Materials of departmental periodicals as the means of building general cultural competences

Introduction. Under the developing model of interpretative socio-cultural situation the problem of working with different sources of information, including periodicals (newspapers, journals), which correspond to the area of training specialists of departmental higher educational institutions of the Federal Penitentiary Service, becomes urgent. Work experience at the Kuzbass Institute of the Russian Federal Penitentiary Service enables the authors to consider using the texts of departmental periodicals as a rather effective method facilitating the development of general cultural competences, and further extension of the learners’ vision of the chosen profession. Materials and Methods. Under analysis are individual elements of methodical guidelines for practical lessons aiming to form general cultural competences of the cadets of higher educational institutions of the Federal Penitentiary Service via materials of departmental periodicals (journals “News of the Penitentiary Service” and “Crime and Punishment”). The results of studying (due to the principle of assessing remaining knowledge) within the subject “Professional Ethics and Official Etiquette” (40.05.02) and “Professional Ethics” (40.03.01) are considered. Results and Discussion. Some methods related to using the materials of departmental periodicals made it possible to reveal their effective usage in the specific educational environment at the higher educational institution of the Federal Penitentiary Service. Examples from practical experience (materials of journal articles) taken, the authors focus on the reasonableness of certain methods of organization of practical lessons using the texts not from the textbooks. The analysis of the work with learners (cadets, trainees, students) was conducted, and the further prospects of applying and improving approved learning methods (summary of the text, complex analysis of the text, decoding text units) were outlined. Conclusions. The use of materials of periodicals at the lessons can promote the extension of informational sphere of textbooks and guidelines recommended by the Ministry of Education as they contain supplementary materials (graphs, charts, tables, citations, statistics) necessary for optimization of studying as a whole. In addition, for studying any material in dynamics it is possible to conduct comparative historical analysis of information from certain journal sections through a long time.