Consulting support of professional practice of a teacher of a Belarusian rural school
The processes taking place in the educational sphere of modern Belarus require both theoretical rethinking and practical research. The current demographic situation in the country and the socio-economic conditions for the development of society have actualized the issues of the functioning of the rural school. Today in rural schools in Belarus there are five times less schoolchildren than in urban schools. Rural schoolchildren find themselves in a situation of very limited choice of forms of the system of out-of-school and additional education. Rural schools have limited access to various types of resources due to their territorial and, correspondingly, informational isolation. The difficulties of attending cultural events not only at the republican, but also at the regional level are explained today not so much by territorial remoteness as by the material support of a rural family. These circumstances lead the professional practice of a rural school teacher to a situation of uncertainty. It is aggravated by the problems of insufficient material and technical equipment of rural schools, low wages (especially for young teachers), low motivation to receive education from schoolchildren and their parents. Consulting support of the professional practice of a teacher allows you to look at education in rural school from the inside through the eyes of subjects immersed in educational processes. The article outlines the main theoretical and methodological ideas for organizing the process of consulting support for the professional practice of a teacher, the features of its implementation in rural school, reveals the mechanisms and conditions for the implementation of this activity. The publication highlights the results of feedback from participants in consulting events - teachers of rural schools in the Baranovichi and Mozyr regions of Belarus. In the process of consulting support, rural teachers actively discussed the pressing problems of work in rural schools in Belarus, both at the regional level and throughout the country as a whole. The article presents the results of surveys on the optimization of rural schools by enlarging them, on the existing paper-reporting and other kind of bureaucracy, on the material, technical, scientific-methodological and staffing of the educational process in rural school. The analysis of these results will make it possible to concretize the directions for reforming education in the country.