EXPERIENCE CONSTRUCTING AS A FACTOR OF PROFESSIONAL COMPETENCE DEVELOPMENT OF A PSYCHOLOGIST

Abstract

The article is devoted to substantiation of influence of personal experience as an organized semantic formation on the development of a psychologist professional competence. It is shown that the problem of professional competence development should be considered in the context of a post-nonclassical methodological approach that interprets an individual as a person which is capable of self-determination, self-creation and self-designing. The experience constructing as a necessary condition for personal development is interpreted as bringing sociocultural and personal information into the system, organizing this information into related structures that help to understand its meaning.

Professional competence is considered as the unity of knowledge, which is necessary for successful professional activity and experience, which involves not only the possession of necessary practical skills and abilities, but also the presence of a specialist’s developed field of professional meanings, which determine the creative nature of the psychologist’s professional activity to a large extent. The personal experience is an organized and holistic structure, the source material for which is provided by real life and professional events. It can be considered as comprehension and ordering of current events, which arise in certain life and professional situations, and, being defined, understood and interpreted, they are transformed into personal experience.

The main components of professional competence are cognitive, operational and communicative. They are formed at different stages of education in the process of carrying out the following activities: educational quasi-professional and educational-professional. It is shown that the development of all professional competence types is based on understanding a students’ personal experience and to a great extent depends on the successful resolution of major conflicts – inconsistencies, desemantization and semantic conflict. Failure to resolve these conflicts blocks the development of the future specialist’s semantic sphere and leads to the person’s professional experience rigidity, uncertainty in his own professional capabilities, frustration in the future profession. It is proved that one of the conditions for resolving major conflicts is the development of the ability to understand and interpret, which are important procedures of the psychologist’s practical activities, as well as his self-knowledge, self-development and professional reflection, thus enriching his professional and personal experience. It is also shown that the development of new schemes and scenarios of professional activity with the help of two main mechanisms for understanding and interpreting personal experience – semiotic and communicative, as well as the development of dialogism as one of the professionally important qualities of a psychologist, plays an important role in the development of a psychologist’s professional competence.

Keywords: professional competence; professional experience; meaning; interpretation; post-nonclassical psychology; educational conflicts; understanding; dialogue; reflection

Accepted: 02.11.2020

Reviewed: 20.11.2020

Published: 01.12.2020

DOI: https://doi.org/10.31108/3.2020.4.3.10