Self-learning university laboratory as an educational environment for developing technical creativity of engineering students
Abstract. The article reveals the theoretical and methodological foundations of the formation of technical creativity of students of engineering and technical fields of study in the conditions of high school. The relevance of the topic is due to the need to update pedagogical approaches in the context of digitalization, creative economy, strengthening of national technological leadership and the growing requirements for training new types of engineers capable of generating innovative technical solutions in the conditions of uncertainty. The author substantiates the position that the formation of technical creativity is impossible within the framework of an exclusively content-based educational model and requires the creation of an educational environment with the characteristics of a self-learning organization. The key element of such an environment is a self-developing university laboratory, presented as a structural and functional module with the ability to develop and reproduce «new knowledge» and innovative solutions obtained in the course of students’ experimental activities. A model of the laboratory as an environment of pedagogically organized self-learning is presented, in the center of which is an algorithm for analyzing the results of students’ experimental activities. This algorithm is considered as a didactic mechanism for the formation of meta-competencies: reflection, project thinking, subjectivity, ability of knowledge shift and transformation. Special attention is paid to reveal organizational and pedagogical conditions.