Formation of Professional Communicative Culture of Future Engineers in the Framework of New Educational Standards Realization

Today we observe a complicated process of higher education paradigm reforming, its realignment for pursuing new objectives that conform to the modern level of the society development and means of communication in postindustrial information environment. Formation of professional culture meeting the requirements of international standards as a goal of education has been pursued in the framework of the three generations of state educational standards of higher professional education, the RF Law “On Education” and other legislative acts.

Competence-based approach is looked upon as a conceptual basis of FSES HPE (Federal State Educational Standard of Higher Professional Education). Within this approach the concept of competence is interpreted as a system of values and personal qualities, knowledge, skills, abilities and capabilities which provides a personality’s readiness to competently fulfill his/her professional duties, whereas competency is a practical application and realization of certain competences [2; 32]

Competence-based approach is considered by the state as one of the main ways of improving the quality of both professional training and general secondary education, as a key methodology of their modernization. The new generation of state standards of professional education is aimed at forming basic competences of students [2; 32]. Thus, the new generation standards prescribe that engineering technologists, civil engineers, mechanics, designers, planners, and electrical engineers should master communicative competence which plays significant role in the process of professional experience acquiring. Communicative competence is a complex structure composed of the following constituents:

1. Linguistic aspect of communicative competence is gained through the process of accumulating a certain fund of knowledge of language as a symbolic system and a social phenomenon, its structure, development and functioning; mastering the main norms of the Russian literary speech, enriching the vocabulary and observing grammar rules in speech generation; forming ones’ ability to analyze and assess linguistic phenomena and facts; ability to use different linguistic dictionaries; perceiving language as a science.

2. Culturological competence (social and cultural) is realized when language is perceived as a form of national culture expression, reflection of the historic heritage, peculiarities of the national culture, awareness of the speech etiquette norms and rules of interethnic interaction.

3. Speech competence is looked upon as an ability to realize all kinds of speech activity and cultural norms of oral and written speech acts; basic skills of using language in all communicative situations relevant of the student’s age mode [10].

Thus, an engineer is to adopt the following characteristics in the framework of communicative competence: capability for generalization and analysis, information comprehension, goal setting and selecting the ways of its achievement; he should be also capable of logical thinking, clearly constructing his/her oral and written speech using argumentation techniques; he/she ought to be ready for cooperative activity with his/her colleagues, independent work, taking decisions within his professional competence. Among his/her professional features some more properties are distinguished: capability and readiness for practical analysis of logic in acts of reasoning, for public talks, using discussion, disputing and argumentation techniques; capability and readiness for perceiving the role of arts, he/she ought to be capable of esthetic development and self-improvement work, treating the historical heritage and cultural traditions with care and respect; appreciating social and cultural differences with tolerance, perceiving the facts of diversity of cultures and civilizations in the process of their interaction.

During their professional activities engineers have to interact with different people, communication itself being an independent aspect of professional activities. However, this is often the case when would be engineers who had received profound technical training suffer from certain problems in acts of communicative interaction, which puts forward the actual issue of forming the professional communicative culture of a future engineer whose communicative skills may predetermine his/her success in professional activity. The engineer’s communication is often filled with nonverbal components (formulae, diagrams, schemes etc) as necessary means of engineering environment. Thus, one of the primary demands that an engineer should fulfill is the ability for converting digital data and images into a verbal text. Moreover, a participant of the professional communication has to follow the rules of the speech etiquette prescribed by certain speech acts.

It follows from the above mentioned reasons that while transforming education to a new level of quality, its reforming on competence basis we can’t do without a complex set of studies of man, we can’t possibly omit psychological, cultural and other laws of personality’s development in the process of education [2; 34].

Nevertheless, the Russian Cultural Speech is still being considered as a minor discipline as opposed to engineering subjects. Our strong belief is that the issues of communicative skills development are vital today in view of their significance for successful professional perspectives. Thus, these items are supposed to become an integral part of modern engineering majors training programs.

Scientists and engineers of any professional level are supposed to be able to state properly aims and objectives both in the oral and written forms. The latest investigations in the field of engineering education conducted by the scientists in the USA, Canada and Australia underlined the necessity to develop and improve communicative skills of both engineering students and experienced engineers [5; 8; 1]. This demand has been caused by certain changes taking place in modern engineering practice, an increase of documents circulation and interchange in particular as applied to quality management procedures, work safety requirements, ecological safety of engineering manufacturing processes etc. Moreover, the modern engineer is responsible for due documentation renovation and systematic manufacturing reports.

M.W. Oatheimer and E.M. White state that very few of engineers admit considering communicative skills as an obstacle for successful engineering practice, until they have come across with something like inability to make contact with and influence other people. A typical engineering student supports the view of communicative skills development being a natural process of personality’s education [7]. Thus, we might conclude that insufficient development of communicative skills is considered as that kind of a graduate engineering student’s weak points that would act as a hindrance to his/her promotion, professional achievements and perspectives. Persons with inherent oratory and communicative skills have fewer problems in obtaining promotion and high management posts; they have better opportunities to realize their ideas and projects, to get means for their funding and to maintain feedback for their acts improvement. It is a curious thing that being technical in its essence, an engineering profession is mostly designed as a communicative process.

The communicative barriers which are most common with the engineers are as follows: the lack of special communicative training and experience, inability to clearly state one’s ideas, errors in written communication, inability to properly assess the peculiarities of the system of values and comprehend the information code of a certain audience, and inability to hear the audience. A person who is considered as a successful communicator should not just follow grammar rules while stating his ideas and be aware of how language system works on the intuition level as a native speaker, but he/she has to be able to render efficiently the meaning of his utterance to the listener as well [5].

All those communication peculiarities draw our attention to the needs of developing certain aspects of communicative competence. So, the reasonable question arises: “What are the ways to develop professional communicative skills?”

A brief analysis of psychological and pedagogical studies on the problem, ways and techniques of a future engineer’s personal characteristics development revealed the fact that among other forms and methods such technologies as role-plays, business games, practice-oriented seminars, master classes and other interactive educational technologies have been widely used in higher educational institutions (A.A. Verbitsky, V.I. Rabalsky, A.M. Smolkin, L.A. Petrovskaya, B.D. Parygin, A.S. Prutenkov. A.A. Kalmykova, T.N. Chernyayeva, V.V. Kuznetsov).

We consider the training technology to be one of the most natural ways of communication skills development in engineering education. In training the presentation of teaching material is minimized, whereas particular attention is paid to practical exercising of skills and abilities, to the process of communication competence acquiring [6].

Training as a means and method of professional communication skills forming has been investigated by T. Alberg, R. Bandler, J. Grinder, K. Levy, J. Moreno, K. Rogers, K. Rudestam, M. Forverg [1970]. The training method is based on the teacher’s use of active forms potentials of group work and due assessment of each training group member capabilities, use of relevant education methodology, skills and competence practicing through a specially arranged system of tasks [6].

The training is aimed at facilitating the process of a certain kind of activity mastering. What conditions are required for new experience assimilation?

1. Demand for the training participants desire to assimilate new type of activity, to appreciate it as personally significant, perceive its value.

2. The future engineer conceptual system completeness. Conceptions are assimilated views of the world used by human beings for the reality interpretation and which predetermine their behavior. Conceptions can’t be strictly and definitely defined, although they might impose quite more power on human life, than the knowledge that has been acquired without being assimilated and which has not been transformed to conceptions.

3. Development of abilities. We interpret abilities as a kind of a person’s property to control acquired conceptions, relations and skills in accordance with a certain situation conditions [1].

In order to make efficient use of training a future engineer should at least: 1) get conception of the essence of efficient communication, various communication strategies and techniques; 2) form his/her personal biased attitude to different techniques and technologies selecting partially only those that suite his professional competence framework and personal needs; 3) perfect certain techniques required for communication under different conditions, try various behavior strategies and the main point at last – to probe various communication situations together with other participants in the live canvas of training [12; 35].

V.V. Kuznetsov believes the process of professional competences exercising, practical skills of listening, speaking, and writing to be based on active forms of collective activities. The objective of the coach-tutor in creating a teaching group is to facilitate the process of the training when each participant is supposed to assimilate professional acts, and types of activities which are necessary for an engineer in planning his/her future professional activity [6].

The demands for reforming the paradigm of engineering education are admitted presently in all professional communities of the civilized cultures. Moreover, International Accreditation Agency (ABET) singled out the six components (out of 11) among engineering education quality criteria which are not generally considered as objectives of engineering disciplines [13]:

• ability to work in interdisciplinary projects;

• realization of professional and ethic responsibility;

• ability for efficient communication;

• group work skills;

• conscious approach in solving engineering problems, which influences economic, social and ecological welfare;

• development of the ability to learn during whole life.

In conclusion we would also stress the importance of search after and practical application of such forms of educational process organization which would compensate for the disadvantages of knowledge-based approach and would develop the future engineers’ abilities for reflexive thinking, efficient emotion control, constructive communication and independent perfection of the knowledge gained at the university. The situation can be changed, with the teaching and educational process being modified in the higher school, its chief objective being aimed at personality’s professional skills development.

References:

1. ABET (2007). – www.abet.org

2. Augustine, N.R. Engineering Education for a Changing World / N.R. Augustine, C.M. Vest. – Washington, 1994.

3. Federal State Standard of General Education. Sketch. Variant 2, M., 2007: URL: http://www.standart.edu.ru.

4. Gunn, C.J. Engineering graduate students as evaluators of communication skills // Proc. ASEE Annual Conf. – 1995. – Р 287-290.

5. Johnson, P. Changing the Culture / P. Johson// Engineering Education into the Future. – Canberra, 1996.

6. Kuznetsov, V.V. Corporal Education: a tutorial for university students/ V.V. Kuznetsov. – Yekaterinburg: Russian State Professional Pedagogical University. – 2010. – 238 p.

7. Oatheimer, M.W. Portfolio assessment in an American engineering college / M.W. Oatheimer, E.M. White // Assessing Writing. – 2005. – № 10. – Р. 61–73.

8. Pudlovsky, Z.O. On Professional Communication Skills Development in Engineering Education / Z.O. Pudlovsky // Higher Education in Russia, № 10, 2008, P. 50-55.

9. Shemet, O.B. Retrospective organization of competence oriented educational process at the University/ O.V. Shemet// Pedagogics. – 2010. – № 6. – P. 40-44.

10. Slemon, G. Engineering Education in Canadian Universities: Report of the Canadian Academy of Engineering / G. Slemon. – Ottawa, 1993.

11. Vachkov, I.V. Group training technique fundamentals / I.V. Vachkov. – M.: Os-89, 2005. – 256 p.

12. Verbitsky, A.A. Kontextual and Copmetence Approach in Education Modernization /A.A. Verbitsky // Higher Education in Russia, № 5, 2010, P. 32-37.

13. Zimnyaya, I.A. Competence Approach. Its Place in the System of Modern Approaches to Education Problems (theoretical and methodological aspect) / I.A. Zimnyaya. – 2006. - № 8. – P. 20-26.