Professional Orientation of Students in Historical and Pedagogical Discourse

The purpose of the research was to identify the characteristics of professional orientation at one stage or another of social development and to distinguish periods of the evolution of professional orientation from chaotic and narrowly pragmatic goals of preparing young people for life and work to a scientifically sound system of training young people to choose their future profession. The methodology of the research was based on the selection and analysis of the scientific-source base for determining the typical, characteristic traits of youth preparation for life and work at one stage or another of social development; use of the comparative analysis to track the dynamics of becoming a vocational orientation by a scientifically sound system of training young people to choose the sphere of future professional activity; systematization of the distinguished characteristic features, and classification of them with the subsequent separation of periods in the evolution of the vocational guidance system; use of forecasting and modeling of development of the modern system of vocational orientation for outlining prospects in the sphere of choice of professions with the management of modern social, cultural, educational, information challenges. The results of the research are reflected in the presented periodization of the development of vocational orientation as a system of training young people to choose their future profession: pre-industrial, industrial, post-industrial, information; disclosure of the peculiarities of career guidance with youth in each of the selected periods; outlining the current trends and prospects for the development of forms and methods of career guidance. The practical significance of the results obtained is a convincing demonstration of the unity of goals and content, forms and methods of vocational guidance with youth in each of the isolated periods of its development for the design of new, promising, adequate to contemporary challenges forms and methods of vocational guidance with youth