The study presents a comprehensive scientific analysis of border guards’ professional training in the European Union countries, its theoretical, organizational and methodological foundations and justifies creative use of innovative ideas of European countries for the development of the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine. The preconditions for harmonization of educational standards of professional training of border guards in the European Union have been specified. The main groups of the European Union border guard agencies have been distinguished by the type of personnel training. On the basis of the revealed common features in the systems of professional training of border guards of the mentioned countries the particularities of professional training of the European Union border guard agencies’ personnel have been generalized.
The conceptual and methodological bases of border guards’ professional training in the European Union countries have been substantiated at the general scientific, specific scientific, practice-oriented and technological levels with the respective approaches, technologies, forms and methods of border guards’ training in the European Union. On the basis of historical-genetic and chronological analysis, the genesis and the periods of formation and development of unified professional training of the European border guards have been outlined.
It has been established that the professional training of European border guards is based on the unified educational standards: implementation of the Sectoral Qualifications Framework for Border Guarding and Common Core Curricula for basic, medium and strategic levels; introduction of specialized educational tools and training courses; functioning of a quality assurance system of unified training; organization of training courses for teachers of border guard educational institutions on methodology of delivering border guard oriented subjects. It was found that the widespread use of innovative forms, methods, information and communication technologies in the system of the European Union border guards’ training contributes to its massification and implementation of cost-effective forms and methods of training. The system of professional training of border guards in the European Union has been presented as a dynamic, purposeful, space-time integration of elements characterized by a functional structure with interconnected and interdependent subsystems: purpose, legislative and regulatory, institutional and managerial, strategic, organizational, theoretical and methodological, content and technological, diagnostic and resultative.
A comparative pedagogical analysis of the professional training of personnel of border guard agencies in the European Union countries and Ukraine helped to distinguish between the common and different characteristics, compare the professional training programs, possibilities of educational border guard oriented web-platforms, the level of implementation of Common Core Curriculum for the border guards training, the level of interoperability of the personnel of the European border guard agencies. The lack of certain competencies of Ukrainian border guards in the all-European Common Core Curriculum is explained by the events in the East of our country and participation of border guards in the Joint Forces Operation, which necessitated changing the approaches to train Border Guard Service personnel and introducing a military-based component. The ability of border guards from different countries to perform their duties together has been tested through the organization of Interoperability Assessment Program. The results of testing the level of knowledge of Ukrainian border guards (78–96 %) showed a high level of professional competence and interoperability with the border guards of the European Union countries and proved their ability to participate in FRONTEX initiatives to protect various border sectors.
Grounding on the results of the research the perspective directions for the development of the professional training of the State Border Guard Service personnel based on the experience of the European Union countries have been outlined. Finally, the findings were used to elaborate the methodological support for scientific and pedagogical staff to improve the system of professional training of Ukrainian border guards taking into account European best practices. To address the problem of selecting personnel for the implementation of joint border protection tasks with border guards of the European Union, the method of staff selection optimization to perform professional functions during joint border protection operations with the staff of the European border guard agencies has been developed.
