University-School Cluster as an Innovative Form for Teachers’ Professional Competence Development

Abstract

The paper describes relevancy, aim, scope and technologies of experimental activity conducted by HSE—Perm to set up a university and school cluster as an innovative form of enhancing Perm region teachers’ professional competencies. The authors describe organizational structure of the cluster, determine unique features of applied forms and techniques of cooperation among participants (high school and university teachers), and analyze the results of university and school cluster activities at the first stage of its development. Cluster is an organizational form of efforts combined to achieve competitive advantages in general education system. The key benefit of building clusters is that the educational market is entered by communities of concerned members, instead of individuals. University takes on a leadership role in innovating general education through: training and re-training human resources of general education; updating the syllabus; monitoring training materials and taking direct participation in their development; pursuing research (sociological, economical, psychological, legal, managerial) in education; monitoring quality of education process. The long-term innovative educational project “University and School Cluster” was launched in 2009. The paper compares quantitative measures of teachers’ subject-matter competencies at three stages of university and school cluster development (2009–2011).The authors consider the innovational aspects of cluster-based cooperation to be: advanced information and engineering support of subject departments; development and implementation of a special technology to monitor the level of teachers’ subject-matter competencies through the whole project; individual tutorial support for the process of enhancing teachers’ subject competencies; development of the university and school cluster website, an integrated interactive space for project participants, and filling it with appropriate methodological materials.