Elena V. Slizkova

The rapid development of new technologies, increase in standard of living and life expectancy, the accelerated transformation of demanded skills in the labor market require a person to acquire new competences, knowledge and skills by means of life-long education. The relevance of the presented research is determined by the need for continuous education of an adult at all stages of his/her development (school – secondary vocational education – university – profession/specialty). The purpose of this article is to describe the system of continuous professional pedagogical education aimed at improving the quality of education received by a person throughout life. Systemic, competence-based and activity-based approaches were used to examine the stated problem. The authors analyzed such categories as “continuous education”, “lifelong education”, “mobility and flexibility of the lifelong education system”. The scientific novelty of the research is determined by the development and implementation of the conceptual framework for the stepwise model “Lifelong Learning” as a platform for continuous teacher education in the south of the Tyumen region. Lifelong learning also helps to improve the general culture of the population, increase labor productivity, and adapt to rapidly changing conditions both in life and at work. The theoretical significance of the study lies in the study of scientific and methodological materials on the research topic in order to determine the relevance of the chosen topic and the prospects for the implementation of continuous professional education, taking into account regional requests for the quality of teacher training for the modern education system. The practical significance of the study lies in the development of a step-by-step model of continuous pedagogical education “Lifelong Learning”, which includes three stages of target guidelines that make it possible to form a stable motivation in a person for the chosen profession, master in it and develop the ability to become a mentor for younger generations. The need to create a modern, mobile and flexible system of continuous professional pedagogical education has been proven, the purpose of which is to improve the quality of education received by a person at all levels, throughout life, thereby preparing him/her for study, career, and life. Each stage of continuing education has its own completeness: the requirements of educational standards are determined for it - the target setting, the content of training, the main methods of teaching, forms of organizing the educational process, conditions and means of implementation. The determining principle is the continuity of professional educational programs at all levels: from initial training, including career guidance, to post-graduate education. The university is a platform for implementing the model of continuous pedagogical education. Participants in this system view it as a guarantee of their competitiveness in the labor market, so they continue to further develop themselves. The research materials and its results can be used to improve educational and methodological support for the learning process of students of teachers’ training institutions in the system of continuing education.

The relevance of this research is due to the fact that, despite the active discussion of the students’ soft skills development problem in domestic and foreign literature, the level of their development is very low. Modern graduates quickly lose their value on labor market, because a certain set of skills (hard skills) acquired during the years of education becomes out of date and soft skills are underdeveloped and, as a result, they become incompetent on the modern labor market. The term «soft skills» is one of the hits of the dynamically changing world. The purpose of the article is to study the main determinants of the students’ soft skills development. The article presents a content analysis of the «soft skills» concept that ensures the integrity of the term perception and its content, and its possible use in the communication sphere. Today, in the world of «clip-making opportunities» and integration in the system of psychological and pedagogical assessments of the individual abilities, «soft» skills are divided into four groups: basic communication skills or communicative literacy, self-management skills, effective thinking or intellectual thinking skills, management skills or foresight management. The soft-skills development is considered to be a constructive cooperation in the communication sphere, in which the so called co-existent identification of the internal potential appears. Co-knowledge, co-experience and co-creation represent a three-sided model of such cooperative form of interaction. The article describes these forms, the key rules of the selected determinants, the technology of making an individual development plan in the communication sphere (the program of goals, steps and activities needed for this), the main methods of the soft skills development. The development of soft skills is a personal motive of every person and it depends only on him to what extent his personal qualities would help him to make a successful professional career, to determine his efficiency in the professional competitive environment. Studies of this kind contribute to the development of new educational approaches aimed at the students’ soft skills development at any level of education. In addition, they make it possible to comprehend the possibility of applying the described theoretical issues to practice.