International scientific and pedagogical communication as a constituent part of the tourism activity

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Vinnytsia Mykhailo Kotsiubynskyi State Pedagogical University

Varna University of Management

INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC AND PEDAGOGICAL COMMUNICATION AS A CONSTITUENT PART OF THE TOURISM ACTIVITY

G.I. Denysyk, A.M. Kolomiiets,

I.V. Gromov, D.I. Kolomiiets, D. Kamenova

Annotation

tourism education europe university

The authors have analyzed the essence and main characteristics of the scientific tourism phenomenon; defined the present- day tendencies in development of higher education in Europe and Ukraine; first studied the actual proposals from European countries concerning the internship programs for teachers; determined the current situation and potential possibilities of foreign internships for the Ukrainian universities' teachers professional development; outlined the prospects of the scientific tourism development in Ukraine and the perspectives for internship of the foreign colleagues on the basis of Ukrainian universities. It has been mentioned that the new knowledge, information, skills, and experience, acquired during the scientific tours are actively used in the further practical professional activities of the higher school teachers. Therefore, the authors came to the conclusion that the study and use of the progressive European experience will significantly accelerate the approaching the Ukrainian system of professional education to the European standards. It has been also concluded that a considerable number of organizational measures and steps must be undertaken for adequate response to the world-wide trend of students' and teachers' academic migration, as well as for attracting the representatives of the international scientific communities to the Ukrainian higher educational institutions. The main task is to develop promotional events presenting our scientific and educational achievements in the maximally good light. It is also necessary to develop the infrastructure and encourage the activities of institutes, universities, research centers, aimed at the educational and scientific tourism development. The scientific novelty is in determination of the main reasons motivating the higher school teachers to participate in the scientific tourism programs. Keywords: international scientific and pedagogical communication; foreign internship; international cooperation; scientific tourism.

Анотація

Г.І. Денисик, А.М. Коломієць, І.В. Громов, Д.І.Коломієць, Д.Каменова

вінницький державний педагогічний університет імені Михайла Коцюбинського Варненський університет менеджменту, Болгарія

МІЖНАРОДНА НАУКОВО-ПЕДАГОГІЧНА КОМУНІКАЦІЯ ЯК СКЛАДОВА ТУРИСТИЧНОЇ ДІЯЛЬНОСТІ

Проаналізовано суть та основні характеристики явища наукового туризму; визначено сучасні тенденції розвитку вищої освіти в Європі та Україні; вперше вивчено фактичні пропозиції європейських країн щодо програм стажування викладачів; визначено сучасну ситуацію та потенційні можливості закордонних стажувань для професійного розвитку викладачів українських університетів; окреслено перспективи розвитку наукового туризму в Україні та перспективи стажування іноземних колег на базі українських університетів. Зазначено, що нові знання, інформація, вміння та досвід, здобуті під час наукових екскурсій, активно використовуються у подальшій практичній професійній діяльності викладачів вищої школи. Тому автори дійшли висновку, що вивчення та використання прогресивного європейського досвіду сприятиме наближенню української системи професійної освіти до європейських стандартів. Також було зроблено висновок про необхідність проведення значної кількості організаційних заходів та заходів для адекватного реагування на світову тенденцію академічної міграції студентів та викладачів, а також для залучення представників міжнародних наукових спільнот до українських вищих навчальних закладів. Основним завданням є розроблення рекламних заходів, що представляють наші наукові та навчальні досягнення в максимально позитивному світлі. Необхідно також розвивати інфраструктуру та заохочувати діяльність інститутів, університетів, науково-дослідних центрів, спрямовану на розвиток освітнього та наукового туризму. Наукова новизна полягає у визначенні основних причин, що мотивують викладачів вищої школи брати участь у наукових програмах туризму.

Ключові слова: міжнародна науково-педагогічна комунікація; зарубіжне стажування; міжнародне співробітництво; науковий туризм.

Research topicality

Nowadays the integration processes cover an increasing number of states. In this regard, the European Union is not only one of the first world's integration associations, but the most successful one. Therefore, in many countries, we observe the growth of scientific and public interest in the phenomenon of European integration, the identification of its essence, and determining the degree of its influence on various spheres of the sovereign states' life, in particular, the sphere of education. This is logical, since education in any country remains the main factor in its sustainable development.

It's a great pity to admit that the present-day level of the national educational system development is lagging behind the growing social needs of the Ukrainian society. The consequence of this lag is resulting in the society's discontent with the outcome of the educational system functioning, which remains largely conservative. Besides, the processes of the society's democratization and humanization come into conflict with the ideological-worldview, and value vacuum in education. This is also accompanied by uncertainty in the education and upbringing goals; penetration of the practically unverified knowledge into the education content; the collapse of the former education system managing mechanisms in the absence of any reliable legislative framework in this area; insufficient level of the state subsidies on education.

After coming into force on 1 September 2017 the ratified Ukraine-European Union Association Agreement, the European integration of Ukraine became unavoidable but at the same time it sets the new challenging tasks for the national education system [1]. The European Union (with its macroeconomic, macro-financial, macro-technological, macro-political, and macro-cultural dimensions) now determines the specifics, dynamics, frontiers, dominants, criteria, and laws of the European labour market, which is the main realization field for an individual involved into the education process. Therefore the European Union becomes a speaker of the objectively necessary and system-forming educational principles, rules and norms.

In Ukraine, like in all European countries, education is also considered a decisive factor in the country's cultural progress and human resource development. Government policy is aimed at joining the European Union. In line with this objective, Ukraine will accept and fully utilize the achievements of European Union's legislation in the field of education and professional training. Ukraine's participation in this process will help to achieve the equal position of the national higher education institutions and specialists not only in the European but also in the world community. It might also solve the problem of the Ukrainian diplomas recognition and strengthening the Ukrainian specialists' positions in the labor market.

Nevertheless, in practice one can observe plenty of contradictions, problems, and even paradoxes in the Ukrainian higher education system. They significantly hamper the process of integration into the European educational and scientific space. Higher education reforms and gradual standardization of the system in accordance with the world trends and European requirements are carried out unpardonably slowly. This happens due to the fact that: various social, economic and political problems intersect and contradict; there is no proper modernization of the professional education system; the existing European experience of professional training isn't fully studied and applied by the native educationalists and practical teachers. Therefore, the intensification of international cooperation between Ukrainian and European higher education institutions is absolutely necessary. We presume that one of the most effective forms of such cooperation is educational and scientific tourism.

Literature Review

Formation and rapid development of the educational services' international market in the beginning of the XXI century led to the merger of two initially separate branches of economy - education and tourism. A new independent trend has emerged in the tourist services market structure - international educational tourism, the feature of which is mass, and not elitist character.

Educational tourism involves such tourism services and products as different educational programs, student exchange programs, tours, excursions, and various types of tours that have a purpose of the study, and new types of educational tourism-related activities (e.g. ethnic workshops and field study trips). It can be stated that demand for the educational tourism products is enormous since, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the number of students enrolled in higher education outside their country of citizenship has more than doubled over past decades [2].

Different aspects of the interaction between the tourist business and the educational services industry as well as the perspective directions of the world tourism development in the beginning of the Third Millennium are presented in the Ritchie Brent's, Neil Carr's and Chris Cooper's monograph [3] where the main features and positive effects of such interaction have also been analyzed. The scholars state that due to the educational tourism an individual can acquire not only new knowledge and useful experience, but can also improve his (her) professional qualifications, and widen his (her) partnership contacts, simultaneously coming to know the local people culture and habits. The educational tours will allow people to treat each other more respectfully, esteem and appreciate all countries and all cultures. The educational tourism is defined as «a trip of a separate individual or a group of people to a certain region (country, city) in order to receive educational services within specific programs». Obtaining these educational services usually contributes to increasing an individual's value as a specialist at the labour market.

Typically, the following features of educational tourism are distinguished: a trip, during which a traveler acquires knowledge in a certain area; a trip, in which professional education is the main goal; revenues from educational tourism go to support the country's economy; thanks to the educational tourism development new jobs are created; educational tourism is an auxiliary vehicle for the society development.

The useful combination of the study and leisure activities makes the educational tourism more and more in demand. Good business results stimulate the diversity and quality of supply in the international educational services market. Having analyzed such phenomena as international academic mobility, educational and scientific travelling, one may come to the conclusion that international educational tourism is currently developing taking into account the specifics of academic exchange, based on the developed tourism industry infrastructure.

According to O.A. Ageeva's work [4], the educational tourism includes study tours for the purpose of improving foreign languages proficiency or increasing competency in various general disciplines or/and special subjects. It also embraces different familiarization tours to institutions, organizations and enterprises; participation in scientific seminars, conferences, congresses, symposiums, creative workshops and master classes, the purpose of which is the exchange of experience and the acquisition of new professionally important information; sightseeing tours in different cities, natural areas and countries [4]. It is obvious that the foreign internships of higher school teachers can be included here. But, in other scholars' opinion, this kind of internship is rather «scientific» than «educational» tourism.

Generally, the term «scientific tourism» appeared in literature for the first time in the work by Jan G. Laarman and Richard R. Perdue [5], where the term was opposed to an ordinary scientific expedition, and described as «a purposeful work of explorers in other countries without proper technical equipment».

Two years later, in 1982, Morris B. Holbrook and Elizabeth C. Hirschman in the paper [6] made an attempt to consider the phenomenon of scientific tourism from the standpoint of the theory of consumption. The scholars presumed that a «scientific tourist» (researcher, academician, teacher) doesn't simply consume the tourism experience by visiting (individually or within a group) foreign universities, research centers, laboratories, libraries, and other places or events of scientific interest. He (she) also requires that the tourism experience gained, and the specific tourism services associated with it, meet his (her) best expectations. Thus, the «scientific tourist» becomes not only a consumer of cognitive experience, but also an active participant, who can directly influence the organization of the cognition process [6].

The New York Times columnist and a science popularizer Peter Kuyavinskyy in the review [7] determines the scientific tourism as a specific form of tourism that is related to scientific practice and brings benefits not only for science, but also for tourism industry, as the works (articles, reviews, essays etc.), written in various popular scientific journals by the results of such travellings, have not only scientific value, but also actively promote popularization the places (countries, cities, universities) visited by the tourist-researchers. He also reminds that «this type of tourism is generally light on the wallet».

The researchers L. Ilyina and Z. Mieczkowski in their article [8] agree with P. Kujawinski and characterize the scientific tourism as a way of obtaining new knowledge and practical skills without any significant financial expenses.

Several definitions of the scientific tourism are presented in the work by J.H. Liang [9]. According to the scientist, the successful scientific tourism does not only include all the necessary attributes and services residing in so called «ordinary tourism». This type of tourism requires a human factor and technical equipment of the high level, raising the increased demands for both the proficiency of the scientific «auxiliary personnel» (guides, lecturers, researchers) and for technical support of the scientific tours.

Magdalen Piklerova holds a similar view, arguing in the article [10] that at the heart of the scientific tourism lies the principle of satisfaction the leisure, cultural and educational needs of an individual or a group of people who are interested in a particular scientific problem. The researcher is convinced that the main components of the successful scientific tourism are, first of all, highly qualified mentors, guides, experts who provide clear and comprehensive explanations on the scientific tour issues, and secondly, well-established tourist and scientific infrastructure, starting with commonplace transfer, accommodation and feeding services, and ending with available modern scientific equipment, software, hardware, and methodological support (including multimedia means, various visualization), as well as representativeness and accessibility of the proposed courses, programs, excursions, etc.

Lucia Molokacova and Stefan Molokac in their paper [11] promote the idea that, like all other types of travellers, the scientific tourists utilize the usual tourist infrastructure (hotels, restaurants, bars, transport, cultural events, relaxation and recreation centers), as well as the most advanced audiovisual and computer technological means for conducting lectures, classes, seminars. Among the scientific tourists, beside the «elite» academic researchers, there may often be found usual teachers, educators, graduate students and postgraduates who are interested in international internship programs. These scientific tourists actively use the acquired new knowledge, skills, and information in their further practical professional activities, so in this way, scientific tourism acquires the features of the educational tourism.

In our opinion, the most universal and precise definition of the scientific tourism is offered by Fabien Burlon and Robinson Torres in the presentation [12]. The scholars note that the scientific tourism is a kind of «niche» within other alternative forms of tourism that shares specificities of learning, cultural, leisure, recreational, adventure, and experimental tourism, but has wider implications and benefits. It is described as a tourism that generates and distributes acquired impressions, experiences, pleasures, knowledge and skills through publications (reviews, reports, articles).

Therefore the scientific tourism is more productive and attractive when compared to many traditional forms of tourism.

As one can see, almost 40 years have elapsed since the term's appearance, but the phenomenon of scientific tourism has not still received a generally approved official definition and, according to various scientific sources, may acquire different interpretations. Having analyzed the most common variants, we came to the conclusion that all of them anyhow define the scientific tourism as a kind of ordinary tourism, carried out in accordance with a specific scientific task related to data collection, research, training, participation in scientific events (conferences, seminars, symposiums), gaining new knowledge, increasing the level of the researcher's scientific competence, etc. That is, this category includes any organized science-oriented actions taking place on the territory of a foreign state.

So, the main feature of the scientific tourism is the orientation towards deliberate gaining new knowledge. The main its forms are foreign tours aiming at: conducting experimental research; collecting materials and samples; visiting scientifically important places and objects (natural and anthropogenic monuments, museums, establishments, research centers, laboratories, observatories, universities, enterprises etc.); exchanging experience through participation in the scientific forums (conferences, symposiums, seminars, etc.); improving the scientists' practical skills through training within scientific programs, projects, courses, summer and winter scientific schools, camps, etc. The last form of the scientific tourism can be distinguished in a separate type of tourism - the so-called «educational tourism».

Recently, many professional researchers, even world-wide-renowned scholars, have become interested in proposals for the scientific tourism. These scientists are attracted by the leading foreign scientific centers conducting research in the spheres of science, different from their major scientific specialization. Thus, sometimes a well-known physicist for a short time becomes a biologists- beginner, a venerable paleontologist turns into an astronomer, and a guru of medicine acts as a pedagogical college student. And this is being done not for entertainment. This is a quick and effective way to study the new techniques, technologies, methods, auxiliary means and supplementary equipment, which the scientists are likely to use in conducting further researches within the framework of their major scientific specializations [10]. Hence, the scientific tourism is gaining in popularity, and therefore this phenomenon deserves a separate study.

The aim of the article is to determine the present-day capabilities and the further possibilities of the scientific tourism for increasing the Ukrainian higher school teachers' professional level as well as to outline the perspectives of the Ukrainian universities in the sphere of organizing the scientific tourism programs for the foreign colleagues.

Methods of the research

The theoretical basis of the study are the provisions concerning the nature and organizational features of the scientific tourism in Europe [2,3, 5-10, 12 and others]. While conducting the study the authors used the following research methods: descriptive analysis of the definitions and the essence of the scientific tourism concept; comparative analysis of the educational and scientific tourism in Ukraine and abroad; quantitative and qualitative analysis of the actual proposals of the EU countries regarding the academic internships programs for high school teachers; analysis of a new European teacher's function spectrum expansion; observation the teachers' professional activities in conditions of European integration; questioning teachers about the factors influencing the scientific internship place choice; forecasting the possible scientific tourism opportunities for foreign colleagues in Ukraine.

To ensure the survey results reliability, first of all we determined the sample size. Since at the beginning of 2019 the overall amount of teachers in the Ukrainian pedagogical universities equaled to about 6500, we had to find out how many teachers need to be interrogated. It had been done to ensure the fact that, with a probability of 0.95, it could be stated that the awareness of the need for foreign internships within the sample group differs not more than 0.05 from the same the awareness within the general amount of teachers. We calculated it using the following formula: (1)

where N - overall amount of teachers, p and q - quantity of teachers who are aware or aren't aware of the need for foreign internships, A = 0.05, t = 1.96 - determined from the tables for F(t) = 0.95 [13].

Since the quantities of the teachers who are aware (p), and the teachers who aren't aware (q) of the need for foreign internships, are unknown, one should take their values to make their product maximal, i.e. pxq = 0.25. Having substituted the corresponding values in the formula, we got n « 377. So, to form a representative sample, we decided to interrogate the participants of ten international and all-Ukrainian scientific conferences that were held on the basis of the Vinnytsia Mykhailo Kotsiubynskyi State Pedagogical University January through May 2019. The sample embraced higher school teachers of various disciplines (specialties), who represented pedagogical universities of the most Ukrainian regions.

Discussion and Results

The survey covered 395 respondents. In our opinion this sample must have shown the real picture concerning the visited countries and the factors which motivated the respondents to participation in foreign internships. Among the mentioned factors there were: wish for seeing the ways of living in other countries, wish for studying foreign experience in the field of education, getting acquainted with the current trends in pedagogical education development, necessity of obtaining an internship certificate, wish for changing the routine situation and have some rest, opportunity of spending more time with colleagues in informal setting, coercion from the side of governing bodies, wish for getting acquainted with the newest technical equipment, need for establishing international contacts, wish for stay in a foreign-language environment, need for scientific research, need for professional self-improvement within the internship topics, and others.

We chose the most frequently mentioned factors and tried to evaluate their importance. To determine the priority factors encouraging teachers to take part in the foreign internships, we applied the expert evaluation method [14]. The expert group included those teachers who had participated in three or more foreign internships within three last years. There were 32 such respondents (among the group of 395). The proposed questionnaires included 9 major factors and were evaluated by the experts on a five-point scale according to the following criteria: «decisive» - 5 points, «very important» - 4 points, «important» - 3 points, «little significant» - 2 points, «insignificant» - 1 point. The results of the statistic processing of the factors' expert evaluation are presented in the table 1

Table 1

Results of the expert evaluation of the priority factors encouraging teachers to take part in the foreign internships