ON THE STATE OF PHILOSOPHIC-METHODOLOGICAL AND GENERAL SCIENTIFIC PREPARATION FOR BACHELOR’S AND MASTER’S DEGREES (THE CASE OF KHERSON STATE UNIVERSITY)

Abstract

The primary task of education is the formation of thinking as an end in itself which creates opportunitiesfor individuals to exert significant influence on social phenomena and processes using modern knowledgeand the latest technologies. The ability of a person to successfully socialize is unthinkable withoutintellectualization which must be achieved in the educational process.The author of the article developed a questionnaire and conducted a survey of the first-year full-timepostgraduates (master’s degrees) at Kherson State University (187 people were interviewed, which is 44%of the total amount in the 2019–2020 academic year). Most degree-seeking students continue their studies inthe bachelor’s degree program. However, the survey showed that the main topics of the course “Fundamentalsof Scientific Knowledge”, which was studied for bachelor’s degree programmes, are not sufficiently captureddue to the small amount of class hours. For many postgraduates (master’s degrees) the relationship betweenthe philosophical approaches themselves, general scientific and special scientific methods, as well asthe content of the latest methodological principles, turned out to be incomprehensible. It is a matter of concernthat many degree-seeking students were not able to answer the question about the results they obtained in scientific work through the use of the methods they specified. This indicates a lack of connection betweenmethodological theory and scientific practice in the educational process. It was also found that the majorityof postgraduates (master’s degrees) do not associate their future professional activities with scientific research.This circumstance obliges teachers to strengthen their responsibility for forming a decent attitude of degreeseekingstudents to science as a social and professional institution, as well as to theoretical thought as the basisof any highly professional activity.It is necessary to find an optimal collegial solution (exclusive at each university) to increase the “specificweight” of the methodological component in the curriculum documents of different branches of education, aswell as regarding modern forms of improving the level of methodological competences of teachers of varioustheoretical disciplines.