Development of project management competencies of heads of general education organizations

The research problem and the rationale for its relevance. The empirical analysis of the existing educational practice and some scientific publications carried out by the authors of the article allowed highlighting the problem of the study. It is connected with the insufficient formation of project competences among the heads of general educational organizations. In addition, the highlighted problem is exacerbated by the fact that institutions of additional professional education do not have the relevant practice of implementing additional professional programs in this area, which indicates the relevance of the proposed publication. This thesis became the basis for the study. The goal of the research was to confirm the assumption put forward by the authors that the identified problem can be solved by means of specially developed additional professional programs for heads of general educational organizations, based, first of all, on the methodology and principles of project management in the system of professional development. In the second way, the applied aspects of project management will be mastered by trainees in the form of internships on the basis of general educational organizations. In this regard, an additional professional program (hereinafter - APP) of professional development for the heads of general educational organizations “Project management of educational organization in the conditions of modernization of the content and technologies of general education” was developed and implemented. The authors present the structure and content of this program in detail in the article. A description is given of the setting of goal-setting, determination of the planned results, structural components and content lines of the program. A special emphasis is made on the description of approaches to organization and carrying out internships on the basis of general educational organizations having the status of regional and (or) federal innovative platforms. Moreover, the description of the peculiarities of internships is given taking into account the methodological foundations of project management. The article presents the results of the program implementation obtained on the basis of the comparative analysis of the students' answers to the questions of the entrance and final diagnostics of the subject position. The article concludes with a brief description of the results of conceptualizing the best practices of improving project competencies of heads of general education organizations within the framework of internships. The technology of developing and implementing an additional professional development program for heads of general educational organizations presented in the article allowed us to make a conclusion about the novelty, theoretical and practical significance of the research.