Specific features of forecasting in professional education

The relevance of the study is determined by the need of pedagogical theory and practice in prognostic research in order to reveal the prospects and risks of the professional school development programmes. The purpose of the study is to determine the specific character of professional education as an object of forecasting. The author notes that professional education is a synergetic system, which is characterized by the following features: disequilibrium, nonlinearity, variability and probability of development. The provisions of the social forecasting methodology of A.S. Akhiezer are interpreted in the study. The article also shows that professional education has static, intensive and destructive types of reproduction. Different approaches to forecasting are compared: the one based on mutually exclusive oppositions (such as optimistic and pessimistic development options) and the other based on complementary scenarios. The author shows that binary oppositions in making forecasts are unproductive, whereas considering the possibility of several potential scenarios, and determining their prospects and risks are expedient. Further, the study identifies three potential growth points for the system determined by possible bifurcation situations in the development of professional education and three corresponding scenarios for further development: organizational, technological, and subjective. The organizational scenario implies the spread of regional educational associations and it is strategically aimed at reducing the difference in the level of socio-economic development of central and peripheral regions. The technological scenario is associated with the spread of digital educational platforms, virtual laboratories and simulators. It is aimed at individualizing students’ educational trajectories. The subjective scenario is characterised by the change in the axiology of professional education, by the consolidation of the environmental protection (in the broadest sense) of the professional activity. The author draws the conclusion that specific features of forecasting in professional education are determined by the characteristics of a synergetic system, its anthropocentric nature and the increasing role of the methodology of environmentally-centred professional activity.