PREPARING FUTURE PRIMARY SCHOOL TEACHERS FOR PROFESSIONAL SELF-DEVELOPMENT

Abstract

The article addresses the problems of preparing future primary school teachers for professional theoretical and practical self-improvement. We compare and analyze the ways this is conducted and achieved by various higher education institutions in Ukraine and abroad, in particular, in the United Kingdom. The article also outlines the main components that constitute professional self-improvement and looks at the functions of professional development in education. In our research, we construe professional self-development of a future educator as an integration of personal and professional components of the student’s growth from the early stages of preparing for their prospective occupation. With that in mind, we give account of the professional pedagogical self-improvement indicators as well as its structural components. Seeing professional self-improvement as an integral component of professional training of specialists, we suggest the following. Preparedness for self-improvement of a future teacher as an individual and professional is a sort of new formation which combines the changes in one’s consciousness as the most complete identification of the higher need for personal and professional development, and the acquisition of appropriate knowledge and skills sets, as well as the application of one’s abilities and potential opportunities in creating a new, socially significant product, the purpose of which being a person’d self-affirmation in society. Inevitably, we discuss the concept of «self-learning» as seen through the lens of related research and highlight the impact of a primary teacher’s self-education on the quality of instruction and learning. As a summary, we establish and describe the conditions necessary for productive and efficient self-education of a teacher.