PSYCHOLOGICAL READLNESS OF STUDENTS-GRADUATES OF UNIVERSITIES OF PEDAGOGICAL PROFILE OF TRAINING FOR A CAREER AS A TEACHER IN RUSSIA
PSYCHOLOGICAL READLNESS OF STUDENTS-GRADUATES OF UNIVERSITIES OF PEDAGOGICAL PROFILE OF TRAINING FOR A CAREER AS A TEACHER IN RUSSIA
Anastasiia Sidorova
Invited teacher, Higher School of Economics,
Russia, Moscow
ABSTRACT
This article examines the psychological readiness of students–graduates of universities of pedagogical education for a career as a teacher in Russia. One of the challenges facing education systems in many countries today is the outflow of teaching staff from educational organizations of all types. Emotional exhaustion, a crisis of internal motivation, lack of support from colleagues and the administration of the educational institution, too much workload – this is not a complete list of reasons for professional burnout in teachers, which almost always leads to a decrease in performance, and often to retirement from the profession.
Keywords: psychological readiness, pedagogy, teacher, teacher, higher educational institution, professional training, personality, psychology.
The outflow of teaching staff from educational institutions is noted in a large number of studies.
In the foreseeable future, many countries may face a shortage of teaching staff, and some sources claim that it has already arisen.
The problem of professional burnout and retirement from the profession is relevant for all categories of teachers, but its prevalence among young teachers who have just started their professional activities is of particular concern.
Young teachers who are on the verge of leaving the profession express strong dissatisfaction with the number and nature of their teaching duties, lack of resources and insufficient support from experienced teachers.
The initial optimism of a young teacher can be replaced by pessimism during the first year of work at the school.
The outflow of teaching staff from schools is associated both with the objective conditions in which the education system operates, and with the subjective characteristics of the people included in it. Many young teachers cannot adapt to school conditions, burn out psychologically and leave the profession, but there are also many who, being in the same difficult conditions, still adapt and successfully build a career in education. One of the important differences between these groups of young teachers is the level of psychological readiness for professional activity, which becomes an important factor of success in the work of yesterday's university graduate.
Psychological readiness should be formed at the stage of teacher's personality development during active professional training. Studies conducted among students of pedagogical specialties of universities have revealed a tendency to decrease their professional motivation, which is one of the components of the PGPD and includes professionally significant needs, motives for activity, a positive attitude to activity, interest in it and other fairly persistent motives.
Considering that the share of those working in education in Russia is large, the study of the state and methods of assessing the psychological readiness of students of pedagogical specialties for professional activity is an urgent task.
The formation of psychological readiness of a student, and especially a student of a pedagogical university, for professional activity is a necessary condition for high–quality professional training. However, the traditional approach to training and evaluation of its results is mainly aimed at the formation of subject knowledge, and the regulatory foundations of activity often fade into the background.
In the Russian tradition, psychological readiness is most often studied as a subjective state of a person who considers himself capable and prepared to perform a certain professional activity and aspires to perform it, or as a quality that determines attitudes to actions in professional situations, as a prerequisite for activity.
Psychological research of the nature of pedagogical activity and the corresponding requirements for a teacher in Russian scientific psychology and pedagogy began in the second half of the XX century. Thanks to the research of N. V. Kuzmina and V. A. Slastenin.
N.V. Kuzmina, Doctor of Psychological Sciences, received the title of professor of the Department of Pedagogy and Pedagogical Psychology of LSU and until 1984 was in charge of this department. She modeled the subject of acmeology and founded the All–Union Acmeological Association.
Nina Vasilyevna Kuzmina's contribution to the development of science and practice cannot be overestimated. We do not set the task of a holistic analysis of her scientific and pedagogical creativity, the creation and development of a scientific school.
The peculiarity of each of the sides of the pedagogical process, according to N.V. Kuzmina, is that they (the parties) exist not only in interaction, but also independently, independently of each other.
According to N.V. Kuzmina, these components are necessary and sufficient to create a pedagogical system. If you exclude any of them, there is no system.
Figure 1 – Interrelation of structural and functional components of the pedagogical system (according to N.V. Kuzmina)
Later, N.V. Kuzmina will clarify her definition of the pedagogical system: «the pedagogical system can be defined as the relationship of structural and functional elements subordinated to the goals of forming in the student's personality readiness for independent, responsible and productive problem solving.
N.V. Kuzmina identified pedagogical phobias that limit the readiness of graduates of the pedagogical profile to prepare for a teacher's career:
• phobia of education / mania of learning: the teacher is afraid to teach because he considers himself unprepared for this difficult task. He considers teaching to be his main function, and connects the educational one only with the duties of the class teacher, or leaves it to the discretion of parents and society;
• collectivomania – excessive fascination with the goals of forming a student team to the detriment of the development of students' individuality;
• mania for the development of students' individuality – excessive enthusiasm for the development of students' individuality to the detriment of their willingness to live and work in a team, obey its norms and requirements;
• mania for achieving goals «lowered by higher authorities»: the desire to achieve the goals prescribed in the program at any cost (Ministry of Education, educational institution, etc.) while ignoring the specific conditions of education and upbringing, the capabilities of students.
V.A. Slastenin is a Soviet and Russian scientist in the field of pedagogy, Doctor of Pedagogical Sciences. In 1980, he created and headed the Department of Pedagogy and Psychology of the higher school. Author of more than 300 scientific papers, about 20 textbooks and teaching aids on pedagogy.
The author believes that the totality of professionally conditioned requirements for a teacher is defined as professional readiness for pedagogical activity. According to its composition, it is legitimate to distinguish, on the one hand, psychological, psychophysiological factors, readiness, and, on the other hand, scientific, theoretical and practical competence as the basis of professionalism.
The content of professional readiness as a reflection of the goal of pedagogical education is accumulated in a professionogram reflecting the invariant, idealized parameters of the personality and professional activity of the teacher.
To date, we have accumulated a wealth of experience in building a teacher's professionogram, which allows us to combine professional requirements for a teacher into three main complexes that are interrelated and complement each other: general civil qualities; qualities that determine the specifics of the teacher's profession; special knowledge, skills and skills in the subject (specialty).
Psychologists, justifying the professionogram, turn to compiling a list of pedagogical abilities that represent a synthesis of the qualities of the mind, feelings and will of the individual.
Based on the understanding of the teacher's functions, a teacher's professionogram was developed, which included four sections: the properties and characteristics of the teacher's personality, requirements for psychological and pedagogical training; the scope and composition of special training; the content of methodological training in the specialty.
Based on the works of Russian authors, it is possible to distinguish motivational, volitional and organizational components of pedagogical activity, directly pedagogical abilities, beliefs and attitudes about teaching. These components ensure the readiness of the specialist for pedagogical activity.
Speaking about the psychological readiness of students of pedagogical universities for professional activity, we mean a set of personality characteristics that contribute to the successful performance of professional activity, such as personality traits, motivation, attitudes and values of the teacher.
Psychological readiness is a complex, multicomponent construct, which requires psychodiagnostic techniques to measure its individual components – personality traits, motivation and satisfaction of basic psychological needs.
Motivation can be assessed within the framework of the theory of self–determination, which is most popular in psychological research due to the large array of accumulated empirical data confirming its validity.
Within the framework of this theory, internal motivation (a person's direct interest in the activity performed), external motivation (or external regulation – a person's interest in external incentives for his activities, whether high marks or material stimulation) and amotivation (lack of motivation when neither interest nor external stimuli can induce a person to perform an activity) are distinguished.
Amotivation makes a negative contribution to the readiness for professional activity, therefore it should be considered with the opposite sign: the absence of amotivation will be considered one of the signs of readiness for professional activity.
Basic psychological needs are considered another component of readiness.
The problem of the formation of professional competence of students currently does not lose its relevance, in particular, our research is aimed at studying the readiness for professional activity of bachelor students of pedagogical education by checking the mastery of labor actions, the necessary skills and knowledge in the teaching, educational and developmental activities of a teacher in the conditions of the introduction of a professional standard.
To achieve this goal, we have developed and conducted test tasks with the help of which the psychological preparation of students was checked, at the level of mastering labor actions, skills and knowledge that contribute to the formation of developing functions of students.
The main difficulties in the implementation of labor actions are associated with low practice–oriented psychological training of bachelor students of pedagogical education.
The most difficult, as our research shows, is the choice and application of tools, methods of diagnosis and assessment of indicators of the level, dynamics of child development, the adequate use of special technologies and methods that allow for correctional and developmental work.
Bachelor students also demonstrated difficulties in developing programs for individual child development. The full development of educational programs by teachers involves not only following a certain technology, but also a clear understanding of the entire complex of its psychological and pedagogical foundations, the nodal points of the logic of children's development.
The students of bachelors of pedagogical education revealed an average and high level of psychological knowledge necessary to ensure the developing activities of students. Bachelors of pedagogical education have fairly stable ideas about the laws of personality development and the manifestation of personal properties, psychological laws of periodization and development crises, and they also successfully navigate the patterns of formation of child–adult communities, their socio–psychological features and patterns of development of children's and adolescent communities.
The main difficulties in mastering the necessary skills are associated with the problems of interaction of the teacher with other specialists – psychologists, speech pathologists, speech therapists in order to jointly implement psychological and pedagogical support of basic general education programs, as well as compiling psychological and pedagogical characteristics of the student's personality.
Thus, the results obtained lead to the fact that in the educational activities of students it is necessary to create a system of actions that are similar in their psychological structure to actions performed in a real situation, i.e. to create a system of actions for training. There is a need to develop new requirements for teaching psychology, requiring the inclusion in the program of at least two new blocks – psychodiagnostics and family psychology.
The use of active forms and methods of teaching, pedagogical technologies (contextual, model learning, critical thinking development technology, collaborative learning, etc.) in the implementation of the educational program. These pedagogical technologies help to introduce the student into the professional context, to acquaint him with the peculiarities and specifics of future professional activity, to develop a responsible and motivational attitude to the performance of professional tasks.
Studying the disciplines of the professional module of the educational program is unthinkable without clear planning of classes and organization of independent work. To achieve the goals of forming universal, general professional and professional competencies and improving the level of training of future teachers, contextual lectures, business games, a method of analyzing a specific situation, setting and working out problem–oriented tasks are effective.
The complication of the content of professional functions of pedagogical activity can be considered by integrating the technology of modular training and adaptive specific situations, which makes it possible to prepare students for the emergence of professional difficulties within the framework of the formation of professional adaptation.
The teaching methods used in the professional adaptation of future teachers should allow to generalize theoretical knowledge and find ways of implementation in the professional activity of the future teacher.
It can be recommended that future teachers effectively plan and organize classroom classes, independent and research work of students, apply team and project types of educational work, strengthen feedback in the learning process, act as a mentor and consultant.
Thus, the professional development of students of a pedagogical university is a process of adaptive entry into the educational environment, within which they acquire professional competencies, acquire stable motivation for future pedagogical activity by acquiring positive experience of social interaction and communication with students, parents, colleagues, the head of an educational organization, and performing professional functions that stimulate professional development and further formation of pedagogical culture.
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