COMPARATIVE STUDY OF FUTURE TEACHERS’ ENVIRONMENTAL TRAINING IN GREAT BRITAIN AND UKRAINE

Considering the numerous changes in social and political life of modern Ukraine and the fact that the state seeks to join world scientific community as a full partner, there is a need for educational system reforming and striving for meeting the European standards. That is why the experience of leading countries should be taken into account. The paper aims to compare the peculiarities of future teachers' environmental training in Great Britain and Ukraine. In order to achieve this goal, the curricula of Roehampton University, University of Leeds and University of Glasgow were compared with those of The Bohdan Khmelnytsky National University of Cherkasy and Pavlo Tychyna Uman State Pedagogical University. It should be noted that in Great Britain, more academic hours are allocated for the disciplines in the field of environmental studies, compared to Ukraine. Besides, in British universities students get more time for independent and scientific work. One more difference is that British graduates work in biomedical laboratories, hospitals, etc. as distinct from Ukrainian colleagues, who are usually hired as school teachers. It has been concluded that the environmental training in Ukraine should be performed in the following directions: expansion of hours for environmental disciplines and the number of subjects of the environmental sphere (for example, implementation of subjects “Environmental Development of a Child” and “Socialization of a Child” into the training course of students majoring in “Primary education”), increasing the financing, etc. The following ideas taken from British experience should be implemented into the educational system of Ukraine (particularly, in the field of environmental training): creating the conditions for lifelong environmental learning of teachers, student-centered approach and encouraging students to take part in scientific activities, adoption of methods of conducting different types of lessons (lectures and practicals), as well as IT methods (online discussions, online presentations, etc.). It should be concluded that the study of the specificity and experience of other countries in all spheres of life in general and education in particular will definitely contribute to the improvement of the state in all its spheres.