Volunteering as a convergent tool in the supra-professional competencies development in vocational education: expert opinion

Importance. Today volunteering is not just a tendency, but rather a trend in the development of modern society. It’s becoming a life standard for active young people. The society itself begins to act as a social change source. In our country a solid foundation of volunteering is being laid at all levels of education, spreading its influence on other society spheres. Association Dobro.RF together with its partners has been implementing the “Volunteering over a lifetime” concept for many years. A large team is working on it, including the state represented by Rospatriotcenter, Federal Agency for Youth Affairs of Russia “Rosmolodezh”, Ministry of Education, Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation, Ministry of Economic Development, Agency for Strategic Initiatives, other agencies and major public organizations of the country, and Russian citizens themselves. The implementation of legislative acts and strategic documents aimed at the educational activities development in educational organizations of higher education (hereinafter – EOHE), as well as the growing demand for the program “Service Learning” makes the search for effective tools and practices highly relevant. They are focused on the education and development of students’ soft-skills, which are adaptive and relevant to the educational programs content. In this study we analyze the experts’ experience and opinion in the higher education field. Volunteering is considered as a tool for seamless educational activities integration into educational and extracurricular activities of students undergoing different academic programs in order to develop both hard and soft skills. The volunteering effectiveness in this area is confirmed by the high level of support for this type of activity, stated in the National Project “Education”, the National Project “Youth and Children” and a number of specialized strategic documents and resolutions. The aim of the study is to identify the key trends in the students’ soft-skills development in the integrating volunteering practices process into curricular and extracurricular activities, considering volunteer work as a convergent tool in the professional education system, based on expert interviews. Materials and Methods. Using the expert interview method, volunteerism has been studied as a tool of practice-oriented education, which has a high educational value and is aimed at developing professional and supra-professional competencies. Results and Discussion. The results of an expert interview with the professional community representatives in the education field in Russian Federation are presented, which reflect the respondents’ positive attitude towards volunteerism as a promising tool for developing students’ supraprofessional and professional competencies, acting as an the youth effective element and educational policy of higher education educational institutions. Conclusion. The importance of universities in the formation and promotion of the volunteerism culture and values is confirmed, and the possibilities of including volunteerism in the educational process as an effective convergent tool in the students’ supra-professional and professional competencies development are substantiated.