Bohush M. Formation of readiness of future primary school teachers for professional activity in the conditions of digitalization of the educational environment

2. The subject of this study is the process of professional training for prospective primary school teachers at higher education institutions in the context of the digitalisation of the educational environment. The aim of the study is to provide a theoretical justification and develop a structural-functional model, as well as to experimentally verify the effectiveness of specific pedagogical conditions and the outcomes of preparing prospective primary school teachers for professional practice in the context of the digitalisation of the educational environment. The scientific novelty of the research findings lies in a comprehensive scientific analysis of the issue of preparing future primary school teachers for professional practice in the context of the digitalisation of the educational environment as an integrated pedagogical process that combines the modernisation of professional training in higher education institutions, the development of digital-pedagogical competence, the use of information and communication technologies, digital educational resources and practice-oriented forms of learning in accordance with the contemporary requirements of the New Ukrainian School and the digitalisation of primary education; the specification of the essence and content of the concept of ‘the readiness of future primary school teachers for professional practice in the context of the digitalisation of the educational environment’ as an integrative professional quality of the future teacher; the identification and theoretical justification of the pedagogical conditions for developing the readiness of future primary school teachers for professional practice in the context of the digitalisation of the educational environment; the development, theoretical justification and experimental validation of a structural-functional model for developing the readiness of future primary school teachers for professional practice in the context of the digitalisation of the educational environment; the identification of criteria, indicators and levels of development of the readiness of future primary school teachers for professional activity in the context of the digitalisation of the educational environment, enabling a comprehensive assessment of the identified components of the readiness under study; improving the diagnostic tools for assessing the effectiveness of developing the readiness of prospective primary school teachers for professional practice through the use of questionnaires, tests, expert assessment, analysis of the outcomes of learning and project-based activities, self-assessment, reflective procedures and methods of mathematical statistics to establish the dynamics of readiness levels, verify the significance of differences between the control and experimental groups, and confirm the effectiveness of the developed model. The thesis substantiates the significance of the author’s methodology – developed and implemented in the educational process of higher education institutions– for fostering the readiness of future primary school teachers for professional practice in the context of the digitalisation of the educational environment. This methodology involves the implementation of specially designed pedagogical conditions, the teaching module ‘Digital Technologies in the Professional Practice of Primary School Teachers’ as part of the optional module ‘The Teacher in the Digital Educational Environment’. In this study, through the comprehensive use of diagnostic tools at the higher education institutions involved in the experiment, an assessment was carried out of the level of preparedness of prospective primary school teachers for professional practice in the context of the digitalisation of the educational environment; the effectiveness of the pedagogical conditions introduced into the educational process for prospective primary school teachers and the efficacy of the author’s structural-functional model were demonstrated. The reliability of the results obtained and the validity of the formative experiment were ensured through the application of methods of mathematical statistics. For the statistical analysis of the experimental data, arithmetic means, standard deviation, coefficient of variation, Kendall’s coefficient of concordance and Fisher’s F-test were used.