Spread of constructive teaching/learning theory results in a bigger research interest in knowledge and its acquisition, which is directly related with competence development. The focus is laid on the concept of knowledge, their links with sense and intertwining of knowledge and values (and especially moral ones). The research results revealed that educators' attitude to deepening of knowledge is based on the level of knowledge acquisition. The priority is laid on teaching to learn, development of thinking, spread of spiritual powers, new technologies of education, underlying ideas of general education programmes and standards and about 65.3–50.9 percent of teachers refer to them as very important. Whereas the least attention is paid to education management, understanding of feelings, imagination and partially to perception of volitional development, diagnostics and evaluation of progress and achievement and education planning.The statistical data analysis shows that all the identified knowledge priorities, with the exception of teaching to learn, have very weak links with spiritual values or such links are absent (with knowledge of education management, memory development, methods of pedagogical interaction, peculiarities of education and upbringing, new education technologies). Spiritual values are linked with knowledge of feelings, volition, imagination and partially with education planning.It was established that gender, qualification, working experience and workplace have insignificant effect on teachers' attitude and only on knowledge related with external elements of educational process (general programmes, education management, planning, teaching to learn). ; Profesorė socialinių mokslų (edukologijos)habilituota daktarėVilniaus pedagoginio universitetoEdukologijos katedraStudentų g. 39, LT-08106 VilniusTel. (8 5) 2 79 00 42Straipsnyje aptariamos žinios kaip mokytojo profesijos kompetencijos dėmuo, analizuojamas pedagogų požiūris į žinių apie švietimo politiką, žmogaus vystymąsi, ugdymo proceso tobulinimą, atskleidžiamos jų sąsajos su dvasinėmis vertybėmis, taip pat išryškinami veiksniai, darantys poveikį žinių gilinimui.
Gender differences can be essential (inborn) and randomly developed, the latter being preconditioned by ethnic, economic, social, political, religious, and geographical factors, and those differences help to establish inequality between the two sexes. With the democratic processes embracing more areas of human activity, issues of gender bias and discrimination appear among the topical ones; also, those issues come into focus of anthropological, physiological, psychological, and political research. In those studies, alongside the patterning of the randomly developed gender differences, there are noticeable attempts to oversimplify the treatment of the essential characteristics of the two sexes that make human existence essentially meaningful. The actual state of teenagers' spiritual growth did not essentially have an effect on the teenagers' attitudes towards the opposite sex as those attitudes in the first place depend on the teenagers' attitudes towards the highest spiritual values. At the same time, the possible problems that can already be outlined are too complex for the pedagogues alone to solve them as the scope of the problems may shuffle the existential foundations of human being. ; Straipsnyje aptariami kontroversiški požiūriai į lyčių skirtybes, lygybę bei lygiavertiškumą. Šiame kontekste atskleidžiami 13-15 metų paauglių požiūriai į priešingą lytį. Net trys ketvirtadaliai paauglių linkę įžvelgti atsitiktinius, stereotipinius, dažniausiai neigiamus aspektus. Tyrimo duomenys išryškino daugelio tyrinėtojų pastebėtą didesnį berniukų veiklumą, o mergaičių - receptyvumą. Požiūriai į priešingą lytį turi sąsajų tik su aukščiausiomis dvasinėmis vertybėmis ir nepriklauso nuo lyties, tačiau dvasinių vertybių internalizacija iš dalies skiriasi. Dabar neįmanoma vien pedagoginėmis priemonėmis pakeisti tokį didžiulį mastą įgavusį negatyvų paauglių požiūrį į priešingą lytį. Pagrindiniai žodžiai: lytis; lyčių lygiavertiškumas, lygybė, skirtingumas; dvasinės vertybės.
Under evolving economic, political and social situation, education paradigm is also undergoing changes. It establishes new education possibilities, which are actively propagated. However, most frequently they fail to answer expectations since they are focused on separate factors that reflect the spirit of the time, disregarding or even critically evaluating achievements of the previous paradigms. Pursuing to find answers to the most urgent questions of education and development, especially, when life-long learning is becoming a common objective of all the European countries and when education problems are emerging in countries of various levels of economic and social development, there is a need to search for fundamental ideas that exceed the borders of one paradigm. Therefore, the aim of this article is to highlight fundamental education ideas, to reveal possibilities for their expression, which transcend the frames of any education system. The article is based on the methods of scientific literature analysis and generalisation of pedagogical experience. Fundamental education ideas are based on and education, which integrate external and internal factors and, thus, form preconditions for stability without impediment of changes. Considering a human nature to be a subordinate unity of three (psychical, physical and spiritual) dimensions, where a particular role is played by a spiritual one ensuring individual's readiness and power for self-possession and self-control, the first fundamental education and development idea may be pointed out: only individual himself can change own personality. This idea allows for understanding, why a learner, as a person, acquires status of the key object of pedagogical action, irrespective of whether educative or developmental goals are being pursued. An important factor in ensuring learner's self-development is environment because natural powers are only of potential level.
Under evolving economic, political and social situation, education paradigm is also undergoing changes. It establishes new education possibilities, which are actively propagated. However, most frequently they fail to answer expectations since they are focused on separate factors that reflect the spirit of the time, disregarding or even critically evaluating achievements of the previous paradigms. Pursuing to find answers to the most urgent questions of education and development, especially, when life-long learning is becoming a common objective of all the European countries and when education problems are emerging in countries of various levels of economic and social development, there is a need to search for fundamental ideas that exceed the borders of one paradigm. Therefore, the aim of this article is to highlight fundamental education ideas, to reveal possibilities for their expression, which transcend the frames of any education system. The article is based on the methods of scientific literature analysis and generalisation of pedagogical experience. Fundamental education ideas are based on and education, which integrate external and internal factors and, thus, form preconditions for stability without impediment of changes. Considering a human nature to be a subordinate unity of three (psychical, physical and spiritual) dimensions, where a particular role is played by a spiritual one ensuring individual's readiness and power for self-possession and self-control, the first fundamental education and development idea may be pointed out: only individual himself can change own personality. This idea allows for understanding, why a learner, as a person, acquires status of the key object of pedagogical action, irrespective of whether educative or developmental goals are being pursued. An important factor in ensuring learner's self-development is environment because natural powers are only of potential level.
Educational policy makers in post-modern Europe have taken to creating strategies of life-long education that overestimates one type of spiritual values (consisting of truth, goodness, beauty) and lead to the pragmatic needs satisfaction. The system of education in Lithuania goes hand in hand with modern European tendencies and aims at defining the desirable values and skills alongside the key competences acquired in the processes of education. The greatest attention is given to learning and moral values that involve the individual's relationships with the micro and macro-environment (dignity, responsiveness, honesty, tolerance, national sensitivity, civic educational component). The present study has established that adolescents are able to internalize most successfully those spiritual values that are related to their interpersonal relationships (persona] dignity, sensitivity, honesty). However, other important values that also make up part of the educational content of school curriculum (national sensitivity, civic education component, wisdom, creativity) seem to be much more problematic in the processes of value internalization in adolescents; though these values in particular are exclusively important for the processes of adolescents' spiritual becoming, and these values have a complimentary character. ; Straipsnyje aptariamos Europos ir Lietuvos XXI amžiaus švietimo strategijos bei svarbiausios ugdymo vertybės. Jų internalizavimą lemia veiksniai, nukreipti į dvasinės būties pamatus (tiesą ir laisvę), kurie skirtingai funkcionuoja esant totalitarinei ir demokratinei valdymo sistemai. Jie labiausiai įkūnija vertybes, susijusias su tarpasmeniniais santykiais (orumą, jautrumą, sąžiningumą). Pateikiami tyrimo, kaip dabartiniai paaugliai internalizuoja dvasines vertybes, duomenys. Ryškinamos susijusios su vertybių, atitinkančių XXI amžiaus švietimo iššūkius (patriotizmo, pilietiškumo, išmintingumo) ar svarbių dvasiniam tapsmui (tikėjimo, altruizmo, estetinių vertybių) internalizavimo pedagoginės problemos.
Striving to establish a unified qualification system, problems related to vocational education and training arc raising more and more concern in all the countries of the European Union, since vocational education and training have to meet the changing requirements of the labour market and the acquired qualifications arc to be recognised. Moreover, it is of a particular importance to ensure personal satisfaction of employees, their development, involvement and efficiency. 130 Therefore, standards of vocational teacher, which are based on competences implying objective and subjective factors, arc being established, the system of vocational training and professional development is being reformed at a national level. This research aims to identify the effect of vocational education and training policy on vocational teachers: their attitude to the skill standard for vocational teacher, the competencies they want to develop and to what extent they are satisfied with the current system of professional development. The research results show that competences of personal self-development conform with the standard for vocational teacher to the greatest extent. However, the most favourable evaluation was attached to general competences of personal self-development (e.g. to assess and develop own personal qualities) and competences regarding application of information technologies. The parameters, indicating the highest maturity of a personality (responsibility, independence, self-analysis, abilities to reflect own performance and behaviour) gained lowest evaluation. The competences of teaching module planning, teaching and development were evaluated similarly: slightly fewer respondents considered them to be very important but a bigger number of educators referred to these competences as relevant. The most favourably evaluated competences comprise those of planning of teaching module content and teaching, whereas competences to assess achievements of teaching module were ranked lowest. The least relevant competencies include: abilities to conduct pedagogical experiments, to interpret and to adequately evaluate achievements and obstacles in the context of aims of teaching module, etc. Competences of school and education system development take third place referring to their compliance with the standard for vocational teacher. Competences of improvement of school as an organisation are evaluated more favourably. The highest ratings are attached to skills of conflict resolution, abilities to ensure contacts among schools, the labour market, enterprises and organisations. Abilities to disseminate own experience, to conduct didactic experiments implementing innovations, to develop teaching programmes and teaching materials for external contracting parties, etc. Competencies of projecting of vocational education and training arc considered to show the lowest compliance with the standard for vocational teacher. According to the respondents, competences of improvement of vocational education and training programmes are more important: abilities to identify the situation in the labour market, to plan the process of teaching programme implementation, to improve content elements of a particular development programme were ranked highest, whereas skills and abilities to conduct internal audit, to identify reasons for changes in the labour market and consequences of them were considered to be less relevant. It was revealed that the lower the rating of the competence importance, the bigger the number of vocational teachers, who fail to identify their own relations with them, i.e. they omit them or refer to them as irrelevant. The statistical data analysis highlighted the tendency that the attitudes of vocational teachers mainly depend on their participation in professional development courses and their qualification category. Fewer than half of the vocational teachers in the survey want to develop their own competences independently. The majority of them expressed their willingness to improve abilities of achievement assessment. However, none of the respondents pointed out competences of personal self-development, which indicates educators' insufficient perception of their importance. The attention of professional development system to qualification development satisfies only 42.4 % of vocational teachers. A particular concern is required for development of abilities to improve teaching module programmes. Intention of vocational teachers to independently develop abilities and assistance provided by qualification systems comprise the same competence groups (6 out of the 12 provided for in the standards). According to the respondents' opinion, development of competences to assess achievements and to improve vocational training programmes lacks proper concern from the qualification system itself, whereas focus on competences of teaching module programme improvement surpasses their expectations. Working experience (on ability to assess situation in the labour market) and the speciality acquired (on competences of school and education system development) have the most considerable effect on independent development of educators' own abilities. The satisfaction with concern of qualification system in development of abilities mostly depend on educators' qualification category (in competences of personal self-development); experience of pedagogical work (in competences of teaching module content planning) and the speciality acquired (in competences of vocational training programme projecting). ; Straipsnyje analizuojamas profesijos mokytojų požiūris į svarbiausių veiklos sričių, teikiamų profesijos mokytojo standarte (asmenybinio ugdymosi, mokymo modulio planavimo, mokymo ir tobulinimo, profesinio rengimo programos projektavimo, mokyklos ir švietimo sistemos plėtojimo), kompetencijas trimis atžvilgiais: a) bendru jų svarbumo pripažinimu, b) asmeniniu santykiu, reiškiamu noru jas tobulinti, ir c) kvalifikacijos kėlimo sistemos teikiamos pagalbos įvertinimu. Aptariami veiksniai, darantys poveikį tokiam požiūriui.
