Educational Abilities: Present-day Challenges

Abstract

The article justifies that due to the exhaustibility of the classical educational paradigm, which is reflected in non-efficiency and helplessness of the national system of education in the present situation of global manufacturing, technical and socio-cultural changes, the educators have new goals and functions. These functions are rather vague – ranging from tutoring to general child’s development – and are not always adequately perceived by both an educator and the society. One of the key goals of the modern psychology is identifying the indicators and characteristics which determine professionally important qualities of an educator and provide his/her successful fulfillment of his/her functions. The author has conducted a survey among parents and pupils with the purpose of identifying demands of the “education service consumers” concerning personal and professional educators’ qualities. The survey was conducted among 300 pupils of the secondary educational establishments and 300 parents, who study and reside in different regions of Ukraine. The most essential qualities that were singled out are sense of humor, high morality, kindness, knowledge of the subject, emotional stability, the skill to comprehensively select educational material, the ability to perceive mental state and inner world of a pupil, organizational skills, knowledge of operating modern media systems and computer technologies and communicative skills (from the most to the least important). Quite interestingly, being strict was considered to be the least important quality among pupils. Parents considered the ability to perceive mental state and inner world of a pupil, high morality, kindness, the skill to comprehensively select educational material, being strict, knowledge of the subject and emotional stability to be really vital. The conducted survey proved that emotional and spiritual-moral qualities of a pedagogue are of the utmost importance. The received results will give a possibility to see perspectives and build the curve of the development of educational abilities in conditions of modern culturalhistorical and educational domain.

Keywords: personality, educational abilities, professionally important qualities of an educator, survey.