DEVELOPING STUDENTS’ RESEARCH AND SELF-STUDY SKILLS: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

Abstract

Background. The context and the science tasks have changed recently which means that there is a need for an updated methodology to form and develop university students’ ability to do a research, i.e. to plan, carry out and present its’ results. Before we develop an educational program or a course that is aimed at developing this set of skills, it is important to break the whole process down into stages so that we could see the progress of a student doing a research at university who is getting more and more self-reliant from the start to the end of a project. Materials and methods. The research was done by means of literature review and experience analysis in order to identify pedagogical and methodological background issues that underlie the process of mastering the research skills as part of the self-study competence at university. Results. Based on the findings, we suppose that there are four stages; we called them the (1) Introductory (controlled) stage, (2) Forming (guided) stage, (3) Creative (free) stage, and (4) Independent (reflective-analytical) stage. All four stages smoothly follow one another stimulating and supporting students while they are involved in a research project till they are able to cope with it with the minimum support provided by a third party. Conclusion. The developed scheme of the stages can also serve as a basis for the life-long learning afterwards. When a student masters this set of skills at all four levels, he or she is then capable of repeating the experience starting with the very first stage in another context in their home country or abroad – at another university, research organization, or in another field of research.

Keywords

• research skills
• self-study
• lifelong learning