Model Of An Innovative Teacher In The Republic Of Sakha (Yakutia)

Abstract

The relevance of the study about the problem of an innovative teacher lies in the need to educate teachers able to teach the new Generation Z living amidst the Fourth Industrial Revolution. In this regard, the current article aims to develop a model of a modern teacher, which comprises a set of professional competencies that will be in demand in future schools. The main method for studying this problem is modeling, which allows considering this problem as a process of purposeful and conscious mastering of professional competencies by students. In addition to modeling, a questionnaire was administered to 100 university students, which allowed identifying the key competencies of a teacher of the future. The most important competencies include informational and communicative competencies, psychological and communicative competencies. It was found out that the most developed competencies among future teachers are teamwork ability, communicative competence, and learning capability. The article emphasizes that in the age of actively developing technologies, teachers’ moral qualities continue to be the key prerequisite for the implementation of the advanced principles of teaching and education. The model is aimed at the formation of the innovative teachers who are willing to implement an educational program and educate the Generation Z schoolchildren who are distinguished by creativity, conscientiousness, readiness to learn continuously, multitasking, and pragmatism.

Keywords: Professional competenciesinnovative teacherGeneration Z

Introduction

Due to an active migration of the population and the fact that humankind is entering the age of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the system of higher education should adapt to the imperatives of the time and answer the questions: what should a modern teacher be, what competencies should he or she obtain in order to address current challenges and meet expectations. A person who graduates from school and enters a new life will inevitably face a shortage of jobs in the near future due to the “digitalization of products, services, and the corresponding business environment” (Aleksankov, 2017, p. 54). Despite the prevailing situation in the labor market, the teaching profession is still in demand, which is why our research is highly relevant.

Currently, researchers pay great attention to the modeling of the personality of the modern teacher. Kulikova (2018) addresses the problems of adaptation of young teachers, the age structure of teaching staff at school, the assessment of professional competencies, professional development, and staff retention. Makarov (2017) analyzes two main aspects of the problem of modeling an innovative teacher’s personality. First, since Russia is a multinational and multicultural country, it is important for a teacher to find the common thing that is present in every religion, which forms the basis for their carriers to be united in creative social activities. One of the most important tasks in the process of modeling an innovative teacher’s personality is the acquisition of mercy. The second aspect highlighted in the article is the moral problem of using information technology. Another aspect of the development of information technologies is the gradual transformation of the information society into a society of total control. This implies a new actualization of professional ethics. A person should follow its image created in social networks. From the foregoing, it is required to model the personality of the teacher taking into account enthusiasm of the modern youth for information technology as well as with the general course of scientific and technological progress as a whole.

Problem Statement

Bicheva, Chelnokova, Yudakova, and Tsareva (2017) elaborate on the importance of self-analysis allowing teachers to see and evaluate themselves through the others’ eyes. It is noted that the professional development of a teacher depends largely on the informed choice of a profession and the finding of personal meaning in their professional activities. It highlights professional qualities that contribute to the formation of a teacher: anticipation (the ability to anticipate, predict the development of situations arising in the process of activities); willingness to change and overcome resistance; ability to search, make alternative choice, and implement innovative ideas; ability to navigate in conditions of uncertainty by assessing the level of risk tolerance.

Kyndt, Gijbels, Grosemans, and Donche (2016) examined 74 studies on the teachers’ informal acquisition of knowledge that improve the quality of their work and their professional qualifications. The article presents the results of a comparison of the aspects of obtaining informal knowledge about the professional development by beginner and more experienced teachers and concludes that the main difference between them is not in the form of their learning activities but rather in their attitude to learning, learning objectives, and how their pedagogical conditions affect them. Zee and Koomen (2016) integrate 40 years of research experience of authors to assess the performance of teachers. They studied 165 articles on topics of interest. The results showed that teaching performance demonstrates a positive link with academic adjustment of students, models of teacher behavior related to the quality of the learning process, and factors underlying the psychological well-being of teachers, including personal achievements, job satisfaction, and involvement. Negative links were found between teacher efficiency and burnout factors.

Kennedy (2016) notes that professional development programs are based on different theories of student learning and different theories of teacher training. Reviewers often classify programs according to design features, such as program duration, intensity, or the use of certain methods, such as coaches or online lessons, but these categories do not highlight the main goal or prerequisites of teacher-training programs. In this review, programs are classified according to their main theories of action, including the main idea that teachers need to learn, and a strategy to help teachers implement this idea within their own existing practices. Shahmohammadi (2015) presented the students’ points of view on the characteristics of a competent teacher of a foreign language. In his survey, the author identified five characteristics: knowledge of the subject, sociability, good conduct, management skills, and attractive appearance. According to the results of the survey, students put good conduct and knowledge of the subject in the first places. In other words, students are convinced that the teacher’s personality traits dominate the art of audience management. The work of the teacher is efficient if he/she is easy-going, active, friendly, and at the same time, serious and attentive to the students. Profound knowledge of the subject is also more important to students than the ability to control the audience. The remaining three characteristics are also important and efficient in the work of the teacher, but good conduct and knowledge of the subject are paramount.

Research Questions

Examination of academic literature allows us to state the insufficient coverage of the topic of our study. No one but the teachers educate the future generation, which will be involved in the most fast-growing sectors of the economy. The new generation of students is called Generation Z and is distinguished by the following features: “creativity, conscientiousness, readiness to learn continuously, audacity and agility of thinking, multitasking, pragmatism, and commitment to a healthy lifestyle. The weakness of the Generation Z representatives is the lack of motivation, inability to concentrate on one subject, animus toward reading (Vorobieva, 2018). The primary task of a modern teacher is to comply with the model of an innovative teacher who has all the competencies required to teach a new “Generation Z”. In this case, the teacher should rely on the strengths of the new generation, while eliminating the disadvantages.

In 2020, in Russia, according to estimates, IT specialists (programmers, experts in database or server equipment administration, web designers), engineers, marketing specialists, representatives of social professions (teachers, doctors), interpreters will be in demand. According to the State Employment Committee of Yakutia, in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), workers in the areas of mining, health care, construction, public administration, military security, and social security are most in demand.

Aleksankov (2017) writes that

today, the life cycle of technology becomes comparable to the term of apprenticeship, and there is an increasing threat of disappearance of professions chosen for training in. That is, both the student and the educational institution may be in a situation of the need to reconfigure the entire educational process to achieve a different end result in the middle of this process . (p. 57)

Yashina (2017) offers the following option for training the personnel in demand in economics: In present-day conditions, future employees must be “brought up” by their organization, starting from school. Khusnullova and Absalyamova (2016) note that changes in society associated with Industry 4.0 will be explosive in nature when working people have very little time to retrain and re-qualify. Most researchers agree that the Fourth Industrial Revolution “comes laden with a powerful destructive potential to change the personnel market and destroy the existing foundations” (Zaitsev, Zbritskaya, & Zaitseva, 2016, p. 3). Kochetkova and Kozlova (2017) stress that

according to Eurostat, the European Union will need 900,000 IT specialists and experts in Apps technology in 2020. An illustrative trend is the example of the UK, where a child’s acquaintance with programming begins at the age of 5, and 11-years-old schoolchildren learn at least two programming languages. The task of the school is not to make students become professionals in IT-technologies but to make them prepared to “survive” in the era of digital revolutions . (p. 447)

There is another point of view that “new industrial culture will not replace people with machines, on the contrary, it is the competencies and abilities of people that become the key resource determining the competitive advantage of companies” (Kondratyuk, 2018, p. 7).

Purpose of the Study

Purpose of the study is to model the personality of an innovative teacher, define competencies that meet current trends in the development of society, science, and the economy.

Research Methods

In the process of study, the following methods were used: theoretical (analysis; synthesis; generalization; modeling); diagnostic (questionnaire method; interviewing; method of challenges and tasks); empirical (study of the work experience of educational institutions, regulatory and educational documentation; lesson observation); experimental (summative and formative assessment, control experiment); mathematical statistics methods.

The M.K. Ammosov North-Eastern Federal University represented the experimental base of the study.

The study of the problem was carried out in three stages:

At the first stage, a theoretical analysis of the existing methodological approaches in the academic scientific literature, as well as theories and methods of academic research, was conducted; the problem, purpose, and research methods were identified; a plan of experimental research was prepared; a survey among students was conducted;

At the second stage, educational activities were arranged, aimed at developing the competencies required for future teachers;

At the third stage, a survey of students was conducted with the aim of ascertaining the development of students’ competencies identified as the key ones at the first stage of the experiment.

Findings

The introduction of this model involved the following stages of experimental work:

– Determination of the initial level of development of professional competencies among students enrolled in the courses of “Education” and “Philology” at the Faculty of Philology and the Institute of Modern Languages and International Studies at M.K. Ammosov North-Eastern Federal University (Yakutsk) using surveys, lesson observations, statistical processing of research results.

Conclusion

In this paper, the authors described a model of a modern teacher based on an analysis of relevant literature on the topic of study, questionnaires, surveys, conversations with students enrolled in “Pedagogical Education,” “Philology” courses at the Faculty of Philology and the Institute of Modern Languages and International Studies of the M.K. Ammosov North-Eastern Federal University (Yakutsk).

Following the work performed, we concluded that a modern teacher should possess digital literacy, emotional intelligence, communicative competence, strong learning capability, should be punctual and able to plan their activities rationally. They should possess teamwork ability, creative thinking, mobility, cultural competence, adaptability, initiative. At the same time, teachers are persons with high standards of integrity, able to be a role model and only secondarily – a professional in their field.

References

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