Dr.Hab., Professor Sh.Z. Khubbiev¹
PhD, Associate Professor N.S. Panchuk²
PhD, Associate Professor V.G. Bondarev²
Dr.Hab., Professor V.E. Smirnov²
PhD S.S. Buchnev^3
1Saint Petersburg State University, St. Petersburg
²Russian State University of Justice, St. Petersburg
³Peoples' Friendship University of Russia, Moscow

Keywords: education, physical education, law university.

Background. Professional applied physical education (PAPE) shall be designed to make the students competent for the professional requirements; help them master their professions; step up their physical working capacity and their physical and mental stress tolerance; and persistently advance their professional skills. The PAPE shall also contribute to physical rehabilitation and recreation with its resource being actively and effectively mobilized via the national academic education system.

The Saint Petersburg State University (SPSU) team has developed a draft Education Standard that provides a set of minimal requirements to and provisions for the bachelor education curriculum as a part of academic 49.03.01 Physical Education discipline [4]. The valid Bachelor Physical Education curriculum is composed of a few education modules including the Academic Physical Education and Sport Specialist module customizable by the relevant education routes and paths to secure due competencies and skills for future physical education specialists; with the module being applicable at law departments of universities. The academic physical education and sports (PES) curriculum for law departments shall be designed as required by the Federal State Higher Education Standards (FSHES) 3++, specialties of the trainees and professional fitness requirements to the graduates; and shall secure the body conditioning and professional applied training components being duly harmonized. Due quality of the academic physical education and sports (PES) service shall be secured by the high quality of the educational process; educational provisions (environment) compliant to the valid standards; and the relevant set of PES tools, methods, models and modern educational technologies.

Objective of the study was to analyze the educational process specifics of the academic Physical Education and Sports (PES) discipline at law universities.

Methods and structure of the study. We have analyzed the content of the FSHES 3++; key education curricula (KEC) for 49.03.01 Physical Education and 40.03.01 Law disciplines (bachelor courses); practical bachelor physical education experience; and the PAPE basics at the national law universities. In addition, we have analyzed the practical experience of the professional advanced Academic Physical Education and Sports Specialist Education Course offered in SPSU [3].

Study results and discussion. The PES curricula for future lawyers shall be customized for the trainees’ actual needs; physical fitness levels; practical PES experience; actual condition of the PES infrastructure of the university; and future job requirements and responsibilities.    

As far as professional responsibilities of the future lawyers are concerned, they may be classified for the purposes of the study into the following categories: civil law service (general courts, colleges of lawyers, insurance companies, notary chamber, legal firms); criminal law service (law enforcement bodies, prosecutor offices, investigation service, federal agencies including FSS, FDCS, FSPE and FBS); state legal service (government agencies, local government bodies); and international law service (Ministry of Internal Affairs, foreign trade companies, transnational corporations, finance industrial companies etc.).

Future lawyer, police officer or serviceman must have good health, high physical fitness (with the relevant speed and strength qualities and endurance), speed strength and speed-strength endurance to be able to successfully oppose and detain an offender; plus well-developed coordination abilities to be able to respond to fast changing situations under time/ space pressure. It is also critical for the specialist to have good practical physical skills and abilities as required for the individual and public security [2]. We believe that a lawyer shall also demonstrate a variety of well-developed personality qualities including self-discipline, self-confidence, integrity, responsibility, business acumen in every mission, impartiality, good communication ability, emotional and mental balance, stamina and fast rehabilitation after stresses.

The academic PES may be designed and viewed as the highly important discipline for the personality and physical qualities building process. The law university graduates shall have good self-defense skills and physical fitness including racing and shooting skills, high tolerance to physical loads, and good physical responsiveness. These requirements to physical, mental and job-specific qualities of the future lawyers are geared to secure their fitness for the challenging and versatile job responsibilities including the excellent data and document processing skills, good verbal ability for the court proceedings, competency in the legal provisions, job-specific values system and ethical rules of conduct, good communication and management skills [1].

For successful professional career, the lawyers shall be prepared for reasonable risks; adequate rating of their abilities; to objectively estimate every situation for efficient decision making; to maintain emotional balance and self control; have good interpersonal communication skills in conflict situations; good coordination and strength abilities; general and special endurance developed by a set of special reasonably complex and new exercises; attention focusing and control ability; they should think and acting logically; and have good and fast analyzing skills; with all these skills and qualities being developed and excelled by sets of special situation-modeling game practices [5].

The high-quality academic PES service may be provided only by the highly mentally and physically fit and competent PES specialists. It should be noted, however, that at this juncture the national educational system is still in need of the sound theoretical and practical provisions for the high professional culture and spiritual background formation process at the law universities. Presently only a few studies of the physical education models are available for the relevant academic specialists [5]. Therefore, the modern academic PES service shall be designed to develop due competences in the bachelors as required by the FSHES 3++ for 40.03.01 Law discipline (bachelor course), with due account of the SPSU Bachelor Training Concept for 49.03.01 Physical Education curriculum [4]. Having analyzed the relevant databases offered on official websites of Saint Petersburg and Moscow based law universities we made an account of the PES services presently offered in the latter: see Table 1 hereunder.

Table 1. Physical education and sport (PES) services offered by Saint Petersburg and Moscow law universities

As demonstrated in Table 1 above, the academic PES curricula include a variety of physical education sub-disciplines to efficiently and effectively train future lawyers for their professional work. Summarizing the above data, we would highlight the following specific aspects of the academic PES services.

1. For success of the professionally valuable personality qualities building process, the academic PES service shall be designed as follows:

(a) It shall offer a three-stage program of active/ team games to model conflict situations for practical skills mastering by the future lawyers. At Stage 1, the trainees shall be duly motivated for professional progress to develop the job-specific personality qualities including good interpersonal communication skills in challenging professional situations. At Stage 2, they shall be motivated for excelling their professionally valuable personality qualities and knowledge of the rules of the relevant active/ team games; to efficiently apply the relevant problem-solving and situation management technologies. And at Stage 1, due habitual mental models facilitating the interpersonal communication skills in the challenging job-specific situations shall be formed including the lawyer-personnel communication format (with the referee assisting in the decision making and defending, initiative building and decision verbalizing processes); lawyer-lawyer format (to facilitate decision substantiation, logical formulation and verbalizing abilities and listening and discussing ability); and in the lawyer-client format (also referred to as the captain-player communication format with an emphasis on keeping ones cool when listening to the opponent, individual initiative and decision substantiation capacities) [5];

(b) The game tasks in the above educational program shall be designed to offer variable difficulties including the following: time limitations (for situation understanding and analyzing; decision making; communication with executive teammates; and urgent actions); intellectual problems (related to decision options analyzing and decision-making); situational challenges (due to the situations being new and unusual); social limitations (with the tasks varying in goals and age-, gender-, status-specifics and numbers of communicating individuals); and subjective/ individual performance limitations (due to fatigue, emotional stress etc.) [5];

(c) The PES practices shall be designed to make a special emphasis on the collective action formats to encourage the students’ motivations by the joint goals and roles distribution related challenges and accomplishments.

2. In the professionally important physical skills building process via the academic Physical Education and Sports curriculum, due priority shall be given to the self-defense basics to help future lawyers effectively act in the potentially dangerous situations.

Conclusion. The Physical Education and Sports (PES) curriculum for future lawyers shall be designed to attain the relevant educational, health improvement and cultural goals and help the trainees master the job-specific practical self-defense skills basics; and build up the general and special physical fitness and professionally valuable personality qualities. The PES curricula shall be designed to reasonably combine the traditional and new PES technologies including a variety of modern sport educational technologies with a due priority to the problem-solving education and business game elements.

References

1. Maltsev G.M. Kakoy yurist nuzhen obschestvu [The type of lawyer needed by society]. Rossiyskaya yustitsiya, 2001, no. 5, P. 69.
2. Mironov A.G. Pedagogicheskie usloviya sovershenstvovaniya professionalno-prikladnoy fizicheskoy podgotovki buduschikh yuristov na osnove primeneniya aykido [Aikido-based educational conditions for improving practical professional physical training of future lawyers]. Obrazovanie i samorazvitie, 2011, vol. 5, no. 27, pp. 64-69.
3. Panchuk N.S., Khubbiev Sh.Z., Smirnov V.E. et al Osobennosti realizatsii programmy professionalnoy perepodgotovki ‘Prepodavatel fizicheskoy kultury i sporta vysshey shkoly’ [Features of implementation of professional retraining program "Physical Education and Sports Teacher in higher education”]. Teoriya i praktika fiz. kultury, no. 10, 2017, pp. 8-10.
4. Khubbiev Sh.Z., Lukina S.M., Khismatullin S.A. et al Kontseptsiya podgotovki v SPbGU bakalavrov po napravleniyu «Fizicheskaya kultura» [The concept of training bachelors in Physical Education at St. Petersburg State University]. Teoriya i praktika fiz. kultury, 2017, no. 10, pp. 5-7.
5. Cherginets V.P. Formirovanie professionalno vazhnykh kachestv u studentov yuridicheskikh fakultetov sredstvami fizicheskoy kultury. Dis. kand. ped. nauk [Building professionally important qualities in law students by means of physical education. PhD diss.]. Ulan-Ude, 2004, 165 p.

Corresponding author: khubbiev@gmail.com

Abstract

The study analyses the educational process specifics of the academic Physical Education and Sports (PES) discipline at law universities. For success of the personality building and professional qualities cultivation service provided to future lawyers, the academic Physical Education and Sports curriculum shall be designed to: model conflict situations in the academic team sports and active games; motivate the students for the professionally important personality qualities building with a special emphasis on the interpersonal communication skills to control stressful profession-specific situations; give due knowledge of the rules of team sports and active games; apply problem-solving technologies and conflict situation modeling and testing practices; and form constructive mindsets for the productive communication in conflict situations. The game tasks in the educational process shall be designed to offer variable difficulties including: time limitations (for situation understanding and analyzing; decision making; communication with executive teammates; and urgent actions); intellectual problems (related to decision options analyzing and decision-making); situational challenges (due to situations being new and unusual); social limitations (with the tasks varying in goals and age-, gender-, status-specifics and numbers of communicating individuals); and subjective/ individual performance limitations (due to fatigue, emotional tension etc.).  In the professionally important physical skills building process, due priority in the academic Physical Education and Sports curriculum shall be given to the self-defense basics to help the future lawyers effectively act in potentially dangerous situations.