Teacher Professional And Personal Development: Integrative Approach

Abstract

The article actualizes the problem of understanding the professional and personal development of a teacher as a complex integrative process of changing professionally significant personal characteristics such as professional pedagogical competence; teacher's professional and pedagogical culture; a set of personal qualities that determine the nature of his pedagogical activity and interaction with participants in the educational process; pedagogical self-actualization and others. On the basis of a synergetic approach to understanding the pedagogical reality, a special task of the professional and pedagogical activity of a modern teacher, the article substantiated and defined the identification and solution of situations of uncertainty that arise in the process of implementing the educational process. The article substantiates and examines two levels of teacher's professional and personal development: functional and activity levels, which ensure design and implementation of the educational process in accordance with the requirements of the federal state educational standard (hereinafter FSES) and the creative problem level aimed at identifying and resolving situations of uncertainty, arising during the implementation of the educational process.

Keywords: Professional and personal teacher development; pedagogical competence, pedagogical culture; professional and pedagogical subjectivity; educational process

Introduction

Modern civilizational challenges, the specifics of lifelong pedagogical education, the issues of assessing and improving the quality of professional and pedagogical activities of a teacher are the most discussed ones in the psychological and pedagogical international and domestic science. This is evidenced by the results of the international research TALIS (2009, 2013), active discussion of the Professional Teacher Standard (hereinafter referred to as the Standard), the development of the national system of teacher growth in Russia and the standards of higher pedagogical education.

The standard is aimed at structuring and further developing the professional and pedagogical activities of a teacher. The functional map of the Standard identifies two basic general labor functions (RF Ministry of Labor and Social Protection, 2013): pedagogical activities in design and educational process and pedagogical activity in design and basic general educational programs.

New requirements for design and organization of the educational process and its individual components (goals, content, methods, and technologies, planned educational results) significantly complicate the teacher's pedagogical activity. These circumstances are the reason for the changes occurring in the process of teacher's professional development and explain the active interest of the scientific psychological and pedagogical community in the analysis and theoretical modelling of this process.

This study attempts to systematize various modern scientific approaches to determining the basic parameters (goal, content, components, methods and forms, results, and methods of measuring them) of the teacher professional development process in modern conditions.

The category “professional development of a teacher” describes the phenomenon of pedagogical reality, the essence of which is quantitative and qualitative changes in the professionally significant characteristics of a teacher that occur during the preparation and implementation of professional pedagogical activities aimed at the design and implementation of the educational process that ensures the achievement of the planned educational results by students.

Problem Statement

The variety of interpretations of the concept of “professional and pedagogical development of a teacher” generates contradictions in its understanding in pedagogical practice and creates problems in the development of programs, internships aimed at targeted professional and personal development of teachers in the process of obtaining higher education, professional retraining, and advanced training.

Advanced training programs, internships, professional retraining are aimed, on the one hand, at meeting the needs of the individual to improve knowledge, skills and abilities in any field of activity, on the other hand, take into account the requirements of society in training personnel with the necessary qualifications.

Research Questions

In the psychological and pedagogical literature, there are various approaches to understanding the professional development of teachers. Mitina (2005) understands professional development as a qualitative active transformation of his inner world by a teacher, an internal determination of the teacher's activity, which leads to a fundamentally new way of professional self-realization and life.

Representatives of the acmeological approach use the concept of “personal and professional development”, understanding it as the process of personality formation, which is focused on high professional achievements, mastering professionalism and is carried out in professional activities, professional interactions, and self-development (Slastenin et al., 2013).

Researchers in the field of personal approach (Ananiev B.G., Abulkhanova-Slavskaya K.A., Slobodchikov V.I., etc.), considering the process of professional development of a teacher, focus on two of his professional and personal characteristics: personality and subject of pedagogical activity, which independently determines the priorities of self-expression and self-development, making a choice in favor of professional growth.

The leading means of professional and personal development of a teacher are social and pedagogical design of professional development is considered as value-oriented, purposeful, motivated, conscious, planned, productive activity aimed at the professional development of a teacher at different stages of his professional development (Antonov 2015).

Within the framework of the activity approach, researchers (Ananiev B.G., Leont’ev A.N., Rubinstein S.L., etc.) consider professional activity as a decisive condition, means, basis for the teacher's professional development, achieving the highest level of pedagogical activity and a creative level of self-realization.

The analysis of psychological and pedagogical literature made it possible to single out two main factors influencing the process of the teacher's professional development:

• professional activity of a teacher;
• continuing professional education of a teacher (college, university, postgraduate pedagogical education, professional development, internships, self-education, and certification procedures).

In the system of Russian continuing professional education of a teacher, the goal is the pedagogical organization of the process of professional development of a teacher in accordance with regulatory requirements (the law “On Education in the Russian Federation”, Federal State Educational Standard, professional standards).

Purpose of the Study

Theoretically substantiate and present an integrative model of the process of professional and personal development of a teacher, taking into account the understanding of this process in the logic of competence-based, personal, subject-activity, synergetic approaches in modern pedagogical science.

Research Methods

The article uses theoretical analysis of studies of the process of professional and personal development of a teacher in the logic of competence-based, personal, subject-activity, synergetic approaches.

Findings

Since the beginning of the 90s of the last century, one of the professionally significant characteristics of a teacher in the Russian educational system and scientific research has been determined by his professional and pedagogical competence, as the basic professionally significant structure of a teacher, and the professional development of a teacher is interpreted as an expansion of professional competence necessary for the performance of professional pedagogical functions (Bim I.L., Minyar-Beloruchev R.K., Sakharova T.E., Solovtsova E.I.). The formation and development of professional competence are considered in the works of Adolf V.A., Brazhe T.G., Zeera E.F., Zimney I.A., Kuzmina N.V., Markova A.K., Bernhard G., Bloom V., Sterner R. et al.

Foreign researchers consider the development of teacher's professional competences presence of the abilities necessary to effectively perform a specific action in the subject area (White R., Raven J., Himes D., Weil P., Danver F., Mern F., etc.).

In modern pedagogical research, the professional competence of a teacher is defined as:

• manifestation of the unity of professional and general culture of a teacher (Brazhe T.G., Sokolovskaya E.A., etc.);
• a set of knowledge and skills that determine the effectiveness of labor in practice (Kachalova O.I., Kalnei V.A., Tonkonogaya E.P., etc.);
• personality quality, characterizing the teacher's ability to solve professional problems (Lomakina O.E., Avvo B.V., Kuzmina N.V., Mitina L.M., etc.);
• a complex of knowledge and professionally significant personal qualities (Markova A.K., Verbitsky A.A., Vershlovsky S.G., Kalyutkin Y.N., etc.);
• unity of theoretical and practical readiness for the implementation of professional activities (Adolph, V.A., Belova S.V., Vardanyan Y.V., Grishina N.P., Novikova T.V., Ogarev E.I., Slastenin V.A., Shiyanov E.N. and others).

Slastenin et al. (2013) consider the teacher's professional competence as a personal characteristic that expresses the unity of a specialist's theoretical and practical readiness to carry out pedagogical and methodological activities and characterizes his professionalism.

Currently, pedagogical science has not developed a unified understanding of the essence and constituent components (competencies) of the teacher's professional competence, which is the reason for modern scientific research in this field. In general, the professional development of a teacher in the logic of the competence approach can be defined as the process of developing professional and pedagogical competence as an integrative quality that determines the teacher's readiness and ability to achieve educational results in professional and pedagogical activity.

As the second integrative professionally significant characteristic of the teacher, which is the result and indicator of the level of his professional and personal development, the researchers single out the professional (professional and pedagogical) culture of the teacher. In recent years, a complex of fundamental studies of the phenomenon of professional and pedagogical culture of a teacher has been carried out (Bondarevskaya E.V., Gaisina G.I., Isaev I.F., Slastenin V.A.), the content and pedagogical conditions for the development of its most important components (Vilensky M., Komelina V.A., Levina M.M., Lifintseva N.I., Mudrik V.A.).

Professional and pedagogical culture is broadly considered to be an integrative quality of the personality of a professional teacher, a condition and prerequisite for effective pedagogical activity, a generalized indicator of the level of his culture and the task of continuous pedagogical education, the goal of professional self-improvement. At the same time, researchers distinguish different specifics and components of the teacher's professional pedagogical culture (teacher's professional culture). Isaev (1993) considers professional and pedagogical culture a complex education, which is a unity of pedagogical values, technology, and essential forces of a person, aimed at his creative self-realization in various types of pedagogical activity. He distinguishes the intellectual, personal and activity components of professional and pedagogical culture. Zaretskaya (2005) states that the professional culture of a teacher is a community of his personal and professional qualities, the specificity of his professional activity in general.

Sorokopud and Sirotina (2020) note that the “professional culture of a teacher” is one of the socially significant indicators of a person's education, reflecting the totality of spiritual and material values, the degree of creative self-realization and actualization.

Integration of ideas of culturological, personal and axiological approaches makes it possible to define the professional culture of a teacher as an indicator and result of professional development of a teacher, an integrative personal quality, the components of which are:

• a value-semantic sphere of the teacher's personality, which determines the humanitarian nature of his pedagogical activity, the intersubjective nature of the educational process he organizes, the value attitude towards himself, children, pedagogical activity, the world;
• a set of personal qualities that determine the nature of his pedagogical activity and interaction with participants in the educational process (philanthropy, benevolence, mercy, justice, honor, and dignity);
• cultural creativity, aimed at the implementation of the educational process as an interaction in the space of human culture, aimed at its development and further development.

Within the framework of an integrative approach, professional pedagogical competence and professionally significant personal qualities of a teacher are considered as two fundamentally different, but complementary characteristics of the process of professional development of a teacher.

The third professionally significant characteristic of teacher professional development is its subjectivity (subjective qualities). In pedagogical science, a subject-activity approach to the essence of the process of professional development of a teacher is indicated, within which the qualities of a teacher as a subject of activity (self-actualization, self-improvement, self-development, reflection, etc.) are considered as the basic professionally significant structure of a teacher, and “professional development teacher” is interpreted as the formation of a teacher as a subject of pedagogical activity.

The systemic quality of a personality, which determines its ability to transform existing abilities and properties consciously, independently, purposefully into socially significant and professionally important qualities, is defined as subjectivity. Many researchers (Volkova E.N., Gorshkova V.V., Krylova N.B., Slobodchikov V.I.) see the subjectivity of the teacher as the ability to self-determination and conscious regulation of their actions on the basis of an internally produced professional position, which is expressed in the desire to self-determination, self-regulation and self-improvement in professional activity. Thus, the developing subjectivity of the teacher is revealed only with the boundlessly proactive development of his professional and general abilities for internally motivated and actively conditioned action. If a teacher is creative, flexible, creatively changing himself (not circumstances and the environment; renewal of the environment is a derivative of the qualitative state of the subject), then this happens with the continuous actualization of his subjective activity, which is the basis for the mobilization of all his professional and spiritual potentials (Gorshkova et al., 2019).

The level of formation of the teacher's subjectivity is associated with the development of his subjective characteristics: activity, ability to set goals, freedom of choice and responsibility for it, awareness of one's own individuality, uniqueness, readiness for self-development.

Analysis of pedagogical research on the problem of considering the process of professional development of a teacher in the logic of the subject-activity approach allows us to determine the professional subjectivity of a teacher as an indicator and result of professional development, its integrative new formation, which determines the unique nature (creative individualization) of the implementation of professional activity at the level of self-determination and self-realization, and its components:

pedagogical self-determination as a conscious choice of the pedagogical activity, aimed at solving a specific educational situation and the way to achieve it;

pedagogical self-actualization (self-development) as a deliberate process aimed at identifying and realizing internal potential;

pedagogical self-reflection as a process of understanding and correcting one's pedagogical activity.

The professional subjectivity of a teacher is related to professional competence and professional culture on the principle of complementarity.

Thus, the professional development of a teacher in the logic of an integrative approach can be considered as a complex internally contradictory process of changing mutually complementary professionally significant characteristics of a teacher (professional pedagogical competence, professional pedagogical culture, professional pedagogical subjectivity), which determine the effectiveness, intersubjective character and the degree of individualization (uniqueness) of his professional and pedagogical activity.

The complex nonlinear probabilistic nature of the development of objects of modern pedagogical reality is investigated on the basis of a synergetic approach.

The study of issues related to synergetics is the subject of the works of Arshinova V.A., Knyazeva E.N., Kurdyumova S.P., Nicolis J., Prigogine I.R., Stengers I., Haken G., Shazaretyan A.G. and others; theory of self-organization of pedagogical reality – Boguslavsky M.V., Zorina L.Y., Malinetskiy G.G., Novikova L.I., Pugacheva E. G., Trubetskov D.I., Sheveleva S.S., Sharonin Y.V. and others; pedagogical synergetics – Andreeva V.I., Talanchuk N.M., Fedorova O.N. and others; synergetic approach, developed in the research of Budanova V.G., Korotaeva A.V., Tretyakov P.I., Chernyavsky D.S. and others.

Yakusheva (2012) considers the professional development of a teacher as “a self-determined personality as an open self-organizing system with emergent (suddenly emerging) properties” (p. 10). Nikitina (2006) argues that synergetics makes it possible to restore the connections with practical reality lost in the development of the pedagogical theory, to create a “communicative bridge” between different components of the educational system and its subjects on the basis of the development of dialogism, openness, interaction.

Synergetics deals with self-developing objects – man and society, the disclosure of which made it possible to develop not only the laws of values, but to define the methods of their content. The priority components are didactic aspects of adapting synergetic ideas in the content of education; their use in modeling and forecasting the development of educational systems; application in the management of an educational process. The synergetic approach in education focuses on the multidimensionality, multicomponent and polyphonicity (alternativeness and variability) of cognized educational processes. In the logic of the synergetic approach, the educational process is considered as a complex self-organizing system, the nonlinearity and variability of which is determined by the possible occurrence of bifurcation points (zones of instability, situations of uncertainty).

This leads to the fact that the professional activity of a teacher, aimed at designing and implementing the educational process, acquires two components:

• activities aimed at the design and implementation of the educational process in accordance with the legal requirements of educational and professional standards;
• activities aimed at identifying and solving situations of uncertainty that arise during the implementation of the educational process.

Conclusion

The analysis of scientific literature allows us to consider the problem of the professional and personal development of a teacher at the modern level of pedagogical science from the position of the following theoretical approaches:

• a competence-based approach, which determines the process of professional development of a teacher as the development of professional and pedagogical competence (readiness and ability to solve pedagogical problems of various sizes and degrees of complexity);
• a personal approach that defines the process of teacher's professional development as the development of professionally significant personal qualities of a teacher;
• subject-activity approach, which determines the process of professional development of a teacher as his development as a subject of professional and pedagogical activity;
• a synergistic approach that defines the process of professional development of a teacher as the development of the ability to identify a point of bifurcation (situations of uncertainty) in professional and pedagogical activities.

Based on the principle of complementarity and integration of these approaches, the professional and personal development of a teacher can be considered as a complex integrative process of changing the professionally significant characteristics of a teacher (professional and pedagogical competence, professional pedagogical culture; professional pedagogical subjectivity), ensuring the implementation of professional and pedagogical activities on two levels:

• design and implementation of the educational process in accordance with the requirements of the Federal State Educational Standard (functional and activity level)
• identification and resolution of situations of uncertainty (instability) arising during the implementation of the educational process (creative-problem level).

The structural model of the process of professional development of a teacher is presented in Table 1.

The results obtained allow us to draw the following conclusion: when developing educational programs for the training, retraining and advanced training of teachers, it is necessary to design the development of the entire range of professionally significant characteristics (professional and pedagogical competence, professional and pedagogical culture; professional and pedagogical subjectivity) and pay special attention to the achievement of creative problematic level of professional development of a teacher.

References

• Antonov, N. V. (2015). The specificity of the stages of social and pedagogical design of professional development of teachers in the constantly changing conditions of the general education system. Modern high technol., 12, 58–63.

• Gorshkova, V. V., Uskova, S. A., & Tonkonogaya, E. P. (2019). Subject professional activity of a teacher: methodological framework and theoretical design. European Proceedings of Social & Behavioral Sciences, 58, 2096-2107. DOI:

  Google Scholar

  Crossref

  European Proceedings

• Isaev, I. F. (1993). Theory and practice of the formation of the professional-pedagogical culture of a university teacher. Moscow Pedag. State University.

• Mitina, L. M. (2005). Professional development and Health of a Pedagogue: problems and solutions. Herald of Education in Russia, 7, 48-56.

• Nikitina, E. K. (2006). Management of the quality of education in the system of training a modern specialist. Sci. notes of the Moscow Human. Pedag. Inst., 4, 200–211.

• RF Ministry of Labor and Social Protection (2013). Teacher (pedagogical activity in preschool, primary general, basic general, secondary general education), educator, teacher. Professional standard of a teacher. Ministry of Labor and Social Protection of the Russian Federation. http: //profstandartpedagog.rf/profstandart-edagogue

• Slastenin, V. A., Isaev, I. F., & Shiyanov, E. N. (2013). Pedagogy Textbook for students of higher pedagogical educational institutions. Publ. Center “Academy”.

• Sorokopud, Y. V., & Sirotina, S. A. (2020). Professional culture of a teacher as a factor in improving the quality of education. The world of sci., culture, ed., 1, 187–189.

• TALIS. (2009). Teacher Evaluation: a Conceptual Framework and Examples of Country Practices. OECD.

• TALIS. (2013). Teachers for the 21st Century: Using Evaluation to Improve Teaching. OECD.

• Yakusheva, S. D. (2012). Synergetic approach in the development of professional skills of a modern teacher. In Personality, family, and society: issues of pedagogy and psychology (Part 2). SibAK.

• Zaretskaya, I. I. (2005). Professional culture of a teacher. Textbook. APKiPRO.