Avetisova Karina, Candidate of Engineering Sciences, Assistant Professor

Taganrog State University of Radio Engineering (TSURE)

Russia

Avetisova Ksenia, BA in Linguistics and cross-cultural communication

University of Helsinki (HY)

Finland

PROBLEMS OF REFORMING THE SYSTEM OF HIGHER EDUCATION IN

RUSSIAN FEDERATION BASED ON FORMING THE KEY COMPETENCES

OF THE TECHNICAL UNIVERISTY GRADUATE

The changes of the modern world connected with globalization, expansion of labor market, application of the new information technologies to all spheres of life, as well as integration of Russia into the European and world economies demand new approaches to education. It is rational to use competence approach, which allows to ensure high competitiveness of the specialist, graduate of the higher technical institution in global economical space, as well as possibilities for adaptation, effective self-realization and constant creative growth.

Peculiarities of education process in technical university demand formulating of the key competences of the future graduate. Among these competences Media and Digital Competences are of great importance.

In course of last 30 years one of the authors has been working in TUSRE, coming a long way from teacher of technical courses to realizing the importance and value of humanitarian aspects of education and the development of personal qualities of the graduates and having the last 5 years of practical experience in this sphere. The second author has been majoring in humanities’ program of Linguistics and cross-cultural communication in course of four years and studying social sciences in the European university for one year.

Considering the problems of Russian education, first it is necessary to note that the Soviet higher education, starting from the last century, traditionally was known for the high level of training, especially in some fundamental and technical sciences. High professionalism, wide scientific view, developed practical skills of the soviet schools’ graduates brought the country to the leading position in the world.

Nevertheless today some of the changes that have been taking place in the world in the last decade become visible. Among them are globalization process, development of modern information and other technologies, forming of the new labor markets, transfer to the postindustrial society, and the most important, the process of integration of Russia in the world community, particularly accelerated after the collapse of Soviet Union.

All this demanded reconsideration of the traditional principles of higher education in Russia, which were thought to be unshakable, and development of the new forms, methods and means of training specialists, who would be highly competitive on the dynamically changing world labor market.

In course of many decades soviet higher education institutions followed the principle of so called ‘znanievij’ (‘knowledge’) approach in education, which was based on the assumption that for successful performance in the chosen major and further successful career ladder climbing it is enough for the student to learn the certain assigned amount of knowledge and gain corresponding abilities and skills.

Such approach was well grounded by the economic conditions of soviet state, where a person, having perfectly mastered one profession, was assured to have a place of work within the framework of his major throughout his whole life, had a steady job and thus was successful. Moreover, moral criteria of soviet society encouraged the invariability of professional field: it was prestigious to have one steady job and it was usual for the young generation of the family to choose the same profession of their parents and grand parents. They would find the work at the same factories, thus creating professional family dynasties, which were widely complimented in the soviet society.

Perestrojka that started in the Soviet Union in the 80s of the last century greatly altered the existing value set.

First of all, rapid development of entrepreneurship, appearance of great number of small and middle-size private companies clearly indicated that one profession was not enough now, even if it was the most demanded and greatly mastered. The changed labor market demanded qualitative redistribution of specialists – the need for economists, book-keepers, administrators grew immeasurably, thus making specialist retraining, mastering of new knowledge and obtaining the second higher education the mass phenomenon.

Secondly, the process of Russia’s integration in the world economical space accelerated significantly. The fall of the ‘iron curtain’ allowed the Russian citizens freely travel to the western countries, certain part of specialists gained possibility to work there successfully, some students – to study and get degrees in the western universities. The possibilities increased constantly and the labor market widened immeasurably for Russian citizens. Among the most important qualities of the specialist became competitiveness, which was multisided and included a number of components.

Lastly, the same process, erasing the borders of the countries, caused and accelerated the process of mutual penetration of cultures. The successful business relations or job seeking and career growth in the conditions of globalization demanded the skills of intercultural communication, knowledge in the sphere of inter-economic relations, ability to conceive different cultures and way of living at the same time with ability to preserve one’s own national culture and features.

Today’s Russia witnessing the shift in the value system from the concept of “one good education for life” to the concept of constant life-long self-education for the effective adaptation to the demands of the modern information society. Following this concept will let the specialist to be constantly in demand on the labor market and to realize his constructive potential in a best way.

It should be noted that the last condition was caused not only by economical factors, but also the personal characteristics of the student: it is clear that at the age of 17-18 years one can not be sure that he makes a right choice of university and profession, even having all the freedom of choice he can not be positive that it is exactly the sphere that will be interesting for his whole life and that he can realize his potential in it. This factor existed for a long time but in the soviet times it simply was not considered because of the historically prevalent traditions and norms of the soviet society.

Consequently, all the stated factors conditioned the necessity of new approaches to education and produced qualitatively new demands to the higher technical schools.

The term ‘higher technical school’ is not used accidentally. It should be noted that education process in technical university has its peculiarities comparing to the education process in the field of humanities, which is caused by the number of objective and subjective reasons. The first set includes predominance of the technical courses over the humanities by the number of the courses studied and the number of hours for their learning. This is being enforced by the standards of higher technical education. Subjective factors include the personal and psychological characteristics of the student, special ‘technical’ turn of mind and the system of inner preferences.

The peculiarity of teaching should also be considered: the humanities students together with the professional knowledge and skills gain also the skills of communication, solving conflicts, deeper knowledge of psychology and ability to build interpersonal relations within the framework of the academic program. But the students of technical majors are lacking such possibility. The teachers of technical courses, who also once graduated from the technical university, often do not have enough knowledge of the humanities thus transferring to students their attitude towards the profession and towards life. There are a lot of talks about the humanization education in contemporary Russia and this problem is also one of the most important in reforming the educational system.

One of the ways to solve stated problems can be found through using the widely spread in western universities so-called competence approach to education [1]. Today these ideas have already been used in the State academic standards of higher education in the field of linguistics and cross-cultural communication [2], however in higher technical education application of the competence approach is not yet a norm, it is only starting.

The project of federal component of state academic standard for general education [3] already provides for introduction of the competence approach to education, giving capacious definition of the term key (basic, universal) competences. According to the project, that is “readiness of the student to apply assimilated knowledge, academic skills as well as ways of activities in life for solving practical and theoretical problems”.

However, today the scientific literature uses the notions of competency and competence mainly in the context of foreign languages, linguistics and cross-cultural communication, many times not distinguishing between the two terms and using them as equal. If we analyze the definitions of these notions in different sources, we can conclude that they are not equal at all and it is necessary to distinguish them clearly before discussing the pros and cons of competence approach.

If we consult the Russian explanatory dictionary [4] competency is 1. A circle of questions in which one is informed good. 2. Circle of one’s authority, rights. And competent means 1. Knowledgeable, informed, authoritative in some field. 2. Possessing competency.

In more general respect, competence is correspondence to the requirements, set standards in corresponding spheres of action and at solving a certain type of problems, possessing necessary active knowledge, ability to reach results with confidence and to control situation [5]. The notion of competency first appeared in the USA in the 60s of the last centuries in the context of performance-based education, which aimed at training the specialists for successful competitiveness on the labor market and had only practical direction, which turned out not to be enough when the development of the graduate’s creative personality came into the discussion.

In that same time it was offered to distinguish the notions of competency – as a part of academic program, and competence – as the complex personal resource, providing for the possibility of the effective interaction with the surrounding world in this or that sphere and depending on the necessary for that competences [5].

Today along with the supporters of the competence approach appeared the first critical specialists, who argument their claims by stating that the approach is somewhat limited, too rational and purely practical. They also fear that instead of comprehensively developed personality, believing in the ideal of Truth, Good and Justice we will get the specialist, who desires to be in demand and to correspond to the dynamically changing labor markets in the gobalized society [6]. Not disagreeing completely with the authors of such statements we will try to analyze the possibilities of the competence approach in organizing the educational process in higher technical school.

Now we will formulate and fill with content those competences of the future graduate of technical university that will allow him to gain sufficient professionalism, develop personal qualities, form psychological readiness for life-long learning and also to gain the skills necessary for that, thus turning the graduate into the competent specialist, socially developed, professionally authoritative and competitive on the global labor market.

Not closing the list of the competences we would like to present those that today can be named as the key competences – the list may be corrected or expanded during further research:

· socio-individual competence or readiness to problem solving;

· general economic and organizational-administrative competence;

· professional competence;

· informational competence;

· readiness for life-long learning.

The listed competences form the basis which provides the graduate with mobility on the professional labor market and readiness to continue educational, scientific and organizational-administrative activity after graduating from the university. They also form the sufficient basis for the further education and ensure the graduate’s ability to adapt to the demands of dynamically developing labor market.

The first competence of the list, socio-individual competence, is directly linked to bringing up and forming the personality of the specialist and fully reflects the ideas of humanization of the technical education. This competence in more general sense should be understood as the set of the graduate’s active skills:

· ability to orient in the system of common human values and to consider the peculiarities of personal-notional orientations of various social, religious and professional groups in the Russian society;

· ability to take a citizen stand in socio-personal conflicts;

· skills of socio-cultural and cross-cultural communication, based on the principles of cultural relativity and social ethics, assuming respect of the uniqueness of the different culture and value systems and denial of ethnocentrism;

· ability to realize different forms of relations aimed at cooperation and solving of social and professional tasks;

· ability to self-educate oneself and constantly perfect in professional sphere;

· skills of leading the healthy way of life and building the relations within the family.

The rest of the listed competences are connected with specialist’s ability to realize different forms of communication in order to carry out cooperation and solve social and professional problems; his capability of self-education and constant perfection in professional activity; possessing skills of leading healthy way of living and physical education skills.

It is now necessary to take a closer look at the media competence and digital competence as the components of information competence and readiness for life-long learning. They are quite well-grounded in view of the modern processes of globalization and wide introduction of new information technologies to the educational process.

Today the notion of “global university” and corresponding educational technologies are well-known in the number of European and world universities [7], and their practical application is also one of the main features of the modern educational process. At the same time these notions did not found the wide public in Russia yet, thought the specifics of Russian reality is such that they are of a high importance to the majority of the Russian students, who do not have financial means to continue their education abroad. Supplying the Russian students with the skills of gaining knowledge in the process and by means of the global education should open the wide range of possibilities of junction with world scientific, practical and professional achievements and, accordingly, ability for the further self-realization within the global labor market.

Moreover, it seems that media and digital competences come to foreground today and gain the importance for successful forming and developing of the whole set of key competences, because they ensure that the student, and later the specialist, has the skills to become proficient in the sphere of new knowledge, new technologies and to perfect his professional status. Exactly media and digital competences allow the specialist to feel confident in the modern society and to promptly consider the changing conditions and demands of the labor market.

Nevertheless forming and developing of media and digital competences puts forward high demands to the level of personal informational safety. Right now Russian educational system is on the early stage of development of competence approach in education, but the research is carried out constantly and results will follow soon.

REFERENCES

1. Common European competences of foreign languages possession: Studying, learning, evaluating – M., 2003.

2. State academic standard of higher professional education. Major: “Linguistics and cross-cultural communication”. M., 2004.

3. Project of federal component of state academic standard for general education. P. I, II. M., 2002.

4. Ozhegov, S.I., Shvedova N.J. Explanatory dictionary of Russian language: 80 000 workds and phraseological expressions/ Russian scientific academy. The institute of Russian language of V.V. Vinogradov. – 4^th edition, supplemented. – M.: Azbykovnik, 1999.

5. Miljrud R.P. Competence and foreign language education // Collection of scientific articles. – Taganrog: TSURE Publishing house, 2004.

6. Andreev A. Knowledge or competences // Higher education in Russia, № 2. 2005.

7. Varis T., Utsumi T., Klemm W. (Eds.) Global Peace Through The Global University System. University of Tampere, Finland: Saarijarven Offset Oy, 2003.