FUTURE CHEMISTS’ EXPERIMENTAL COMPETENCE FORMATION

The article deals with the issue of Chemistry students' experimental competence formation in professional train-ing at higher educational institutions. In the empirical study, the levels of the experimental competence of future chemists (low, medium, sufficient, high) on the basis of selected components (motivational, cognitive, operational, activity) in accordance with selected criteria and corresponding indicators were determined. According to the initial assessment of the respondents' competence it has been found that most of them have an average level of its maturity. In order to improve it, there has been conducted an experiment, which involved introducing the following stages of future chemists' experimental competence formation in the process of training: focus on mastering the experimental competence; acquisition of theoretical chemical knowledge; mastering practical skills; gaining professional experi-ence of the experimental competence application. The effectiveness of forming the experimental competence of future chemists according to the identified components has been proved by statistically significant positive changes. The reliability of the obtained results has been proved by means of Student's t-test.