Scientific journal

European Journal of Natural History

ISSN 2073-4972

ИФ РИНЦ = 0,301

The article studies professional competences and their interpretations, for example, mastering knowledge, skills, and abilities; constructs of standards´ projecting; efficient usage of abilities, integrated combination of knowledge, skills, and settings; readiness and ability to act reasonably, etc.

Besides, the very isea of academic competence is studied, such competences are also called applied.

Further we provide different approaches of authors towards the understanding the essence of professional competence and its formation. A relation between professional competence and pedagogic skills has been revealed.

Nowadays scientific literature provides definitions of different competences: professional, general and key, academic, special, etc.

Professional competence is defined as:

• mastering knowledge, skills, and abilities that are necessary to work in a specialty with a simultaneous autonomy and flexibility in terms of solving professional problems, developed collaboration with colleagues and professional impersonal environment;
• constructs of projecting standards that represent «elements of competence» that include: activity criterions (measure of quality); area of implementation, required knowledge;
• efficient usage of skills that allow one to carry out professional activity productively according to the requirements of his workplace. In this case competences go beyond the frame of professional triad «knowledge-skills-abilities» and include informal and formal knowledge and know-how (behavior, analysis of facts, making decisions, processing information, etc). [1];
• integrate combination of knowledge, skills, and settings that allows one to carry out professional activity in modern labour environment [2];
• readiness and ability to act reasonably in accordance with requirements of a business, solve problems independently and in an methodically organized way, evaluate the results of his activity [3].

Professional competences are oriented towards a profession.

Some outline academic competences that are defined as mastership in methodology and terms that is typical for a certain areas of knowledge, understanding of its actual system relations, and realizing its axiom limits [4]. These concepts are also called applied, and related skills, correspondent methods and technical means that are typical for subjective areas are referred to them [3].

Pedagogic science studies the idea of «professional competence» as a totality of skills and knowledge that define the efficiency of work; an amount of skills to solve a problem; combination of personal characteristics; vector of profesionalization; unity of theoretical and practical readiness to work; ability to carry out complex, culture-defined types of activity, etc. Such «wide» definition of this concept, as we think, is linked to its integrative characteristic that allows us to transform and study its meaning from different point of view.

Professional competence as a professional readiness and ability of a labour subject to carry out tasks and responsibilities of everyday activity is studied by K.A. Abulkhanova-Slavskaya who pays a great significance to specific-applied knowledge of a specialist, as «they serve as a basis in forming the whole professional competence». Structural components of a competence are also professional positions, for which a person´s orientations play an important part. They unite a system of needs - dominants, values, goals, prevailing systems of sense motives that are fixed in life goals, settings, prospects, urges, plans, and active work to achieve them; individual psychological characteristics of a person that define his individuality, way of activity, behavior, ans acmeological invariants of a specialist that, being inner stimulants, define his need for active self-development, productive realization of his creative potential in work and move towards personal peak of professional perfection.

M.A. Choshanov put the following definition of professional competence: «If we try to define the place of a competence in the system of levels of professional mastership, it occupies an intermediate place between routine and perfection. First of all, a competence implies continuous refreshment of knowledge, mastering new information in order to use it successfully in definite terms, in other words, mastering operative and mobile knowledge. Secondly, a competence is not simply possession of knowledge, but more a potential readiness to solve problems consciously, thus, a competence includes both substantial (knowledge) and procedural (skills) components. Depending on circumstances, a competent specialist can use a method that is most suitable for the conditions and time. Flexibility of a method is the second important characteristic of a competence. Thirdly, a competent person can select the optimal solution among a multiplicity of those, reasonably reject the incorrect, argue both effective and ineffective methods, in other words, a specialist must possess critical thinking. Thus, the concept of a competence includes the following main characteristics: mobility of knowledge, flexibility of a method, and criticality of thinking». A competence is a step, higher than diligence and lower than perfection.

Most authors consider a definite amount of professionally-necessary knowledge, skills, abilities, deep awareness in questions of upbringing and training a necessary element of professional activity of a pedagogue. Different dictionaries interpret mastering knowledge that allow to judge something, an area of questions in which a subject possesses an idea, experience as a competence (latin - competo - achieve, correspond, fit).

V.A. Sitarov defines professional competence as a complex formation that is provided by variation, optimization, and efficiency of constructing training-educational process.

Building professional competence of a pedagogue is the topic of a research by S.I. Ferkho who defines it as a complex personal formation, essence of which should be explained through the unity of cognitive, behavior, and motivation areas of a person´s development [119].

Authors of the textbook «Pedagogy» V.A. Slastenin, I.F. Isayev, A.I. Mishenko, and E.N. Shiyanov claim that professioanl competence of a pedagogue represents the «unity of his theoretical and practical readiness to carry out pedagogic activity», while the basis of a tutor´s competence structure is formed by numerous pedagogic skills that characterize this readiness. Scientists consider psychological-pedagogic and special (subjective) knowledge (theoretical readiness) to be necessary, but sufficient condition of professional competence. Much of it, particularly theoretical-practical and methodic knowledge, is a supposition for intellectual and practical skills and abilities. Pedagogic skill is a totality of continuously-developed actions, part of which can be automated (skills), that are based on theoretic knowledge and directed towards solving problems of development of a harmonic person. Such definition of the essence of pedagogic skills underlines the leading role of theoretical knowledge in forming practical readiness of future tutors, the unity of theoretical and practical training, multi-level character of pedagogic skills (from reproductive to creative), and possibility to perfect them via atomatization of separate actions.

Thus, V.A. Slastenin, I.F. Isayev, A.I. Mishenko, and E.N. Shiyanov present us a model of professional competence of a tutor as a unity of his theoretical and practical readiness. Besides, as we have already outlined, a special attention is paid to pedagogic skills that are split into four groups by the authors.

1. Skills to «transfer» the contents of an objective upbringing process into definite pedagogic problems: studying a person and a group to define the level of its readiness for an active mastering new knowledge and projecting the development of the group and separate students at the basis of this analysis, outlining a complex of educational, upbringing, and developing problems, their definition, and outlining the dominant problem.
2. Skills to construct and ignite logically-finalized pedagogic system: complex planning of educational and upbringing goals, rational selection of the contents of educational process; optimal choice of forms, methods, ans means of its organization.
3. Skills to outline and establish relations between components and factors of upbringing, carry them out: creation of the necessary conditions (material, moral-psychological, organizational, hygienic, etc.); activation of a scholar´s personality, development of his activity that transforms him into a subject of training from an object; organization and development of mutual activity, provision of link between school and environment, regulation of outer non-programmed interactions.
4. Skills to account and evaluate results of pedagogic activity: self-analysis, and analysis of educational process and results of a tutor´s activity, definition of new complex of dominant and secondary pedagogic problems

V.P. Simonov describes competence of a tutor as a readiness to carry out his professional functions, harmonic unity of social setting s and psychological-pedagogic training. Knowledge of a subject, erudition, and pedagogic (methodical) mastership he outlines as the main in characteristic of a pedagogue´s personality. And, the scientist puts the following sense into the concept of «pedagogic mastership»:

• an ability to solve problems of training, upbringing, and development in a dialectic unity;
• an ability to draw attention of students and interest them with a studied material;
• an ability to consider an age and psychological peculiarities of students, as well as the level of their development and provide an individual and differential approach towards them;
• an ability to build his relations with students on basis of human, democratic ideas;
• an ability not to get lost in front of the most difficult and unexpected questions from students;
• an ability to combine theory and practice in teaching a subject;
• an ability to use novelties of headmost pedagogic science and technics in one´s practice;
• an ability to master one´s tool of labour - speech, a word;
• an ability to think critically and have a clear active civil position;
• an ability to diversify one´s classes, avoid cliché in their organization.

Divesity of the existing ideas on the essence and the content of the concept «professional competence» allow us to claim that there is no unity in this question, and it defines differencies in defining its structure.

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