Abstract:

The paper considers the competence approach, the most crucial empirical tool of the education model for sustainable development implementation. The primary attention is paid to environmental competence, structure, and contents as a fundamental principle of the sustainable development concept.

Characteristic features of the era of sustainable development are environmental lifestyle, global thinking, healthy pragmatism, saving, environmentally justified activities, strict adherence to the standards and requirements of the environmental and moral imperative. Modern man needs to be prepared for this way of life and follow it today, to build his life strategies and programmes, personal life and professional activities following these positions.

The paper aims to provide a theoretical analysis of the features of the implementation of Vernadsky’s noosphere concept in modern environmentally-oriented higher education methodology. We state that modern environmentally-oriented higher education from the point of view of the noospheric concept is a natural, socially and culturally oriented system of acquiring, accumulating, transferring and renewing knowledge, skills and abilities in the human-society-environment system. Its content should integrate knowledge from different scientific fields: philosophy, ecology, psychology, biology, management, history and culturology. The methodology of such education should be based on the principles of greening, systematization, harmonization, humanization, personal orientation and advanced development, efficiency and potential intellectual security.

The research has theoretical and practical value for the development of educational and methodological complexes in various fields of higher education, taking into account the concept of the noosphere, as well as programs aimed at shaping a new environmentally friendly worldview and value attitudes of contemporary youth.

The topicality of the research is since the development of human civilization has reached a qualitatively new state of global economic, political and social processes caused by the threat of local and global environmental disasters, caused by the negative consequences of revolution and consumer society. High hopes for overcoming existing destructive stereotypes are placed in the education system. As the most important area of production of the intellectual and moral potential of society, education is the dominant factor in educating a new generation of people with an environmental mentality, able to implement the ideas of sustainable development in practice.

Keywords:

Education, noosphere, skills, key competencies, environmental education, environmental competencies.