Tonne O. Organizing Self-sustaining Cognitive Activity of General Educational Institutions’ Teachers in Career Development Process

The thesis offers a new way of solving the challenging issue of organizing self-sustaining cognitive activity of general educational institutions’ teachers in professional development process. As a definition of organizing self-sustaining cognitive activity the author represents a sequence of conscious, willingly chosen, internally motivated cognitive operations and meaningful actions; those actions which are focused on forming in person’s consciousness some particular images due to deep analysis of information sources, communication, generalization of personal and other people experience as well. The author of the research insists that organizing self-sustaining cognitive activity is a system of post-graduate pedagogical institutions’ actions to regulate cooperation between andragogists and learners, and also other parts of andragogy system aiming to improve intensification of teachers’ self-education, development their cognitive and working competences for enhancing the professional activity quality and performance. For the investigation the author deliberately chooses the theoretical background of organizing self-sustaining cognitive activity in such scientific areas: humanistic pedagogy and psychology; gnoseology, theory of activity by O. Leontiev; socio-cognitive theory by A. Bandura; reflective approach in pedagogy; andragogy; competency-based approach in higher education; pedagogical management. The points of the thesis justify the fact that process of organizing teachers’ self-sustaining cognitive activity must be affected by such fundamentals: teacher’s subjective role; feedback; pragmatic nature; emotional coherence; cognitive and practical components of collaboration and interaction of andragogy specialists and teachers. The thesis proves that providing some special conditions can improve effectiveness of teachers’ self-sustaining cognitive activity, in author’s opinion they are: highlighting of teachers’ self-sustaining cognitive activity within assessment process as an index of their professional development progress; different ways of efficient motivation teachers to self-sustaining cognitive activity; focusing the mid-career education courses content, short-time formal, non-formal and informal kinds of andragogy collaboration and interaction on learning teachers how to organize self-sustaining cognitive activity; gradual methodical support of self-sustaining cognitive activity within mid-term certification period; complementing qualification arrangement with some recommendations for general educational institutions’ teachers about organizing their self-sustaining cognitive activity for the next professional development cycle. Firstly, it has been proved in practice that implementation of the specified conditions in accordance with the described above fundamentals is possible due to andragogy process creation in frames of author’s pattern which integrates different components: regulatory and objective, procedure component and resulting one. According to this pattern the relevant process combines preliminary, reflective and motivational, cognitive, distantly searching, evaluative and advisory stages. Secondly, it has been revealed and proved that the most reliable measuring facility of self-sustaining cognitive activity organization level is considered to be an evaluation method that is based on procedure, educative and resulting criteria as a single set. Empirical data of the research show that organizing self-sustaining cognitive activity of general educational institutions’ teachers in full compliance with suggested scientific pattern has had a significant impact on teachers’ self-sustaining cognitive activity performance.