Abstract:

The spread of COVID-19, called “the Plague of the 21st century”, has made certain changes in the citizens’ life of many countries. It also affected the most numerous social institutions – the state educational systems. To stop the disease, many governments have switched education at various levels to distance learning and full immersion in the digital educational environment. The widespread use of digital information and technologies in the educational process, including intermediate and final controls, has become a scientific incentive to study the readiness of the student's personality to self-development in the conditions of digitalization, as well as the readiness of the teachers to work in new conditions.

The purpose of the research is to study the readiness of a high school student's personality for self-development in the conditions of digitalization of education and the impact of COVID-19 on this process, as well as to analyze the readiness of a teacher to work only with information and digital educational technologies.

We used a comparative pedagogical approach that makes it possible to analyze the educational process and educational digitalization outside the conditions of the pandemic, and the educational process in the digital educational environment due to the spread of COVID-19. We used the main provisions of the theory of professional development of the individual and his or her readiness for self-development, as well as the draft didactic concept of digital professional education and training in Russia. The empirical part of the research is the result of diagnostics of the readiness of a higher school student's personality for self-development in the conditions of widespread digitalization of education, determination of the teacher's readiness to work with information, and digital educational technologies as a digital didactic unit of learning.

We have reached the following conclusions:
1. Students and teachers experienced stress due to the complete transition to information and digital educational technologies in the educational process, explaining the lack of verbal and non-verbal communication, which allows people to track the emotions of the interlocutor and keep active thinking.
2. Not all of the students were ready to take full responsibility for their self-development and obtaining high-quality professional education. Teachers noted increased fatigue caused by the lack of eye contact and live communication, which, in their opinion, can lead to a decrease in lecturing skills and to diminish lectures as a form of learning.
3. To diagnose the readiness for self-development of a higher school student in the conditions of educational digitalization and the impact of COVID-19 on this process we based on a questionnaire including 14 questions. It revealed the emotional state of respondents. Thus, 46.8 % of respondents said that they want to know themselves and could change, and COVID-19 made them reconsider some socially significant values, such as getting a high-quality professional education. The study was conducted at three universities of Yekaterinburg, the group of respondents was 123 students and 47 teachers.

Keywords:

Self-development, readiness, personality, student, teacher, higher school, digitalization of education, COVID-19.