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"The Fossil Language of Professions", where he proposes to abandon exhausted concepts. But I never saw how to replace these concepts.
In many ways, I agree with Mikhail Kushnir, but I think that it is not worth completely abandoning the concepts of “profession” and “career guidance”. Below I want to explain in detail why psychologists, teachers, and adolescents with their parents should each time clarify what they mean when they choose a profession and try to develop in it as professionals and as individuals.
PROFESSION IN THE CONTEXT OF OTHER IMPORTANT CHOICES
Many adolescents and their parents, turning to professional psychologists, ask for help in choosing a profession. At the same time, they often hope that “a profession is for life” ... And then it turns out that this is far from the only choice. For example, already in a university or college you have to clarify the specialty, and then also specialize in more specific areas of study and subsequent work. And already in the organization it is necessary to choose (or the management chooses for the employee) specific positions and positions. Note that even at a specific job post, you can perform different functions, be responsible for different areas of work, especially in collective activities. At the same time, in addition to purely business relations, you have to take on non-professional (informal) roles,
SO WHAT DOES A MAN REALLY CHOOSE?
Let me give you an interesting example to illustrate the ambiguity of this issue. I witnessed the dispute between the academicians of the Russian Academy of Education about what a “marshmallow handler” is - a profession or a specialty. This provocative question was thrown to the respected academicians by NN Nechaev, who was at that time the Chief Scientific Secretary of the Russian Academy of Education. The academics argued heatedly, but never came to an agreed answer.
If we analyze the activity of the “handler”, then, most likely, it does not pretend to be either a profession or a specialty, but rather correlates with a specific labor function (if not even with an operation). It is so simple that it is easy to automate it, which has already been done in many confectionery industries. Although someone can bring such work to perfection and theoretically even become a "world champion in stacking marshmallows" ...
We can recall the well-known Russian labor psychologist EA Klimov, who shared the level of “deeds” in work, which presupposes a complete holistic activity in unity with a person, where the act itself is an integral cycle that includes a complete psychological structure (subject of labor, subject of labor, end, means, conditions ...) and more specific levels of "actions" (clarified goal-task), "macroelements" (rather unconscious, performing labor) and "microelements" of labor ( often even automated and unconscious). The Marshmallow Stacker is more likely to be related to the latter levels.
But can we then say that a person who chooses a job related to "packing marshmallows in boxes" chooses exactly the "profession"?
Of course, from a psychological point of view, this is still not a "profession", but rather a "labor operation". Although formally or at the level of everyday ideas, many will call it a "profession", and academics are a little confused ...
But does even an experienced worker employed in high-tech industries always implement in his activity the “complete psychological structure” of this work, does he not often have to limit himself to only individual functions or solve only individual problems?
If you look at many of the official job descriptions, it often turns out that the “duties” listed there simply cannot be fulfilled within the framework of a specific position in a specific organization. For example, a “teacher-psychologist” should also carry out vocational guidance work with schoolchildren, but in reality, not every school psychologist (“teacher-psychologist”) does this work - there is no time for it, then there is no motivation , then there is no qualification.
PROFESSION AND PROFESSIONALISM, SPECIALIZATION AND "HARMONIOUS DEVELOPMENT"
The well-known Russian psychologist NN Nechaev discusses the problems of studying professions and about professionalism, indicating an interesting paradox: the more accurately we strive to study the profession, the faster our knowledge becomes obsolete, since in the real world professions change and are concretized in specialties, job positions, positions and functions that are even less stable in practice.
Other interesting patterns and paradoxes can be added to this. An employee, as he develops, on the one hand, specializes (he does a specific job better and better), and on the other hand, he is forced to master adjacent areas of work, that is, “universalizes”, constantly expanding his horizons.
Let us recall that even K. Marx angrily opposed "narrow specialization", believing that it leads to human degradation, and in modern approaches such specialization is often considered as the main reason for "professional destruction" (EF Zeer and others).
So who is considered a professional - a narrow specialist who knows his specific area of work well, or a well-educated worker who can quickly switch from one job to another?
It is interesting that many modern employers give preference to “narrow specialists” and their position often influences reformers from education (nowadays it is fashionable to say that “higher education should be guided by employers' requests”). Although well-known theorists believe that it is necessary at least to combine the practical orientation (specialization) and the formation of a broad professional outlook of a modern specialist. Note that in some universities, such as Moscow State University, the idea of obtaining two diplomas at once (in different specialties) is becoming more and more popular among students, and sometimes even the idea of combining higher and secondary vocational education , that is, an orientation towards broadening one's horizons, which makes a person not only better educated,
There is one more pattern. It is often difficult for a teenager to immediately choose a profession, especially a specialty, and he is more focused on the "profile" of education. Only then he can clarify for himself both the profession and the specialty.
Thus, at some of professional development (and professionalization), there is a broadening of horizons (for example, among adolescents), which allows them to better orient themselves in the world of professional work. At some stages (for students and for working specialists), you have to narrow your interests - both for better mastering of new activities and for more effective work. But further, as experience is gained, there is often a broadening of horizons again (mastering related work, mastering the skills of teamwork in a team, which implies interchangeability and business cooperation based on knowledge of the work of their colleagues, who may have other professions).
It turns out that the very correlation of “profession”, “specialty”, “position”, “labor post” and even certain “labor functions” is much more complicated, which many people think.
For adolescents and their parents, the “purely professional” choice is further complicated by the fact that they first have to study somewhere, and such training takes more and more time (bachelor's + master's, and for some, residency and postgraduate studies, and then additional and continuing education).
At the same time, the choice of an educational institution is often strongly influenced by the scores of the Unified State Examination (USE). Some would like to go to a budget place or to a more prestigious institution, while others would like to go to an institution where even low scores allow them to get into. Often, the attractiveness of the profession itself fades into the background, yielding to the attractiveness (or at least acceptability) of a particular educational institution.
It turns out that not always a young person chooses a profession, and even a "favorite". So what is more important for him - a profession or the very fact of receiving any (more often higher) education?
It is interesting that Mikhail Kushnir, who quite seriously criticizes the terms “profession” and “career guidance” as “some anachronisms,” questioning both “work books” (in the conditions of more and more frequent combination of jobs), and diplomas ( quickly becoming obsolete), and much more, nevertheless accepts the term "professional self-determination" as a kind of terminological compromise.
In his opinion, in “self-determination” a person tries to try on his chosen work activity, while “career guidance” is an attempt to orient oneself in professions, that is, in something that “is not clear at all” and “ has become a conceptual mummy”.
CAREER PROFESSIONAL AND MORAL CHOICES
But these are not the main difficulties of self-determination. In certain cases, moral choices have to be made.
For example, in organizations and collectives where the temptation to violate the law or "legalized" deception of gullible visitors (customers, buyers, clients, patients) is high.
Or if the work often allows the employee to “legalize self-assertion” at the expense of other people, when, for example, the watchman can “strictly observe stupid, but long-outdated restrictions” (do not allow well-known employees who simply forgot their pass, although they have other identity documents).
Or when an official refuses a visitor to receive a banal certificate (which takes 1-2 minutes), if he showed up on the wrong day and hour, and even did not turn in his coat to the wardrobe, which is located at the other end of the building.
The complexity of such a moral choice is aggravated by the fact that a person (employee) has to resolve the conflict between his own ideas about decency and dignity and the established orders (instructions), traditions, “corporate ethics”. In especially difficult cases, you have to think about changing the organization and changing the profession.
An employee makes an even more difficult choice when he tries to clarify (or re-find) the meanings of his professional activity. The paradox is that in relation to one profession (specialty, position, job post, and so on) the meanings can be different.
With the loss of meaning, even a previously attractive profession ceases to please a person, and he begins to think about another choice.
It is assumed that, in the ideal case, the profession itself should be a "vocation" for a given person, when he not only gets joy from the labor process itself and is proud that he does a lot of good and useful for others, but also feels that the work allows him to realize his talents and life aspirations.
But often the profession itself is not so exciting, and in terms of self-realization there are many problems, especially in the so-called "office professions". Most workers still do not change even such professions and organizations, and the main reason here is that they do not want to lose relatively high earnings and give up a comfortable lifestyle ...
It turns out that many people are interested not so much in their profession as in an attractive way of life, which also presupposes a certain standard of living. Of course, the way of life is characterized not only by income, but in the conditions of clearly abnormal income differentiation, it is the salary that becomes the main criterion for choosing a profession for many people.
PROFESSION AND LIFESTYLE
The importance of lifestyle choices is discussed by many professionals involved in career guidance (EI Golovakha, EA Klimov, AA Kronik and others). But this is especially clearly represented in the classification of professions, developed at the beginning of the last century by the outstanding Russian psychologist SMBogoslovsky and considered the best at that time.
He not only described more than 700 professions ("types of production and trades"), divided them into "classes", "subclasses" and "groups", but for each profession he prescribed a typical way of life for the worker and his family ...
Unfortunately, this does not occur in modern classifications. The real orientation of many people towards an attractive lifestyle further complicates the issue of choosing a profession and vocational training.
EA Klimov identifies the following main features of the profession:
Unfortunately, these signs allow only an approximate correlation of this or that activity with the "profession". For example, in leisure activities, a person reaches the level of real mastery (writes poetry, repairs complex equipment, writes programs), but formally he is not a professional. Or a person is well versed in some issues and really creates something), surpassing recognized professionals, but does not receive money for this (or his income is random). Conversely, the qualifications of some graduates are highly questionable, although formally they correspond to the characteristics of the profession.
Many questions arise about the "public utility" of certain professions and organizations, because it is no secret that sometimes some organizations are created only for "money laundering" (and then quickly "self-liquidate").
PROFESSION AS FULFILLMENT OF INSTRUCTIONS AND INDIVIDUAL LABOR STYLE AS A DEPARTURE FROM INSTRUCTIONS
Even more interesting questions arise when an employee masters his work well and develops an “individual style of work”. The paradox is that the better the individual style is developed, the more the employee deviates from the existing standards (instructions, rules, traditions, and even from the so-called “specialist model” that defines the requirements for the employee).
When there is an individual style, it is not a person who adapts to work, but the work itself adapts to himself.
This way the employee achieves better results. And this also gives rise to a paradox: such workers, on the one hand, are masters of their craft, and on the other hand, they often break the prevailing ideas about this profession.
Therefore, the question "what is a profession?" becomes even more interesting. At the formal bureaucratic level, this creates more and more problems.
For example, the problems associated with professional selection: is it always necessary to focus on the full compliance of a person with a profession? By the way, even EA Klimov said that "the final professional suitability is formed in the work itself," and that "professional suitability is at least the mutual correspondence of a person and an employee."
In this context, a more modern understanding of the profession involves not only the work itself, but also the "person-work" system, which includes the subject of labor, and the object, and the means, and conditions, and relationships, and non-professional factors of labor. The modern understanding of the profession goes far beyond the immediate professional activity.
Other problems are related to professional training. Many are calling for this training to be “individualized”. For example, NN interestingly argues that the challenges of the modern era presuppose a paradigm shift from the previous “education for life” to a new paradigm - “education throughout life”, focused on “lifelong education” and “advanced education”. Thus, “education throughout life” presupposes the constant development of a specialist and the expansion of his horizons, and, consequently, the development of his individual style not only in work, but also in educational and professional activities. Then it turns out that the "student body" also loses its certainty somewhat, which should be compensated for in more flexible and creative approaches to work with students, and maybe already with some schoolchildren.
PROFESSION AS A RECOGNIZED "SUCCESS" AND AS A "PERSONAL SENSE"
Clarifying the very concept of "profession", SM Bogoslovsky wrote a long time ago that this is "an activity recognized as a profession at the level of a person's personal self-awareness." Many foreign authors, perhaps who did not know the works of SM Bogoslovsky, often base their concepts on the attitude to their work, highlighting important personal meanings in it. For example, E. Fromm writes about the “alienation” of a person from his work, even with successful and recognized work activities. V. Frankl also writes about related problems, highlighting the concept of "despair" in cases of loss of the meaning of life and the meaning of the main business of his life.
Often, it is the transition to a new system of values that is considered as the main criterion of professional development, which turns out to be even more important than traditional development along the line of so-called “professionalism”, which presupposes the improvement of “professionally important qualities”, “knowledge, abilities and skills” or “professional competencies” of an employee ...
As a result, it is the employee's personality, which is based on a system of values and meanings, or, more precisely, conscience, that is becoming more and more relevant both in career guidance, and in vocational selection, and in vocational training. No wonder V. Frankl wrote that "the main task of professional education is the formation of the ability of conscience." VP Zinchenko noted with regret that recently a lot of "artificial intelligentsia" has appeared, which possesses the most modern technologies, but often does not know how to use their knowledge and talents for worthy deeds.
WHAT TO DO FOR TEENAGERS, PARENTS, PSYCHOLOGISTS, DIRECTORS OF SCHOOLS AND PSYCHOLOGICAL CENTERS
In this article, we have only outlined a problem that still needs a deeper and more comprehensive understanding. For adolescents and their parents, as well as many school workers involved in career guidance in one way or another, we could advise:
Such choices are much more complicated than it seems to many, and much more interesting, which in many ways enriches our lives and allows us to correct mistakes associated with previous unsuccessful elections. But only when the person himself realizes his unsuccessful decisions and feels that he has "outgrown" the activity.
In many ways, I agree with Mikhail Kushnir, but I think that it is not worth completely abandoning the concepts of “profession” and “career guidance”. Below I want to explain in detail why psychologists, teachers, and adolescents with their parents should each time clarify what they mean when they choose a profession and try to develop in it as professionals and as individuals.
PROFESSION IN THE CONTEXT OF OTHER IMPORTANT CHOICES
Many adolescents and their parents, turning to professional psychologists, ask for help in choosing a profession. At the same time, they often hope that “a profession is for life” ... And then it turns out that this is far from the only choice. For example, already in a university or college you have to clarify the specialty, and then also specialize in more specific areas of study and subsequent work. And already in the organization it is necessary to choose (or the management chooses for the employee) specific positions and positions. Note that even at a specific job post, you can perform different functions, be responsible for different areas of work, especially in collective activities. At the same time, in addition to purely business relations, you have to take on non-professional (informal) roles,
SO WHAT DOES A MAN REALLY CHOOSE?
Let me give you an interesting example to illustrate the ambiguity of this issue. I witnessed the dispute between the academicians of the Russian Academy of Education about what a “marshmallow handler” is - a profession or a specialty. This provocative question was thrown to the respected academicians by NN Nechaev, who was at that time the Chief Scientific Secretary of the Russian Academy of Education. The academics argued heatedly, but never came to an agreed answer.
If we analyze the activity of the “handler”, then, most likely, it does not pretend to be either a profession or a specialty, but rather correlates with a specific labor function (if not even with an operation). It is so simple that it is easy to automate it, which has already been done in many confectionery industries. Although someone can bring such work to perfection and theoretically even become a "world champion in stacking marshmallows" ...
We can recall the well-known Russian labor psychologist EA Klimov, who shared the level of “deeds” in work, which presupposes a complete holistic activity in unity with a person, where the act itself is an integral cycle that includes a complete psychological structure (subject of labor, subject of labor, end, means, conditions ...) and more specific levels of "actions" (clarified goal-task), "macroelements" (rather unconscious, performing labor) and "microelements" of labor ( often even automated and unconscious). The Marshmallow Stacker is more likely to be related to the latter levels.
But can we then say that a person who chooses a job related to "packing marshmallows in boxes" chooses exactly the "profession"?
Of course, from a psychological point of view, this is still not a "profession", but rather a "labor operation". Although formally or at the level of everyday ideas, many will call it a "profession", and academics are a little confused ...
But does even an experienced worker employed in high-tech industries always implement in his activity the “complete psychological structure” of this work, does he not often have to limit himself to only individual functions or solve only individual problems?
If you look at many of the official job descriptions, it often turns out that the “duties” listed there simply cannot be fulfilled within the framework of a specific position in a specific organization. For example, a “teacher-psychologist” should also carry out vocational guidance work with schoolchildren, but in reality, not every school psychologist (“teacher-psychologist”) does this work - there is no time for it, then there is no motivation , then there is no qualification.
PROFESSION AND PROFESSIONALISM, SPECIALIZATION AND "HARMONIOUS DEVELOPMENT"
The well-known Russian psychologist NN Nechaev discusses the problems of studying professions and about professionalism, indicating an interesting paradox: the more accurately we strive to study the profession, the faster our knowledge becomes obsolete, since in the real world professions change and are concretized in specialties, job positions, positions and functions that are even less stable in practice.
Other interesting patterns and paradoxes can be added to this. An employee, as he develops, on the one hand, specializes (he does a specific job better and better), and on the other hand, he is forced to master adjacent areas of work, that is, “universalizes”, constantly expanding his horizons.
Let us recall that even K. Marx angrily opposed "narrow specialization", believing that it leads to human degradation, and in modern approaches such specialization is often considered as the main reason for "professional destruction" (EF Zeer and others).
So who is considered a professional - a narrow specialist who knows his specific area of work well, or a well-educated worker who can quickly switch from one job to another?
It is interesting that many modern employers give preference to “narrow specialists” and their position often influences reformers from education (nowadays it is fashionable to say that “higher education should be guided by employers' requests”). Although well-known theorists believe that it is necessary at least to combine the practical orientation (specialization) and the formation of a broad professional outlook of a modern specialist. Note that in some universities, such as Moscow State University, the idea of obtaining two diplomas at once (in different specialties) is becoming more and more popular among students, and sometimes even the idea of combining higher and secondary vocational education , that is, an orientation towards broadening one's horizons, which makes a person not only better educated,
There is one more pattern. It is often difficult for a teenager to immediately choose a profession, especially a specialty, and he is more focused on the "profile" of education. Only then he can clarify for himself both the profession and the specialty.
Thus, at some of professional development (and professionalization), there is a broadening of horizons (for example, among adolescents), which allows them to better orient themselves in the world of professional work. At some stages (for students and for working specialists), you have to narrow your interests - both for better mastering of new activities and for more effective work. But further, as experience is gained, there is often a broadening of horizons again (mastering related work, mastering the skills of teamwork in a team, which implies interchangeability and business cooperation based on knowledge of the work of their colleagues, who may have other professions).
It turns out that the very correlation of “profession”, “specialty”, “position”, “labor post” and even certain “labor functions” is much more complicated, which many people think.
For adolescents and their parents, the “purely professional” choice is further complicated by the fact that they first have to study somewhere, and such training takes more and more time (bachelor's + master's, and for some, residency and postgraduate studies, and then additional and continuing education).
At the same time, the choice of an educational institution is often strongly influenced by the scores of the Unified State Examination (USE). Some would like to go to a budget place or to a more prestigious institution, while others would like to go to an institution where even low scores allow them to get into. Often, the attractiveness of the profession itself fades into the background, yielding to the attractiveness (or at least acceptability) of a particular educational institution.
It turns out that not always a young person chooses a profession, and even a "favorite". So what is more important for him - a profession or the very fact of receiving any (more often higher) education?
It is interesting that Mikhail Kushnir, who quite seriously criticizes the terms “profession” and “career guidance” as “some anachronisms,” questioning both “work books” (in the conditions of more and more frequent combination of jobs), and diplomas ( quickly becoming obsolete), and much more, nevertheless accepts the term "professional self-determination" as a kind of terminological compromise.
In his opinion, in “self-determination” a person tries to try on his chosen work activity, while “career guidance” is an attempt to orient oneself in professions, that is, in something that “is not clear at all” and “ has become a conceptual mummy”.
CAREER PROFESSIONAL AND MORAL CHOICES
But these are not the main difficulties of self-determination. In certain cases, moral choices have to be made.
For example, in organizations and collectives where the temptation to violate the law or "legalized" deception of gullible visitors (customers, buyers, clients, patients) is high.
Or if the work often allows the employee to “legalize self-assertion” at the expense of other people, when, for example, the watchman can “strictly observe stupid, but long-outdated restrictions” (do not allow well-known employees who simply forgot their pass, although they have other identity documents).
Or when an official refuses a visitor to receive a banal certificate (which takes 1-2 minutes), if he showed up on the wrong day and hour, and even did not turn in his coat to the wardrobe, which is located at the other end of the building.
The complexity of such a moral choice is aggravated by the fact that a person (employee) has to resolve the conflict between his own ideas about decency and dignity and the established orders (instructions), traditions, “corporate ethics”. In especially difficult cases, you have to think about changing the organization and changing the profession.
An employee makes an even more difficult choice when he tries to clarify (or re-find) the meanings of his professional activity. The paradox is that in relation to one profession (specialty, position, job post, and so on) the meanings can be different.
With the loss of meaning, even a previously attractive profession ceases to please a person, and he begins to think about another choice.
It is assumed that, in the ideal case, the profession itself should be a "vocation" for a given person, when he not only gets joy from the labor process itself and is proud that he does a lot of good and useful for others, but also feels that the work allows him to realize his talents and life aspirations.
But often the profession itself is not so exciting, and in terms of self-realization there are many problems, especially in the so-called "office professions". Most workers still do not change even such professions and organizations, and the main reason here is that they do not want to lose relatively high earnings and give up a comfortable lifestyle ...
It turns out that many people are interested not so much in their profession as in an attractive way of life, which also presupposes a certain standard of living. Of course, the way of life is characterized not only by income, but in the conditions of clearly abnormal income differentiation, it is the salary that becomes the main criterion for choosing a profession for many people.
PROFESSION AND LIFESTYLE
The importance of lifestyle choices is discussed by many professionals involved in career guidance (EI Golovakha, EA Klimov, AA Kronik and others). But this is especially clearly represented in the classification of professions, developed at the beginning of the last century by the outstanding Russian psychologist SMBogoslovsky and considered the best at that time.
He not only described more than 700 professions ("types of production and trades"), divided them into "classes", "subclasses" and "groups", but for each profession he prescribed a typical way of life for the worker and his family ...
Unfortunately, this does not occur in modern classifications. The real orientation of many people towards an attractive lifestyle further complicates the issue of choosing a profession and vocational training.
EA Klimov identifies the following main features of the profession:
- this is one of the types of labor activity that arises historically even during periods of complication and division of labor, and with the further development of production, the professions themselves become even more differentiated and concretized in specialties and specializations;
- it is socially useful work (for example, leisure and even educational activities do not always have such a pronounced usefulness for society, for example, it is not known how a college or university graduate will then use his knowledge);
- this is work performed for a certain remuneration (but as already noted, in the modern world it is material remuneration that still noticeably dominates over moral one);
- this is work that involves certain training and compulsory certification (and this requirement for the profession is only increasing - without a diploma or certificate, certain jobs may simply not be accepted, although in reality a person is ready to perform these works);
- a profession gives a person a certain status in society, this is his main "visiting card".
Unfortunately, these signs allow only an approximate correlation of this or that activity with the "profession". For example, in leisure activities, a person reaches the level of real mastery (writes poetry, repairs complex equipment, writes programs), but formally he is not a professional. Or a person is well versed in some issues and really creates something), surpassing recognized professionals, but does not receive money for this (or his income is random). Conversely, the qualifications of some graduates are highly questionable, although formally they correspond to the characteristics of the profession.
Many questions arise about the "public utility" of certain professions and organizations, because it is no secret that sometimes some organizations are created only for "money laundering" (and then quickly "self-liquidate").
PROFESSION AS FULFILLMENT OF INSTRUCTIONS AND INDIVIDUAL LABOR STYLE AS A DEPARTURE FROM INSTRUCTIONS
Even more interesting questions arise when an employee masters his work well and develops an “individual style of work”. The paradox is that the better the individual style is developed, the more the employee deviates from the existing standards (instructions, rules, traditions, and even from the so-called “specialist model” that defines the requirements for the employee).
When there is an individual style, it is not a person who adapts to work, but the work itself adapts to himself.
This way the employee achieves better results. And this also gives rise to a paradox: such workers, on the one hand, are masters of their craft, and on the other hand, they often break the prevailing ideas about this profession.
Therefore, the question "what is a profession?" becomes even more interesting. At the formal bureaucratic level, this creates more and more problems.
For example, the problems associated with professional selection: is it always necessary to focus on the full compliance of a person with a profession? By the way, even EA Klimov said that "the final professional suitability is formed in the work itself," and that "professional suitability is at least the mutual correspondence of a person and an employee."
In this context, a more modern understanding of the profession involves not only the work itself, but also the "person-work" system, which includes the subject of labor, and the object, and the means, and conditions, and relationships, and non-professional factors of labor. The modern understanding of the profession goes far beyond the immediate professional activity.
Other problems are related to professional training. Many are calling for this training to be “individualized”. For example, NN interestingly argues that the challenges of the modern era presuppose a paradigm shift from the previous “education for life” to a new paradigm - “education throughout life”, focused on “lifelong education” and “advanced education”. Thus, “education throughout life” presupposes the constant development of a specialist and the expansion of his horizons, and, consequently, the development of his individual style not only in work, but also in educational and professional activities. Then it turns out that the "student body" also loses its certainty somewhat, which should be compensated for in more flexible and creative approaches to work with students, and maybe already with some schoolchildren.
PROFESSION AS A RECOGNIZED "SUCCESS" AND AS A "PERSONAL SENSE"
Clarifying the very concept of "profession", SM Bogoslovsky wrote a long time ago that this is "an activity recognized as a profession at the level of a person's personal self-awareness." Many foreign authors, perhaps who did not know the works of SM Bogoslovsky, often base their concepts on the attitude to their work, highlighting important personal meanings in it. For example, E. Fromm writes about the “alienation” of a person from his work, even with successful and recognized work activities. V. Frankl also writes about related problems, highlighting the concept of "despair" in cases of loss of the meaning of life and the meaning of the main business of his life.
Often, it is the transition to a new system of values that is considered as the main criterion of professional development, which turns out to be even more important than traditional development along the line of so-called “professionalism”, which presupposes the improvement of “professionally important qualities”, “knowledge, abilities and skills” or “professional competencies” of an employee ...
As a result, it is the employee's personality, which is based on a system of values and meanings, or, more precisely, conscience, that is becoming more and more relevant both in career guidance, and in vocational selection, and in vocational training. No wonder V. Frankl wrote that "the main task of professional education is the formation of the ability of conscience." VP Zinchenko noted with regret that recently a lot of "artificial intelligentsia" has appeared, which possesses the most modern technologies, but often does not know how to use their knowledge and talents for worthy deeds.
WHAT TO DO FOR TEENAGERS, PARENTS, PSYCHOLOGISTS, DIRECTORS OF SCHOOLS AND PSYCHOLOGICAL CENTERS
In this article, we have only outlined a problem that still needs a deeper and more comprehensive understanding. For adolescents and their parents, as well as many school workers involved in career guidance in one way or another, we could advise:
- Do not limit yourself to the “choice of profession”, but try to look at the space of self-determination a little more broadly. For example, be prepared for the fact that only the choice of a profession will not be enough to enter a specific college or university, because often you have to choose a certain specialty right away (experience shows that a considerable part of applicants have not thought about this before).
- Even at the preliminary stages of self-determination (for example, in high school, and maybe even earlier), to think more often about the moral aspects of self-determination, about what is more important for you, “take more from the world” or “give more to the world”? Unfortunately, the current situation on the labor market forces to raise such questions more and more sharply, and in many schools they try to ignore these delicate topics (or translate them into the plane of banal moralizing, like, you have to be "honest and decent", but without specifying what is behind this costs).
- Try to at least start thinking about the meanings of the chosen work activity, about what this profession can personally give you, will it allow you to realize your life plans (including the implementation of an attractive lifestyle)? The implementation of a certain life plan can occur with the help of different professions, and then it is not the choice of a profession that is more important, but the clarification of this life plan. You also need to be mentally prepared for the fact that at different stages of development a person is guided by different meanings, and to the meanings of a higher level you need to mature and not miss the moment when a person is ready to change the meaning of his life.
- With all the increasingly complex uncertainty of the concept of "profession", one should not completely abandon it. It is important to understand what is behind the profession itself? It will still have to be concretized, otherwise many issues of life and career choices simply cannot be resolved. Reflections on the profession are quite "adequate" to the stages in human development, when he first defines the sphere (profile) of his interests, then specifies the areas (often sorting out different options), then specifies his choice, thinking about specialties, educational institutions, organizations, jobs ... As a person develops, a person may find that a specific specialty (and even more so specialization) is "cramped" for him, does not allow him to fully realize his potential, and then he again expands his horizons,
Such choices are much more complicated than it seems to many, and much more interesting, which in many ways enriches our lives and allows us to correct mistakes associated with previous unsuccessful elections. But only when the person himself realizes his unsuccessful decisions and feels that he has "outgrown" the activity.
