The state of formation of the future pre-school educators’ methodological competence

The improvement of the quality of preschool education is an important task for the modern stage demonstrating the development of the Ukrainian society, the implementation of which, above all, requires the efforts of higher education institutions to train a methodologically competent specialist, who is able to master and create innovative methods, techniques and technologies for organizing the educational process of a pre-school education institution. This task fully meets the requirements of the State Standard for Preschool Education in Ukraine, the documents regulating the functioning and modern guidelines for the development of pre-school and higher education of Ukraine in the 21st century. Under these conditions, the formation of methodological competence of the future pre-school educators is of paramount importance. The purpose of the article is to cover and analyse the results of the diagnostics determining the proficiency markers of the future pre-school educators' methodological competence at the ascertaining stage of the experiment. We consider the methodological competence of future pre-school educators as an integrative personal composition characterized by these features: the presence of the ability to reflect, the desire to carry out methodological activities, the understanding of its value, theoretical knowledge and practical skills, which provide the ability to consciously and methodologically use methods and techniques and technologies of preschool children's education, upbringing and development. The structure of the future preschool educators' methodological competence is made up of the cognitive, motivation- and value-centred, activity-oriented and evaluative-reflexive components and their indicators, according to which the manual of diagnostic methods is created and selected. During the ascertaining stage of the experiment, a sufficient level of methodological competence was demonstrated by 16.6%, a basic level – by 61.7%, a low level – by 21.7% of the future educators.