Pedagogical competence of a teacher in the context of university education

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Pedagogical competence of a teacher in the context of university education

Yuliya Zakaulova,

PhD in Pedagogical Science, Associate Professor, Associate Professor at the Department of Foreign Languages

National University “LvivPolytechnic” (Lviv, Ukraine)

The paper considers the issue offormulating pedagogical competence of the university teaching staff in the system of tertiary education. Pedagogical competence is a complex notion; thus, close attention should be paid to its components - competencies mastering which is an obvious proof that a teacher has reached their ultimate state of development as a pedagogue, a personality and a professional. Further, the research differentiates between such concepts as “pedagogical competence” and “pedagogical professionalism”. The difference between the two lies in the state of being prepared to follow the goals having been identified, and the ability to attain them at one's best. The author proceeds with the definition of a “competent teacher” and, closely related to it, pedagogical integrity, pedagogical responsibility and pedagogical development. Defining the job of a competent teacher, it is vital to raise the issue of a person's competencies considered as one's knowledge, behaviors and skills. The concept is a description of one's ability or a measure of one's performance. The task of a teacher should be closely tied to the nature of the group. A competent teacher of today should prepare virtually all students for higher order thinking and performance skills. Every trained competent teacher has to possess professional practice, leadership and management, and personal effectiveness. A competent pedagogue always encourages learning process, believes in their students' success and takes every opportunity to grow professionally. A competent teacher tries to win the minds of the students and praises team work. A true teacher maintains high standards of personal and professional integrity directly related to pedagogical responsibility. The author considers the former to describe the willingness and consistency of the teacher's actions with social standards or moral values of society. The teacher practices within the guidelines of the chosen profession which makes them responsible for every word pronounced and the outcome of their professional performance, which contributes to their pedagogical competence.

Key words: pedagogical competence, competencies, pedagogical professionalism, pedagogical integrity.

Юлія ЗАКАУЛОВА,

кандидат педагогічних наук, доцент, доцент кафедри іноземних мов Національного університету «Львівська політехніка» (Львів, Україна)

ПЕДАГОГІЧНА КОМПЕТЕНТНІСТЬ ВИКЛАДАЧА У КОНТЕКСТІ УНІВЕРСИТЕТСЬКОЇ ОСВІТИ

Робота розглядає питання формування педагогічної компетентності викладачів у системі вищої освіти. Педагогічна компетентність - це комплексне поняття, отже окрему увагу приділяємо її складовим - компетентностям, володіння якими є незаперечним свідченням того, що викладач має високий рівень педагогічної майстерності, і як особистість, і як професіонал. Стаття розводить поняття «педагогічна компетентність» і «професіоналізм педагога». Різниця полягає у рівні підготовки викладача, здатності слідувати визначеним цілям й успішно їх досягати. Також, автор докладніше зупиняється на визначенні поняття «компетентний педагог» і безпосередньо пов'язаних з ним поняттях педагогічної доброчесності, педагогічної відповідальності і педагогічного розвитку. Окреслюючи завдання компетентного педагога, розуміємо компетентності як знання, способи поведінки і вміння спеціаліста. Це поняття демонструє здатність і міру ефективного виконання завдань викладача, які мають бути орієнтовані на групу в цілому і полягають у його здатнос¬ті навчити студентів мислити послідовно і працювати на результат. Окрім цього кожен компетентний педагог має володіти практичним досвідом у своїй галузі, лідерськими та управлінськими здібностями й вмінням ефективно працю¬вати в колективі. Компетентний педагог завжди заохочує студентів до навчання, вірить у їхні успіхи, використовує усі можливості для професійного зростання, сприяє командній роботі, намагається підкорити серце студента. Ще однією рисою компетентного педагога автор визначає дотримання високих особистісних і професійних стандартів, підкріпле¬них педагогічною доброчесністю і відповідальністю. Автор розглядає педагогічну доброчесність як бажання викладача дотримуватись соціальних стандартів й шанувати моральні цінності суспільства. Дотримуючись певних вимог щодо організації роботи у межах професії, педагог є відповідальний за кожне слово, сказане в аудиторії, й за кінцевий резуль¬тат своєї професійної діяльності, що є очевидним проявом педагогічної компетентності.

Ключові слова: педагогічна компетентність, компетентності, педагогічний професіоналізм, педагогічна доброчесність.

Problem statement

pedagogical competence teacher iuniversity education

The contemporary system of tertiary education strives to provide its learners with knowledge, habits and skills, both, theoretical and, eventually, practical, and to train competent professionals being able to rationally apply their knowledge, focus on the result, be accountable for the process and the outcomes of their performance, think critically, analyze the mistakes or missteps, find the middle ground while solving a problem, continue their personal and professional development. Ukraine has been an active political actor in the world for the last years because of the tragic and challenging situation within the country provoked by the Russian- Ukrainian war. Moreover, the state has also become an important economic actor in the international arena. Further, demonstrating dignity and cherishing its socio-cultural values, Ukraine considers them to be inseparable from European and global values of peace, security and ecological awareness. Thus, positioning itself as an integral part of European and global community, Ukraine should train professionals to have a perfect command of a couple of foreign languages including English as the language of international communication. Another essential requirement for a today's professional is the ability to use information technologies. It has become especially urgent in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic and war, as soon as an online format of education has made it possible to access educational services for those who has no opportunity to attend offline classes due to being abroad or staying within the temporarily occupied territory. One more important factor is the integration of education system, which is being implemented due to international programs on research and cooperation for the university teaching staff and students and international social advancement courses in the frames of life-long education system and academic mobility. Thus, profound knowledge of English or any other foreign language is crucial to become active in fruitful cooperation, access necessary information, share experience and participate in international scientific-educational projects.

The role of a teacher in today's higher education is changing. A teacher is not only a mentor and a source of knowledge anymore; now, they are skillful leaders and team-managers, colleagues, counsellors with the focus on sharing valuable experience with the future generations, exploring their major to know more about the subject they teach, making students love and respect their future profession, organizing learning process taking into account all the socio-psychological peculiarities of the student, religious and cultural aspects of their upbringing, and the goals identified by the students at the beginning of their educational and professional career mastering their specialty. The teacher should comply priorities with the defined pedagogical goals, improve teaching methods if necessary, and take time to analyze their and students' performance. Such approach may contribute to the development of pedagogical competence as an integral component of the contemporary pedagogue model.

As to pedagogical competence, we treat it as a complex concept that should be considered in relation to its numerous components - pedagogical integrity, academic integrity, professional knowledge, verbal and non-verbal communication, etc. Pedagogical competence is more than an arsenal of knowledge, habits and skills of a teacher. This is the ability to apply alternative methods and teaching techniques, which requires from the side of a teacher being critical towards their classroom activity, being capable of finding the way “to the heart” of the student, being ready to identify clear learning goals and optimize the ways of attaining them.

There is a close argument that the effectiveness of the learning process depends on a highly skillful teacher, their professionalism and eagerness to share experience acquired with the learner. The topicality of the issue of pedagogical competence of a teacher in the context of university education is obvious due to the high demands from the side of the society towards the job of a pedagogue. The latter should demonstrate profound knowledge from the subject they teach, be able to effectively apply their professional skills, convey the material to the learner in the way the learner feels engaged and interested in it, clarify and explain how to use such experience in the future and persuade the learner in the necessity to acquire such an experience which could be ultimate for his future career. Just as important as that, is the skill of a pedagogue to teach a student how to study, develop, and perfect their critical thinking skills, that is to actively participate in the learning process. Though, a student of today has an access to every possible information source and obtain a grand amount of data on any topic, the number of students who are able to process and analyze this information and decide if it is really crucial to complete this or that task, or not, is small. The number of critical thinkers is actually small. Due to a lack of time and huge education load plus a lack of critical thinking skills, some students may face the problem of information overload and need an advisor, a teacher who could instruct on how to deal with tons of data. Consequently, we think that the primary role of a teacher today is to teach how to study.

Research analysis

The concept of pedagogical competence has been researched by Ukrainian scientists from different perspectives, namely: from the perspective of shaping pedagogical competence of a teacher as an effective way to provide high-quality tertiary education services (L. Martyniuk); from the perspective of comparing the notions of competency and competence and the theory of experience (M. Holovan, S. Skvortsova, Ya. Tsymbaliuk); from the perspective of the development of pedagogical competence of a primary school teacher (Yu. Kolos); from the perspective of students' scientific activity under the supervision of a competent mentor (O. Onyshchenko); from the perspective of shaping and developing professional competence of a teacher in the system of higher education (N. Zhuravska, I. Ziaziun, A. Ponomariov, V. Haivoronska). The aim of our research is shaping pedagogical competence of a teacher who constitutes professional and personal qualities of a competent pedagogue.

The layout of the main part

To better understand the concept of pedagogical competence, let's see what Ukrainian scientists say. They say competence is being experienced and proficient in a certain field, enjoying full rights while solving a problem, being informed about professional issues, knowledge and authority of a person, and the ability to mobilize this knowledge and experience to rationally solve the issues related to one's professional activity (Martuniuk, 2011). Pedagogical competence is also understood as a symbiosis of fundamental knowledge and practical skills (competencies: socio-cultural, economic, information, managerial, personal, communicative) necessary to effectively organize and manage learning process. As a complex notion, pedagogical competence is far more extensive concept that the one of pedagogical professionalism. The latter presupposes a certain way of behavior, identified goals, personal characteristics, which shape the image of a professional who is ready to follow the set goal applying their knowledge and experience. Professionalism is also understood as a final result of a continuous process of the professional development of a person who is ready to perform effectively in the frames of their career using knowledge and experience to meet the wants of the society. Outlining pedagogical competence, one may define it as a combination of professional and personal characteristics that are critical for the teacher to be able to perform successfully in accordance with the pedagogical goal having been set and to attain the goal in the learning process.

Scientific papers dedicated to the topic emphasize upon information competency as an integral part of pedagogical competence. Information competency is considered to be an ability to apply information technologies in teaching, identify the information needed, manipulate this information effectively for making constructive, intelligent and ethical decisions which can be critical to successfully run the learning process.

Productivity competency is not less important. It reflects the skill to be focused upon the result and the ability to organize and run the learning process in the way that the result should be reached as fast as possible. Prioritizing, maintaining effective work habits, taking initiative, projecting professional presence, producing good results and being responsible for these results - all these contribute to the phenomenon.

Close attention should be paid to subject competency which is understood as mastering and possessing teaching and learning techniques in one's field that are crucial for stimulating performance of a group and every individual in this group; here we may also include an appropriate tone and style of communication, ability to catch one's attention and the skill of managing a pace of working process (Martyniuk, 2011).

One of the basic roles belongs to communicative competency which presupposes extensive communication skills of a teacher necessary to find a common ground with the audience, provide effective feedback and work with every student individually to reach team and personal goals. Communicative competence is closely related to cognitive ability and skills available to individuals or learnable by them to communicate successfully as well as the motivational and social readiness and ability to use problem¬solving and communicating in variable situations.

Socio-cultural competency describes the ability of a professional to build interpersonal relationships, be respectful towards cultural and social diversity and stay loyal to one's own cultural and national identity.

Political competency stands for the ability to understand what you can control and what are the conditions for performing successfully, when and how to take action and push your plan of action forward. This is knowing how to get students on your side, how to apply leadership skills correctly to continuously stay informed.

Essential components of pedagogical competence are personal qualities and characteristics a teacher possesses. Among them are: inspiration, self¬sacrifice, open-mindedness, sociability, a capability of working in a team, getting students involved and being ready for a creative productive performance and an appropriate self-esteem: “One of the senses of the concept of pedagogical competence is an outline of personal qualities, possessing a competency - a certain norm, the presence of which demonstrates the ability to solve a problem or a task correctly; consequently, we may define competence as an indicator of having or not having this norm” (Holovan, 2008: 23-30).

Ukrainian scientists believe that the issue of professional competence of a pedagogue is becoming crucial today. It is true because contemporary intellectual society continuously faces the necessity to explore and master new knowledge and skills, and thus, “competence could be considered as a complete act which includes goal-setting, choosing methods and techniques to attain the goal, planning, implementing and controlling” (Kolos, 2013: 123-129). A. Markova argues that a competent pedagogue has to be able to train a graduate possessing ultimate psychological qualities. They should be aware of their career perspectives, feel delighted from the work they do, stay loyal to their career path, be prepared for persistent professional development, stay creative and socially active individual, and provide qualitative feedback on their performance (Markova, 2015). Yu. Shapran describes pedagogical competence as a manifestation of psychological development, creativity and self-awareness; its fundamental characteristics are universality, sociability, multifunctionality, intellectuality (Shapran, 2014).

Due to this, pedagogical competence is based on the structured education system which should be organized in accordance with the personality- oriented, multidisciplinary and competency-oriented approaches, which in turn may demonstrate its functional characteristics, such as: organizing learning process taking into account personal needs and social-psychological peculiarities of the student; an opportunity to master related specialties which could help to choose from a wider range of career paths in the future; concentrating upon mastering and developing necessary competencies which shape an image of a competitive professional. Life-long learning matters much. It allows a professional to obtain a chance for perfecting knowledge and skills in their major and related fields. N. Mukan believes that the fundamental life-long learning principles of a pedagogue are: studying and fulfilling career duties simultaneously; refreshing knowledge specific to the major, which contributes to quality training; attending social advancement and professional development courses to thoroughly investigate and study history and fundamentals of the subject they teach; understanding the new essence and context of education; getting acquainted with new technologies applied to streamline education process (Mukan, 2010: 268).

So, what does a competent teacher stand for? Firstly, one should always follow and strive for mastering modern trends in teaching. In this case, one should keep in mind both, a changeable nature of any subject knowledge related to changes and the latest trends in the field, and the necessity of using innovative, progressive methods and teaching techniques. Secondly, a teacher should always stay responsible, which means treating educational process critically. Such treatment outlines students' and a teacher's personal goals related to their professional career, their desire to acquire knowledge and experience they need, reflexive thinking, the ability to be critical towards the task having been fulfilled, the ability to correctly prioritize methods for mastering knowledge and skills and the ways they might be put to practice. In fact, teacher's responsibility is the one to shape the general treatment of a student towards the learning process.

Further, we may specify the following functions of pedagogical competence. First of all, it is rendering fundamental and practical knowledge to the student by means of appropriate teaching techniques aimed at stimulating their independent thinking and readiness to participate in the education process. It's desirable that we should remind about the three basic interactive processes of acquiring knowledge, which are closely connected with the students' studying habits and the intermediary in these processes (a teacher) who manages and corrects them. Thus, we differentiate among visual, auditive and practical interactive processes according to which we may identify the three stages of mastering knowledge. The first stage demonstrates a superficial glance at basic notions and concepts of a subject area. At the second stage, the student has become knowledgeable enough to explain their essence or meaning. The third stage demonstrates the student's capability of using and putting these fundamental notions to practice. All in all, an essential function of pedagogical competence is the ability to organize the learning process taking into account the three stages of mastering knowledge with the aim to find an individual approach to every single student due to their pace of studying. It's advisable that a teacher should work out and apply appropriate pedagogical tools and try to stay positive concerning ups and downs of the student, be patient with a lack of desire and engagement while studying. And remember that the teacher's task is to make a student be engaged. If they are not, this is mostly the teacher who lacks professionalism.

A communicative approach to the organization of the educational process is not the least when we speak about sharing and mastering knowledge. The teacher, who is both, the source of knowledge and the intermediary in the process of rendering them, has to possess the following personal characteristics: being open to conversation, flexibility, patience, being ready to cooperate, persistency, efficient self-management, responsibility, self-criticism, and communicative skills.

Pedagogical competence is also based on professional ethics of a teacher, which primarily stands for the gift to render moral values and principles taking into account students' cultural and social background, religious beliefs, family roots, etc. The ultimate goal of any teacher is to educate members of society, however, here is crucial to create the most accurate, the most humane, the most correct fulfillment of learning environment to get the most from what is suggested.

Pedagogical competence may obviously influence personal and professional development of the student. The teacher should be able to create learning conditions which are comfortable and natural (to the extent when it is possible) and help stay interested in the subject matter. It is pretty clear that every student has different studying pace and should have their own opinion on this or that matter. How would one define the word “development” in this context? Speaking about professional development, we may define it as professional growth of the student which involves learning, interpretation, conceptualization and application of a certain subject area, shaping one's own opinion on the matter. Much more complicated is the point of personal development. This “personal” component reflects human qualities which may contribute to shaping personality of a teacher in the frames of a professional career, namely, the ability to explore, self-perfect, assert oneself in the career, reflect on one's activity, analyze, make constructive decisions, improvise, be able to hear and listen what others say, be part of a general whole with an individual treatment upon every matter. So, development can be then explained as a personal and professional growth based upon shaping appropriate treatment concerning knowledge one gets and a career path one chooses.

The issue of shaping pedagogical competence in the system of university education demands high- quality standards for professional training of teachers. This takes place due to functional changes in the sector of higher professional education caused by the necessity to revise the education process as a whole. The center of the education process is a personality, a professional possessing ultimate competency. Most of it can be acquired during their professional activity and in the frames of professional development courses. The role of a pedagogue in training qualified specialists is crucial. Being tolerant, occupying the position of a talented manager (Ponomariov, 2012), the teacher of today must display initiative, creativity and experience while organizing learning process and provide the student with an opportunity to work at their mistakes, have time for clear feedback on their performance and make independent decisions.

Conclusions

Thus, having considered the issue of pedagogical competence of a teacher in the system of university education, we may conclude that pedagogical competence is the process and the result of on-going learning and development both, professional and personal, which can be proved by the extent to which this or that competency can be demonstrated; these competencies reflect an active social position of a teacher, exhaustive knowledge on the subject, desire and readiness to grow professionally and accommodate educational goals to the techniques and ability to attain them.

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REFERENCES

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