The role of self-education in distance learning

Abstract

In the modern fast-changing world, the education system has to meet numerous challenges of time.
New approaches to modernization of the Kazakhstani education system, introduction of the new generation
standards determine priority goals and objectives whose solution demands high level of education
quality. Today the society is interested in graduates with developed cognitive needs aimed at self-education
and self-development, being able to operate the knowledge got, to orientate in the modern information
space. Self-education of the student’s personality, as an independent direction of pedagogical
research, emerged in the science comparatively recently. The term ‘self-education’ is met frequently in
studies and scientific pedagogical publications, but a uniform approach to the studied problem has not
been designated in the science yet. Taking into account new position of students as subjects of education,
higher education institutions are rebuilding the status of their purposefully organized independent
work, perfecting its normative and legal and information bases. One of the directions of its development
is the distant form of education, based upon self-education. We understand self-education of students
as activity aimed at achievement of certain educational goals: satisfaction of professional requests, gaining
new knowledge, continuous professional education, owing to which knowledge is actualized and
expanded. The most important in the structure of self-education of students is a motivation component,
which includes: professional interest, strive to self-perfecting. In the process of distant education, certain
relations of educational character arise, which are the very catalyzer of self-development processes.
Self-education becomes an individual and social value, provides mobility and wide opportunities to the
youth in the educational sphere. Introduction of distant education as a means of realization of individual
educational trajectories of students is an important tendency of development of the Kazakhstani educational
system. The article gives arguments in favor of the necessity of formation of skills and abilities of
self-education for efficient realization of distant education.
Key words: self-education, distant education, educational process, pedagogical support, independent
work.