MEASURING LEGAL COMPETENCE OF HIGHER EDUCATION STUDENTS IN THE SPECIALTY "SOCIAL WORK"

The set of criteria, indicators, and levels of development of legal competence in students of the "Social Work" specialty, which is presented in the article, is a necessary condition and starting stage when organizing the process of measuring this component of general professional competence. To implement measurement and reflection on this basis of the development state of students' legal competence, the following assessment criteria were selected: value-motivational and cognitive-reflective. Each of them contains important content and technological aspects of legal competence development in future specialists. For the practical implementation of measurement tools, we defined such indicators as: students' legal awareness, their motivation to carry out professional and legal activities, their ability to reflect on the level of awareness in the legal field; these indicators are also related to the conditions for the implementation of effective human rights protection activities. The development degree of each indicator characterizes the level of legal competence formation (beginner, average, sufficient, high), the definition of which is an important component of the diagnostic stage of scientific research.
According to the results of the measurement conducted with students of the "Social Work" specialization, we observed a predominant manifestation of high and sufficient development levels of legal competence in students. This is evidenced by their persistent interest and focus on work in the field of social and legal protection, interest in performing complex tasks in legal and professional activities, readiness for timely and competent resolution of social and legal issues, ability to consciously predict their actions, perform self-analysis and self-evaluation.
 In addition, the conducted measurement revealed a number of factors that need further study and detailing of their impact on the development of legal competence in higher education students:
­ the personal significance of emotional assessment of a professional or real life situation as opposed to a justified and legal assessment;
­ determinism of the phenomena of "we-responsibility" and "I-responsibility";
­ multidisciplinary discourse on the development of the educational process of higher education, aimed at building the legal culture of students;
­ the role of soft skills as factors of continuous professional and personal growth of social work graduates.