Influence Of Socio-Cultural Conditions On Modernization Of Communicative Models In Teacher Education

Abstract

The growing need for communicatively competent specialists is determined by the complex socio-cultural situation in connection with the growing tension in communication processes at the interethnic, interstate, interpersonal and other communicative levels. Particular attention is required to the nature of communicative technologies in higher education and the training of teachers. The report examines the details of modern socio-cultural conditions that affect the major change in education, especially in pedagogical communication, such as free access to educational information, transformation of ways to work with information, updating of communicative models and educational goals, etc. The study analyzes the specifics of modern communicative models and communication tools that are relevant to contemporary tasks of continuing education. In particular, new sources of potentially educational information, ways of transferring information, new roles of the translator and recipient, types of information and the newest ways of its processing into an educational product that affects the transformation of communicative models.

Keywords: Modernizationcommunicative modelsteacher educationinformation technologieseducational technologies

Introduction

The growing need for communicatively competent specialists is determined by the complex socio-cultural situation in connection with the growing tension in communication processes at the interethnic, interstate, interpersonal and other communicative levels. Particular attention is required to the nature of communicative technologies in higher education and the training of teachers. This is due to the fact, that just as socio-cultural processes affect education, so also communicative technologies in education form a communicative space in society. Communicative competence of teachers is the basis for the development of the communicative culture of graduates – the future citizens and professionals.

Information technology is rapidly developing and creating an informationally rich educational space outside of educational institutions. At the same time, there are corresponding risks when using this information for educational purposes. Firstly, not all the information can be trusted, since it can be distorted by an incompetent source or personal emotional attitude of the source. The information can also be distorted by social or political demand. Secondly, information is not knowledge that spontaneously forms the education of an individual, until it is appropriately processed by an individual. Thirdly, the abundance of information disorientates, creates information noise. Sometimes it may be too aggressive and as a result comes satiety and indifferent attitude towards its recipients. There are other consequences of an active and even aggressive information space in which a man of the 21st century is forced to stay.

Today, various sources are considered potentially educational, but we can name the Internet and the media as the most significant ones. These sources have a great impact not only on the younger generation. Educational institutions in these conditions do not lose their status, yet the nature of educational processes in them is significantly changing. Firstly, the content of education is changing: it should include, first of all, ways of independent work with information (information retrieval, assessment of its importance, identification of the main and the secondary, etc.). Communicative competencies and communicative culture are also an important content and result of education–it is not only a basis for personal development, but also a means for obtaining a variety of information necessary for full self-realization. Secondly, the methods of communication change while processing information (the ability to work independently and in a team, project work, etc.). The peculiarity of mastering communicative models is connected with the fact that they are mastered in the communications themselves. This is the area of knowledge that is transmitted mainly not verbally, but in the communication practice itself. Therefore, mastering and applying new models of communication by teachers is an indispensable condition that ensures the quality of education.

Problem Statement

Evaluating the quality of education, we assess the quality of the teacher's preparation for the implementation of actual communicative technologies that ensure the readiness of the learners to new and emerging socio-cultural problems. Attention to communicative processes, communicative tasks and technologies should be kept in focus when training teachers. In connection with the above, the communicative preparation of the teacher becomes an important component of the teacher education and in the development of the general culture of the teacher. Since communicative models are rapidly changing following communicative technologies, then education must also quickly react to this process.

There exists a large number of studies devoted to various aspects of pedagogical communication in education. We also repeatedly turned to the topic of pedagogical communication and the need for the systematization of it into a separate area of education research (Zeleeva, 2009a; 2009b; 2010; 2012; 2013; 2014; 2016; Zeleeva, & Marder, 2010). Today psychologists, sociologists and journalists are also turning to the theory of communication in connection with the problem of reforming education and updating educational technologies for the urgent tasks of socio-cultural, economic and technical development, expanding the framework for the study of communicative processes in education (Balakina, 2007; Brudnyy, 1972; Lazarsfeld, 2000; Lassvell, 2002; Kashkin, 2007; Ulanovskiy, 2009; Maklyuen, & Ponimaniye, 2011; Krasnoyarova, 2013; Ivanov O. B., & Ivanova S. V, 2015; Izmagurova, 2015; Maksimova, 2015; Karpova, & Goloukhova, 2016; Kravchenko, 2016; Zhovtun, 2016; Revzina, 2017; Shakirova, 2017).

In our study, we relied on a systematic understanding of communication processes. Elements of the educational communicative system are both sources of potentially educational information, as well as ways of transferring information. In addition, the list of the elements includes new roles of the translator and recipient, types of information and the latest ways of its processing into the educational product that affect the transformation of communicative models. In order to understand how the system changes as a whole, it is necessary to see how its individual components change: the recipient of the information, the one who conveys the information, the content of the message (information), the method of communication (internal, remote, oral, written, through a visual image). We should keep in mind that the source of information does not necessarily coincide with its carrier. Considering what has changed today in pedagogical communication, it is necessary to understand how all components in the ‘communication’ system have followed the change. Subsequently, for the results of the educational process and its effectiveness, it is important to understand how participants in the educational process are involved in the communication and what importance they attach to this communication.

Research Questions

The issue of pedagogical communication is discussed in psychological and educational studies. Nevertheless, the education community does not go beyond the pedagogical discourse, where pedagogical communication is not separated from other types of teachers’ interaction. Then, they are used as synonyms. In another case, pedagogical communication is considered as one of the types of pedagogical interaction.

In the practice of higher education, such ideas about pedagogical communication are also reflected. In order to understand what importance undergraduate and postgraduate students receiving teacher training place on the pedagogical communication in the educational process, we conducted a written survey on the significance of pedagogical communication, the possibilities and the need to modernize it for modern educational tasks. The majority of the respondents seem to recognize the significance (60%), but do not see the need to refuse a direct dialogue with the teacher and believe that there is no necessity to change anything (90%). Basically, they are focused on getting ready information from the hands of the teacher and are not prepared to acquire the information themselves. 100% of respondents do not distinguish between the concepts of ‘communication’ and ‘interaction’. Also, they are not ready to consider what has changed in the contemporary nature of pedagogical interaction.

Purpose of the Study

The purpose of our research is to investigate the transformation of communicative processes in the university on the basis of the analysis of the manifestation of various types of communication in the socio-cultural space.

The results of our research concern only the higher school, where the change of communicative practices is more noticeable against the background of mass use of the Internet, electronic educational resources and where the education of an individual is accompanied by submersion in other social processes.

Research Methods

To build our understanding of the possible transformations of pedagogical communication in the changing socio-cultural space, we relied on systemic, socio-cultural and axiological approaches. The research is interdisciplinary in nature and is based on the achievements of the philosophy of education, psychology, sociology and pedagogy, as well as a new scientific direction – communicology. Logical deductive method allowed revealing the main characteristics of the transformation of pedagogical communication. Written survey of the participants in the educational process revealed problems in the perception of such communication by students of pedagogy faculty.

In order to consider the transformation of communicative processes in the university, it is necessary to include the features of the manifestation of various types of communication in the socio-cultural space. Because of the Internet-related sources of information there emerges an environment of interactive information. Various types of communication are intertwined and interconnected in this environment. Today we can observe processes that are transforming pedagogical communication. The nature of the Internet space changes in many ways the educational environment of the university.

An attempt to comprehend, what it is that reflects synchronous socio-cultural processes and transforms them in pedagogical communication, requires that one turns to more sources than only to psychological and educational ones that study various aspects of communications.

Findings

Specialists in the field of communications note a special situation at the moment–there is an integration of various types of communications, blurring of the boundaries, interlacing of the characteristics by increasing the variety of technically mediated communication interconnections. In the period of convergence of communication technologies, the boundaries between public and private, large-scale and individual communication networks are becoming less noticeable and significant. Today, personal communication (axial communication) can be present in mass (retail) communication (Brudnyy, 1972). In the Internet space, a private person can become a distributor of information, which reduces the reliability of this information. The use of information from the Internet for educational purposes requires additional information competence, the ability to work with such an ambiguous source of educational information.

The phenomenon of ‘torn communication’ might become another complicated problem. Matveeva (2009) calls information ‘torn’ when it is mediated by technical means, since information is created at one ‘end’ of the communication chain, and consumed on the other. This communication is asymmetric due to the lack of unity of space and communication time, as well as the difficulty of fast feedback. The factor, that mediates this communication goes beyond the media and includes the features of the internal and external life world of those exchanging information (Matveeva, 2009). At the same time, the relevance of educational information can be achieved with the help of novelty, an unusual and interesting way of presenting the information and other means, that will allow to feel involvement in the event.

However, simultaneously mass and public communication can manifest as ‘pseudo-communication’ (a failed dialogue due to the lack of adequate interpretations of communicative intentions) and ‘quasi-communication’ (a ritual action that substitutes communication and does not involve dialogue on the basis of the initial condition) (Dridze, 1996).

The educational process in the university is built primarily on the basis of public communication, and remote technologies bring into this process the nature of mass communication, the hallmarks of which are the presence of a broad anonymous audience, the message for which is mediated by technical means and the feedback of the audience is delayed and not necessarily given. Olshansky (2002) defines mass communication as a process of production of information and its wide distribution, carried out with the help of technical means. In the university we observe both direct communication and the one, mediated by technical means (EOR, online courses). The educational process in this case acquires the features of mass communication, in which information is depersonalized.

According to the Lasswell (2002) model, communication includes 5 elements: communicator, audience, message, transmission channel, efficiency.

To apply this model in education, we would need to add the objectives of the transmission of the message. Communicator in higher education is a teacher. He is the carrier and the exponent of both his own ideas, as well as the people's ideas from various sources. Mass communication increases the number of participants in communication and the teacher in this case is the spokesperson for the ideas of a group of those, whose ideas he borrows. In remote technologies widely used in education, the teacher can present information personally (video lectures, or online lectures), enriching it with the non-verbal information in that case. The teacher may also convey message through the text created by him or through a borrowed one.

The teacher is the leader of communication. His role as a leader increases in parallel with the growth of the number of participants. His authority of the expert that generates information dependence (the lack of freedom to select and interpret information) also increases. This feature is manifested when we use Internet technologies in education. In this case communication translates from the interpersonal to the group level, and it also shows the effects of interpersonal communication.

Noticeably, mass communication influences the structure of interpersonal relations: contacts are decreasing; a person spends a lot of time accumulating information, rather than processing it into an educational product. Downloading the necessary information does not guarantee that this information will be further actively used for educational purposes. Memory becomes less active, analytical abilities become blunted, the educational process becomes informational.

Information transmitted by technical means for educational purposes can itself be ascertaining as well as motivational, oriented to stimulate an action. The transmission channel–an electronic educational resource (in the form of printed texts or links to them), video lectures or online lectures have different influences on the nature of the perception of information. For instance, the printed text has the feeling of a stating, ascertaining message, and video lectures or online lectures are more likely to trigger an emotional reaction of the audience and have an incentive, motivational potential.

The potential audience to which the electronic educational resources are oriented is known and its characteristics are known. However, video lectures on the Internet, webinars and other similar educational forms have the nature of mass communications, in terms of the inability to determine the audience's volume and its nature. This educational audience has the properties of fluidity and optionality. Because of the heterogeneity of the audience with different perceptual abilities, which do not allow for adjustment to the audience, practically any information can cause a dysfunctional effect. The effectiveness of the educational process in these conditions is related to the purposefulness of the educational audience and the incentive nature of the information transmitted.

Conclusion

Thus, highlighting the new features of communicative technologies in the educational process and the peculiarities of pedagogical communication mediated by the Internet, the need to update the communicative competences of higher school teachers becomes evident.

Expanding the boundaries of educational science in the study of pedagogical communication provides a more complete picture of the changes in the nature and dynamics of the pedagogical communication that reflect the socio-cultural context.

In the practice of teacher education, more attention should be given to understanding of the pedagogical education peculiarities that are reflecting new forms of communication in higher education, oriented toward quality and development prospects.

Acknowledgments

The work is performed according to the Russian Government Program of Competitive Growth of Kazan Federal University

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