A Significant Role Of Constant Learning In Improving The People’s Life Quality

Abstract

The relevance of the problem is due to the need of society in the education system as a basis for constant learning of the adults in the light of the necessity of acquiring new professional skills and competences. The authors propose the main directions of development of additional education in Samara region, taking into account the needs of the society in new specialists and with regard to improving peoples’ life quality. The article gives a comprehensive and clear idea of the current development of new innovative ways of teaching and managing adult learners in large groups, describes new distant learning techniques and methods. The results of the research show that education is an important part of economics and largely depends on its condition and development. The authors of the article examined the relationship between economics and education and concluded that the level of education in any society relates to the indicators of economic development and well-being of the people. Thus, the state of the economy is the source of more or less strong development of education in different periods. The results of the research are based on diagnostic analyses of what new industries will develop most rapidly and what specialists will be in demand in the following few years.

Keywords: Economic developmentlife qualityhigher professional qualificationsself-directed learningblended learningflipped classrooms

Introduction

Improving the population life quality is fundamental to the modern development of Russia and its regions. Quality of life is becoming an important factor in the competitiveness of the region as evidenced by the trend of labour migration to regions with more favourable living conditions. The main purpose of the study of the quality of life of the population at the regional level is the Samara region. The prospects for successful economic development at the present stage are determined by the nature of the transition of countries to the post-industrial stage, where services, science, education, etc., prevail. That is, the way we produce and transfer knowledge comes to the fore. Even now, in all countries, human capital predetermines the pace of economic development and scientific and technological progress. Accordingly, the interest of society in the education system as a basis for the production of this capital is also increasing. Education is an important part of economics, and largely is deterministic of its condition and development. Many researchers of the relationship between economics and education note that the level of education in any society relates to the indicators of economic development and well-being of the people. Thus, the state of the economy is the source of more or less strong development of education in different periods.

Problem Statement

Identify and study the needs of the economy for new specialties and specialists in the labour market of Samara region. Consider the options for retraining specialists for new jobs in the light of quickly changing responsibilities and duties of people working for big companies and corporations in order to be at the cutting edge of technological development of Samara region. Verify and suggest the most efficient ways of distant learning and acquiring new skills and competences through the Internet for young, retired and disabled people.

Research Questions

• Analyze the strategy of economic development of the region until 2030.

• Determine the number of high-income people with higher education.

• Identify which areas of production and service delivery will grow most rapidly.

• Determine which specialties and, accordingly, specialists will be in demand in the next 5 years.

• Identify innovative methodologies to be developed and applied to practical training in the region.

Purpose of the Study

To define the main directions of development of additional education in the Samara region taking into account the needs of the society in new specialists and with regard to improving peoples’ life quality. Develop new innovative ways of teaching and managing adult learners in large groups. Describe new distant learning techniques.

Research Methods

The following research methods are used in the article:

• Empirical methods (comparison, observation);

• Theoretical research methods (analysis, abstraction, induction);

• Diagnostic methods (diagnostic analysis of the condition and causes).

Findings

Analysis of the strategy of economic development of the Samara region for the period up to 2030 showed that increased attention will be paid to the development of traditional industries for the region, but special attention will be paid to the use of innovative technologies and advanced methods of business management. Breeding and genetic engineering technologies will be developed in agriculture, the introduction of multimodal transport and logistics services will be a priority in the transport and logistics sector. The priorities of the petrochemical cluster will be the development of polymers and support of monomers from vegetable raw materials. New technologies and scientific achievements will be applied in aerospace, metallurgical, automotive and pharmaceutical industries.

Traditionally, these spheres employ mostly people with higher education who have higher professional qualifications than those without higher education or a scientific degree. Higher incomes improve life and improve its quality. Usually, people with higher education spend money differently from those with no higher education. The need for continuous advanced training determines spending on professional books and magazines, participation in seminars and conferences, and additional education at universities. This, in turn, leads to the desire and need for general intellectual development and expansion of the outlook. People seek to live a full spiritual life, visit theatres, concerts and art exhibitions. The research conducted by the authors of this article included expert assessments and sociological survey data. The analysis of specialized literature on quality of life studies highlighted the main types of challenges that researchers face in assessing quality of life. Based on subjective components of the quality of life of the population, we have developed our own list of indicators. These indicators include level of income, satisfaction with work, conditions of work and rest, satisfaction with the level of development of the sphere of services, including intellectual ones (quality of theatre performances, films, theme and relevance of art exhibitions, accessibility of clubs according to peoples’ interests and sports centers). According to the results of the study out of 2000 surveyed by the method of free sampling the highest income had: 148 people – 70-80 thousand rubles per month, 91 people - from 80 to 90 thousand rubles per month, 46 people – from 90 thousand and higher. 873 out of 2,000 people had a university education.

Economic and social development based on the introduction and rapid diffusion of advanced technologies. Sales of clothing, household items, construction materials, electronic equipment are moving onto the Internet. Cloud computing, large data analytics, artificial intelligence and blockchain are developing rapidly. Digital innovations contribute to the introduction and expansion of various services and applications in science, medicine, education, and public administration. The introduction of digital technologies, artificial intelligence, robots into the economy of the region has increased dramatically. All this will lead to the fact that the demand for workers of routine and physical labor will fall in favor of highly qualified specialists. Thus, the solution to the problem of employment of medium and low-skilled personnel is to obtain education and re-education with a view to obtaining new skills and skills. At the greatest risk of displacement by robots are specialties of medium qualification, in which the performance of routine cognitive works is concentrated.

Analysis of strategic development of the Samara region allows concluding that employment in the sphere of services will increase over time. At the same time, employment in the field of information and computer technologies, professional, scientific and technical services is growing rapidly. As the main activities that contribute greatly to the development of the service sector will be wholesale and retail trade, transport and communications, real estate operations, health care. In the medium term, it is planned to focus efforts on the development of breeding, the creation of an agro-industrial park, the attraction of large agricultural holdings to the region, which will ensure of higher life quality indicators. Increased attention will be paid to the development of higher and secondary vocational education, the social and transport infrastructure of the region, as well as the qualitative improvement of the living conditions of the population in the urban environment. An important component will be ensuring the access of non-State organizations to the provision of social services, which will improve their quality and bring the provision of services closer to the population. The priorities of the petrochemical cluster will be the development of monomers (Richard & Giri, 2019).

The number of people receiving second, third and even fourth additional education is increasing in Russia. Professionals are becoming more mobile, open to new knowledge. More than three and a half thousand students undergo professional retraining in different areas of activity every year at Samara higher education institutions. Thus professors face a very responsible and important task - constant training and retraining of new specialists with taking into account constantly changing requirements to the set of necessary skills and competences. Future professionals will need to work in conditions of work uncertainty, adapt to stressful situations and deal with complex intellectual projects. At the same time, knowledge should be obtained quickly and in-service. Teachers face the difficult task of training specialists with the focus on modern challenges, constant renewal of knowledge, considering scientific achievements and requirements of the economy. Good results in this area can be achieved only with the use of new techniques in education.

Secondary and higher professional education perform the function of forming the professional structure of the population, focusing on the needs of society. A significant role in this process belongs to the forms of training in the workplace. These are forms varied and are focused on workers, on managers, on highly professional specialists. The development of these forms is associated primarily with the fact that on-the-job training is more flexible and substantive, that is, directly reflecting the needs of any sector of the economy.

For economics and education the feedback system is crucial. The training of highly qualified professionals consists of many stages: preparation at the university, mastering at the enterprise various stages of production, writing a thesis on a topic related to a specific production, subsequent internships at various workplaces. In the economic sphere, education has a serious impact on the sphere of consumption. We are talking about the consumption of both material goods (goods) and spiritual goods - culture, information. At the initial stages of a person’s life, the education sector translates and consolidates the norms of consumer behavior. Considering the role of education in the country's economy, we should mention that the education system is an active consumer of public resources. Educational systems cannot work without attracting resources.

Therefore, in the relations of educational and economic social subsystems feedback is important. Education should not only satisfy the economic needs of the state, but the state must ensure the normal functioning of the educational system (Carroll, 2010).

Managing learners in large groups, forces teachers think of some innovative (alternative) ways of teaching. In a traditional classroom setting, learners are working at the direct control of a teacher who monitors the development of the course. The teacher is responsible for setting the goals, presenting the material, assessing learners’ progress. For university-aged language learners face-to-face classes may be quite relevant and more efficient than self-directed (or even autonomous) lessons (Hunsinger, 2018).

But adult learners that are often pressed for time and are likely to study at their own pace often adopt self-directed learning which is concerned with learner responsibility. A self-directed learner is responsible for all the decisions concerned with his own study but he/she does not necessarily implement those decisions (Nadeem, 2009). Self-direction is a general cover term that refers to situations in which students are working without the direct control of a teacher. The idea of self – direction implies that the teacher provides the learner with all the materials and resources for self-study and the learner in his/her turn may ask the teacher for assistance and advice.

Here the question of organizing the student’s study process arises. How can a teacher manage adult learners in a multi-level classroom environment?

Sciences (teachers) suggest a blended learning approach, which involves both conventional (teacher-student) and distanced learning. Among innovative methods of study that can easily be integrated into the traditionally organized classroom are: Station rotation; Flipped classroom; Lab rotation; Individual rotation.

Station Rotation refers to situations in which the class is divided into groups (stations). Each group fulfills a specific task. The teacher is walking round the classroom and monitoring to see if the answers of each station are correct. Then the results are presented to the other groups, which naturally evokes discussion on the issue. A ‘station rotation’ technique is especially efficient when doing experiments and practice-oriented tasks (Luburić, Sladić, Slivka, & Milosavljević, 2019).

Sample ‘station rotation’ activities at an English lesson can be as follows:

• Asking concept questions, i.e. questions about meaning, (i.e. contrasting the meaning and use of two language items by asking concept questions in groups).

• Making questionnaires and quizzes, (i.e. helping learners in groups design their own questionnaires and quizzes on the topic studied).

• Using sample sentences, (i.e. highlighting the meaning of the pattern with examples from the course book or teacher’s flashcards, in small groups correcting the order of the jumbled sentences and identifying the pattern).

Internet “hunting” for sample sentences, i.e. searching the Internet for a grammar pattern, or target vocabulary, identifying grammar and vocabulary rules, etc. (Gretter, Yadav, Sands, & Hambrusch, 2019). If you have a class of 20-25 adult students, a ‘station rotation’ technique can really be helpful as it involves all learners into the learning process (thinking process) and can “revive” the classroom environment. If all the students are doing the same activity, it is difficult for the teacher to involve all participants into the work. Some students may “dream off” while doing this exercise. However if the class is divided into several groups (stations) of 3 or 4 these “lazy dreamers” are likely to take part in the activity. The results can be presented either to the rest of the groups or to the teacher. Then the groups exchange activities (Tucker, 2017).

Lab rotation implies choosing a group of learners that want a special individual study route. Such students are either behind the classmates or ahead of them. The teacher organizes extra-curricular activities for them, sometimes in a face-to-face format, but mostly in a distanced way. ‘Lab rotation’ students are working without the direct control of a teacher in a synchronous or asynchronous way. Synchronous learning is online learning. Using special computer programs learners are able to watch video lectures, attend video classes, interact with other students or the teacher online and get immediate feedback. Asynchronous learning means learners cannot watch video classes in real time, but they do assignments at their own pace and send them via the Net to the teacher for assessing.

Sample ‘lab rotation’ activities are:

• Creating assignments (exercises, questionnaires, quizzes) for classmates;

• Designing power-point presentations illustrating the topic.

Creating case studies:

• An Individual Rotation method implies having to deal with individual learners when fulfilling a specific task.

• One of the most popular innovative methods of blended learning is Flipped Classroom, which can be defined as learners’ mastering new material before the teacher explains it in class. When learners come to class, the teacher just provides the exercises to see if the material is understood correctly. With this technique students can work at home at their own pace and review the material multiple times. The teacher can design a collection of video lessons with the new material to be learnt at home. Besides, he can create special on-line assignments for learners to be completed either at home or at a lesson. The teacher then gets an immediate feedback.

Conclusion

The provision of paid additional educational services is becoming an increasingly important area of activity of state and municipal educational institutions in a market economy. In order to reform Russian education and improve the quality of life of the population, attention must be paid to additional educational services that contribute to more complete satisfaction of the growing educational needs of the population in conditions of constantly changing work environment. However, at the same time, it is extremely important to observe the norms of the current legislation, especially regarding the implementation of the constitutional principle of accessibility and free education.

References

• Carroll, H. (2010). Leadership dispositions: What are they and are they essential to good leadership. Academic Leadership: The Online Journal, 8(1), 21.
• Gretter, S., Yadav, A., Sands, P., & Hambrusch, S. (2019). Equitable learning environments in K-12 computing: Teachers’ views on barriers to diversity. Journal ACM Transactions on Computing Education (TOCE), 19(3), 24. https://doi.org/10.1145/3282939
• Hunsinger, J. (2018). Station rotation & lab rotation: Blended learning models. Retrieved from: https://blog.kiddom.co/station-rotation-lab-rotation-blended-learning-models/ Accessed: 03.07.19.
• Luburić, N., Sladić, G., Slivka, J., & Milosavljević, B. (2019). A framework for teaching security design analysis using case studies and the hybrid flipped classroom. Journal ACM Transactions on Computing Education (TOCE), 19(3), 21. https://doi.org/10.1145/3289238
• Nadeem, M. (2009). Emergence of strategic human resource management historical perspective. Academic Leadership: The Online Journal, 7(1), 16.
• Richard, G. T., & Giri, S. (2019). Digital and physical fabrication as multimodal learning: Understanding youth computational thinking when making integrated systems through bidirectionally responsive design. Journal ACM Transactions on Computing Education (TOCE), 19(3), 17. https://doi.org/10.1145/3243138
• Tucker, B. (2017). The flipped classroom. Education Next, 12(1), 82-83.