"Educational company" (Technology): Peculiarities of its implementation in the system of professional education

A competitive specialist's characteristics and requirements for his/her qualification level underlie the authors' Generalized Model of a Specialist. Its fundamentals are the specialist's personality traits, along with special knowledge, skills and abilities which correspond with the general and professional components of the Federal State Educational Standard and are formed in the three directions (socialization, adaptiveness to the labour market and professionally important qualities). Research methods. The study implies a new imitation method “Educational Company”, which is regarded as a system of imitation methods. It has all necessary methodological characteristics and provides the teacher with a range of possibilities, which help him/her to organize the pedagogical process, formulate pedagogical tasks and fulfill them. Research results. The authors propose an algorithm underlying their imitation method “Educational Company”, which includes the following stages: the creation of “Educational Company” (its presentation and environment analysis); the performance of “Educational Company” (recruitment, activity control, partner relations establishment); the formation of an automatized workplace. A significant progress in experimental groups shows that the proposed system improves the students' professional skills and abilities, along with their personality traits. Discussion. It is concluded that in order to train a competitive specialist, a teacher of secondary professional school should give priority to the active teaching methods oriented to improve the students' cognitive activity, to reveal and develop their creative potential and other positive qualities. Such methods also provide for solution of important educational-organizational tasks. Conclusion. The revealed practical peculiarities of the imitation methods make it possible to realize the components of Competitive Specialist Model; to reveal the teacher's self-development potential in the chosen profession; to apply the system of imitation methods through the new teaching method “Educational Company”.