New trends in the development of Ukrainian higher educationin the 21-st century

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New trends in the development of Ukrainian higher educationin the 21-ST century

Raisa Gryshkova, doctor of sciences (pedagogy), professor Petro Mohyla Black Sea National university

The article deals with defining new trends in the pedagogy of higher school in Ukraine. The main directions of pedagogical researches concerning higher education at the beginning of the 21-st century are stated. They are: joining of Ukraine to Bologna process with introduction of the European Credit and Transfer System (ECTS), students' mobility and its other key principles, the ideas of life-long education and constant learning, computerization of educational process, competence approach to teaching, and some others. The dynamics of the changes under the influence of current events in the country is explained. New trends in the development of higher education in our country which have been formed as a reaction to social demands are defined. The autonomy of universities and high quality of education as corner stones of all changes are analyzed in this research.

Great attention is paid to implementation of competence approach to teaching. New phenomena in the modern world such as life at super speeds and digitalization and their influence on higher school educational process are highlighted. Much attention is paid to distance learning and usage of the artificial intelligence as the most perspective directions in further development of educational systems. Eco thinking as one of the components of the new way of comprehending the environment is investigated. The necessity of training a new generation of specialists caused by appearance of new professions in the labor market such as biotechnologist, DNA consultant, biophysicist, gene engineer is grounded. Professional training of such specialists will require not only high computer literacy rate on the part of university educators but also working out new educational technologies and methods of teaching. The further development of the Ukrainian educational system will be focused on introduction of new approaches and computerized educational technologies.

Keywords: higher education, trend, university autonomy, distance learning.

Нові тренди розвитку вищої освіти України в ХХІ столітті

Раіса Гришкова, доктор педагогічних наук, професор Чорноморський національний університет імені Петра Могили

Компетентнісний підхід до навчання прийшов на зміну діяльнісно-комунікативному, особистісно орієнтованому, культурологічному, контекстному на іншим підходам, якими зазвичай послуговувались викладачі вищої школи. Автором проаналізована динаміка змін у тенденціях розвитку освітньої системи під впливом поточних подій у світі та в житті нашої країни. Нові тренди у розвитку вищої освіти в Україні, що сформувались як реакція на вимоги суспільства, описані в статті. До них автором віднесено автономію університетів та підвищення якості вищої освіти як підвалини реформування системи надання освітніх послуг на рівні бакалавра й магістра. Нові явища у сучасному світі, такі як життя на підвищених швидкостях, діджиталізація в усіх сферах діяльності та їх вплив на освітній процес вищої школи проаназізовані в дослідженні.

Велика увага приділена автором дистанційному навчанню та використанню штучного інтелекту в університетській освіті як найперспективнішим напрямам досліджень у педагогіці вищої школи. Формування екологічного мислення як компонента нового сприйняття людини в навколишньому середовищі розглядається в статті у контексті сучасних освітніх тенденцій. Обгрунтована необхідність професійної підготовки фахівців нового покоління, викликана появою нових професій на ринку праці, таких як біотехнолог, консультант із ДНК, біомедик, генний інженер та ін. Професійна підготовка фахівців із нових спеціальностей вимагатиме не тільки високого рівня комп'ютерної грамотності з боку університетських викладачів, але й розробки нових освітніх технологій і методів навчання. Подальший розвиток вітчизняної вищої освіти має бути сконцентрований на імплементації нових підходів до навчання й комп'ютеризації освітніх технологій.

Ключові слова: вища освіта, тренд, університетська автономія, дистанційне навчання.

Under the conditions of the independent Ukrainian state a new generation of young people has grown up, and its mentality greatly differs from the way of thinking of all previous generations. Modern students no longer have a non-significance complex which bothered people of the same age fifteen years ago, and believe in their abilities to get proper education and reach their professional goals in the future life. Consequently changed the role of higher educational establishments in teaching and bringing up young people who want not only to gain knowledge but to learn how to get used to constantly growing volume of information and become competitive on the labor market.

Reforms on all stages of Ukrainian educational system regulated by the Laws of Ukraine “On Higher Education” (2014), “On Education” (2017) and other state documents are aimed at improving the quality of our educational system and integrating it into European and world educational community. But no integrating is possible without keeping to some key principles of the development of higher school: university autonomy, high quality, more attention to students' self education, synergy of academic process and students' scientific research activity, knowledge of English etc.

The world is constantly changing under the influence of different factors: natural, economic, political, social, and many others. To keep in step with the progress in various spheres of life and adequately react to these factors people should comprehend their consequences and adapt to the new challenges in life.

The university community should understand the inevitability of adjusting to new circumstances in organizing the university educational process and building a new type of relationships between teachers and students having cleared out modern trends in the development of our society.

So the aim of the article is to:

• state the main tendencies in the development of higher school pedagogy at the beginning of the 21-st century and define the new trends in education of the current decade;

• attract the attention of researchers to the problems in university education caused by new challenges of the last decade.

Every historical period causes definite changes in people's lives and marks certain trends in societies' development. But the fact is that if a hundred years ago it took one or two generations to make important changes, now the world community faces a lot of significant changes every decade and scientists cannot explain to people what is really going on.

Starting with a new century the key trends in Ukrainian pedagogical science were defined by many scholars who tried to generalize the most important changes in our society and evaluate their influence on the further development of educational systems. Famous Ukrainian scientists V. Andrushchenko, V. Bebyk, G. Vasianovych, S. Goncharenko, V. Kremen, V. Lugoviy, O. Meshchaninov, S. Sysoeva, I. Ziaziun, etc. researched different aspects of novelties in pedagogy of higher school.

Being one of the trends of the 2000-th the main ideas of the Bologna process were described in the works of V. Kremen,V. Andrushchenko, Ya. Boliubash,and others. The main ideas of joining the Bologna process were described by V. Bebyk in the monograph: national higher education system has to be transformed from reproductive approach to teaching in productive creating process, to competence approach which combines knowledge with experience in certain spheres [2, p. 74]. Academician V. Andrushchenko researched modern philosophical tendencies in pedagogy of higher school on the boundary of centuries and proposed “a new person-centered paradigm of education” [1, p. 13]. Perspectives of life-long education and constant learning were researched by T. Desiatov, N. Nychkalo, G. Vasianovych, S. Sysoeva, I. Ziaziun, S. Goncharenko. Modern models of the development of university education in Ukraine wereclassified by O. Meshchaninov. Problems of computerization of educational process on all stages attracted the attention of plenty of Ukrainian scientists, among them O. Zhaldak, G. Kozlakova, M. Kademiato name a few. Competence approach to teaching was introduced thanks to O. Pometun, N. Demianenko, V. Maiboroda and others. Many researches were devoted to introduction of distance learning (V. Bykov, R. Gurevych, N. Poltorak). Quality of Ukrainian higher education caused a lot of questions as with the increasing number of universities of different kinds of ownership (state, private, municipal) the quality of education decreased. The process of “massovization” of higher education resulted in lowering the level of students' knowledge and minimization of their chances to be demanded in the labor market.

The vectors of the development of Ukrainian higher education are changing under the influence of the inner factors and constantly changing situation in the world. To better understand the situation in the world let us summarize the most important trends of the current decade and try to predict their influence on educational systems in the next ten years.

In 2005 researching the models of the development of university education in Ukraine O. Meshchaninov wrote that “innovative university educational system has the following characteristics:

• active social control of the level of quality;

• complete changing of the system of monitoring the position of the university;

• research and working out the strategic plans of university development;

• active usage of the Internet resources which form a new level of functioning;

• team culture of researches on the poly-disciplinary grounds;

• widening the assortment of university services, etc.” [5, p.400].

These characteristics which were considered as innovative fifteen years ago are now regarded as normal and regular ones. But in the course of time there appeared a lot of new trends in education caused by the creation of civil society in Ukraine, massive access to the World Wide Web and increased people's expectations.

The most conspicuous trends of Ukrainian higher education development are the following: university autonomy, quality of Ukrainian higher education, competence approach to teaching, advanced knowledge of English, life at super speeds, digitalization, distance learning, relationship between people and machines, and eco thinking. This list of trends has been compiled as the author's own classification by means of generalization of modern tendencies in the development of international educational systems.

Having been a basic principle in the European educational system for quite a while, university autonomy is widely discussed by Ukrainian pedagogical community especially after the publication of the “Road Map of Reforming Higher Education in Ukraine” by S. Kvit in 2018. The concept of university autonomy was fixed in the Law of Ukraine “On Higher Education” (2014). However, in 2018 S. Kvit underlined that the implementation of this law “came into contradiction with interests and wishes to preserve `status quo' by conservatively thinking part of Ukrainian politicians, state officers and university managers. Real mechanisms of healthy academic competitiveness did not work in Ukraine; financial autonomy of universities was blocked” [3]. Constant changing the ministers of education made it impossible for the government to concentrate on certain problems.

As a result a lot of educational questions remain unsolved in primary, secondary and higher school. Practice shows that it is not enough to declare good intentions. It is necessary to finance the improvements in education. Now it is known that all governmental educational programs adopted during the years of Ukraine's independence were not performed completely because of the lack of money for their implementation. Real university autonomy permits universities to open the specialties demanded in their region, choose their own strategies in teaching methods, approve their own plans and develop the infrastructure.

Present-day Ukrainian society is concerned with the quality of Ukrainian higher education since it is closely connected to the challenges of Ukrainian university graduates' relating to their competitiveness in the labor market. According to the research of V. Kozakov, university graduates in Ukraine leave higher school with a great amount of knowledge but without any skills how to use it in a real life because the knowledge-centered approach to teaching still prevails in our higher educational establishments [4, p.40].Content of professional training should correspond to the modern level of the development of science, technologies, and social networks. More attention should be paid to students' practice and self-education. Among the factors which provide the quality of higher education we underline the following:

• professional competence of tutors and their personal qualities;

• correspondence of curriculums to the modern requirements;

• qualitative educational and methodical accompaniment of learning process;

• implementation of new educational technologies;

• adequate system of control and assessment;

• necessary material and technical support;

• teaching process orientation to forming of a future specialist's socially important qualities [7, p. 16].

After the creation of the National Agency for Higher Education Quality Assurance headed by the ex-minister of education S. Kvit in 2018 the situation starts gradually changing for the better as many new factors have been taken into consideration while evaluating the university activity.

Among various teaching approaches (communicative, constructive, contextual, culture-centered, socio cultural, etc.) competence approach to teaching has proved its effectiveness as is considered as the trend that can meet students' educational requirements in the most comprehensive way. Today “competence is regarded as a unit of evaluation of a person's education as gained habits and skills are not enough measurement of the level of educational quality” - states O. Malykhin [5, p. 28]. Competence approach is aimed at forming life and professional competences that is combining skills and knowledge with the experience of their usage in practical activity. It presupposes rejection from lecture-and-seminar system of teaching and implementation of tutor system the same as at European universities. According to long-time observations, the conclusion is made that the obsolete lecture- and-seminar system does not stimulate students to form critical thinking and create anything new: they passively listen to what their professor is delivering without any efforts to really comprehend the material [7]. Later in seminar classes they mostly reproduce the texts from outdated textbooks or retell professor's lectures and do not produce any materials by themselves. Such a situation is repeating from one generation to another without any changes during decades.

In terms of strengthening academic integrity, Ukrainian universities make considerable efforts to eliminate plagiarism among their students and teaching staff. Plagiarism is not a rare event in students' community as the system of academic integrity has not been shaped yet. It gives all reasons to say that our higher educational system has a reproductive but not creative character. The outdated lecture-and-seminar system does not imply scientific discoveries or search for new non-standard solutions of existing problems. Tutor system seems more appropriate for present-day educational requirements in the transition from knowledge-centered teaching to competence approach.

Advanced knowledge of English is one more trend of our time. Ukrainian university graduates can hardly be competitive if they do not have profound skills of English communication on their professional subjects. Mastering professional English is the only way to find a well-paid job in joint companies, communicating in the Internet and using various social media. That is why great attention should be paid to learning English as the language of international communication.

Traditionally students of all non-philological specialties learned English but among the four kinds of competences in a foreign language (reading, speaking, listening and writing) more attention was paid to developing skills of reading, translation, and in the last years speaking. Now it becomes clear that for effective cooperation and mutual understanding listening and writing are not less important than other kinds of competences. Moreover, in the world of business filling in all sorts of documents as well as writing references, summaries, resolutions are becoming an inseparable part of communication. It means university graduates are to be professionally competent in writing and listening to the same degree as in reading or speaking English.

People living in the 21-th century are becoming eyewitnesses of life at super speeds: Verkhovna Rada works in a turbo regime - laws are adopted neglecting the public opinion and without any discussion. Although the National Agency for Higher Education Quality Assurance was stated in the Law of Ukraine “On Higher Education” in 2014, it started functioning only in 2019.While European universities take into account students' academic preferences and employers' requirements during the curriculum-making process, Government Order #584 issued by Ukrainian Ministry of Education and Science “Recommendations on methods about higher education standards elaboration” was signed only 30.04.2020. Sometimes it seems Ukrainian society can be an unintentional victim of our authorities' unconsidered decisions in educational sphere: e.g. the concept of “New Ukrainian School” was borrowed from Finland the population of which is ten times less than in Ukraine and the main national feature is law obedience. While adopting one of the Bologna documents Ukraine joined the idea of students' and university educators' mobility but the state does not subsidize the expenses for studying abroad. The consequences of such a `hurry' can be rather unpredictable.

The word digitalization was considered the most frequently used word in 2019. The digital era started at the beginning of the 21-st century, and now we have a digitalized driving license, student's identification card and even passport. Most documents are now in free access on the Internet thanks to digitalization and people can solve their problems staying at home. Students have access to digitalized works of art, literature, and computer software. It is especially important when the whole world is under lockdown. It is certain that the process of digitalization is going to be continued in the future as it is one of the most effective ways to get rid of piles of paper documents and save trees in forests. This process will help people to implement their ideas about nature preservation in practice.

Another trend that has proved its effectiveness during the lockdown is distance learning. It is the main priority and advantage of the computerization of educational process as its possibilities are unlimited. It really helps the academic process to go on and gives students one more chance to become sure they can use their computer skills for expanding their knowledge, learning new material, and to feel better being engaged in constant studying. In the previous decade distant learning was mostly considered from the viewpoint of correspondent studying; now it is becoming quite a regular occasion to learn without attending classes in real time. Students willingly communicate with their teachers on different platforms (e.g. MOODLE), via Skype, in ZOOM, etc. New possibilities of distant education having become one of the trends in the conditions of COVID-19 pandemics are waiting for their further investigations. But it is clear now that radical changes in academic process will be connected with on-line learning, using e-books, creating more special teaching platforms for satisfying students' demands. On the part of the state it will be necessary to synchronize general tendencies of the society development with changes of the system of specialists' professional training.

One more trend of the modern world is the relationship between people and machines. Robots as a kind of an artificial intelligence are widely used now. There are a lot of materials in the Internet devoted to working out an artificial intelligence. The key problem is whether robots can replace people in a real life: work instead of teachers at school, doctors in hospitals, shop-assistants in supermarkets. Now in the quarantine period robots have got a new chance for their development and implementation.

In educational sphere robots can replace teachers in such academic processes as delivering lectures or grading students' tests but they might never equal teachers as personalities. The questionnaire which took place at Petro Mohyla Black Sea National University showed that 64 % of students prefer communicating with teachers during lectures, taking credits or exams than with unemotional computers. However, robots have very good prospects as for their functioning at universities. Special ways of their usage for the benefit of teaching and learning are to be researched in future.

Eco thinking is one more trend of our time. It is regarded as one of the components of the new way of comprehending the environment. Traditionally it was considered as the subject obligatory for learning by students of biological faculties, future ecologists, generally people who were engaged in nature protection movement. Nowadays the humanity has become aware that this issue concerns virtually everyone. More and more people are voluntarily adopting eco thinking as a lifestyle.

Global warming, snowless winter and rainless spring and future problems with possible harvest should make people be thrifty and care about nature. It is difficult to overestimate the role of education in teaching young generation to be attentive to natural processes and think about preserving the environment.

With the advance of pedagogical science and educational technologies, new trends are inevitable to arise while teaching approaches of the past will become obsolete. In the time when the mankind is struggling with the pandemics of coronavirus, the new trends of the next decade - the 2030^thare discussed in mass media. Futurologists foresee the fast development of the artificial intelligence, biotechnologies, gene therapy and editing of a person's genome. Appearance of new specialties will require new professions. The necessity of training a new generation of specialists caused by appearing of new professions in the labor market will force universities to open new departments and look for new teachers. Such specialists as a biotechnologist, an engineer of augmented reality, a DNA consultant, a biophysicist, a gene engineer will be approved by the society's demand. These professions combine different branches of science and they will develop within medicine, biology, engineering, computer technology, etc. Professional training of such specialists will require not only high computer literacy rate on the part of university educators but also working out new approaches to training university students, educational technologies and methods of teaching.

Ivan Ziaziun proposed to implement dual education at pedagogical universities, that is to prepare, for example, a Mathematics teacher with a qualification of a book-keeper so he/she could work part time in a village council if there is not enough work load in the local school. Or a language teacher in the same situation can work as a secretary in a village office. This idea did not find any support on the part of educational bureaucrats, and as a result of lowering the number of schoolchildren in village schools many of them were closed, teachers were left unemployed. The idea of dual education will prove its vitality in future because of the necessity to combine two or three specialties in one for satisfaction of the society demands in a new generation of specialists.

Summarizing the ideas mentioned above we should like to stress that now changes in education are taking place much quicker than a couple of decades before. The reason for that lies in the necessity of educational systems to immediately adjust to constant changes in political, economic and social life of the society. If Ukrainian universities do not adequately respond to the changes in applicants' demands, they may lose a number of potential students who can go abroad to foreign countries to get higher education.

The new trends in the development of higher education in Ukraine defined in the research (university autonomy, quality of higher education, competence approach to teaching, advanced knowledge of English, life at super speeds, digitalization, distance learning, and eco thinking) make pedagogical community adapt to the changes in the requirements of students and their parents.

The further development of Ukrainian educational system will be focused on introduction of new approaches, specialties and computerized educational technologies.

distance learning eco thinking

literature

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