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FACULTY AS AN ENVIRONMENT FOR SPIRITUAL AND INTELLECTUAL GROWTH OF THE FUTURE TEACHER

The article reveals the possibilities and potential of the faculty in ensuring the spiritual and intellectual growth of future teachers. It was found that the activity of the Union of Students and Youth, as a structural element of the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics, is aimed at the sustainable spiritual and intellectual development of students. It has been proven that the multifaceted nature of such activities has a positive effect on the comprehensive, harmonious development of the personality of a future teacher with deep convictions, a wide range of moral and ethical, spiritual and intellectual values.
Keywords: future teacher, spiritual and intellectual development, environment, faculty, union of students and youth.

Bondarenko D. R.
teacher of Physics and Mathematics at Kharkiv Gymnasium No. 12 of the Kharkiv City Council of the Kharkiv Region,
PhD student of the third (educational and scientific) level of higher education,
H. S. Skovoroda Kharkiv National Pedagogical University, Kharkiv, Ukraine

10.34142//2708-4809.SIUTY.2022.50

The transformations of modern society and its informatization force every person in general, and educators in particular, to develop, to optimally apply all previously acquired knowledge and to be in constant search of new ones, to enrich their activities with means, methods and forms of work that were previously unknown, to increase the level of their own spiritual and intellectual development and to promote the spiritual and intellectual development of the child’s personality. After all, the saturated flow of various information spreading through social networks usually has a negative impact on the formation of a harmonious, comprehensively developed personality of a child, which means that we are losing the spirituality and intellectual potential of the future of our people.

Thus, educators, teachers, and students of pedagogical institutions of higher education face an acute, urgent task, which is to form a conscious, harmonious, highly spiritual and intellectual personality.

A future teacher is a person who should have a wide range of subject knowledge, competencies, a high level of psychological, pedagogical and methodological training, spiritual and intellectual development. In the scientific and pedagogical literature, it is widely believed that spiritual and intellectual development of a personality can be considered as a set of systematically integrated features of the cognitive-intellectual, sensory-emotional and volitional spheres, which provides a person with the ability to psychic and personal improvement and self-improvement [1].

To put it another way, spiritual and intellectual development, on the one hand, is a systemically integrated component of the psyche, and on the other hand, it is a synergistic factor in the interaction of different spheres of human activity [2]. We come to the conclusion that spiritual and intellectual development can be studied as the formation and realization of such higher human needs as:
— the need to know the world as a whole, oneself as an integral part of it, as a person, one’s position in society, the meaning of one’s being, and the values of life
— The need to be recognized and respected (self-respect) by others
— The need to perceive and create beauty (scientific, natural, aesthetic)
— the need for charity and the establishment (creation) of justice (spiritual, moral, ethical, scientific)
— The need for improvement and self-improvement;
— The need to constantly search for new things (organization, planning, involvement of oneself as a highly intellectual, creative person in innovative activities).

These needs can be developed in the personality of a future teacher only in a specially created intellectual, highly spiritual environment, which includes the spiritual space of the future teacher and lecturer, the space of culture, which directly or indirectly affects the student’s personality. In our opinion, such an environment is not only the university (an environment of aesthetic, moral, and knowledge development), but also the faculty (an environment of spiritual and intellectual development of the future teacher’s personality).

The activity of the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of H. S. Skovoroda Kharkiv National Pedagogical University, as one of the oldest faculties of our university, is aimed at the comprehensive, harmonious development of the personality of a future teacher of physics and mathematics, the formation of not only professional and subject competencies, but also moral and ethical, national and patriotic, personal, cognitive, subject and transformative (creative, aesthetic, scientific, religious, etc.) values, that is, it promotes the spiritual and intellectual development of students.

One of the faculty institutions that contributes to the spiritual and intellectual growth of future teachers is the Union of Students and Youth of the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics.

The Union of Students and Youth of the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics is a student self-government organization that has a clear structure (committees) and values and traditions established over the years. The purpose of the Union of Students and Youth is to involve future teachers in active activities (cognitive, innovative, educational), which further ensures the readiness of students for classroom management in educational institutions and undoubtedly contributes to their spiritual and intellectual development. The mission of ensuring such development of students is “taken over” by committees: cultural and mass (whose activities contribute to the formation of moral, ethical, aesthetic, spiritual values of students), educational (whose work is aimed at fostering the habit of academic integrity in students, contributes to the enrichment and accumulation of their knowledge), scientific (whose functioning solves the problem of forming the skills of organization, self-organization, planning, forecasting in future teachers), media committee (whose activities contribute to the development of public speaking).

The above makes it possible to assert that the Union of Students and Youth of the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics, due to the multidimensional nature of its activities, directs all its efforts to meet the needs of the future teacher’s personality in spiritual and intellectual development not only at the faculty, during the period of study at the university, but also beyond it and for many years after graduation from Skovoroda University.

Thus, taking into account the experience of the Student and Youth Union as a structural element of the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics, we can state that the faculty is an environment for the spiritual and intellectual growth of the future teacher’s personality, which leaves a bright mark in the memory and heart of every Skovoroda graduate for many years.

List of references

1. Kulchytska O. Methods of diagnosing intellectual giftedness. Gifted child. 2007. С. 39-41.
2. Matsenko Zh. Spirituality: a phenomenon of psychology and an object of education. Kyiv: Education of Ukraine, 2010.