Academic Interaction as Part of Developing Professional Identity in Schoolchildren: Informational and Educational One-Industry Urban Environment

Abstract

Single-industry urban settlements often experience a lack of qualified specialists for their key enterprises. Therefore, professional identification should start at school and be based on a scientifically organized interaction between local education facilities and local industrial enterprises. The authors identified, developed, and tested pedagogical conditions that contribute to career counselling in single-industry urban schools. They developed a digital resource called Proffuture42.rf that modeled informational and academic environment of a single-industry town. The platform united programs of extracurricular activities, additional general education, and career guidance developed by urban education institutions for schoolchildren of various age groups. Education facilities and their industrial partners were able to interact in the form of network training. The research revealed a number of possibilities for industrial organizations and social services to participate in the process of professional identification development. The pedagogical experiment involved observation and questioning. The survey results were subjected to mathematical processing. By monitoring the qualitative changes, the platform was able to facilitate the pedagogical support of career counselling in a single-industry town.