Professional and Creative Thinking in Future Foreign Language Teachers

Introduction. Well-developed professional and creative thinking increases future specialists' competitiveness and ensures their professional success. Thus, developing professional and creative thinking in future foreign language teachers is important for their professional development. The novelty of the research lies in studying characteristics of professional and creative thinking related to the specifity of a foreign language specialist's professional activity as follows: associativity, anticipation, divergence, flexibility, criticism, and constructiveness. Methods. The pedagogical experiment involved 22 master students of the Institute of History, Philology and Media of Kabardino-Balkarian State University. The analysis of foreign and domestic works made it possible to choose theoretical appraches to developing professional and creative thinking in future English teachers and develop the author's program. The idea of gamification of the educational process was underlying for this program. This required the following innovative training methods and techniques: (a) the REAL techniques (N. V. Maslov); (b) case method (situation–sample, situation–problem, and situation–exercise); (c) game technology; (d) reverse brainstorming (RB); (e) association method; and (f) dialogue with a destructive related assessment. Results. The study results indicated a positive dynamics for all the characteristics of professional and creative thinking. The students had significantly higher levels of associativity, anticipation, divergence, flexibility, criticism, constructiveness. However, this process was incomplete and required the constant development of these characteristics of thinking. Discussion. The development of professional and creative thinking is the main condition for a foreign language specialist's professional development, which provides him/her with competitive advantages and great demand in the modern labor market. In conclusion: there is a need for purposeful work on the development of professional and creative thinking in future foreign language teachers.