Who becomes a teacher of high school: the motives of choice of scientific and pedagogical activities

Abstract

The article is prepared on the basis of analysis of activities of Penza higher educational institutions conducted in 2013-2014 by the Chair of Management, Penza State University of Architecture and Engineering. It is devoted to the topic of training pedagogical staff for higher educational institutions. Forming professionally competent and pedagogically trained teaching staff is the most important mission of higher educational institution essential for quality of specialist training in higher education. The article is aimed at identifying motives for choosing pedagogical career and defining ways of organizing the work with specialists starting their career as a lecturer at higher educational institutions. Achieving this aim is related to analyzing modern requirements to quality and lecturer's competencies, identifying motives for choosing pedagogical career by lecturers participating in the research, formulating ways of forming pedagogical skills among young lecturers as well as evaluating the involvement of university, department and chair into training future lecturers in the context of absence of such a system on the national level. The article provides several lecturer activity monitoring results that allow for drawing conclusions concerning main motives for choosing pedagogical work (ability to teach and desire to conduct research), difference of motives among lecturers with different work experience and presence of an academic degree. The article analyses attractive aspects of position of a lecturer, including creative self - realization arising from combination of pedagogical activities and research. The article looks into difficulties related to upgrading professional level of young lecturers and the experience of solving this problem at PSUAE: target training of graduate and postgraduate students willing to become lecturers, their intensive involvement into the world of future professional activities. The article also identifies and describes possible ways of entering pedagogical profession and forming professional competences and skills of young lecturers.