TRAINING OF THE USA FUTURE SOCIAL WORKERS FOR THE RESEARCHING OF MULTICULTURAL ENVIRONMENT AS A PART OF INTERCULTURAL COMPETECE FORMATION

Ukraine, being a multicultural society, requires a new conception of the world, aimed at integrating cultures and nations, their further convergence as well as cultural enrichment. The neglecting of national and ethnic peculiarities of the population enables tension and conflict situations in relationships, which may be observed nowadays. Hence, it is very important to consolidate efforts to find constructive mechanisms for mutual understanding and cooperation. In this context the experience of many foreign countries, among which the experience of cultural interaction in the USA is very interesting. This country differs from average multicultural nations in a range of peculiarities, one of which is the fact that cultural interaction was not within an individual ethnos, but within immigrants – descendants of different countries, representatives of various cultures. So, multicultural education is very important in this country. Multicultural education provides the formation of intercultural competence and ability to intercultural communication. Competence is understood as a comprehensive personal resource, which is a product of studying/ teaching and socialization, a coefficient of erudition, a guarantee of active capacity and competitiveness of an individual. Hence, a competitive person is an individual, active in his professional field, competitive in the labor market who worthily presents himself, his organizational structure, state, who is regarded and respected. Intercultural competence includes the ability to investigate multicultural social environment (complex multilevel formation, a particular manifestation of social relations occurring in the society where an individual lives and develops; it is a set of social conditions of human life (aspects of social life, social institutions and social groups) that affect its consciousness and behaviour). Social environment is a system of social conditions of life of an individual (economic, political, legal, industrial, cultural, ethnic etc.), where its formation, development, functioning takes place. The basic principles of multiethnic study of the social environment are: system approach (taught as a system with different components); the study of the social environment in dynamics (formation, development); practical orientation (researchers are to know what to study exactly and what is the purpose of it); focus on important components (it is necessary to distinguish the most important components for advanced study); coherence and consistency (every next step should be a logical continuation of the previous one); loyalty to all ethnicities; prognostic approach (capability to predict the close and distant future prospect of development of the research object); scientific-based approach (development of research specific plan, diversity of techniques); consideration of an individual's age, ethno-psychological characteristics etc. The readiness of future specialists to study multiethnic environment includes the following components: motivational component (positive orientation on ethnical environment study), content component (knowledge of basic features, tools, methods of social environment study), operational (the ability to study features of ethnical environment). Thus, the readiness of future social work specialist to study the multicultural environment obviously means the integrative quality of an individual to ensure the effective professional work in a multicultural region, the essence of which consist in the interaction of motivational, content and operational components.