Higher School Instructors’ Pedagogical Skills Improvement as a Basis of Educational Strategy for Development of Students’ Professional Training

Abstract

The article substantiates the expediency of acquaintance of higher school’s teachers with the essence, rules and regularities of pedagogical skills improvement. The necessity of developing a strategy for improving pedagogical skills of the instructors of non-pedagogical institutions of higher education (IHE) are emphasized, as evidenced by the coverage of this problem in many scientific researches of philosophical, psychological, pedagogical directions. It is generalized that the development of pedagogical skills involves understanding by instructors the essence and productive effectiveness of own pedagogical activity regardless of the disciplines’ content they teach. Pedagogical skills provide the disclosure of teacher’s creativity, understanding the meaning of developing professionalism, which is required from modern instructor of IHE according to the level of solving new tasks of education. In the article, the theoretical basics of the research are connected in four groups. The first group includes the fundamental works of scholars, who opened the essence of the basic principles of the philosophy of education. The second group – works, which reflect ontology and phenomenology of pedagogical skills as higher expression of the freedom of being a teacher in professional activity, as the highest level of quality of instructor’s work. The third group consists of the scientific works, where the structure of pedagogical skills as the top of teacher’s creative activity, in which the harmony, perfection and beauty are realized, is revealed. The fourth group includes scientific-methodical materials, the main purpose of which is directing of instructors on the formation and development of different aspects of pedagogical skills as the criterion of teacher’s professionalism. A particular attention is paid to the disclosure of methods for improving pedagogical skills of instructors of non-pedagogical IHE that is considered as an advanced training of scientific and pedagogical staff. Considering this, special courses were organized in I. Horbachevsky Ternopil State Medical University in 2018 in order to perfect instructors’ pedagogical skills. Classes were conducted in the form of lectures and study trainings in order to expand pedagogical knowledge and ideas about the essence of pedagogical skills and possibilities of educational technologies use in the professional training of future specialists in medicine. Instructors acquainted themselves with the extra active regime of information exchange, peculiarities of the organization interactive cooperation, were aware of the feasibility of interactive technologies use in IHE, tested in practice methods of doing exercises “Press Method”, “Six Thinking Hats” – the method of parallel thinking by E. de Bono. As a result of the final questionnaire, it was found that most instructors seek to increase their own level of pedagogical skills in different directions.