The quality of education is increasingly a priority area for state development. In the context
of globalisation, the mission of the education system has become to create conditions for the
achievement of greater stability in society, by ensuring equal rights and opportunities for all
citizens, including individuals with disabilities. Amid efforts towards fully inclusive education, the
professional competences of specialists addressing the needs of those with learning disabilities are
crucial. High-quality training is required for qualified educator –particularly for social educators
– in this field. It aimed the research at identifying the necessary professional competences and
personal qualities of pre-service social educators to work in an inclusive education, as well as to
identify the difficulties university lecturers face in the training of social educators. A qualitative
research design was applied in the study. Fifty-one respondents-university lecturers participated
in it. Its results showed that, alongside central competences, emotional-volitional qualities have
played a significant role in the social educators’ engagement in inclusive education. The research
enabled to identify that the professional difficulties have the highest indicator among the difficulties
that lecturers face when training pre-service social educators. It can be assumed that these findings
will advance improvements in the development of social educators’ professional competences and
solutions to obstacles during their university-level studies.
Keyword(s) : professional competences
Academic expertise for the structure and content of professional competences for future preschool teachers
The Federal State Educational Standard for a new generation (FSES of HE 3++) sets out universal
and general professional competences for university graduates. Educational structures can define
professional competences independently and describe them as professional standards. A means
of solving this challenge is to use a group of assessment experts – one of the core academic
qualitative methods. This collective expert opinion helps to develop an algorithm for pedagogical
competence expertise and for generalizing their quantitative representation and content. The article
presents methods for the structure and content of professional competences for undergraduate
students majoring in preschool education. These include the group expert assessment method
and the procedure for reconciling the determined competences with current legal documents for
preschool education. The research focused on competence-based and qualimetric approaches aimed
at modeling the outcomes of education. The “framework” sets out the structure of competences
that act as the professional quality standards for higher education. The group expert assessment
made it possible to identify groups of professional competences and elaborate their content.
The authors have determined the academic expertise for the structure and content of professional
competences for students who are the future preschool teachers. This involved the examination and
harmonization of the requirements of the Professional Standards for “Teachers (teaching practice
in the field of preschool, primary, lower secondary, upper secondary education) (a pre-school
teacher, a teacher),” and the Federal State Educational Standard for preschool education. These
stages can be implemented in developing the structure and content of professional competencies
for students majoring in other areas and profiles of training, which adds to their practical value and
usefulness. The findings can be used by university instructors to identify and develop professional
competences for undergraduate students following their future job functions and actions as outlined
by professional standards.
Preparation for future teacher professional activity using a system for assessing the formation of competences
The system of teacher professional training is currently focused on changing approaches to the
organization of the practical component. A competence approach involves the evaluation of educational
outcomes from the perspective of competence development. The purpose of this article
is to determine the levels of competence formation among student teachers to identify the main
competence components of further professional development. The study involved the assessment
of 132 reports on master’s work following the results of pedagogical practice. The analysis enabled
the identification of the problem areas in competence formation. The article presents the system of
competency assessment developed by the authors during the undergraduates’ teaching practice. It
offers recommendations for improving the basic professional educational programs, for changes
both in the structure of the module itself and in the order of mastering the modules.