The role of interactive technologies in the process of forming sociocultural competence of future engineers
The article deals with the issue of developing socio-cultural competence of future engineers which is considered as part of their professional competence. The author gives a definition of sociocultural competence of future engineers taking into account the two notions of competence. The study of pedagogical literature has shown that the representations of these notions depend on the tasks being solved and the context where they are being used. The culturological, competence-based, learner-centred and system-related approaches are substantiated as the main theoretical foundations for forming sociocultural competence of future engineers. The author formulates a number of contradictions to be resolved, which explains the need to use interactive technologies in the process of forming sociocultural competence of future engineers. To prove the pedagogical viability of the use of interactive technologies in the process of forming the sociocultural competence of future engineers we have conducted research among students of Siberian Transport University (286 participants). The test “Raven's progressive matrices” was used to determine the influence of interactive technologies on the effectiveness of the formation of the competence among the participants with different rates of psychometric intelligence. According to the interpretation of the obtained data, emotional and intellectual interaction of the participants of the teaching and learning process and the coordination of this interaction by the teacher while working in small groups can be considered as key factors of the success of the learning process, thus having a big impact on the effectiveness of the process of forming sociocultural competence of future engineers with the help of interactive technologies. Attention is drawn to the fact that the learning process, being similar to the perception of the reality by a human, includes cooperation and social interaction. The author concludes that the process of forming students' sociocultural competence can be intensified through developing collective solutions in variable learning situations that simulate professional activities, with the use of interactive pedagogical technologies. This kind of teaching and learning activities allows participants to simulate actual social relations between the interacting subjects under the conditions of work environment.