Experimental analysis of integration processes practice in vocational education and training

Abstract

The analysis of the practice of integrating knowledge into the educational process revealed a
divergency in the teaching of fundamental and professional disciplines, the dominance of the subject
approach to the content of learning, the discrepancy between objectively available links between concepts
and phenomena, and the implementation of these interrelationships in a studying process. It has been found
out that the problematic type of knowledge integration is not fully realized and the elective component in
general education is insufficient. A considerable amount of knowledge without a specific purpose has been
revealed in the content of education. In combination with the minor knowledge it overloads the educational
and cognitive processes. The purpose of the study is to analyze the level of integration of students'
knowledge into practice, to find out the reasons for the existing weaknesses, to identify the specific
integration of the content and forms of training in vocational education institutions and the ways of
improvement and development of education in general. The study was conducted within the framework of an
ascertaining experiment in vocational education institutions in Lviv for three years. The observation method,
questioning, analysis of the content of pedagogical documentation and activity results, pedagogical
experiment (natural and laboratory), methods of mathematical statistics and computer data processing were
efficiently used. The article substantiates the necessity of knowledge integration into the system of
vocational education institutions and its positive impact on the quality of students' knowledge, which is an
effective means of solving the problem of high-quality professional education and eliminating a number of
difficulties in teaching process such as active introduction of integrative learning and integrating the content
of educational material on a scientific basis in the educational process. The results of the ascertaining
experiment give grounds to claim that the integration of knowledge of vocational education institutions
students does not have sufficient scientific substantiation. In the practice of knowledge integration different,
often contradictory approaches are implemented, which violates a number of fundamentally important
didactic principles and the knowledge does not meet the criteria for selecting the content of training. The
theoretical conclusions regarding the state of knowledge integration of the vocational school students were
confirmed by the results of the ascertaining experiment, which allowed to prepare the materials for a
formative experiment based on partial empirical hypotheses arising from partial theoretical ones.