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O.V. Bondarenko, N.P. Ilyashevich, A.I. Martynenko

Irkutsk State Agrarian University named after A.A. Ezhevsky,

Russia

 

PHILOSOPHICAL FOUNDATIONS OF THE COMPETENCE APPROACH TO EDUCATION

 

Modern problems of education, exacerbated and clearly pronounced in the Russia by transition to a market economy and the innovative type of development require a new philosophy of education. At its core, the problem of education in Russia are not unique national issues and should be considered in the global context  of the transformation of the institutional foundations of education in the era of "society of knowledge" and the processes of globalization. Specifically, they are to move away from traditional models of translation of knowledge and patterns of education and suggest the implementation to the aggregate educational activities of innovations, that provide training as many people to the highly professional innovative activity and the meeting of needs of the personality in obtaining of appropriate education.

The basic principles of educational policy in Russia are defined in the Federal Law of the Russian Federation dated December 29, 2012 ¹ 273-FL "On Education in the Russian Federation" and the target indicators are disclosed in the National Doctrine of Education in the Russian Federation until 2025, the State program "Development of Education in Russia Federation for 2013-2020", and others. According to the documents the main purpose of modernization of the Russian education system is “to ensure availability of quality education that meets the requirements of an innovative socially-oriented development of the Russian Federation. Modernization of general and pre-school education as the Institute for Social Development; bringing the content and structure of vocational education in line with labor market needs; development of evaluation of education quality and relevance of education services " [1].

In relation to higher education there is an urgent demand of transition from information-objective to creative-developing model of education. This is reflected in the growing tension between the increasing demands for public intelligence and morality of human and his ability to prediction and responsible creation of the future. The result is that the problem of formation of nature-, socio-, and culture- and personality-shaped education system has become one of the most important national problems.

In accordance with that state educational policy of the Russian the higher education must perform two main functions. The first, traditional, related to the training of specialists, and the second, also associated with the preparation, but of a different kind, which can be called activity on the formation of human capital. Moreover, this second function of education is not secondary one. It is not less important, at least, so is declared by society and the state, than the first.

The transformation of the higher education system began with the development and implementation to operation of the federal state educational standards of higher professional education (HPE FSES) of the third generation on the basis of competence approach. Competence began to act "nucleus" of the new generation of FSES, shifting towards educational outcomes. Competence (from the Latin. Competere - match, fit) – is a personal ability of the specialist to deal effectively with a certain class of professional tasks.

Russian higher education has a wealth of experience in building of qualification characteristics (models) of experts submitted to the SES of the first and second generations. With relation to the "knowledge", "abilities", "skills", the competences in the integral form allow to include all their constructive content and ensure the organic continuity SES HPE of all generations. Thus, in contrast to typical SES HPE qualifying model, competence model of specialist, oriented on the sphere of professional activity is less rigidly tied to a specific object and the object of labor. This will provide greater mobility of graduates in the changing labor market.

The basic concept of "competence" includes not only the cognitive and operational- technological components, but also motivational, ethical, social and behavioral sides. "Competence is a complex, integrated concept, which characterizes a person's ability to realize its full potential (knowledge, skills, and personal qualities) for solving the professional and social problems in a certain area. Behavioral skills, as well as value orientation of human can be attributed to his personal qualities. As practice shows, the personal qualities of the person (the third component of competence), i.e. his singleness of purpose, hardworking, behavior ethics, moral values, responsible attitude to ones duties, have a decisive importance to the results of any activity" [2].

The essential characteristic of competence model is expressed in the emergence of two groups of competencies - common (generic) and specific (professional). General competences should ensure employability and the actual quality of teaching. Among them: the instrumental (general science), interpersonal (social-personal), systemic (including organizational-managerial) competences. To the special (professional) competence are ranked: basic general professional knowledge in chosen field of activity; professionally profiled (specialized) skills in accordance with a particular specialization or profiling of graduate [3].

Professional competences are kind of professional standards. Professional competences are accented to the validity of the criteria: important is that, what really leads to the best performance of the work.

However, professional knowledge, especially in applied sciences, outdates with astonishing rapidity, and become irrelevant, therefore, can only be one of the two pillars of the qualification. It should be added that in the modern (post-nonclassical) scientific knowledge various particular-scientific disciplines increasingly intertwind, and any discipline inevitably, going beyond its borders, needs to contact not only with other disciplines, but also with various forms of premise knowledge - philosophical and methodological. Today, the phenomenon - conditionally - "going beyond borders" of discipline as is the norm of scientific knowledge, the rule has two meanings - interdisciplinary and reference to philosophy. "Going beyond" is necessary for almost every branch of modern science, it carries the risk of blurring the subjective boundaries, especially as these borders are open, agile, transparent. This danger is becoming greater as the specific sectors of modern science themselves aspire to embrace a growing number of heterogeneous realities, becoming - paradoxically - multidisciplinary (or complex) in their objectivity. Given this situation, inherent in many branches of concrete scientific knowledge, the new philosophy of teaching is needed.

It appears that the approach to the teaching of professional disciplines should be oriented not to reproduce learned in the field of knowledge, but to develop capabilities to contextualize new information and give it an interpretation based on the basic principles of the discipline; logically and consistently present the acquisitioned knowledge; properly use of scientific methods and discipline techniques and etc., i.e., requires the formation of (common) system-activity-related competences and competences of self-organization and self-government.

It is also evident that modern man needs "flexible" skill - willingness to "lifelong" learning, which supports its competences up to date.

Considering the specificity of modern production - the production of the equally closely related with people and with nature, along with social competence as a totality of competences, knowledge and skills, required for effective action in society for graduate  the environmental competence is necessary. Environmental competence - it is not only theoretical knowledge and understanding of the interaction between society and the natural environment in terms of the optimal solution, but also motivated adaptive-saving behavior of people in relation to specific social and environmental opportunities. In other words, environmental competence is ideologically, methodologically, axiologically, economically and socially motivated solution of particular practical problems (within the paradigm of co-evolutionary interaction between nature and society) of modern production. It is an organic unity of professional and "human."

Obviously, the general and professional competences of the students should be complementary, but in practice occurs and probably will still occur be a certain dissonance due to currently low level of assimilation of general and (or) professional competences of many students, studying in the various fields of education.

In the modern Russian education, despite numerous attempts of its humanization and humanitarization the pragmatic tendencies still dominated, that contribute to the prevalence of technocratic thinking, there has been a separation of natural-technical and humanitarian. Awareness of the obvious truth that without a high level of general culture the modern graduate is not able to perform his professional duties at the level of the requirements of the XXI century has caused expansion of volume and diversification of the contents of training of staff (bachelors, masters and PhD students). Competence approach is designed to find them points of contact with the purpose of training of not just a "good" person and not just a first-class professional, but of personality – a professional, along with professional knowledge and skills mastered the culture of human relationships and the culture of nature management, which will allow him to act as innovatively and socially-nature responsibly.

In practical terms the main problem of implementation of competence paradigm of education is the search for ways of transition from the declaration of qualification competencies of students to implementation of integral ways of organizing of the educational process and creating real social-economic conditions for the elimination of the contradictions between supply and demand on the labor market and supply and demand in the educational services market.

Literature:

1.     Gosudarstvennaja programma «Razvitie obrazovanija v Rossijskoj Federacii na 2013-2020 gody»: ofic. tekst /M-vo obrazovanija Ros. Federacii. - URL: http: minobrnauki.rf.

2.     Proektirovanie osnovnyh obrazovatel'nyh programm vuza pri realizacii urovnevoj podgotovki kadrov na osnove federal'nyh gosudarstvennyh obrazovatel'nyh standartov /Pod red. S.V. Korshunova. - M.: MIPK MGTU im. N.Je. Baumana, 2010. – S. 152.

3.     Konceptual'nye osnovy proektirovanija FGOS VPO tret'ego pokolenija dlja mnogourovnevoj sistemy podgotovki pri innovacionnyh podhodah k standartizacii, realizacii i ocenke kachestva obrazovatel'nyh programm VPO [Tekst]. - M.: MO RF, 2006. – S. 14-16 s.