Pedagogical sciences / 2. Problems of training specialists

O.V. Kurtas

Communal establishment of Sumy regional institute of postgraduate pedagogical education, Ukraine

INFORMATION CULTURE AS AN ESSENTIAL ELEMENT OF THE FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEACHER'S PROFESSIOGRAM

A characteristic feature of the development of modern society is an escalating value of information which becomes a strategic resource. Information management has become the main content practically of any kind of activity, including in education. There is an evolution of a pedagogical paradigm when the purpose is set before an education system - to train the experts of double competence, on the one hand, who are rigidly connected with the profession, that differs from informatics, and on the other - capable not only to use new information technologies, but also to adapt them for performance of specialized tasks. As a result the need of national education in teaching personnel with high information culture became escalated.

Informational culture gains special relevance for modern teaching staff, because today professionally significant qualities of the teacher are based not only on the criteria of volume and completeness of knowledge of a concrete subject, but rather on the ability to self-replenish them, to put and solve professional educational and pedagogical problems, to develop selection criteria of the most effective of them.

The problems of formation of professional competences of the expert are closely connected with questions of information culture of the personality. In modern Russian pedagogics competence began to be understood as a personal component of professionalism, as result and criterion of quality of preparation of the expert, practical expression of modernization of the content of education, and also as basic components of pedagogical culture of the teacher [1]. It should be noted the concept of E.N. Solovova [2], according to which professional competences of the teacher of a foreign language are subdivided into the following types:

- objective (knowledge in the field of the taught subject);

- philological (knowledge of fundamentals of philology);

- methodical (knowledge of teaching methods);

- administrative (abilities in planning and organizing pedagogical activity);

- scientific (abilities in the sphere of innovative and creative activity);

- social (ability to solve professional problems in group and collective);

- psychology-pedagogical (knowledge in the field of psychology and pedagogics on the organization of informative processes of the personality taking into account its specific features);

- informationally-communicative (ability to work in the sphere of IC technologies).

The formation of information culture of the foreign language teacher in many respects is defined by properties and functions of information, features of its perception, understanding, judgment, transfer and creation, allocation of reference points, establishment of interrelations; association of separate elements; definition of a context of the semantic statement; opportunity independently to explain the discussed facts and dependences.

Exactly the informationally-communicative competence understood as ability of the teacher to solve the professional problems with use of information and communication technologies becomes one of the important elements of its professional competence and information culture today.

Levels of the formation of information culture of the personality can include the following criteria:

I. Information literacy: obtaining information (definition, formulation of requirement and finding of information); evaluation of information (selection, extraction and synthesis of information); use of information (application, preparation and transferring of new information products).

II. Information competence: an idea of information society and information resources; knowledge of the bases of search and information processing from traditional sources and by means of modern information technologies, the ability to use them in daily activity; personal skills and abilities to work with information.

III. Information competence: high level of information preparation; knowledge of information technologies and ability to use them in professional activity; individual experience and the features of the personality directed on its self-improvement, creativity, professional growth with use of traditional and modern information technologies.

IV. Information culture: one of basic elements of the general culture of the person; information outlook, awareness of need of constant information self-improvement; possession of intellectual types of information knowledge and abilities:

- problem definition;

- search, analysis, critical evaluation of information;

- independent creation of new information products;

- modeling of processes and situations;

- forecasting of consequences of the made decisions;

- information support of specific professional tasks and processes.

The main organizational forms of the development of information culture of the teacher can be traditional and innovative directions.

Traditional forms include classes on theory and technique of teaching the subject, the implementation of state programs, the analysis and introspection of personal activity, etc. Innovative forms include, first of all, teaching integrative courses and implementation of author's and variable programs, and also use of modern pedagogical technologies, including electronic.

Certainly, information culture is a component of the overall culture of the personality. In this case its allocation in an independent directory is quite justified, because allows to specify value and a place of a phenomenon of information culture in structure of professional competence of the teacher taking into account modern requirements.

By N. I. Gendina's definition, information culture reflects extent of possession of the expert of bases of knowledge in the field of methods and technology of work with information, and also experience, skills of performance of information procedures.

On the practical level it means: information component of professional competence of the foreign language teacher has to include knowledge of the organization of information processes, possession of methods of search, collecting, processing, the analysis and synthesis of information, ability to apply the technical means used in information process, namely:

- knowledge of bases of the scientific information activities (SIA);

- knowledge of bases of the organization of educational process in the environment of information and communication technologies;

- knowledge of modern software and opportunities of their use for the solution of specific objectives when training in a foreign language;

- ability to use traditional and network resources (The Internet, the Runet, etc.) for search and selection of pertinence information;

- ability to own the principles and methods of analytic-synthetic information processing;

- knowledge and ability of use of audiovisual and interactive tutorials;

- personal properties - readiness, skills and abilities to work with information.

Unfortunately, as practice shows, teachers are not fully proficient with this knowledge, receptions and abilities.

For example, to search for information, why the foreign search engines are not used, though on request for a work technique with the professional focused texts Yahoo.com gives out documents almost three times more, than Yandex?

Thus, we come to a conclusion that only the teacher owning information and communication competence can orient students in the Internet - space to ensure that they are not drowned in the abundance of information of the different contents and different quality, and most productively use it for satisfaction of educational and professional interests and requirements [3].

In scientific literature there are many descriptions of how the incorrect, illiterately constructed work of students with Internet resources promoted formation at them not only false stereotypes and generalizations about culture of the country of the learned language, but even racism and xenophobia. For this reason at the present stage of training in foreign languages, when the latest Internet technologies are used, there is an urgent need in acquaintance with new educational Internet resources.

In the didactic plan the Internet includes, at least, two main components: forms of telecommunication and information resources. E-mail, a chat, a forum, ICQ, video, web conferences, Facebook, etc. belong to the most widespread forms of telecommunication. Originally they were created for real communication between people who are at distance from each other and only then began to be used in the educational purposes in training in a foreign language. Many of these forms of Internet communication aren't by hearsay familiar to most of students and teachers. The Internet with use of various programs, so-called Internet messengers: ICQ, QIP, Windows-messenger, Skype – (as in writing, and in the mode of voice and video calls); chats and forums and also especially popular now social networks.

Literature

1. Bezukladnikov K. E. Evaluation of professional competence of future foreign language teacher in pedagogical higher education institution / K. E. Bezukladnikov, E. E. Karpushina//Foreign languages at school. – 2009. – No. 6. – Page 87-92.

2. Solovova E.N. Methodical training and retraining of the foreign language teacher: the integrative and reflexive approach [monograph]. - M.: GLOSS PRESS, 2004. - 336 p.

3. 3. Feld O. L. To a question of professional and methodical training of the foreign language teacher in pedagogical higher education institution / O. L. Feld//the TGPU Bulletin. Release 8 (86). – Page 28-31.