Dr.Hab., professor F.I. Sobyanin
PhD O.V. Petrenko
PhD E.S. Nikolaeva
Belgorod State National Research University, Belgorod

Keywords: specialist, vocational fitness, model, education

Introduction. It is a matter of common knowledge today that the present national education system policies are largely dominated, among other things, by a competency building approach [2]. On the one hand, it gives some reference basis for initiatives to implement main staff training curricula in different areas; for accreditation of higher educational establishments; and for different educational and methodological processes. But, on the other hand, practical experience of its application in the professional sport education system has revealed a serious problem that is of expressly negative impact on the education quality. The problem is that the educational process is put on a more formalistic, disinterested basis. For instance, the process geared to formulate competences (ideally viewed as universal, general professional and specific professional ones) is free of clear reference points, and this is the reason why the competences are often commonly perceived as being too far from reality; and the relevant specialists encounter serious difficulties trying to describe what disciplines, education tools and methods should be applied to implement these competences in practice. This is in fact the case for every level of educational curricula, including the bachelor, master and postgraduate levels.

It might be reasonable to suppose that a solution for this problem, under the present conditions, may be found based on a new scientifically grounded approach making due account of the modern concepts of the professional education and vocational fitness standards to shape up a future specialist and his/her model image, based on the relevant provisions of the theory of culture and acmeology. Since the problem has never been deeply explored by the theoretical and practical methods, we believe it deserves to be seriously studied.

Objective of the study was to explore prospects for the professional sport education quality improvement based on a new culturology- and acmeology-driven approach.

Methods and organisation of the study. The study data have been accumulated for the period of 1985 through 2015. Subject to the study were in total 1248 people including university entrants, students, physical education teachers and university teachers. The study has been performed in different periods at the Ural Pedagogical Institute named after A.S. Pushkin (Uralsk city, Kazakhstan), A.I. Herzen Leningrad State Pedagogical Institute (Leningrad, Russia), Russian State Institute of Physical Culture named after P.F Lesgaft (Leningrad, Russia), West-Kazakhstan Humanitarian Academy (Uralsk city, Kazakhstan); and Belgorod State National Research University (Belgorod city, Russia).

Study results and discussion. It is the valid state educational standard that sets forth formal guidelines for the university education process, albeit it offers no graduate specialist model in fact. The Federal State Higher Professional Education Standard Clause 49.04.01 ‘Physical Education’ Discipline (master level) [3], for example, sets forth a set of specifications for master’s professional activity and frame requirements to the master’s knowledge assessment results categorized by the key disciplines of the masters curricula, albeit provides no model specifications for a master as such. The same applies to the bachelor/ postgraduate education standards. Moreover, Clause 49.06.01 ‘Physical Education and Sports’ Discipline (postgraduate level) of the above Standard enables the universities to set forth professional competences at their own discretion [4]. It actually means that every university may come up with its own set of professional competences and thereby make its contribution to the national education system being totally disharmonized; and it means that there will be no more universal educational environment in the country that was supposed to be established by a consistent system of educational standards.

This problem may be solved, in our opinion, by a culturology- and acmeology-driven approach that implies exploration of interrelated phenomenological classes using the tools of acmeology and theory of culture. The key idea of this approach is to train specialists based on the mainstream cultural, vocational and personality-centred values being in focus of the educational process. In the approach implementation process, the following key educational principles will apply: the three education levels continuity principle that equally respects the general (mainstream cultural), specific (vocational) and individual (personality-centred) values of the process; the specialist’s formation process integrity principle that implies all the specific aspects of the vocation being addressed and integrated into the process; principle of personality formation through diverse activities; the universal human and national values protection and advancement principle; education process variability principle; education process individualization principle; and the education process humanization principle.

From the viewpoint of the culture theory, a few phenomenological classes may be of special interest for the study, including such categories as culture, humanization, continuity, traditions, innovations etc.; and from the acmeological standpoint, special emphasis will be made on such categories as specialist model and vocational fitness. Culture in this context will be interpreted as the specific, ethically sensitive method of human activity, including the activity result apprehension and valuation. Humanization in this context will imply the dominating role in the process being given to the efforts to help develop and employ the internal assets of the trainee (i.e. his/her vocational fitness shaping methods) rather than to the external pressure on the trainee from outside. In terms of cultural continuity, top priority will be given to protection of the national accomplishments in the educational sector and taking full benefit of the valuable past experiences viewed as a basis for further improvement of the educational agenda and curricula rather than thoughtless parroting of the foreign educational standards. Traditions and innovations will be viewed in this context as a dialectic interaction to help the innovations being accepted by the professional community as useful and efficient tools that may evolve to and be rated as traditions with time. If the above terms and definitions are applied on a constructive basis, they will set frame notions for the new occupational-and-tutorial fitness standards of future specialists and provide a basis for further specialist model (standard) development followed by implementation of these models in the professional physical education curricula.

The specialist model (i.e. future professional standard) will be duly substantiated by scientists and specialists and recommended by the relevant agencies for implementation by the relevant higher educational establishments. It would be appropriate to first establish a base specialist model for the university graduate willing to work in the national physical education sector; and then develop a set of specific individualized specialist models for a variety of specific disciplines/ areas including, for example, sports, sport recreation, adaptive physical education disciplines etc.

The specialist background education models with a special emphasis on the vocational fitness domain (including the ones for the physical education sector, with different professional and psychological traits spelling charts called professograms, psychograms and specialist’s passports) were developed in the past millennium; but no efforts are being taken today to benefit from the past modelling experience and take it as a basis for further developments.

As far as we know from the available data, definition of vocational fitness (of a physical education teacher, for instance) falls in no contradiction with the meaning of vocational competency and rather is interpreted as a background measurable quality that competency is build on (being interpreted as the knowledge in a broad sense of the term); and then, in the postgraduate phase of the specialist’s development, the special knowledge and skills are referred to as professionalism (interpreted as the broad-based knowledge system) and professional teaching mastery [3].

We would propose the following key categories for the aspects (content) of such term (and asset) as the physical education teacher vocational fitness:

1) Professional and tutorial fitness aspect, including individual interests, ideas, needs, aspirations etc.;

2) Intellectual/ rational fitness aspect;

3) Physical (classified into general and special) fitness aspect; and

4) Individual and mental aspects of personality, including personal temperament, character, gifts etc. [1, 3].

Having applied tools of a regular factor analysis, we found the main role in the above list of vocational fitness content being played by the following six aspects: professional and tutorial fitness aspect with the factor weight of 26%; cognition-focused physical education determination aspect with the factor weight of 12%; humane and self-demanding attitude to oneself and others element with the factor weight of 12%; positive, emotional and entrepreneurial attitudes to children element with the factor weight of 9%; mental stability aspect with the factor weight of 7,2%; and communication skills aspect with the factor weight of 5%. The other elements or aspects were found less important. It should be mentioned in this context that each of the above factors may be spelled out by sets of criteria that fall in good correlation with the actual academic successes of the university students of physical education departments. In the vocational motivation aspect, for instance, these criteria were found to be in good correlation with the actual academic successes of the subject students to the extent of r=0.781 [3].

The vocational fitness rates, as verified by the relevant reports, are very important at every stage of student’s education at the university. These rates are always listed among the top priorities in the university entrance process, in making decisions on dismissals of students from the university, in the educational practices etc. According to the data reported for many Russian and Kazakhstan universities, vocational motivation plays notably higher role in the choice of vocation by the would-be university entrants than even the most successful vocational orientation campaigns. Moreover, vocational fitness rates were reported to play an important role in the student athletes’ training process individualization initiatives [8, 9].

The study data and analyses show that there are a few more or less variable components in structure of the physical education teacher’s vocational fitness. The experiments demonstrated that educational tools may be of significant effect on one or another quality development process; for example, the students’ teaching abilities were proved to improve, with the educational practice being reported as the most favourable period for the improvements.

It should be noted that our studies on the subject are actively responded and referred to in works by national and foreign authors with concern to professional university education of teachers, and this fact may be indicative of high priority of the subject for the research community [1, 5-7]. Therefore, we believe that the proposed culturology- and acmeology-driven approach will open new avenues for improvement of the physical education teacher training process to meet the modern social development challenges.

Conclusions

• The study demonstrated that the proposed culturology- and acmeology-driven approach designed to improve the physical education teacher training process is quite promising for the education quality improvement initiatives.

• Occupational fitness of a specialist (bachelor, master or postgraduate) is proposed as a key reference point for the professional physical education curricula offered by universities. Such an approach will help shape up and excel mastery of the physical education personnel based on the authors’ system of actions.

• It will be beneficial to develop a base specialist model for graduates based on the relevant theoretical and empirical data on the structure of personality and vocational fitness of the physical education specialists. The model will be designed as an invariable standard subject to revision only in case when absolutely new knowledge on vocational fitness is obtained.

• The base specialist model in application to the physical education sector will be developed by the relevant top experts under supervision of the relevant ministries and institutions. It may be used as a basis for the downstream graduate specialist models applicable at every level of the physical education system and to every discipline of the latter.

• Graduate specialist’s competences may be further revised with consideration for the approved base specialist model and discipline-specific specialist models and with maximum possible account of the content of the vocational fitness standard and actual challenges faced by the physical education specialists.

References

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Corresponding authors: petrenko_o@bsu.edu.ru; Nikolaeva_e@bsu.edu.ru

Abstract

The paper concerns the problem of development of professional sports education in universities on the basis of the culturology-acmeology-driven approach, applying classes of phenomena of the theory of culture and acmeology. It is assumed that the educational process should be focused on the content of professional pedagogical competency of students to work in the sphere of physical education, on the development of basic and specialized models of graduates for different majors, correction of definitions of common cultural, general professional and professional competences.