STRATEGIES OF PRACTICAL USE OF CASES WHEN FORMING TERMINOLOGICAL COMPETENCE OF FUTURE TEACHERS

The article presents results of the study aimed at describing the education and development strategies of case method application when forming future teachers' terminological competence on different levels of pedagogical education in Russia and comparing their efficiency.
When defining terminological competence (TC) the authors draw upon its structural-functional model (N.V. Bordovskaya and E.A. Koshkina) and consider it as an important part of professional competence. Specificity of terminological competence of a teacher is revealed through a system of actions in the course of solving any pedagogical problem: 1) successful assimilation of the vocabulary in the subject field of pedagogical activity (the subject-cognitive component of TC); 2) free orientation in the lexical system of the pedagogical language and argumentation of terminology choice when setting goals and choosing solutions (the intellectual-reflexive component of TC); 3) appropriate use of terminology in the course of oral or written representations of results and when explaining any upcoming difficulties and ways to overcome them (the communicative and speech component of TC).
The study in question involved 202 students from Russia including 35 students of the pedagogical college, 134 bachelor and 33 master students of the university.
The basic methods of research are as follows: a) evaluation (5-point scale) and analysis of the results of three types of case-tasks on the subject of didactics solved by the students (the subject-cognitive, intellectual-reflexive and communicative and speech components); b) the author’s method of diagnosing the level of TC; c) methods of mathematical statistics for data processing (nonparametric Mann–Whitney U test for two independent samples and Kruskal–Wallis H test for two or more independent samples).
Comparative analysis of results of cases solutions showed that the level of development of components of terminological competence is average in all the groups (54%, 77% and 88%); the college students tend to have a lower level of development of TC components while no significant differences are revealed between the results of the bachelor and master students. Still the bachelor students as compared to the master students show higher indexes of orientation in the lexical system of the pedagogical language and argumentation of terminology choice when setting goals and choosing solutions. Based on empirical results, it was proved that pedagogical cases of subject-cognitive and communicative-speech type are optimal within the education strategy, and subject-cognitive and reflective-evaluation type cases are the best option for implementation within the development strategy.