's personality, his relationship to the learner. Methods of communication with students is attributable to the personal qualities of the teacher and is expressed in skills: to form the perception of students to see him as a person, to instill faith in the success ; to concentrate the information, but so that it was available for weaker students and enough for a strong; to be flexible and be able composite to rebuild the classes with the prevailing situations; to mobilize the attention and maintain the interest of students in the teaching; to foresee the learning difficulties of students, to encourage them to overcome these difficulties; to see the shortcomings in their own work and ways of overcoming them.

In teaching the personal qualities of the teacher can be allocated in three separate groups. The first is his individual qualities, which are difficult for objective measurement and evaluation. Another group of personal qualities of the teacher is based on psychological mechanisms, based on analysis and synthesis. This group of qualities relates to communication with students, and the third appears at the reflective level teaching abilities, her research requires a long observation of the work of the teacher and not always objective because of several reasons associated with variety of pedagogical situations and the actual difficulty of their classification. However, each of the personal qualities of the teacher characterized by its own features. Reflection, identification, compassion is an important psychological characteristics of the activities of the teacher.

Dynamics of development of professional and personal qualities of the teacher correlates with the dynamics of the results of work of students. The stability of these qualities reflected in the stability of knowledge and attitudes of students to the academic discipline, which leads the teacher. Positive feedback contributes to the accelerated development of trainees, as well as evidence of the promotion of teachers to higher level8s of pedagogical skills.

The ultimate goal of pedagogical activity involves the solution of two interrelated pedagogical objectives, educational and pedagogical. Educational objectives are determined by training of graduates of educational institutions to self-development and self-education and self-improvement with the aim of fulfilling specific roles in the system of social relations.

Conclusion

To sum it up, the teacher like any specialist is important to visualize the steps that is leading to professionalism. They can be intermediate goals for professional growth. It is possible to allocate following basic stages that must be mastered by every teacher on the way to pedagogical skills. The stage adaptation of the profession: primary teacher assimilation of rules, regulations, necessary methods, techniques and technologies. The stage of self-actualization of the teacher to the profession: teacher awareness of their capabilities, their individual characteristics, the implementation of professional standards, self-development tools of the profession, purposefully and consciously strengthening their positive qualities, smoothing, negative, assertion of individual style. Stage of fluency in a profession on the skill level, the harmonization of the profession: assimilation of high standards, repeat at a good level previously prepared (e.g., training institutions) development of samples, methodology. Stage of fluency in a profession on the level of creativity: enriching the profession through a personal creative contribution, the introduction of copyright developments and improvements in their own work.

The rise of professionalism is not a linear, systematic process, the teacher can achieve and still have unsecured sites in the professionalism. The irregularity of the different stages of the development of pedagogical skills as possible from different teachers and one teacher at different stages of professional growth. For example, a young teacher at the stage of adaptation to the profession can something be at the level of the Creator (proposing an original methodology or lesson), not as a professional, and this will be the trajectory of individual growth.

Summarizing, we can formulate the key problems of continuous education and self-education of the teacher the task of managing their own professional development. The phenomenon of governance is seen in its modern interpretation as a function of organized systems of different nature (biological, social, technical) that guarantee: the preservation of their specific structure; the maintenance mode activity; implement the program; objectives of the activities. Therefore, the main content of activity of the teacher of the University for the management of their professional growth may be the formulation of long-term and short-term professional development goals based on the semantic of emphasis in various aspects of professional activity of the teacher.

References

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