Communicative competence of elementary school teachers

Abstract

The article considers the problem of teacher's professional communication through the prism of his/her communicative competence formation. The authors present their own approach to the essence of the concept “communicative competence”. The value of personal qualities of the teacher in establishing communicative relations in the system “teacher-student” and professional development was found out. The aim was to determine the features of the formation of communicative qualities of the elementary school teacher, the application in practical activity; the main conditions and techniques of development of successful pedagogical communication; the characteristics of the structure of communicative competence. To disclose the issue of communicative competence we used general scientific methods (analysis, synthesis, comparison), interdisciplinary (interview, conversation, observation) and methods of mathematical statistics. In order to empirically study the process of formation of communicative competence of a teacher, we conducted research among students who had experience of practical classes in elementary school. The sample consisted of 200 applicants for the specialty “Elementary education”. The results showed that the dominant majority of the respondents have no difficulties in professional communication. They are able to provide students with the necessary instructional material and establish a trusting relationship with them. However, the presence of students insecure about their own communicative competence indicates the need to introduce new approaches and methods of practical training of future specialists into the educational space of higher education.