Developing children and adolescents’ life safety culture: Evaluating the professional competencies of children’s summer recreation professionals

Introduction. The article is devoted to identifying challenges of children summer recreation professionals’ competencies in the field of developing children and adolescents’ culture of life safety. The purpose of the study is to identify the differences in the levels of various competencies in counselors, senior counselors and teachers-organizers of children’s recreation, depending on their qualification and relevant experience. The article was prepared as part of the implementation of the State Task for conducting an applied research addressing ‘Development of Competencies of professionals in Children’s Recreation Organizations in the Field of developing Children and Adolescents’ Culture of Life Safety, including Those with Disabilities, in 2025’ in accordance with Order No. 220 of the Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation dated March 20, 2025 ‘On Including in the State Tasks for 2025 and the Planning Period of 2026 and 2027 by the Subordinate Organizations of the Ministry of Education’ Materials and Methods. The research is based on the competence-based approach, which allows us to consider the problem of the effectiveness of teaching children and adolescents the culture of safety in children’s summer camps during summer holidays. The methods used include the comprehensive analysis of scholarly publications on the topic, surveys and statistical processing of information obtained from the sociological survey, as well as methods of evaluating the competencies using specially designed tests and case studies. The study analyzed and summarized the materials obtained after collecting empirical data. Results. The authors of the article obtained the following results: 1. The available scholarly publications and studies on the problems of forming professional competencies of counselors, senior counselors, and teachers-organizers in children’s recreation in the field of teaching children and adolescents the culture of safety in children’s summer camps were analyzed and summarized. 2. The characteristic features of the content of the competencies were clarified, based on which a sociological survey for children’s summer recreation professionals was conducted in order to assess the level of each of the professional competencies using specially developed tests and case studies. 3. The empirical results of the study were analyzed, and the differences in the levels of various professional competencies of counselors, senior counselors, and teachers-organizers of children’s recreation in summer camps in the field of teaching children and adolescents the culture of life safety were identified. Conclusions. Based on the data obtained, it was concluded that counselors, senior counselors, and teachers-organizers of children’s recreation in summer camps have an average level of professional competence, which suggests the need to continue targeted work on improving these competencies by enhancing specialized training for these activities.