CONTINUING EDUCATION OF TEACHERS: MONITORING RESULTS AND DIAGNOSTICS OF ITS MAIN TRENDS

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1 CONTINUING EDUCATION OF TEACHERS: MONITORING RESULTS AND DIAGNOSTICS OF ITS MAIN TRENDS V.I. Klyushkin, A.S. Mishchenko The urgency of improving the diagnostics of continuing education of teachers is determined by the need to upgrade their professional activities. This kind of diagnostics should consider updating of goals, objectives and content of educational activity, which is conducted in qualitatively new socio-cultural conditions of the national education development. To carry out such a sociological diagnosis, we have developed a multipurpose toolkit. In this toolkit we have tried to reflect the pain points of modernization and research of modern teaching. They all expressed the conflicting changes in interrelations between: traditional and innovative teaching approaches, concepts and technologies; training and education of learners; joint organization of training activities and the individualization of learner s education. Moreover, the toolkit enables to fix problems that exist in the area: the interaction between the functional and object-content features of educational activity; expanding research practices of teachers, as a new qualification requirement; corporate interaction between teachers and informatization of the educational process within the educational institution; interaction between teachers and students parents, etc. Sociological toolkit, developed by us, has the following seven units of empirical indicators. The first set includes professional and demographic characteristics of teachers participating in empirical-experimental research (specialized field, length of teaching experience, gender, education, etc.). This set of questions aims at identification of general and distinct aspects of professional activity of teachers belonging to different age and gender categories. The second set of questions includes diagnostic indicators revealing the measure of fulfillment teachers main professional duties and skills: forecasting, planning of the educational process, organization of educative and cognitive activity of students; monitoring of the course and results of training. The third set of questions is composed of objective factors of professional productivity of teachers (modern educational approaches, concepts, and educational technology; availability of training, meth- 87

2 odological, and information-technical facilities of the professional activity of teachers, the level of knowledge, abilities, skills and manners of students, their cognitive interests and willingness to assimilate educational material, the nature of relationship between teachers and their colleagues, administration of the educational institution, etc.). The fourth set of questions includes characteristics of subjective factors of teachers professional efficiency (personalized meaning of teaching activity, the priority of its goals, objectives, functions and principles for teachers, attitude of teachers to the traditions and innovations in education, etc.). The fifth set of questions groups the diagnostic performance indicators of teachers activity on continuous improvement and development of their common cultural and professional expertise (attitude to selfeducation, advanced training courses, continuous development of specific professional skills, the nature of value orientations, interests in the field of continuing education etc.). The content of this set of questions correlates with the relevant teachers qualification requirements. It allows to make a diagnosis of the nature and productivity of their professional activity, as well as to avoid a situation in which teacher-respondents voluntarily or not will aspire to embellish the real characteristics of their activity. The sixth set of questions includes indicators which reflect the activity of teachers in the field of utilization of modern information and communication tools and education technologies. These questions correlate with modern professional-qualification requirements for teachers working at different types of educational institutions. The seventh set of questions unites positions aimed at diagnosing teachers creative research (they allow fixing the degree of involvement of teachers in research practice, their concerns and stages of conduct, the difficulties faced by teachers in this work, and etc.). This set of questions also includes indicators of qualification requirements for teachers. Moreover, answers to the questions of the set enable to check the degree of validity of teachers answers to a number of other questions in the questionnaire. This makes it possible to strengthen the reliability of sociological data and results of the experiment. Piloting of the sociological toolkit during at educational institutions of St. Petersburg helped to identify current development trends in professional activity and continuing education of teachers. The first. According to the research findings, under current conditions, activity of school teacher, vocational school teacher and college 88

3 teacher is continuously becoming more complicated: 86.1% of the teachers pointed out that the work has become more difficult, 69.6% of the respondents that intensity of their teaching activity increased significantly. One of the main reasons for this situation is the more complicated content of school subjects (it is often mentioned by teachers of mathematics, the Russian language and biology). Another important reason for increased complicity of educational activity is the change of mentality, interests and motivation of students: decline in cognitive interests of students is noted by 65% of the teacher-respondents; decline in creative initiative and activity in studies is noted by 53% of the respondents; decline in interest in the country s history 45.2%; lower interest in belletristic literature is noted by 80.0% of the respondents, in the natural-mathematical knowledge 33.9%; lower diligence 71.3%. At the same time, there is a noticeable increase in rudeness and aggression of students noted by 73.9% and 74.9% of teachers respectively. As an example of the positive changes, teachers note interest in information technology 86.1% of the respondents. The second. In recent decades, a kind of scissors have formed in the value orientations of teachers and students: the spiritual orientation of teachers, especially those who begun their professional life in the Soviet school, (62.6% of them work because of the opportunity to exercise their knowledge and experience, and 74.8% because of creative nature of their work ) is in violent contrast with the significantly increased mercantile-pragmatic orientation of contemporary students, who strive for a profession, which, as a result, will enable to receive higher wages this is noted by 92.2 % of the teachers. The third. According to our research, difficulties experienced by teachers are implicitly connected with their poor professional expertise that does not meet modern conditions and requirements of the educational practice: 93.9% of teachers reported that they need to improve their skills, including 41.7% of the respondents who considered that it is necessary to strengthen their expertise in the field of teaching methods ; 33.0% in the subject being taught by them, 32.2% of the teachers - in the field of modern information technology. In the study, we have also established the following main groups of the relationship between development factors and characteristics of continuing education of modern teachers. The first group. Interdependence of the educational activity and functional responsibilities of teachers. The experiment showed that the highest post-graduate educational activity is observed among teach- 89

4 ers who teach technology (7.95 points) and administrative staff of educational institutions (7.91 points). On the one hand, this activity is caused by the dynamic development of modern technologies, requiring continuous study of new scientific and methodological literature, and on the other hand, administrative workers knowledge of trends in modern pedagogy one of the most important functions of heads of educational institutions. Low levels of educational activity of preschool teachers (6.94 points) is determined by the fact that, generally, they have secondary pedagogical education, and in their professional activity, functions related to upbringing dominate functions of training junior schoolchildren. In our view, these factors reduce the need of teachers for the frequent vocational retraining. The second group. Interdependence of educational level, continuity of employment, competence orientation of teachers and their post-graduate educational activity. The highest level of post-graduate education activity, according to our experiment, is observed among teachers with higher non-pedagogical education (8.00 points). Then, in a descending line, come teachers with higher pedagogical education (7.43 points); with secondary pedagogical education (6.91 points) and secondary non-pedagogical education (3.67 points). In the course of the experiment, we detected a wave dynamics of post-graduate educational activity of teachers depending on their professional experience (and indirectly on their age). The young teachers, with working experience no more than 2 years, 7.50 points. This is the result of their awareness of lack of practical experience and gaps in their university education. In the second group of young teachers, with working experience up to 5 years, there is a decline in the educational activity up to 7.04 points. This is probably due to the need for practical realization of the new pedagogical knowledge. In a group of more mature teachers, who have 10 years professional experience and more, the educational activity amounts to 7.55 points. This is the result of awareness of the need for a theoretical understanding of their practical experience in accordance with the new pedagogical concepts and technologies. The following age groups received their education 20 and 30 years ago, when the content of higher pedagogical education and pedagogical conditions were radically different from the modern realia of school life. Therefore, to meet the modern requirements, teachers belonging to these groups objectively have to be engaged in self-education more actively. Decline in educational activity of teachers over fifty to the minimum figure can be explained by the effect of the professional and age-related burning 90

5 of teachers. In our view, these data justify that post-graduate education of teachers should have a 5-year step of their professional training. If we talk about the dependence of post-graduate education of teachers on their competence orientation, than rates of post-graduate education activities are located within points. Teachers, who want to develop their expertise in the field of educational sociology, stand out sharply against this background: their educational activity amounts to 8.47 points. Post-graduate educational activity of educators, who give priority to socialization as a function of training and education of young people, is also quite high 7.71 points, which is 30% higher than the activity of the education individualization supporters. The third group. Interdependence of post-graduate education and socio-professional attitudes and value-semantic orientations of teachers. The highest level of educational activity is observed among teachers, who see the meaning and value of their work in creativity (7.86 points), in the enrichment of their spiritual world (7.69 points), in formation of spirituality in young people (7.58 points). And those teachers, for whom pedagogical activity is just a normal work to earn money, have the lowest self-educational activity 6.58 points. The following pattern is quite natural: the higher the need for teachers to improve their skills is, the higher the level of post-graduate education activity rises. Thus, among the educators who note a greater need for advanced training, post-graduate education activity was 8.19 points versus 5.13 points for those who observe reduction in this need. To sum up our brief theses, we want to note the following. Our four-year experiment showed the effectiveness of the developed sociological toolkit. It made it possible, on the basis of consideration of the continuity of traditional and innovative trends in the development of national education, to reveal: (1) the problems and pain points in the development of new professional standards for training and development of teachers; (2) the possibility of complex use of socio-cultural and competence-based approaches in the development of sociological toolkit for monitoring of their professional activity and continuing education; as well as (3) to test the validity of its indicators and rates; (4) not only to make the diagnosis, but also to reveal significant changes in the interaction of the basic characteristics of professional activity and continuing education of teachers, inherent to modern conditions of their modernization. Translated from Russian by M.N. Nepachatykh 91