Competitive behavior as a condition for realizing the personal potential of teachers

. The article considers the personal potential of teachers realized through their participation in competitions. The analysis of sources, diagnostic tools, formats and means of additional professional education presents professional competitions as a condition for realizing one ’ s personal potential. Its components are as follows: personal meanings, activity, reflexive abilities and pedagogical experience, values, motives, striving for the embodiment of creative ideas and intentions, openness to innovations. The teacher ’ s participation in competitions encourages activities, increases the level of innovative solutions to professional problems, manifests creative individuality and recognizes professional achievements. At the same time, the influence of competitions on the professional creativity of a teacher has not been sufficiently studied. The article aims at studying the competitive behavior of a teacher from the perspective of realizing their personal potential. The research utilized the methods of analyzing scientific sources, regulatory documents; diagnostic techniques to study the personal potential of a teacher; forms of developing the competitive behavior of teachers to participate in professional skills competitions; synthesis; logical generalization. In the course of the study, the authors obtained results that are notable for their novelty. They have presented the concept of “ competitive behavior ” of a teacher as an activity characterized by a complex system of motivation aimed at overcoming competitions and developing personal potential. The authors have characterized the motivational, emotional-volitional and personal levels of mental regulation of the teacher ’ s competitive behavior. They have also determined methods for studying personal potential and developing the teacher ’ s competitive behavior.


Introduction
The development of the teacher's personal potential is among the crucial issues of education.It has a significant impact on the formation of creativity and personality of students [1], as well as on the teacher's self-efficacy, personal achievements and job satisfaction [2].This determines the search for resources that ensure the full-fledged realization of the teacher's potential and creativity.In science, the issue of pedagogical creativity was studied by L.V. Vedernikova [3], V.A. Kan-Kalik, N.D. Nikandrov [4], A.Z. Guseinov [5], etc.Personal potential determines the teacher's readiness to participate in professional skills competitions, to develop and transform their personality [6] According to J.M. Abramo and A. Reynolds, the qualities of creative teachers are as follows: responsiveness, flexibility, metaphorical thinking and the ability to improvise [7].
The elements of realizing the personal potential of a teacher are meanings, activities, reflexive abilities and pedagogical experience activated in a competition [8].N.M.Gnatko claimed that professional skills competitions could act as a factor encouraging teachers to be creative [9].Pedagogical activity is considered as the teacher's ability and readiness to use creative potential [10].Its key feature or "driving force" (in terms of V.A. Petrovskii and A.V. Petrovskii) is oversituational activity [11].It helps teachers to reach the level of creative self-realization and find innovative solutions to a certain pedagogical situation.In relation to the teacher's creative self-realization, the components of professionalism include the reflection of values, motives of activity, the desire to embody creative ideas and openness to innovations [3,12].
Under competitive conditions, pedagogical creativity is regulated by the requirements for the form and duration of presentation, project evaluation criteria and a competitive situation.During a competition, teachers organize their activities as heuristically as possible, which makes the ability to improvise of great importance.According to V.A. Kan-Kalik, it is the product of the logical and the intuitive [4].When teachers participate in competitions, it immerses them in creative and intellectual activity, which allows them to consider professional skills competitions as a way to reveal personal potential, creativity and acmeological position [11,13].
At the same time, the development of the personal potential of a teacher through participation in professional skills competitions has not been sufficiently studied.There are contradictions between the need of post-industrial society for citizens capable of creativity and the lack of educational resources to satisfy this need; the need to develop the creative abilities of students and the inadequacy of the teacher's personal potential for this task; the need to develop the teacher's personal potential and insufficient study of competitions as a condition for its implementation.
Accordingly, we can put forward a research hypothesis that the clarification of the concept of the teacher's "competitive behavior", the determination of mental regulation levels, the selection of the relevant diagnostic tools and forms of developing competitive behavior will contribute to the realization of personal potential in a professional skills competition.
The research objective is to study the teacher's competitive behavior from the standpoint of realizing personal potential.To attain this end, we need to solve the following tasks: 1) to clarify the concept of "competitive behavior" of a teacher from the viewpoint of potential development; 2) to characterize mental regulation levels of the teacher's competitive behavior; 3) to select methods for studying the personal potential of a teacher; 4) to determine the forms of developing the teacher's competitive behavior.

Methods
In the course of the study, we used the following methods: the theoretical analysis of scientific sources and documents regulating professional skills competitions in the sphere of pedagogy; diagnostic techniques for studying the personal potential of teachers and their readiness for professional development; training programs for teachers who plan to participate in professional skills competitions; synthesis; logical generalization.

Results and discussion
The realization of personal potential in competitions is mediated by the development of competitive behavior, which we regard as a complex system of internal and external motivation aimed at completing competition tasks and developing the teacher's personal potential.Such behavior is based on the mechanisms of mental self-regulation.According to competition tasks, there are three levels of mental self-regulation: 1) the motivational level reflects the personal differences of competition participants (the power of creative aspirations; the awareness of self-realization motives and personal meanings in the chosen profession; integral or fragmentary perception of activity); 2) the emotional-volitional level combines the teacher's personal resources and the ability to manage their behavior in nonstandard situations of competition tasks; 3) the personal level promotes one's position that helps teachers in a competitive situation correlate certain competition tasks with professional and personal characteristics, as well as put innovative solutions to the test [1].
If these levels of self-regulation are formed, it will allow teachers to creatively treat professional skills competitions as a condition for the development of personal potential, successfully pass competition tasks and achieve high results.
While preparing teachers for participation in competitions, their competitive behavior can be developed through various forms of work implemented in additional vocational education.Indeed, it is necessary to help teachers in terms of diagnosing their professionally significant personality traits, which allows them to identify personal capabilities and directions of their development.The analysis of the existing methods has revealed a wide range of diagnostic tools for studying the teacher's creative potential: methods for diagnosing readiness for professional pedagogical development (N.P. Fetiskin, V.V. Kozlov, etc.) and the dominant emotional modality (L.A. Rabinovich as adapted by T.G.Syritso); test "Readiness for selfdevelopment" (T.A. Ratanova, N.F.Shlyakhta); self-organization questionnaire (E.Yu.Mandrikova) and others [14].
The second group of work forms aims at developing the teacher's competitive behavior.These issues are considered at seminars, workshops and training program modules, including the use of heuristic methods [15].During these activities, teachers consider the experience of successful counterparts, develop critical thinking and gain an understanding of learning as an intellectually complex process [16].Improving qualifications should provide valuable experience in the process of which teachers move "from a sense of chaos to creativity" [17].Competition participants exchange experience in the format of trainings, creative workshops, supervision and mentoring.Targeted training courses for participants in professional skills competitions are an effective form of developing competitive behavior.While analyzing the resources of institutions for educational development in the constituent entities of Russia, we have not found such courses.For example, the Ulyanovsk Region implements programs to prepare teachers for such competitions as "Teacher of the Year", "The Coolest Class", etc.These courses reveal both professional and personal prerequisites for competition participation, provide examples of competition winners, develop the teacher's competences in the field of critical thinking, emotional intelligence and mental self-regulation.

Conclusion
The practice of developing competitive behavior using the above-mentioned forms realizes the teacher's personal potential as a set of personal meanings, abilities, experience, professionalism and initiative, as well as determines their readiness for competitive behavior.The teacher's participation in competitions is determined by the following qualities of a creative person: alternative thinking, the ability to delve into an issue; stable professional values, openness to new ideas; mental self-regulation and the ability to correlate one's capabilities with the requirements of any given competition.Thus, we have confirmed the initial hypothesis through designating forms of developing the teacher's competitive behavior, clarifying the content of this concept, determining the levels of mental regulation and identifying the relevant diagnostic tools.Nevertheless, the current study has not covered all the aspects of developing competitive behavior as a way of realizing the teacher's personal potential.Further research can be conducted in the following directions: expanding the concept of "competitive behavior"; verifying the relationship between the development of the teacher's personal potential and their effective participation in professional skills competitions; identifying the effectiveness of various models of training competition participants.