Contradictions And Meanings Of Modern Vocational Education: Research Results

Abstract

The article is devoted to the problem of value-semantic foundations of vocational education as significant components of professionalization in the conditions of social transformation. Based on the results of the study, the authors reveal contradictions in the formation and development of values among the younger generation. On the back of diagnostics, the article discusses the specificity of value representations of students, university teachers, school teachers. The results of the study confirm that university teachers do not believe in the development of the student as a citizen and do not work on it. Also, by graduation from the university, students experience a crisis in acceptance of the values of the professional community, that is, they are not only unprepared to form a system of values in other people, but they themselves have not understood their system of values. At the same time, school teachers recognize that they need additional knowledge for development of schoolchildren's values. Consequently, to increase the level of professional identity of university graduates, the process of forming the values of the professional pedagogical community among students should be accelerated, and the special role in this aspect belongs to the university teacher. To solve this problem, systematic organization of the process of lifelong education using the whole arsenal of tools of the competency-based approach is necessary.

Keywords: Value-semantic basishigher educationuniversity studentsuniversity teachersfurther vocational educationprofessional identity

Introduction

Changes in the vocational education system are the consequence of the socio-economic transformations taking place in Russia. One of the main factors determining these changes is the urgent need to improve the level of professionalism of university graduates on the basis of the formation of professional competences defined by modernity. In the psycho-pedagogical science and practice, new approaches and methods of solving the above problem are being developed. Some of them are based on the use of new information technologies in the training of qualified specialists, others – on updating the content of training, others – on intensification its practical orientation, etc. However, solving the problem of improving the quality of training is impossible without forming positive attitude of the individual to his/her work, and most importantly – the formation and development of the citizen of our country, the Person with a capital letter, with adequate value-semantic bases of professional activities and life in general (Koryakovtseva & Bugaychuk, 2017).

The analysis of scientific papers and dissertation researches on the problems of vocational education suggests that at present, despite the high scientific interest in the theoretical foundations of the formation of various aspects of professional competence in the learning process, unfortunately, due attention is not paid to the formation of the value-semantic sphere of the personality of the modern specialist and the specifics of its development at university neither within the framework of the Federal State Educational Standards, nor in scientific researches and in the practice of teaching. Therefore, the problematics stated in the scientific article is relevant.

Problem Statement

At the heart of any professional development there are identification processes; the question is, with what and with whom the person identifies himself/herself, when choosing or rejecting one or another profession, this or that style of professional activities, and what life tasks he/she solves by means of the profession.

Within the framework of the concept of professional development of the personality proposed by Povarenkov (2003), the formation of the subject in the process of the professional path is carried out by solving a whole system of contradictions, which are set by the basic contradiction between socio-professional requirements imposed on the person, on the one hand, and his/her desires and possibilities of their realization, on the other. One of these contradictions implies the professional identity, since at different stages of professionalization the direction and level of development of its basic parameters may not coincide. By accepting oneself as the professional, the person can doubt or reject professional values that the professional community “imposes” on him. Accepting professional values, the person may be dissatisfied with the content and conditions of professional activities, especially on the initial stages of the formation of the professional identity.

The essence of development of the professional identity under this understanding is the projection of own system of professional values and positions on the ideas of values and positions that, according to the subject, are characteristic of a particular professional community. Based on the comparison of values, the decision is made on the level of the professional identity. And on the basis of accepting the values of the professional community and their comparison with individual ones, the latter are changed and developed, which is especially important at the initial stage of professionalization (Ramkumar & Rajini, 2018).

In our opinion, the formed system of professional values and the achieved professional identity determine the correct choice of the profession and successful functioning in it. The economic and pedagogical effectiveness of students' training at a higher educational institution depends on them.

Research Questions

It is during the studentship that the purposeful development of the system of knowledge, practical skills and abilities, value-semantic foundations of the chosen professional activities; the formation of holistic ideas about this professional community; the development and filling motives and goals of future activities with the content area take place. Unfortunately, the question of the role of the assessment (degree) of the acceptance of the values of the professional community by the individual and its development in the training process at university is not sufficiently developed.

Purpose of the Study

In this regard, the problem of studying the peculiarities of the formation of value-semantic foundations of the professional activity in modern students and the development of these values at university is of particular relevance. It was the goal of our research..

Research Methods

The study was based on the series of representative psychological studies and the analysis of statistical data.

The study involved 208 students:

• 1-5-year students (two educational program specializations Bachelor's programme). The sample consisted of 185 students, in which the subsample of the first-year students — 48 people, the subsample of the second-year students - 35 people, the subsample of the third-year students – 41 people, the subsample of the fourth-year students – 37 people, the subsample of the fifth-year students – 24 people.

• specialists who work with young people - university teachers, educators. Total - 23 people.

The empirical base of the research included a questionnaire aimed at updating the ideas about intergenerational continuity in the adoption of value systems; identifying the motives for educating students' patriotic attitudes; the questionnaire “Determining the readiness of teachers for patriotic education and the formation of civic identity of schoolchildren”; the author's psychosemantic method, which was used to compare role positions and find out the identifiers behind them by describing the characteristic indicators of civic identity (Petrenko & Mitina, 2002). To identify the main features of the adoption of values of the professional community among university students, we used the following techniques: “Value orientation unity (VOU) (modified version)” to study values of the professional community; “Life-purpose orientations (LPO)” Leontiev (2015) to study individual and group ideas about the system of meaningful values.

Findings

The results of the research are presented in the form of revealed contradictions.

Let's consider the first contradiction. On the one hand, during the period of study at university, purposeful development of the value-semantic sphere of students should be organized, and, on the other hand, the results of our research show that by graduating from the university, students on the contrary have a crisis in the acceptance of the values of the professional community, that is, they are not only unready to form a system of values in other people, but they themselves have not understood their system of values.

Let us give an example of the dynamics of students' attitudes towards the values of the profession, which we identified as the result of the study of the students of Yaroslavl Pedagogical University (two educational program specializations Bachelor's programme):

The dynamics of the value “education” from the 1st to the 3rd year shows an increase in its importance, but a sharp decline is observed in the 4th year at university, and especially in the 5th.

Significance of the value “interesting work” from the 1st to the 2nd year is growing, in the 4th year its increase is observed, but in the 3rd and especially in the 5th year “low ranks” in this indicator are registered.

The 5th year students consider the following values of the professional community to be unimportant: diligence, education, responsibility, rationalism, delicacy, active life, health, interesting work, financially secure life, happy family life. Obviously, the values necessary for successful professionalization are placed by the fifth-year students in the last place, which indicates a crisis in the adoption of professional values (Caruth, 2014). In our opinion, the reason for this contradiction is the insufficient period of active teaching practice at university.

So, it turns out that the university teacher is one of the main subjects of the educational process in higher professional education, which should be focused on the formation of the value-semantic foundations of students' professional activities. But here we encounter another contradiction: the teacher, on the one hand, does not believe in the student, the teacher believes that it is impossible to change the adult, especially if he/she does not want to do this, but, on the other hand, the teacher does not know how to develop the value system of students, the teacher does not know the technologies of its development. We prove this finding by the results of the study.

Under the guidance of O.A. Koryakovtseva we studied such an important component of the value system as the civil position.

It turned out that the image of young people, formed by university teachers, is far from an ideal citizen. And the student has a very low result according to the teacher's opinion in such qualities as “taking responsibility for the fate of the country”, “responsibility for his/her own actions” (Figure 01 ).

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In the process of self-assessment, the teacher sees himself/herself closer to the ideal citizen.

In the presented diagram, the ratio of university teachers' ideas about himself/herself as a citizen and a citizen-student is interesting. The teacher puts the student below himself/herself in terms of the development of almost all civic qualities, only two qualities almost coincide in the teacher’s ideas, they are “readiness to participate in social and political life of the country” and “desire to participate in social and political life of the country” (Figure 02 ).

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Continuing the analysis of the views of the university teacher on modern youth, we consider it important to note that the teacher does not see the prospects for development of qualities of modern youth in the aspect of citizenship (Figure 03 ).

The modern student, in the opinion of the teacher, in his/her civic qualities practically corresponds to the general level of young people, both now and in ten-year time (Figure 03 ). Thus, the teacher does not see the prospects for the development of the student as a citizen even in 10 years. We can assume that such research results are associated with overestimation by teachers of his/her civil qualities and with underestimation of the qualities of the student.

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Thus, our contradiction is confirmed: education, on the one hand, should have a positive effect on the development of citizenship, but, on the other hand, university teachers do not believe in development of the student as a citizen and do not work on it. We assume the main reason is that teachers are not sure of their own professional and pedagogical competence in shaping the civic position of young people, including the power of a personal example in the image of an almost perfect citizen, which almost every teacher represents. Such a trend, we think, will be observed in relation to the formation of other values.

It is important to understand that requirements for professional competences of teachers in the field of education of the value system of students, especially in the field of patriotic education, are in the Professional Standard of the teacher. So, graduates of the pedagogical university are expected to possess these labor activities be employers. And here we are confronted with the third contradiction. On the one hand, the student “leaves” the university with a crisis in the system of pedagogical values, on the other hand, the university teacher does not invest in development of values because he/she does not believe in the student and doesn’t know how to do it, but on the third hand - school teachers, where the student does practical training and works as a young specialist, also do not know how to shape students' values.

The results obtained in the course of our research (Bugaychuk, Koryakovtseva, & Kalacheva, 2017) of teachers of Yaroslavl and the Moscow region showed the following:

78.39% of teachers recognize that they need additional knowledge for successful work, including the patriotic education and the formation of civic identity of schoolchildren. At the same time, 80% of teachers are ready for patriotic education, but here, presumably, this “readiness” is generated only by an emotional positive response to the problem, since knowledge and skills for organizing teaching activities in this direction are not enough: approximately 30% of respondents cannot explain the concept of "civil position", and more than 50% have no idea what “readiness to form civic identity of schoolchildren” and “readiness to patriotic education” include.

Conclusion

An outstanding representative of Russian religious existentialism Berdyaev (1994) called the personality a spiritual entity and believed that “the activity of the human spirit” should determine "the activity of its actions”. It is on these postulates that we propose to build the concept for the formation of value-semantic foundations of university students. The activity attitude of the person towards the world, that is, socio-historical practice, requires, first of all, the formation of the spirit activity in young people, otherwise the subjective factor in history will not work. Today, it is necessary to expand the space of such social practice, during which the student would recognize himself/herself as the Citizen and Professional. Without this awareness, it is impossible to become a good specialist and the Person (Goertzen & Whitaker, 2015).

It is obvious that development of “the spirit activity”, that is, basic value orientations, must precede development of “activity of actions” in order to avoid asociality of young people and emergence of destructive youth communities. Consequently, the sensitive age for the formation of values is preschool and school age (development of patriotism and tolerance, love for the family and native nature, development of moral principles and cultural values, the idea of activities of state and political institutions, the first steps in social activities, etc.). But the active value-semantic sphere in professional activity should be fully developed among student and working youth on the basis of the already formed the activity of the spirit, the desire to bear the Good of the Homeland and the desire to fulfill the duty of the Citizen.

Now the young man has to make his/her own choice from among the possible options, to determine his/her attitude towards himself/herself, to the world, to the profession. The field of free self-determination is wide. In the early stages of personal development, this choice is very difficult (Koch, Dirsch-Weigand, Awolin, Pinkelman, & Hampe, 2017). In our opinion, the task of the state is to help in the main thing: in the formation and development of social consciousness of the future specialist, in understanding of the social and professional significance.

We also see the importance of the role of additional professional education in issues of enhancing the professional competence of teachers in the formation and development of value-semantic foundations among students. But, as noted by teachers involved in the system of basic general education, they tend to choose courses on the subject taught, on health-saving technologies in teaching, on information and communication technologies, which is partly due to modern approaches to the certification of teachers. However, the introduction of the professional standard makes new demands on the level of professionalism and responsibility for the result of work, including in terms of upbringing. In order to meet these requirements, to be competitive on labor market, it is important for the modern specialist to adapt to changing conditions, break existing stereotypes, acquire new knowledge, new methods and technologies of training and education (Hsu, Hamilton, & Wang, 2015). The system of additional professional education is aimed precisely at solving these problems.

In general, based on the results of the study, it can be confirmed that to increase the level of professional identity of university graduates, the process of the formation of students' values in the professional teaching community should be accelerated (Herranen, Vesterinen, & Aksela, 2018), and the special role of university teachers in this aspect is obvious.

To solve this problem, systematic organization of the process of continuous education using the whole arsenal of tools of the competency-based approach is necessary (Nurdin, Japar, & Bachtiar, 2018):

- independent study of certain problems,

- individual interviews, consultations,

- business and role-playing games, trainings,

- analysis of problem situations, holding discussions.

At the same time, the main principles of organization of the educational environment are: collective design and implementation of the plan of educational interaction; flexibility of the content of education, methods and forms of entry into it, individual programs; integrity and continuity in the content and logic of various organizational forms; stimulation and support of any activity, etc. (Lyz & Opryshko, 2016).

Thus, in order to provide the education system with young professionals who are capable of fulfilling their mission at a high professional level, it is necessary to organize a system integrated process of forming value-semantic foundations of the profession in students both in the context of existing disciplines and specially designed courses and classes that contribute to the formation of the attitude to the profession and to oneself as the professional.

Acknowledgments

We express our appreciation to T.G. Dosse, N.A. Kalacheva, A.M. Khodarev

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