Associate Professor, Dr.Hab. M.A. Kartavykh
Professor, Dr.Hab. G.S. Kamerilova
PhD I.V. Prokhorova
Associate Professor, PhD E.L. Ageeva
M.A. Veryaskina
Kozma Minin Nizhny Novgorod State University (Minin University), Nizhny Novgorod

Keywords: communicative competency, educational process cyclicity, communication cycle.

Background. Modern society gives a high priority to the teacher’s subject-specific communicative competency being high enough in the modern world flooded by information acting as a globally influential resource. The rapidly increasing information flows including those in the worldwide web with its poorly controllable and highly controversial contents may be of high risk for any society. The ideological content of the mixed information flows may be highly damaging for an unstable consciousness, particularly that of children and adolescents. Different extremist/ terrorist organizations, pseudo-religious and pseudoscientific groups take full advantage of the modern information and communication technologies to indoctrinate young people all over the world and recruit them into the groups.

Modern higher teachers education system is designed to respond to every social challenge in a timely manner; the responses coming in form of the competences largely centred on the process communication aspects with a high priority being given to individual safety in particular and the social/ state security on the whole. Future physical education teachers have to develop the relevant competences as well, and these competences are provided by the main professional academic curricula for the Physical Education discipline within the Pedagogical Education sector with its base Life Safety discipline.

In this context, the physical education teacher’s communicative competency in the life safety domain is viewed as a mandatory quality as it helps the teacher find, analyse, interpret, sort out and critically assess information coming from a variety of sources and classify the information as safe or unsafe, necessary or worthless to prudently design interpersonal communication with the trainees in a safe and reasonable manner in a variety of situations.

Objective of the study was to identify a communication cycle most appropriate for the physical education teacher’s communicative competency in the life safety domain being efficiently developed and employed.

Methods and structure of the study. It was found beneficial for the physical education teacher’s communicative competency in the life safety domain being duly developed to apply the process modelling tools. Modelling process means that a real system is physically or virtually simulated using special operable analogues that reproduce the system design and operation principles (V.P. Bespal’ko, B.S. Gershunskiy, K. Ingekamp). It may be pertinent to mention the opinion of M.K. Mamardashvili who underlines, while appreciating advantages of the modelling method, that a model is designed to “so to say thread the integrity of features and links empirically observable in reality that are selected on scientific grounds for the model rather than some other possible creative method; with the modelling human acting as a researcher of the above” [7, p. 16-17]. In the G.P. Shchedrovitskiy’s opinion, a model may be interpreted as a “prototype of action targeted to the future” [12]. Model design herein was performed with due account of the external factors including social values; modern social, economic and political conditions; life safety theory development trends; modern educational paradigms; and the present social and personal needs to address the objectives-and-values-, design-and-procedure- and operational-technology-related aspects of the physical education teacher’s communicative competency model. Model is viewed as a dynamic rather than static structure with the educational process taking place within its frame.

Study results and discussion. Provision on the integrity of the frame model of the physical education teacher’s communicative competency in the life safety domain is designed to ensure the model systemacy governed by the laws of harmony and sustainability, inter-component functional coordination and correlation. Integrity as a manifestation of emergence implies the qualities of integrated model being principally unlimited by direct summation of the model elements, with such summation being insufficient for description of all properties of the integrated model; and with properties of every element of the model being dependent on its place and functions within the integrity. The model integrity has new qualities and features other than those of its individual components and other than those emerging within their limited interaction under a certain system of relationship. Special emphasis in our study was made on the analysis of content-and-values-, design-and-procedure- and operational-technology-related aspects of the physical education teacher’s communicative competency model.

It was purposefulness that was applied as a system-forming factor that determines the social-and-governmental needs of the individual prepared to and capable of safe interaction with the full-of-risks surrounding world to find support for own sustainable development process. The functional structure of the model was designed in compliance with the modern concepts of integrated systemic design of the teacher’s communicative competency in the life safety domain.

The ready model structure required due practical implementation versions being found for its application in a practical educational process in the context of the modern education development trends. It was the idea of the educational process cyclicity (by A.M. Danilov, L.Y. Zorina, I.A. Kolesnikova, A.E. Maron, N.F. Rodionova, A.P. Tryapitsyn, P.I. Pidkastiy) that was taken as a pivotal methodological line for the model.

It should be noted that we consider the modelled communicative cycle of the physical education teacher’s communicative life-safety competency formation process as an educational process dominated by the dual procedure of the interpersonal (subject-object) relationship being developed in the communication process. This communication cycle may be described by the common characteristics of an educational process including its purposefulness; genuine system integrity; dynamism; iteration; recurrence; and controllability. Let us now dwell on these didactic cycle characteristics in considering the internal structure of the process.

The purpose-setting component of the cycle plays a strategic role and may be interpreted as the key attribute of the physical education teacher’s communicative life-safety competency formation cyclicity; it includes a variety of motivations and purpose definition for the communicative competency formation cycle.

The physical education teacher’s communicative life-safety competency may be defined as a complexly designed system integrating motivations-and-objectives-, values-and-standards-, information-and-cognition-, practice-and-creation-, and personality-focused components.

The content-setting component of the communicative competency formation cycle is designed so as the relevant axiological, cognitive, praxiological and personality aspects are duly integrated in the component.

The axiological aspects may be defined as a system of motivations-and-purposes- and values-and-standards-focused components of the physical education teacher’s communicative life-safety competency, the components forming a basis for the doctrines and ideas, system of values and the spiritual domain of the personality being formed in the communication/ interaction process. The cognitive aspect implies the relevant interpersonal communication/ interaction standards and rules being mastered with an emphasis on the life safety centred knowledge and competences. The praxiological aspect implies the communication abilities being applied in a variety of interpersonal contacts and situations, conditional the subject being highly knowledgeable and skilful in the following: preventing and coping with potential conflict situations; self-control and effective communication; applying a wide set of methods to ensure individual life safety and social/ state security in different life conditions and emergency situations including natural calamities, manmade/ social disasters etc.; and the first aid to victims of such disasters, including a reasonable creative initiative in the process. The personality aspect implies that the subject should have deep understanding of the content and due reflexivity in applying the knowledge and own communicative qualities and skills with fully awareness of the personality qualities being formed. And the procedural component of the communicative cycle was designed based on the multi-scaling and hierarchical principles.

The communicative macro-cycles presently applied in higher education are designed to help: master the teamwork methods; foster tolerant attitudes to the social, cultural and personal differences; and professionally communicate in written and verbal formats both in Russian and foreign languages in contacts with the social process partners in professional activity. The subject-setting component of the communicative competency is formed based on the specific requirements of the professional career, with due emphasis on the potential high-risk/ emergency situations and the standard methods of first aid to victims of such situations. Meso-level of the cycle refers to the shorter time periods including academic years, semesters, modules etc. Macro-level implies the specific lesson or education sessions.

Each communication cycle is built up based on an iteration concept and includes the following four key phases that generally show the functional interdependencies in the process: problem-recognizing, problem-identifying, problem-solution-creating and reflexive phases. The educational toolkit of the communicative cycle may be presented as a set of interrelated dialogue-studied situations (as provided by E.A. Kopylova [6]) that consider expressivity-, rituals-, information/ cognition- and convincing-focused communication models that give the means to select the appropriate interpersonal interaction line with due account of the personalities of the process participants and reasonably apply the due communication model and toolkits for the physical education teacher’s competency in the life safety domain being successfully formed.

In identifying the key diagnostic indices of the personality communicative ability in the life safety domain, we made due consideration for the findings of L. Plunkett and G. Heil [11]. As a result, the communication cycle was designed as the life-safety-centred communicative competency levelled building process, the competency being built up dynamically in the following sequence: 1) subconscious incompetency; 2) conscious incompetency; 3) conscious competency; 4) subconscious competency.

Conclusion. The study resulted in the physical education teacher’s communicative competency in the life safety domain being duly substantiated as highly critical at present, the competency being secured by the teacher being engaged in the communicative education cycles. The model tests yielded positive results indicative of the proposed concept being efficient.

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Corresponding author: mkartavykh@rambler.ru

Abstract

The article gives substantiations for the physical education teachers having due communicative competency in the life safety domain. Special emphasis is made on the analysis of content-and-values-, design-and-procedure- and operational-technology-related aspects of the physical education teacher’s communicative competency building process in the life safety domain. It is a communication cycle that was specified as the process basis for the physical education teacher’s communicative competency building process in the life safety domain. The cycle was considered from the viewpoint of the educational process interpreted as a dual procedure of the interpersonal relationship being developed in the communication process. Furthermore, the study analyzes the communication cycle characteristics including purposefulness, genuine system integrity, dynamism, controllability, iteration and renewability. Subject to special analysis is the structure of the physical education teacher’s communicative competency in the life safety domain that is outlined as a complicated system that combines motivations-and-goals, values-and-standards-, information-and-cognition- and personality-development-focused components. The communication cycles were designed based on the multi-scaling and hierarchical principles. In the process design aspects, the communication cycle is built up based on an iteration scheme and includes the following four key phases that generally show the functional interdependencies in the process: problem-recognizing, problem-identifying, problem-solution-creating and reflexive phases. The educational toolkit of the communication cycle may be presented as a set of interrelated dialogue-studied situations that refer to different communication models.