Personalization Of Additional Professional Education Of Teaching Staff: Search Of Practical Solutions

Abstract

The problem of personalization of additional professional education for teaching staff is becoming urgent in connection with the socio-cultural changes in the way of life, the tasks set by the state for the Russian education system. To solve this problem, it is necessary to strengthen subjectivity and reflexivity of teaching staff, to update their professional and personal potential, which means that feedback from teaching staff is needed to test the hypotheses about possible practical steps to achieve the desired effect. Conducting an online survey to identify the attitude of teaching staff to working out and implementation of an individual educational route of a teacher made it possible to clarify important points of the teacher's subject inclusion in solving problems of personalizing additional professional education. That means to determine the importance of this action for a teacher and the need to help with its implementation, learn about experience, clarify personal meanings, highlight benefits and risks, specify conditions that contribute to actualization of internal motivation, fix the most attractive forms of educational interaction. In general, the survey showed that an individual educational route can become an effective technological means of personalizing additional professional education of teachers when making certain efforts and implementing identified conditions.

Keywords: Personalization, additional professional education, teaching employee, individual educational route

Introduction

Teaching staff occupy a special place in the socio-cultural life of any state. The level of education of the population largely depends on their understanding of education goals and objectives, knowledge of ways to include younger generation in educational process. Being carriers of certain ideas and ways of their implementation in practice, teachers are able to have a significant impact on the ongoing transformation processes, accelerating or slowing them. That is why, in conditions of socio-economic challenges, individual and personal requirements for a teacher increase (Stepanova, 2020).

The leading trends of modern education are individualization, personalization of educational process (Kargina, 2015; Karpenko et al., 2019; Kovaleva, 2017; Sazonov, 2020). Attention to these trends is explained by a change in people’s socio-cultural way of life, manifested in normative, value and semantic spheres, which cause changes in education. Progressive possibilities of digital technologies only increase attention to the designated aspects of changes in education. Practice of individualization of education in the context of e-learning is becoming a separate subject of study (Vainshtein et al., 2019).

Individualization as a principle of education assumes that admission of human differences determines the need to grant the right to achieve different goals / results. This means that there is a need to create conditions for building an individual educational route on which personally significant educational activities determined by individual preferences and choices are carried out. Personalization as a principle implies freedom to choose an educational route, when a student himself determines his intentions to participate in educational activities, satisfying the needs of an individual to be himself, using the right to freedom of following his interests, views, values, beliefs, and sense. Spread of ideas of individualization, personalization of education largely depends on how much teaching staff will be imbued with them, will be able to see their effectiveness. To do this they have to immerse in appropriate conditions of the process of additional professional education, aimed at operational improvement of their professional skills, professional development in accordance with changing socio-cultural order for education (Ilyina et al., 2020).

At the same time, the personalization of additional professional education of teaching staff involves strengthening of their subjectivity (Sunnatova, 2020), reflexivity (Kozhevnikova, 2017). After all personalization presupposes independence and internal activity in educational activities, a conscious approach to building an educational trajectory, choosing the tasks of professional development for the current period and ways to solve them, as well as recognizing one's personal and professional uniqueness and awareness of self-worth. Personalization requires formation of educational request from teaching staff, actualization of professional and personal potential (Suvorova et al., 2019).

However, it should be noted that most often such a request is not consciously presented, although it may exist unconsciously. Understanding of this hypothetical statement was carried out on a discussion platform "An individual educational program of a teacher and an individual educational route: in search of personal meaning" within the conference "Modern didactics and quality of education" (Krasnoyarsk, March 2021).

During the discussion of the method for solving the problem of cultivating subjectivity of teaching staff, it became clear that specially organized efforts are required to contribute to actualization of professional and personal potential of teaching staff:

• presentation of prospects, assessment of current state of personal and professional development from the perspective of the Future;
• prioritizing success and achievements;
• assistance in transition from reactive behaviour to active, proactive one;
• assistance in mastering self-skills in combination with hard-skills and soft-skills.
• The following conditions are required:
• “no sanctions” for discovered competence deficiencies;
• reflective workshops and workshops to master methods of self-actualization;
• involvement of teachers in group decision-making;
• providing them with advice to reputable Others.

However, for implementation of organizational and practical actions, clarifications based on feedback from teachers are required.

Problem Statement

Search for productive solutions to personalize additional professional education of a teacher is an urgent problem that requires study. Without adequate feedback from teaching staff, it is impossible to organize productive work, which will be accepted by them as expedient, useful, and prospective. Therefore, it was essential to conduct a survey that made it possible to reveal teachers’ opinion on various aspects of preparation and implementation of an individual educational route, which is considered as a technological means of personalizing additional professional education.

Research Questions

To solve the stated problem, the following research questions should be answered:

• Is an individual educational route capable of becoming a technological means of actualizing the professional and personal potential of teaching staff?
• What are the personal meanings of teachers in preparation of individual educational routes and the conditions for their implementation?
• What points should be considered when involving teachers in the process of drawing up and implementing individual educational routes?

Purpose of the Study

The purpose of the research is to identify the attitude of teaching staff to preparation and implementation of teacher's individual educational route.

Research Methods

To identify the attitude of teaching staff to preparation and implementation of individual educational route of a teacher, method of hypothesis and survey method were used. The method of hypothesizing made it possible to determine main points requiring feedback, as well as to determine the positions regarding which opinions were expressed, the choice of survey participants was carried out. To conduct the survey, a questionnaire has been developed, which is offered to respondents in a Google Form.

Findings

The online survey involved 3001 teachers of basic education system institutions of the Krasnoyarsk Territory of different categories with different experience in teaching. The survey showed that 77% of teaching staff are aware of importance of drawing up individual educational routes and need "assistants" in their development ( 78%). At the same time, more than half of the surveyed respondents have no experience in developing individual educational routes ( 57%).

Special attention in the survey was paid to identifying personal meanings that teachers see in preparation and implementation of individual educational routes. The semantic priority belongs to the opportunity to eliminate their professional deficiencies ( 79%) and the opportunity to improve the quality of their professional activities after the implementation of individual educational routes ( 76%). Setting professionally significant goals and identifying stages for achieving them makes sense for about 69% of respondents.

A cumulative view of the designated priority positions allows us to say that, on the one hand, teachers are aware of the existence of their professional deficiencies, on the other hand, they are interested in improving the quality of their own professional activities, and on the third hand, they understand the importance of purposeful work in the designated areas. It important to pay attention to the fact that teaching staff are guided to a large extent by internal guidelines when thinking about ways to improve their professional performance. This is proved by the following facts: only 12% of respondents indicate as a personal meaning when developing an individual educational route, the need to “report to the management”; only 11% believe that “it is better to agree on your own than when you are forced to”.

Only about 34% of teachers identified as a significant semantic position “to live on oneself an experience similar to that of a student when developing an individual educational route. It can be assumed that for some of the respondents, the practice of developing individual educational routes for students is not new. This point requires further clarification. In our opinion, special attention should be paid to discussion of advantages of development and implementation of an individual educational route that teachers see. Stylistic and logical processing of the respondents' answers makes it possible to highlight the following preferences:

• professional / personal / career growth, professional development;
• the ability to eliminate professional deficits by comprehending their own practice;
• self-education, self-development;
• trying new things and gaining experience;
• planning of activities and the possibility of choice;
• discipline yourself;
• moving with the times;
• taking into account an individual request for advanced training, professional skills;
• self-control / self-esteem;
• tracking your own achievements.

At the same time, the respondents indicate a wide range of risks that they see for themselves when introducing the practice of drawing up and implementing individual educational routes. Here are the most possible risks highlighted by the respondents when solving the problem of drawing up individual educational routes on a regional scale: lack of experience; unnecessary reporting; lack of time; fear of making a mistake and not achieving intended result; fear of not realizing an individual educational route; large amount of work; lack of a clear understanding of the structure of an individual educational route; lack of meaning; additional financial costs; labor intensity; the formality of drawing up an individual educational route; unwillingness to change the usual life; lack of assistants; laziness; administration pressure; low level of competence. The analysis of identified advantages and risks allows us to speak about the presence of a significant degree of subjectivity of teaching staff on the one hand, and the need to maintain and strengthen it on the other hand. At the same time, it is extremely important to avoid formalization in implementation of organizational and methodological work on an individual educational route for a teacher in regional and municipal practice. This is confirmed by processing of data to determine the conditions that contribute to actualization of internal motivation in development and implementation of individual educational routes:

• desire to be successful ( 68%);
• presentation of significance of new knowledge (subject, methodological, psychological and pedagogical) ( 67%);
• designation of professional prospects ( 66%);
• help in focusing the view on upcoming professional future ( 61%);
• diagnostics and presentation of his professional deficiencies to the teacher ( 59%);
• help from an authoritative person ( 58%);
• problematization and reflection organized from outside for a teacher ( 42%);
• absence of sanctions from the management upon detection of professional deficiencies, for recognition of some degree of incompetence ( 38%).

One more point, which we managed to record with the help of the conducted online survey, is associated with identification of attractive options for forms of educational interaction that are desirable for inclusion in an individual educational route. The largest number of respondents noted master classes as a particularly attractive form ( 68%). The rest of the forms of educational interaction in terms of attractiveness were distributed as follows: workshops ( 52%); self-education ( 43%); continuing education programs ( 42%); individual consultations and supervision ( 42%); seminars on selected topics ( 38%); creative workshops ( 36%); trainings ( 29%).

The data obtained require paying attention to the proposed forms of educational interaction with teachers in regional system of additional professional education, to changes in the ways of implementing the educational process within the framework of advanced training programs.

Conclusion

In general, the analysis of the data of online survey allows us to highlight necessary efforts, organizational and pedagogical conditions, creation of which in the system of additional vocational education can significantly contribute to personalization of professional development of teaching staff, increasing their professional skills, cultivating their subjectivity and reflexivity, updating professional and personal potential. Implementation of identified organizational and pedagogical conditions will contribute to the fact that an individual educational route can become an effective technological means of personalizing additional professional education, which is recognized and accepted by teaching staff as a productive and promising tool. Experimental testing of effectiveness of the found options for practical solutions is already being carried out at the Center for Continuous Professional Development of Teachers, created on the basis of the Krasnoyarsk Regional Institute for Advanced Training of Teaching Staff. At the same time, an active role in providing assistance and support to teachers is assigned to municipal methodological services and educational organizations. Cooperation at different levels allows to coordinate efforts and act accompanying and supporting teachers, which is the key to effectiveness of the actions taken.

References

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