Future psychologists’ training in the informational environment

Chepurenko, Galina P.
Leningrad State Regional University,
Russia

One of the most important problems that appeared recently is the readiness of the professionals to the independent collecting, storage, processing and spread of the information. This problem appeared due to the development of the informatization of the society and due to the high level of the social development.

In the process of continuous education and training psychologists deal not only with ready system defined knowledge but they also have to deal with different kinds of information where they need to extract “new knowledge”. This requires the ability not only to work with huge volumes of information but also the ability to extract the necessary pieces and bits of information out of this amount and the ability to build the chain: perception – thinking – application.

That is why the question about the development of skills in the frame of the “informational culture of the individual” is of prime importance. “The informational culture of the individual” is the ability and necessity of the future psychologist to use the available informational resources to retrieve new knowledge, to interpret and spread it.

We try to solve the problems of the advancement of informational culture of the psychologists in the process of the development of new skills of collecting, storage, processing and spread of the information. We also develop intellectual qualities of the individual.

The case study was conducted among the students – future psychologists – at the university. 150 students answered the questions from the questionnaire. It was discovered that the most important for them in the process of work and study is the retrieval of the information, search for the information and the processing of the information got during the polls. That includes the work with the texts and tables.

To develop the informational culture of future psychologists we organize the educational process at the university being guided by the qualification characteristics of the graduate (State Educational Standard of the Ministry of Education of Russian Federation – specialization 020400 “Psychology”). In addition to the obligatory courses there are also additional courses that help future psychologists to learn the usage of the Internet, email, help them to learn Excel and other computer programs.