Competency-based approach in education: Russian and foreign experience

The paper discloses specific features to modernize education by means of competency based approach which is expressed through active practice-oriented training. The paper enlists the key competencies that describe the image of a school graduate, his general skills, willingness to make decisions, adaptability to constantly changing conditions of the modern world. The literature review showed that the main difficulty in implementing competence-based approach in education is the lack of methods and practical experience in many educational institutions. As a result, high school students do not have appropriate level of the indicated competences and are not ready to efficient practical activities. The specification of the competences for the high school students let us identify the main issues to solve for productive program implementation based on the competence approach: to form professional and motivation competences by means of subject-oriented training (technical specialities), to define the context of the programs and to determine the efficiency of the implemented approaches using the testing methods of research. To solve the issues the authors used the experience of boarding school for talented children (Russia), Lehigh University (USA) and Asian educational institutions (Vietnam). The analysis of the programs resulted in the conclusions that stated the necessity to develop international educational programs. The authors consider that, joint concepts and practices that have proved their efficiency will result in integrated competence development enabling student professional growth.