This article is devoted to the issues of organizing independent work of students under the supervision of a teacher in higher educational institutions. The article deals with such concepts as «independent work of students», as well as «independent work of students under the supervision of a teacher» and «cognitive independence». The authors analyzed the works of domestic and foreign researchers on the definition and forms of organization of independent work of students under the supervision of a teacher that showed that the definition of the IWST is treated ambiguously. The article also presents the results of a questionnaire survey of teachers and students of the Karaganda State University named after Academician E.A. Buketov to determine the current situation on the organization of the IWST on a foreign language, namely, to determine the role of this type of classroom activities in the educational process, the forms of its organization, the difference of these forms from the forms of organization of other types of occupations. To clarify the essence of the IWST concept, the authors also considered the characteristics of the IWS, which led to the conclusion that the classification of the types of independent work of a student under the supervision of a teacher depends on the pedagogical goal, the nature of the student's activity, the degree of independence, and also on the specifics of the academic subject.
Introduction
In the context of credit technology, one of the crucial roles is assigned to the independent work of the student, which is connected with the modern paradigm of education, the requirement of which is to teach a person to learn, to promote the formation of motivation for self-educational activity. The transition to the European education system confronts university teachers with the problem of organizing independent work as the main component of the educational process necessary for the qualitative preparation of the future bachelor's degree holder for his professional activity.
Thus, in the higher educational institutions of Kazakhstan, there are two forms of organization of the educational process, the target orientation of which is the development of the students' ability to acquire knowledge independently. These forms are: an independent work of the student (IWS) and an independent work of the student under the supervision of a teacher (IWST). If the first form, IWS, completely assumes an independent activity of the student, the second one, IWST, includes the interaction of the teacher and student, which is determined by the need to determine the direction of student's independent work, as well as its correction by the teacher, which further promotes the student's ability to organize educational activities independently. So, IWST serves as a basis for the formation of the ability for self-educational activity, which predetermines the need to perform such type of lessons. The analysis of the scientific and methodological literature and statutory-legal documents in the field of education regarding the independent work of the student under the supervision of a teacher testifies to the ambiguous understanding of the role, place, significance and specifics of the organization of this type of lessons, which is reflected in the lack of a methodological platform for the organization of the IWST. This causes the occurrence of a problem, that is, an incorrect understanding by the teachers of the independent work of the student under their supervision, its goals, objectives and orientation, which, as a consequence, affects the quality of the organization of this type of lessons.
The main part
In the studies, dedicated to the planning and organization of independent work of stu- dents (L.G. Vyatkin, M.G. Garunov, B.P. Essipov, I.Ya. Lerner, M.I. Makhmutov, P.I. Pidkasisty and others [1–4]), many aspects of the problem under investigation have been discovered in the traditional didactic aspect. However, at the present time, special attention should be paid to solving the problems of organizing the independent work of a student under the supervision of a teacher as a classroom activity of students, taking into account not only the didactic but also the motivational, procedural and technological aspects of the educational process.
Analysis of scientific and methodological literature allows us to conclude that the definition of independent work of a student under the supervision of a teacher (IWST) is treated ambiguously, and different sources offer various definitions, and in some there is no concretization of this concept. For example, S.B. Abdygaparova and S.R. Akhmetova determine the IWST as one of the forms of educational work in the credit system of training, which is conducted as classroom lesson; as a joint classroom work of the student and teacher in an interactive mode [5]. The Rules for the organization of the educational process on credit technology training do not provide a specific definition of the IWST, but describes the nature of the performance of this type of classes: consultation on the performance of homework assignments, course projects and works, semester and test papers, reports and other types of IWS [6]. That is, the IWST lessons should be aimed at monitoring and correcting the independent work of the student. The monograph of A.A. Kussainov,
S.M. Omirbayev and S.S. Karpikov widely considers the distribution of hours for independent work of students under the supervision of a teacher, its relationship with the seminars and practical classes, but there is no information about the goals, objectives and content of this type of work.
To determine the current situation regarding the organization of the IWST on a foreign language, namely: to determine the role of this type of classroom activities in the educational process, the forms of organization of the IWST, the differences of these forms from the forms of organization of other types of lessons, we conducted a survey among teachers and students. The participants of this survey were foreign language teachers of the Karaganda State University named after academician E.A. Buketov and students of this university. The analysis of the questionnaire indicates that all interviewed teachers believe that the IWST lessons can be used to explain the material not understood and acquired by the students during the practical lessons. These results serve as the basis for the assumption that practical lessons and IWST are duplicated, since they have one target orientation. At the same time, a large part of the students (65 %) find the forms of holding these two types of classroom classes different. However, we cannot ignore the fact that almost 1/3 (30 %) of the interviewed students still see the organization of practical lessons and the IWST identical. Also, most of the teachers (70 %) believe that the IWST is an opportunity to consolidate the material studied and passed by the students during the practical lessons, and approximately the same percentage of students (65 %) confirms this. It should be noted that 65 % of teachers believe that the students should be provided with new, additional information on the topic under the study during the IWST. In the meantime, 35 % of teachers believe that the IWST lessons should be organized so that students, in addition to receiving new information, have the opportunity to repeat and consolidate the material on the topic under the study. The same picture is formed regarding this issue and in the students' answers. Thus, 65 % of students would like to receive additional information at the time of IWST, and the remaining 35 % of students do not agree with this.
Summarizing the results of the survey on the objectives of the IWST as a classroom activity, it can be concluded that the majority of both students and teachers define this type of lesson as a way to assimilate an unexplored material that has not been studied for some reasons during the practical lessons, or as a way to consolidate the material that has been studied. Also, a large number of teachers are confident that the IWST lessons should be for the students a source of additional, in-depth information. Thus, it can be stated that neither students nor teachers mark an important aspect of this type of lesson, which concerns the independence of students in studying a specific topic. Whilst, in our opinion, students should come to the IWST lessons with questions and problems on the material that they have to study independently on the topic recommended by the teacher.
The results of the survey among students in relation to the productivity of their lessons show that approximately 2/3 (65 %) of the students surveyed visit the IWST because they consider this type of classroom work productive in learning a foreign language, while about 1/3 (35 %) of students totally disagree with this and are present at the IWST only because the visit is mandatory. Whereas the analysis of teachers' responses allows us to conclude that they perceive the IWST as a fairly productive type of training, since the majority of teachers (80 %) agreed with this assumption, and the remaining 20 % of respondents find it difficult to determine the level of productivity of the IWST. Summarizing the above, it can be said that most of the students and teachers are confident of the need to conduct the IWST, but at the same time a sufficient percentage of students and teachers have doubts about this issue.
Also of great importance, in our opinion, are the recommended forms of organization of the IWST, which are indicated in the syllabus of the subjects. We have analyzed syllabuses of such subjects as «Foreign language», «Basic foreign language», «Language for specific purposes» and «Second foreign language» to investigate if there are given the forms of organization of the IWST. The analysis showed that if during the organization of practical classes the main forms are working with the text, grammar and lexical exercises, listening, writing, then the IWST is characterized by predominance of activities aimed at speaking, namely: discussion, round table, role-playing and business games, dialogues, monologues, reports and others. Taking into consideration the abovementioned we can conclude that the forms of organization of the IWST and practical classes offered in syllabus are different. However, the results of the survey indicate the opposite. 70 % of the surveyed students say that the main activity during IWST on language subjects is reading, working with text and written exercises. Only about 20 % of students noted a discussion in their responses, and approximately 10 % of students indicated reports and multimedia presentations in the Power Point program as a form of IWST. In addition, the teachers noted that they are preparing material for classes according to the topics and forms of organization of the IWST, presented in syllabus. While half of the interviewed students find it difficult to answer the question about the use by teachers of the forms of organization of the IWST presented in the syllabus.
Within the framework of our survey, the teachers had the opportunity to make suggestions on improving the organization of the IWST. 1/3 of the interviewed teachers indicated that the independent work of the student under the supervision of a teacher could be more productive if the teacher could independently recommend certain students to visit the IWST. These proposals of teachers once again confirm that they do not connect the IWST with the independent work of students.
Based on the results of the survey, it can be concluded that:
- independent work of students under the supervision of a teacher, as a kind of classroom lesson, in practice does not have a specific focus, because these classes relate to practical exercises, aimed at reinforcing the new material, or perceived as an opportunity to broadly explain the material on the topic;
- an active subject of the IWST is a teacher, not a student, whose activity, in our opinion, should be aimed at an independent study of a particular topic. Wrong understanding by teachers of this type of occupation is reflected in its content, which should be preceded by independent work of
Thus, all of the aforementioned requires clarification of the concept of independent work of students under the supervision of a teacher (IWST) as a compulsory type of training in the context of credit technology of training, which, in our view, should reflect the main components of this activity.
To clarify the concept of independent work of a student under the supervision of a teacher, we conducted an analysis of the works of domestic and foreign psychologists and teachers to identify the target orientation, components and characteristics of the student's independent work and its relationship with the teacher's activities in relation to the student in the learning process.
The analysis of the literature has shown that the main target orientation of such type of activity as IWST should be cognitive independence of students, as it reflects all the fundamental principles of credit technology of education.
The cognitive independence of students can be defined as an important quality of the personality of the future specialist, characterized by his willingness to carry out cognitive activity on his own, aimed at mastering the theoretical and practical foundations of the specialty, professional self-development and selfrealization in the conditions of rapid growth in the volume of information and technology improvement.
Stressing the importance of this fact, we believe that the formation and activation of cognitive independence are the main goals of conducting the IWST lessons.
An important link in achieving this goal is the role of the teacher in the learning process during the IWST lessons. It is the teacher who organizes the process, directing it to the formation of the students' cognitive independence, and later systematically activates it to develop the students' automation skills to selfactivate this skill and use it in practice. The essence of mainstreaming the cognitive independence of students is to activate their thinking, cognitive interest and in the modeling of mental processes that are adequate to genuine creativity. At the same time, there can be developed skills for an independent exploratory research approach to solving theoretical or practical problems [7].
The objective of activating the cognitive independence of students is to raise the level of independent thinking activity among the students and teach them the system of mental actions that is characteristic for self-solving problems that require the use of creative thinking activity. Activation of students in the learning process will be properly organized if it ensures achievement of skillfully set goals with rational use of efforts and, as a result, preserving psychological balance and obtaining positive emotions for the trainees [8].
The process of activating cognitive activity of students suggests:
- the actualization of problems, ideas of the studied material and an independent cognitive activity of students itself;
- the elucidation of ideas, the formation of concepts, general educational, generalized and special skills in the process of independent cognitive activity;
- the organization of independent cognitive activity of students on the basis of value
The development of cognitive independent activity is greatly influenced by various incentives motivations for action. The need for cognitive activity causes various processes, phenomena, skills, abilities and knowledge. It is possible to attribute all possible assessments of the personal plan (approval, recognition, evaluation, etc.) and the influence of the environment (moral and material) to stimuli of cognitive independent activity. Pedagogical stimulation of cognitive independent activity consists in the special organization of the educational process, which entails the solution of questions of formation and development of motivation, abilities and skills of conducting cognitive independent activity.
So, as it was said above, the main target orientation of IWST activities should be cognitive independence of students, as it reflects all the fundamental principles of credit technology of education.
Let us consider the characteristics of the IWS for comparison with the characteristics of the IWST. Independent work is of great importance in terms of the formation of cognitive activity and the independence of students. Independent work is a form of joint, unified activity of the teacher and students. Carrying out an independent work, students actively operate with acquired knowledge, skills and abilities, perform search activity. Therefore, in this independent activity of students, their cognitive activity and independence are strengthened and mutually conditioned, and this activity is distinguished by a high level of consciousness. If as a result of education students have acquired such a quality of personality as cognitive independence, then it can be stated that at all stages of educational cognition the didactic principles of consciousness, activity and independence in teaching were realized [4].
An analysis of the scientific psycho-pedagogical literature shows the diversity of approaches and the ambiguous definition of the concept of «independent work of students». IWS is considered as a form of educational and scientific knowledge, as a form of learning organization, as a method of teaching, as a method of creative thinking and as a means of learning [9].
There are many classifications based on different criteria: by the didactic purpose (B.P. Essipov); by the sources of knowledge (E.Ya. Golant, V.P. Strezikozin); by the type of tasks (M.G. Garunov, I.Ya. Lerner, Pidkasisty); by the content (I.E. Unt); a multi-level classification (O.A. Nilsson) [10].
Conclusion
Thus, we can conclude that the classification of the types of independent work of a student under the supervision of a teacher depends on the pedagogical goal, the nature of the student's activity, the type of independent work, the place of independent work of students, the degree of independence, and also on the specifics of the academic subject; it is determined by specific goals and content of training, features of methods and techniques of teaching, specific tasks.
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