PhD, Associate Professor T.V. Tatiyanina
Postgraduate A.A. Ozerov
Mordovia State Pedagogical Institute named after M.E. Evsevev, Saransk

Keywords: personal self-improvement by future educator, personal self-improvement competence, off-class activity, social education project design.

Background. The need for the personal self-improvement competence to be formed in the bachelors of pedagogics is largely dictated by the social demand – from students, their families, modern educational establishments and society on the whole – for highly competent educators viewed as the ones having positive influence on the students and advocating for humanistic values of physical culture in the health improvement aspects and human development on the whole.

Objective of the study was to provide theoretical grounds for the social education project design for the personal self-improvement competence formation in a future educator.

Study results and discussion. The present study was designed to address the recent trends in the modern higher education system that bring to the forefront the need for highly competent educators prepared both to provide high-quality education services in their professional domain and to solve a variety of problems coming up in the students’ health improvement process. In this context, top priority is to be given to the idea of a health-centred education system. The core of the Idea is to “shift the physical education process styles and objectives from the “authoritarian training” formats to the physical education and sports centred process to cultivate sporting lifestyles in children and young people” [1, 2, 4].

Personal improvement of a future educator is viewed as an integrated process of personally and professionally customized activity to provide for persistent physical, intellectual and ethical self-development and conscientious progress towards the highest standards of pedagogical mastery, with the due goals and means being set and selected in the process to employ and update the available education systems and create the new ones focused on successful self-fulfilment in the vocational activity. Personal self-improvement competence of a future educator­ means herein the totality of the relevant knowledge, forms of activity, relationship and personal qualities required for persistent physical, intellectual and ethical self-development with due emotional self-control driven by permanent self-discovery agenda; with the relevant outside resources being mobilized to provide for the critical professional and personal problems on the way being solved in a self-reliant and creative manner. The competence covers the relevant personal hygienic standards, personal health agenda, high sexual culture and intrinsic environmental culture, plus a variety of personal qualities and skills to ensure personal life safety [7].

The efforts to build up the cognitive, active and reflexive experience in the personal self-improvement competence building process are more efficient when supported by an off-class activity geared to encourage personal creative self-development, self-perfection and self-fulfilment activities. Every student will be offered his own spectrum of professionally and personally important goals and necessary conditions to facilitate professional progress based on the tests and forecasts of potential challenges in the off-class self-development process – from the goal-setting to the progress rating stage. Top priority in the university students’ off-class activity encouragement will be given to the following elements: create favourable educational environment for creative self-improvement, personality self-development and self-fulfilment by the students; arrange target works to prevent drug addictions, including inhalant, alcohol, smoking addictions etc. and to provide against a variety of other asocial phenomena in the students’ community; and create a basis for due physical education, health protection and healthy lifestyle cultivation activity (V.A. Slastenin, Y.V. Meshcheryakova, V.M. Khudyakov).

These process elements are duly covered by the social education project design activity geared to transform a variety of social processes and phenomena using a set of relevant education tools. It is I.V. Manzheley who makes an emphasis on the project method being highly efficient in the students’ physical education as it “helps the educator create an elective physical culture and sport environment full of motivations to encourage the student to be the best in the class and off-class education process” [5]. Highly valuable in this context is the experience of Mordovia State Pedagogical Institute in strengthening the practical focus in the education staff training process under the innovative model “university – base department – general education establishment”. To give examples of the joint successful projects of that kind, we would mention the “Practical volunteers’ activity to support the Kazan Students’ Competitions” Master Class; “Preventing and coping with bad habits” Discussion Site; the “GTO test standards for school children” Public Awareness Marathon; etc. [8].

An idea to develop the “Health Teacher” Social Education Project was triggered by the traditional and regular All-Russian Contest under the same name. The Project goals are to: encourage the health-centred culture being formed within the national education system; promote innovative approaches, health-protection and health-formation technologies and methods based on the educators being duly prepared to equally appreciate the knowledge and health standards of the trainees; and to disseminate the positive educational experience in the health-centred values and culture formation in the academic staff and pupils [6]. We believe that the “Health Teacher” Social Education Project may help find solutions, among other things, to purely research problems. For instance, efforts are being taken to explore potential benefits of the Project as a tool to form self-improvement competences in future educators in the academic education process. The logical design of the Project was driven by the modern experience of the physical culture and health-improvement system designs based on the theoretically grounded and reasonably balanced external and internal human development factors on the one hand, and adaptation of the project theory to the topic of the study with an emphasis on its design staging provisions on the other hand [3]. Let us present hereunder the “Health Teacher” Social Education Project design algorithm and underline its research focus.

 The Project idea was to modify the dominating attitudes and develop more professional positions of future educators specializing in non-core physical education to help them master the content, forms and technologies of the modern physical culture and health-improvement education system applicable in their future professional careers. The Project was designed to offer facilitating institutional and educational conditions to help the future educators master the due knowledge, skills and relationship and develop the personal qualities necessary for the permanent physical, intellectual and ethical self-improvement process. Subjects to the Project were the students of non-core physical education univerisity. Subject matter of the Project was the personal self-improvement competence formation activity under the Social Education Project. Objective of the Project was to provide theoretical grounds for and practically implement the “Health Teacher” Social Education Project as an efficient tool for the personal self-improvement competence formation in a future educator. Project goals were set to form the relevant diagnostics toolkit; select the most appropriate data mining and progress analyzing tools; put together a set of the Project progress and outcome assessment criteria; and identify the key parameters and indices for the Project efficiency rating studies. Project participants are the academic staff team composed of university educators and students involved in the Project design and piloting process. Project base is Mordovia State Pedagogical Institute named after M.E. Evsevev, Saransk.

Conclusion. The educational benefits of the social education projects designed with an emphasis on the physical culture and health improvement aspects may be described as success in forming the future educators' positive attitudes to the intellectual, emotional, social and physical health improvement activity rated among the top-priority spiritual, ethical and social values.

The study was performed with support from the Ministry of Education and Science of the RF pursuant to the State Order to the Mordovia State Pedagogical Institute named after M.E. Evsev’yev for the year of 2016 under Project #1846 “Theoretical and Practical Grounds for a Model University Acting as a Base Pedagogical Education Centre”.

References

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3. Kotlyarov I.V. Teoreticheskie osnovy sotsial'nogo proektirovaniya (Theoretical basics of social project management) / I.V. Kotlyarov. – Minsk: Nauka i tekhnika (Science and technology), 1989. – 188 p.
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8. Shukshina T.I. Podgotovka pedagogicheskikh kadrov v usloviyakh realizatsii innovatsionnoy modeli: vuz – bazovaya kafedra – obshcheobrazovatel'naya shkola (Training teachers within implementation of innovative model: higher school - base chair - Secondary School) / T.I. Shukshina, S.N. Gorshenina, M.Yu. Kulebyakina // Gumanitarnye nauki i obrazovanie (Humanities and Education). – 2016. – № 1. – P. 79-94.

Corresponding author: t_i_shukshina@mordgpi.ru

Abstract
In the present situation of the national higher education sector of the Russian Federation, top priority will be given to the efforts to prepare the public and individual consciousness to the key values of professional activity being duly appreciated, with due emphasis on the health-building aspects of the educational process. It is the personal self-improvement competence of a future educator that becomes a key mission of the educational process to make an individual prepared for harmonized physical, intellectual and moral self-development process. Furthermore, it is the high and growing social-and-professional potential as a basis for the creative aspects of the physical culture activity in the “Sport for All” Program format that is viewed as a prerequisite for successful sporting activity today. Such an approach to the university physical education is de-signed to activate the socially important forms of the sport movement, including social education projects as one of such forms. The article provides a rationale for the project format being applied to develop the personal self-improvement competences in future educators and offers a formation algorithm for the “Health Teacher” Social Education Project. The study data are indicative of the potential great benefits of the social education projects with an emphasis on the physical culture and health aspects viewed as an efficient tool to shape up positive attitudes of future educators to intellectual, emotional, social and physical health as a prime spiritual, moral and social value.