Short-term Professional Development Programs: The Problem of Balancing Efficiency and Fundamentals

Aim. The aim of the article is to identify and analyse the key contradiction of the contemporary system of additional professional pedagogical education between the requirement of a prompt response to the demands of educational practice and the necessity of preserving the fundamental nature of the content of professional development programmes, as well as to substantiate the organisational and pedagogical conditions for achieving a productive balance between these two poles. Methodology and results. The research has been carried out within the logic of a theoretical and analytical approach. The following methods were applied: theoretical analysis of pedagogical, andragogical and managerial literature devoted to the problems of additional professional pedagogical education; content analysis of federal and regional regulatory documents governing the sphere of professional development of pedagogical workers; comparative analysis of professional development programmes of various durations implemented within the system of additional professional education of the Russian Federation; generalisation of experience in designing modular and short-term programmes. The typologisation method was also employed, which made it possible to identify stable models for the design of short-term professional development programmes. Research implications. The theoretical significance of the work consists in clarifying the content of the concepts of “short-term professional development programme”, “fundamental nature of the content of additional professional education” and “promptness of educational response”, as well as in the systematisation of the factors determining a productive balance between promptness and fundamentality in programme design. The practical significance lies in the fact that the proposed criteria and design matrix can be directly used by methodologists, designers of additional professional education programmes, heads of institutes for the development of education and centres for the continuous enhancement of the professional skills of pedagogical workers in the development of professional development programmes of various durations, as well as in the quality assessment of such programmes.