Heuristic tasks as a means of forming technical competence of future vocational education specialists

The current stage of technology development is characterized by the need for highly qualified specialists who are able to quickly adapt to rapid changes in production conditions. The problem of training vocational education specialists who are able to quickly respond to dynamic changes in the labor market determines the search for new means of developing their technical professionally-oriented competencies, which is reflected in regulatory documents: Professional standard "Vocational education teacher", Standard of higher education of the first (bachelor's) level of specialty 015 "Vocational education (by specialization)". Graduates of this specialty provide training for middle-level workers and specialists in institutions of vocational (vocational and technical) and professional pre-higher education. The purpose of the article is to find an effective pedagogical tool for the formation of components of technical competence of future vocational education specialists in the information and educational environment of higher education institutions. Based on the analysis of the concept of "technical competence", a comparison of competencies and labor functions of future vocational education specialists, a hypothesis was put forward about the use of heuristic tasks as an effective pedagogical means of forming the technical competence of future vocational education specialists. The main functions of heuristic tasks were identified and their influence on the formation of the components of technical competence (cognitive, operational, motivational-reflective, production-empirical) was determined. An experiment on the use of heuristic tasks in the conditions of the Volodymyr Hnatyuk Ternopil National Pedagogical University showed that the level of technical competence in the experimental group increased by 13.5% compared to the control group, which proves the legitimacy of the choice of heuristic tasks as a means of forming the technical competence of future vocational education specialists.