Abstract:

With the fast development of computer-aided hardware devices, specifically Computer Numerically Controlled (CNC) machine tools have become the core of industrial production, which greatly improves design, manufacturing and product competitiveness of different sector enterprises. Individuals, who can design, analyse, use, and maintain these hardware devices and software packages, are essential for the economic growth of any country. As such, schools and education institutes have to educate students of the relevant technical study programs so that their graduates would be prepared appropriately to fulfil professional knowledge and skills requirements put on them in the labour market by their potential employers. Although schools and education institutions are highly pressed to attract new-generation youth to engineering study programs, and in frame of them also to courses of CNC technologies programming, as to the secondary vocational schools these are facing a serious problem. The problem is to ensure professionally educated and skilfully trained teachers and supervisors of vocational education and training (VET) to teach subjects and to lead vocational training aimed at CNC technologies. In a general level, one can state that there is absence of vocational school teachers' interest in continuous education (which is necessary for them to keep up with the rapid changes in this field). A question, research problem solved in the paper, is what is behind this disinterest, i.e. what should be done to eliminate this phenomenon, what kind of support should be offered to these teachers on the one hand to keep them in their jobs (to eliminate their fluctuation) and on the other hand to support up-grading of their subject professional competence. Search for the answer to the stated research question has followed results of an inquiry of secondary vocational school teachers and supervisors of VET who teach subjects and lead VET topically related to the issue of CNC technologies programming.

Keywords:

CNC technologies, industrial production, vocational education and training, technical subject teachers.