Substantive component of preparing students for professional activity in the system of complex support for young children at risk

Introduction. At present, society is facing an increasing number of challenges, including an increase in the number of children diagnosed in the first days and months of life with diseases and preconditions for psychophysical development disorders varying in severity and burden. This results in an increase in the number of young children at risk. These challenges require comprehensive support for this category of children. In modern conditions, the system of higher pedagogical education faces the important task of high-quality training of specialists able to work effectively with children and their parents in comprehensive support, planning and implementation of corrective and preventive processes. The aim of the study is the analysis of the substantive component of future defectologists’ training in terms of their ability to perform professional activity in the system of complex support for young at-risk children. Materials and methods. A total of 43 higher educational institutions that train students in the profile “Preschool defectology” were selected for the empirical study. The expert evaluation criteria were developed on the basis of activity competence, contextual and interdisciplinary approaches. The research was based on fundamental scientific principles: objectivity, consistency, logic and integrity with the use of theoretical methods: exploratory, comparative and descriptive. KEYWORDS Results. The expert evaluation results prove the need for the optimisation of the substantive component of training future teachers-defectologists for professional activity in the system of comprehensive support for young children at risk, proceeding from the challenges of the time, the requirements of the regulatory legal framework and the results of scientific research and innovative methodological developments. This is accounted for by the fact that no programme (0%) was classified as fully meeting the requirements of the Federal State Educational Standards and the professional standard “Teacher-defectologist”. Only seven (44%) of the programmes have content that most closely meets the basic criteria of the above standards. Six (38%) programmes are characterised by some inaccuracies in the substantive component. Another three (19%) programmes were singled out with the content demonstrating insufficient depth, integrity, logical correlation or complementarity. Conclusion. The results obtained in the course of the survey confirm the need for the optimisation of planning strategies and the development of a due substantive component of defectology teachers’ training towards solving professional problems in the system of comprehensive support for young children at risk. The relevance of this process is accounted for by the significant challenges of the time, the requirements of modern regulatory legal framework and the achievements of modern scientific research