Abstract:

Increasing voter confidence in elections, strengthening electoral activity, and awareness of the importance of the electoral actions of every citizen of the country are problems on the solution of which the prosperous future of any state depends. One of the ways to solve these problems is to change the attitude towards the electoral process, considering electoral activity as a manifestation of individual culture. We associate all this with the formation of electoral culture. The objective of the study is to develop the pedagogical conception of teacher's electoral culture formation theoretically and practically and to test the effectiveness of the conception, model and technologies experimentally. Another idea is to describe the role and potential of electoral culture in the personal and professional development of a teacher. The electoral culture of a teacher is a key notion of our study and it is defined as a quality of the personal sphere, including competence, value, activity and translational components, determined by a system of rational and irrational preferences of the teacher’s personality. The electoral culture of teacher includes system of values, knowledge, norms and strategies of electoral behavior, transmitted during educational relationships. It contributes to the formation of personal culture, civic identity, realized in the active life position. The definition of teacher's electoral culture proposed by the author radically changes the attitude to electoral culture and results in attitude to electoral process change.

The research methodology is represented by noospheric, systemic, evolutionary, cultural, activity-based, environmental and competency-based approaches, as well as specific technologies for the formation of electoral culture. The following results were obtained in this study:
1) Specific features of the teacher’s electoral culture were identified;
2) It is shown that electoral culture influences the personal and professional development of a teacher;
3) A system for forming a teacher’s electoral culture has been developed; the system is implemented in accordance with principles of cultural conformity, scientific character, the formation of an individual educational trajectory, and the use of an emotional basis;
4) The concept of the formation of a teacher’s electoral culture is proposed, which reveals the methodological, theoretical, substantive and technological foundations for the formation of a teacher’s electoral culture, and determines the pedagogical conditions for the effectiveness of the concept;
5) The core of the developed pedagogical concept is a model for the formation of a teacher’s electoral culture, justified and developed in accordance with the principles of modeling in pedagogy; the model represents a complex of four interrelated and interdependent blocks;
6) A system of criteria and parameters for the effectiveness of the concept has been developed.

The practical implementation of the concept results in special educational program: “Formation of a teacher’s electoral culture”. After experimental work the conclusion was made that this program contains everything necessary for the formation of teacher’s electoral culture. The results obtained showed statistically significant positive dynamics of the studied process of formation of a teacher’s electoral culture and proved the effectiveness of the concept. Teachers' psychological training being a part of program has proved to be effective.

Keywords:

Electoral culture, voter, teacher, professional development, methodology.