The Problem of Developing Professional Expertise of Vocational College Students

The goal of the paper is to study the problem of developing the professional expertise of vocational college students, future technicians of the road transport industry. The nature and content of the concept "the professional expertise of a technician of road transport industry" has been defined. This concept is considered as a set of skills, knowledge and experience of professional activities in the following directions: cargo and passenger transfer; road transportation service; transport and logistics activities. The content and structure of the contextual approach contributing to the effective development of the professional expertise have been determined. Its structural components--cognitive, value, activity, informational and communicative, adaptive--have been revealed. The pedagogical experiment involved students of the Ufa Road Transport College (Ufa, Russia). The pedagogical conditions ensuring the effective development of future technicians' professional expertise have been formulated. The latter includes using the forms, tools and techniques of active learning within the contextual approach; the implementation of the automated control systems for road transport in the educational process; the orientation of the educational process on realizing the potential of students, enabling them to display creativity through the project method. After the experimental work the number of the students with a high level of professional expertise increased by 30%. The results of the experiment proving the efficiency of the suggested complex of pedagogical conditions for developing the professional expertise have been presented.