(500) THE DEVELOPMENT OF REFLECTIVE TEACHING SKILLS OF PRESERVICE HIGHER SCHOOL TEACHERS

摘要

Nowadays higher school teachers should possess a wide range of teaching skills to be goodprofessionals, as university students have a strong professional motivation, and place high demandson the interaction with the teacher and his or her competence. Therefore, organizational andsubstantive issues of training qualified teachers for higher schools become topical, and manyuniversities in different countries are developing training programs for preparing future teachers.The purpose of our study was to investigate the effect of the training program for pre-service universitylecturers applied in St-Petersburg State University. We assume that one of the effective ways ofpreparing of prospective university teachers is the development of their reflective teaching skills bymeans of special training program. Our program based on the principles of activity and involvement,and on encouraging participants to take responsibility for learning. It relied on the multi-strategy whichincluded informing of participants, training simulations, case studies, focus group discussions andreflection of teaching skills, manifested both in simulated situations of teaching and in the real teachingexperience.The sample included 45 postgraduates (mean age 27.3±1.9) who had primary teaching practice andintention to work as a university lecturer. We used the questionnaire and eighteen 10-point scales(representing the necessary qualities of university teachers, including competence, communicativeskills, motivation, didactic skills, etc) to study the self-assessment of participants, Eysenck PersonalityInventory to study their emotional stability and extraversion/introversion, and Yusupov technique tostudy their empathy. The final work of participants, with reflective writing of the experience, and theindividual program of their further professional growth were subjected to content analysis. The effect ofthe program was also revealed by expert estimates. SPSS-20 was used for data processing.Results showed a high appreciation of the training program by participants. They got the greatestexperience in reflection of their communicative teaching skills including the skills of analyzing of ateaching situation and their own behavior, contact with students, raising interest and activity of theaudience, and skills of self-presentation; they mentioned as a very essential point the awareness ofthe individual temperamental characteristics, and the acquisition knowledge of the difficulties incommunicating with students and ways of resolution of conflict teaching situations. Among furtherdirections of professional growth the participants noted the necessity of development ofcommunicative, organizational and public speaking skills, acquisition of modern educationaltechnologies, and also the development of self-regulation skills, including self-control, coping withstressful situations, and care about health. Another direction was concerned with self-development,including the increase of self-confidence, development of self-knowledge and broadening of outlook.Based on the results obtained in the study, and expert assessment some additions and improvementsin the program were made.