Rural Teacher: from Motivation to Competence through Contextualized Training of Future Teacher

Abstract

Teacher shortage in rural schools is one of the acute problems of national education system. Traditional models of teacher training are primarily focused on subject competencies. They do not take into account the specificities of rural schools: small class sizes, teacher multifunctionality, and limited infrastructure. This creates a need to develop and implement such organizational and pedagogical mechanisms that would ensure not only high-quality professional training but also the formation of sustainable motivation among future teachers to work in rural areas. The study aims to theoretically substantiate, develop, and experimentally test the effectiveness of a model of contextualized training of future teachers for work in rural schools, implemented within a regional university. The author analyzed psychological, pedagogical, and regulatory documents in the field of higher education; identified the essence and structure of future teachers' readiness to work in rural schools; developed a structural-functional model of contextualized training using system-structural analysis and pedagogical modeling. The effectiveness of the model was tested during a pedagogical experiment using diagnostic questionnaires, analysis of learning products, and interviews. The novelty of the research lies in refining the concept of future teachers' readiness to work in rural schools as an integrative personal formation encompassing value-motivational, cognitive, and activity-based components; and in developing a structural-functional model of contextualized training that integrates the resources of the university and rural schools on the principles of subject-subject interaction and ensures the systematic “embedding” of the student into the professional context of the rural school. The practical significance of the study is determined by the possibility of implementing its results in the activities of regional universities offering teacher education programs. The developed model can be adapted to the resource and organizational conditions of any given university and is applicable for designing basic professional educational programs, teaching practice programs, as well as for developing teacher professional development courses within the system of additional professional education.