INDIVIDUAL PROFESSIONALIZATION IN INFORMATION SOCIETY: CHALLENGES AND PROSPECTS

The article considers individual professionalization in information society, reveals the essence of professionalization, identifies its stages, analyzes its features under the informatization of education process and professional activities. Professionalization is defined as a process of professional growth and professional training, i.e. professional self-realization is a form of self-actualization. Under the computerization of social-cultural reality, which is typical for information society, we witness informatization of all forms of professional development and a wide introduction of information technologies into individual professionalization. Globalization of informatization processes determined changes not only in the content of our knowledge about the world, but also in the ways we acquire, reproduce and transfer knowledge, which eventually had a significant impact on the structures of personality. New information technologies changed our ways of thinking and communication, perception of others and self-concept. Computer technologies reveal unprecedented opportunities for education and professional development. However, like any other technical achievement, computer technologies have negative consequences including those in the field of vocational education - the most important stage of professionalization. In the cognitive-mental aspect, these are non-linear, associative, mosaic thinking, an overabundance of information, and weakening of creativity. In the humanitarian aspect, information technologies mechanize and standardize educational activities, impersonate learning process, and weaken the humanitarian aspects of education in general. Thus, global and thoughtless introduction of information technologies into professional development can lead to many problems and eventually to a serious impoverishment of professionalism turning it from a complex creative process of professional development into a primitive, though high-speed, transfer of wealth of information, into ‘operationalism’ instead of professionalism.