Strategic Guidelines For Advanced Training Of Teachers: Advance Effects

Abstract

The article examines a new subject matter for Russian educational practice – strategic guidelines for the development of regional systems for advanced training of teachers. Special attention in the article is paid to identifying the conditions for the implementation of strategies for the development of regional systems for advanced training of teaching personnel, which characterize modern Russian society. It is proposed to determine the efficiency of regional systems for advanced training of pedagogical personnel through a set of criteria and indicators, formulated by the authors, of the effectiveness of collaboration between regional institutes for advanced training and training services, which support and accompany teachers in their personal and professional formation and development. The following approaches are considered as the methodology underlying the study of issues related to the description of strategic guidelines: competency-based approach, well developed in Russian pedagogy; praxeological approach, less popular, but most adequately corresponding to the modern theory of practice centrism; the advance approach focused on the characteristics of adult training.

Keywords: Advanced training system, education development strategies, methodological equipment of the system for advanced training, regional system for advanced training of teachers, strategic guidelines

Introduction

The relevance of addressing the substantiation of the problem associated with strategic guidelines and conditions for the development of regional systems for advanced teacher training is determined primarily by the need for a clear picture of the social demand for advanced training, taking into account the features and requirements of a regional system, as well as by the need for harmonization of the positions of customers and consumers of advanced training regarding the model, the most adequate modern socio-educational situation in a region and modern requirements for the activity of teachers, the goals of advanced training of all participants in this process (leaders, teachers, specialists, public representatives, etc.) (Maron & Koroleva, 2020).

The system for advanced training of pedagogical personnel in Russia has a long history and, as a rule, has been implemented in a traditional way established in Soviet times. But, at the same time, large educational centers and institutes of advanced training are focused on modern innovative technological and social practices (Trifonova, 2017).

In this context, predictive studies, concerning the strategic guidelines for the development of existing regional systems for advanced teacher training and the identification of the conditions for their effective implementation become relevant (Zeer et al., 2019).

The authors of the article do not claim it to be an exhaustive presentation of strategic guidelines; the work considers the most achievable strategic directions dictated by today’s trends in the modernization of Russian education.

Problem Statement

The principal idea of this article is that strategic guidelines are the fundamental basis (priorities) in the development of pedagogical systems, including systems for advanced training of personnel. In this sense, the strategic guidelines for the development of regional systems for advanced training of teaching personnel are considered as an integral and multidimensional phenomenon, which implies the identification of priorities for the activities of advanced training and methodological services of a region (Blinov et al., 2019).

In the article, an attempt has been made to analyze the strategic guidelines of publicly available systems for advanced training.

We consider the following aspects as the leading conditions for the implementation of a strategy:

• methodological equipment of a system;
• its personnel, organizational and technological support;
• information and diagnostic support;
• availability of tools for assessing productivity and efficiency.

Research Questions

In the article, the authors raised the following questions:

Purpose of the Study

The purpose of the study is to uncover the essential features of the formation, functioning, and development of the system for advanced training of teaching personnel, focused on the dynamics of socio-cultural changes in society, taking into account the trends of uncertainty and plurality of models, as well as evolutionary ideas concerning changes in the essence of the development of pedagogical education, manifested in the interaction of formal, informal, and non-formal types of education.

Research Methods

The authors put forward competence-based, praxeological, and andragogical approaches as the methodology underlying the research.

The competence-based approach is the methodological basis of modern education in Russia, and its goal is to increase the level of competitiveness of specialists in the world labor market, to improve the quality of training and the qualifications of teaching personnel through the formation of a high level of professional competence. Competence is manifested in the ability to effectively and efficiently solve the tasks assigned to the teacher on the basis of the knowledge, skills, and abilities the teacher has formed (Sergeeva et al., 2019).

The introduction of the praxeological methodology in pedagogy is associated with the actualization of the issues of rational and productive pedagogical activity in the conditions of the increasing complexity of pedagogical work and the inevitability of an increase in the degree of its meaning.

The praxeological approach is the basis of the theory and practice of the effective organization of professional and personally significant human activities, it best ensures the implementation of the modern educational paradigm focused not on mastering a certain amount of knowledge, but on mastering a set of methods of actions leading to the expected result of the activity (Monakhova & Fedotova, 2017).

The modern practice of organizing professional training, retraining, and advanced training of teachers requires special andragogical knowledge, which is focused on understanding the specifics of the selection of training content, on the professional organization of rehabilitation, adaptation, and information work with adult students.

The basic positions of the symbiosis of the listed approaches in the system of advanced training are the orientation of the meaning of additional education to the development of teachers' ability to independently solve professional problems in various fields through the use of the formed experience of solving cognitive, communicative, organizational, methodological, research, management, and other tasks, provided by the course content (Belyakova & Zakharova, 2020).

Findings

The leading features of an advanced training strategy and its guidelines are:

• the uncovering of the conceptual apparatus of the system under consideration;
• the analysis and identification of urgent problems requiring solutions;
• ideas to support and accompany the professional growth of a teacher;
• the implementation of the leading principles – continuity, accessibility, advancement, digitalization, etc.

There are different points of view on the fundamental issue of the essence of lifelong learning: considering it from the standpoint of personal effects, professional development, institutional support, and as a remediation of educational deficits.

Let us characterize the strategic guidelines for the development of regional systems for advanced training of teaching personnel. First of all, this is an orientation towards professional experience, the specifics of the requests and needs of personnel, their deficiencies in professional and personal development.

The traditional teaching model, when “a teacher, who is being trained, is viewed as a programmable element of the educational system, lacking freedom of choice, real opportunities for self-realization” (Vershlovsky, 2008, p. 20), does not meet the needs of the present day. At the same time, a similar opinion was expressed by Khutorskaya and Khutorskoy (2007): he said that there is a need for a new type of teacher, “capable of adapting to changes in the surrounding life, and not obeying the circumstances of reality” (p. 297).

It is clear that the updated image of a teacher appeals to a new model of advanced training, which, according to Vershlovsky (2008), is aimed at “becoming a way of life that contributes to the development of professional competence and general culture of a specialist throughout their life” (p. 25). Thus, the new model of advanced teacher training determines a new quality and the innovative nature of pedagogical activity, reflecting technological and social changes in modern society.

Yakushkina (2020) proposes to focus on the following classification of categories of teaching personnel, when building a personalized learning path, highlighting the categories of educators who come to advanced training or retraining courses.

The first category includes teachers who consider advanced training exclusively from a pragmatic standpoint – as a way to obtain an appropriate document, which they need exclusively for certification.

The second one includes persons who do not have pedagogical education, but who wish to work in the field of education, and without an appropriate document, they are not entitled to fill positions in educational organizations. Apart from this, they are obviously motivated to master the theory and practice of the pedagogical craft.

The next category of trainees of the system for advanced training of pedagogical personnel are professional working teachers, who have identified specific professionally-oriented or personal deficiencies, which are eliminated in the process of training in specialized courses.

In the considered classification, particular importance is attached to the teachers who are motivated to their own continuous and advanced development of professional competencies and personal qualities.

The accessibility strategy (Sherayzina et al., 2020) emphasizes the development of network partnerships between closely located organizations, the importance of non-governmental associations offering alternative educational programs, and this is a new reality in the field of education from the standpoint of wide access to educational services. An example when partnerships are productively developing outside the territorial framework is the State Autonomous Educational Institution of Additional Professional Education “Leningrad Regional Institute of Education Development” (LOIRO). LOIRO cooperates with Tomsk Regional Institute of Advanced Training, Tatarstan Institute of Education Development, Minsk City Institute for the Development of Education and Minsk Regional Institute of Education Development (Belarus), the Vertikal Ltd Education Center (Finland), etc.

The strategy of openness is approached differently, and first of all, it is the openness to the future (in time). In this regard, it concerns advance effects of education. The second form of openness is spatial-network openness when the complementarity problem is realized. It can be noted that the analysis of experience demonstrates that full and high-quality implementation of requests is possible due to corporate interaction.

The creation of a corporate network for the development of teaching personnel, taking into account the potential of innovative educational organizations of the region, is a strategic direction of advanced training.

The study and a survey of teachers showed that the creation of such a network is dictated by:

• the presence of “empty spaces” in teachers’ lifelong learning;
• the insufficient use of the potential of innovative educational organizations of a region;
• the lack of teacher support in the periods between courses;
• a low level of support for in-company learning;
• the lack of methods for studying teacher deficits.

The use of advanced training models, various in organization and content, is an actual trend and can be considered as an innovative strategy for postgraduate education of teachers.

It concerns cluster, distributed, network, cascade training models, and the model of dual education. The implementation of these models, as experience shows, is possible on the basis of new approaches to the use of the scientific and pedagogical potential of the personnel of a region, which is associated with the actualization of the activities of the reserve of heads of educational organizations (for the school of the future), the implementation of the possibilities of teaching personnel with academic degrees, the transmission of the experience of the winners of pedagogical competitions, the identification of and support for growth points of teachers.

All this will help stimulate teachers’ career growth, contribute to the development of the general cultural space of a territory, the formation of advanced competencies of teachers and, ultimately, a new quality of education, upbringing, socialization of children, and will also help stimulate the transition to distance learning, including in difficult conditions of a pandemic as well.

We consider the digitalization of education as the next strategic guideline for the development of advanced teacher training systems.

The implementation of digital technologies in advanced training of teaching personnel demonstrates the following effects:

• the teacher's understanding of the worldview meaning of education digitalization, considering education digitalization as a necessary resource for modernizing the integral system and increasing its effectiveness both for the teacher and for the student and their parents;
• the presence of digital literacy and information culture, allowing the teacher to function successfully in the digital educational space and implement information technologies of education in their professional practice;
• the possession of an arsenal of new educational platforms for distance learning that significantly expand the range of educational and upbringing tools of pedagogical impact on the student and allow the teacher to manage educational and independent activities remotely;
• the development of competence in the use of interactive teaching aids, which allows teachers to meet modern requirements for them and to motivate students to learn actively.

There is no reason to deny that information equipment is an integral part of the educational process and we also consider it as a strategic guideline for the development of both the general system for advanced training of teaching personnel and its regional representatives.

A characteristic feature of scientists’ pedagogical views should be a focus on being ahead. In this context, there is a valuable approach to teacher training, both at the university and post-university stages of professional activity, that determines the position of the teacher as an eternal student, who must be able to carry out their own professional activity in accordance with the requirements of the time, continuously improve their professional level, be willing to make changes on their own and also respond quickly and efficiently to changes and new challenges (Braje et al., 2009).

The advance approach is extremely important from both practical and predictive points of view since personal creative characteristics come to the fore. The following features are considered as the leading ones of a specialist of the future, including a teacher: the ability to self-learning, self-education, the holistic understanding of the world picture; fundamental meta-knowledge as a condition for solving complex pedagogical problems in professional activity (Abramova & Shishmolina, 2020).

The main principles of the implementation of the advance strategy in a system of advanced training of teaching personnel are:

• the orientation towards personal self-determination and self-realization, which means mastering a wide range of skills in accordance with the diverse needs of teachers;
• the selectivity of ways of implementing the content of postgraduate education – this forms an individual program and an individual request of a course participant;
• the orientation of teachers’ preferences in education and self-education to improve their quality of life, which ensures the development of professional, communicative, and general cultural competencies;
• training for the future, which allows realizing the prognostic goal – the elimination of functional illiteracy of teachers in the period when new challenges emerge, in particular in the conditions of the widespread use of digital technologies;
• the formation of the initial creative potential of an individual, which makes it possible to successfully get out of crisis non-standard situations and provide new opportunities for teachers’ life advancement (Brazhe et al., 2009).

Thus, the strategy of advanced education of teachers, firstly, focuses on the development of the competence potential of a teacher, not only as a specialist, but also as a person who navigates in a variety of the changing conditions of work, culture, information, and secondly, it is a reaction to modernization and changing requirements to the teaching profession in connection with new professional standards. This is especially relevant in the face of unpredictability in the 21st century of dangerous manifestations of the pandemic and leaving for distance learning.

It concerns the formation of the teacher's meta-competence considered as the realization of their intellectual and developmental potential. In these conditions, the role of the institutes of educational development and advanced training of teaching personnel is changing. Such institutes acquire the fundamental function of advanced education, support, and accompaniment for the professional and personal development of teachers, the coordination of the activities of scientific and methodological services and information services of a region. The proposed strategic guidelines disclosed in this article can serve as the basis for the activities of advanced training institutes and centers for the creative support of teachers (Gyurova, 2020).

Conclusion

The indicators for the analysis and assessment of the strategic guidelines are the following:

• the compliance of the basic regulations and concepts underlying a system for advanced training of teachers with social demand for the provision and support of a high-quality modern educational process;
• reliance on general methodological principles of organizing educational activities: advancing, personalization, digitalization, networking, professional growth of a teacher;
• awareness that the regional system of professional development of teachers is a multifactorial, multifunctional phenomenon with the strengthening of the functions of interaction between formal, informal, and non-formal types of education;
• the consideration of advanced teacher training as a system of professional and personal development of a specialist, based on the implementation of self-learning and self-development, taking into account the reliance on the initial level of mastering the profession and the experience of educational and cognitive activities in lifelong learning;
• technological equipment as the realization of the potential of digital technologies.

Along with the methodological equipment, the technological one serves as a strategy for the advanced development of regional systems for advanced training of pedagogical personnel (the organization of modular training, the availability of diagnostic methods for accompanying a teacher, the design of possible individual educational paths focused on the development of pedagogical skills, the use of modern platforms for the implementation of educational programs remotely and etc.).

In the general strategy for the development of education the teacher of the future, responsive to changes in society, mobile, able to participate in innovative activities, able to think critically and navigate in non-standard situations, motivated to continuous personal and professional growth, is in demand, as never before (Lubkov, 2020). In this context, the relevance of the development of fundamentally new models of advanced teacher training is growing. The identified strategic guidelines do not exhaust all areas of the development of regional systems for advanced training of teachers, they are the starting point in the process of their further refinement and expansion of the scope of applicability.

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