CLUSTER OF EDUCATIONAL COMPETENCES IN THE SYSTEM OF VALUES OF DESIGN STUDIES STUDENTS

Reforming the system of training as one of the main directions of modernization of higher education in Russia highlights the issue of correlating the requirements with the qualifications of graduates, as specified in the Higher Education Standards, learning outcomes, and employer needs. One of the burning issues of Russian higher education is lack of well-functioning system of interaction with the labour market. The majority of employers remain passive consumers of the higher education system services. Thus, it is expected that young people look for work outside their region.

Employment not according to the specialisation is an issue marked both by employers and graduates. University students choose the system of education as an alternative employment (comprehensive schools, colleges, lyceum schools, institutions of secondary and further education). This ‘niche’ is traditionally occupied by graduates of teacher training universities and institutes. Inactivity of potential employers does not create competition in the labour market that could boost innovative processes in the universities the graduates of which are ready to be engaged in teaching in the region.

The tool for matching the labour market requirements and achievements in the European educational space is a methodology of qualifications framework as an innovative technology for developing education programmes. Competence clusters that meet the demands of educational service consumers should become guidelines in selecting the content of education. Being a key concept of qualification framework, competences carry out a function of the language to exchange information between the labour market and education.

A competence is an integrated concept that indicates the ability of the individual to independently use various knowledge, skills and experience in everyday life and new situations. A cluster of pedagogical competences as an expected result of education, though formalized, is currently being developed under the influence of interaction of relevant institutions and labour market segments. The result of such an interaction is the Professional Teacher Standard which regulates the requirements of the employer for the applying teacher (educator).

Category Teacher defines a number of functions of the teacher, which can be grouped in the cluster segments: paperwork management, organization and implementation of educational process, monitoring and evaluation of educational process. When offering a job the educational institution employer also pays attention to the personal qualities of the applicant, i.e. their attitude to teaching. Each cluster segment represents a ‘bush’ of knowledge, skills, abilities to form which a sufficiently large number of training hours is required. An academic university, as opposed to a teacher training one, can allocate on student teaching only a limited part of selective courses. Therefore, students’ motivation is crucial in mastering the competence cluster.

The authors of the paper have conducted a study to determine the role of the cluster of pedagogical competences in the system of values of Design Studies students of Kazan Federal University; correlated them with similar teacher’s values working in the field of general education; offered ways to integrate student training in the academic university and teacher training; proved the leading role of student teaching in the process.