Actual problems of teaching social sciences

The main task of the development of any university is to train highly qualified specialists in demand on the modern labor market, and the construction of a new education strategy should contribute to the socialization of a person in the broadest sense. Socialization of students should be carried out not only in preparation for effective self-expression in professional activity, but also in social and social life. Despite the fact that the reform of higher education has led to a reduction in social and humanitarian disciplines and a reduction in teaching hours, the requirements enshrined in educational standards provide for the formation of a wide range of general cultural competencies among future specialists. In this regard, one of the urgent problems today is the search and implementation of a new concept of humanization of higher education.

We must understand that the active life position of students in solving questions of their own destiny and professional career is formed in the process of studying at universities not only special disciplines - this task can be helped in many ways by social and humanitarian disciplines. Therefore, universities are especially keen to increase the role of humanitarian education. Social and humanitarian disciplines should contribute to: raising the general cultural level of development; the formation of students' civil, moral and other professionally significant qualities due to the characteristics of professional activity; active public position, social and professional responsibility; professional and communicative competence; the need for a healthy lifestyle, readiness and ability to endure great psychological stress, etc. Humanitarian disciplines have a decisive influence on the development of the intellectual potential of the individual and the nation as a whole, contribute to the sustainable development of society. The transition to competent education requires changes in the entire pedagogical process, including the effective organization of the process of teaching social and humanitarian disciplines. Today, one may encounter the problem of motivation among students in the study of these disciplines; this is due to the fact that such items are not specialized and are perceived as "useless." And in this situation, a lot depends on how well the system of social and humanitarian education is organized, and teachers can show students the importance of obtaining humanitarian knowledge for their personal and professional life, as well as the demand not only in the present, but also in the future. It should be noted that the competency-based approach provides for the solution of this problem and contributes to the formation of students' ideas about the importance of all disciplines, the generality of their manifestation in professional and social laws, about the necessary values, and this is due to the active interaction between the disciplines taught by special and humanitarian departments.

At the same time, it is necessary to build such a concept of teaching disciplines that would allow, in addition to solving educational, special professional tasks, to also form holistic thinking and develop the personality of the student as a whole. Based on the tasks, in our opinion, in the theoretical and conceptual model of teaching disciplines it is necessary to take into account the following components:

• 1)    ethical, aimed at the formation of ethical standards of behavior in professional activity, the implementation of which is possible through the knowledge of moral, legal, social problems in society;

• 2)    historical, involving the consideration of historical ties and dependencies in various areas of society;

• 3)    philosophical, contributing to the philosophical understanding of information on all disciplines and the formation of the foundations of a worldview;

• 4)    systemic, involving the integration and systematization of interdisciplinary knowledge;

• 5)    value-semantic, aimed at the value-semantic content of acquired knowledge;

• 6)    a component of modernity, providing for the timeliness and relevance of obtaining all knowledge;

• 7)    emotional, aimed at an emotionally-evaluative attitude to the information received; 8) developing, involving the formation of an independent, active subject of training.

The presented components can become the basis for building a general humanitarian basis for education, while teachers of social sciences and humanities face another problem: they need to “draw” students into a new social and professional space, help them discover the value of professional vocation, and form a motivational readiness for unconditional and high-quality performance of professional tasks. Also, teachers of humanitarian disciplines are faced with the task of increasing students' tolerance, preventing and preventing manifestations such as xenophobia, extremism among young people. Teachers need to create an opportunity for creative activity and realization of students, to captivate with their discipline, even if it is not always directly related to the profession. Based on the identified problems, it can be assumed that the contextual and personality-oriented approaches can be the methodological basis for teaching these disciplines. “In contextual education, along with the didactically transformed content of scientific disciplines, another source is used - future professional activity ... This allows us to design complexes of subject and social and personal competencies to be formed and developed in the educational process”. From the perspective of this approach, one of the important points used in teaching social and humanitarian disciplines may be the context of the profession, in which the content should be as close as possible to the actual realities of life. And the main forms of conducting classes can be methods of active and interactive learning.

According to Kirsty Lonka, a professor at the University of Helsinki, young people have increased their “exclusion zone” from education due to traditional approaches. Research data are also presented that show the productive influence of active and interactive learning methods on increasing student learning motivation. This is, first of all, case-study methods, problem and project training methods, game and communication technologies. Using the case study method in social and humanitarian disciplines allows you to reveal the content of disciplines through modeling professionally significant situations, and active work with these situations allows students to combine and demonstrate knowledge in many disciplines, master the norms of professional actions, interactions between people. Revealing the specifics of problem situations in the subject and social context of professional activity, a case is a personality-oriented tasks of a creative level, generating new knowledge, meanings and goals of professional development. In the process of contextual learning, due to the synthesis of educational and practical situations, the student develops competencies that allow him to act in the future taking into account professional and ethical standards.

I would also like to note that the teaching of these disciplines should not turn into the study of factual material at the level of concepts and knowledge; students need to demonstrate the significance of the information offered in terms of their professional “suitability” and compliance with personal goals and interests. Therefore, it is very important in the learning process to pay great attention not only to the formation of strong scientific and subject knowledge among students, but also to try so that they see the application of this knowledge in the future profession, since any information has important personal value if it is necessary not just as educational algorithm, and in the future may become a regulator of professional activity. It’s not a secret for anyone that something interesting and timely is remembered, and this, in turn, can increase the motivation of learning activities. Only knowledge passed through a sieve of one’s own experience has existential value and personal significance.

Thus, guided by the teaching of a personality-oriented approach, it can be noted that when studying the content of the social sciences and humanities, information is not only mastered by students, but there is also a semantic attitude, personal experience arising as a result of personally significant experiences in the study of discipline, which in general, has a great influence on the awareness of the tasks and significance of social and humanitarian disciplines. Another important problem is the ability to establish subject-collaborative relationships between teachers and students, as this largely affects the appearance of new qualitative positive changes in the psyche of students. Cooperation puts at a more trusting level the relationship between the teacher and students, involves students more deeply in the educational process, helps them develop teamwork skills, while forming the understanding that cooperation is not only the creative interdependence of all members of the team, but also personal participation , as well as the responsibility of everyone for the success of teamwork.