Image of a student and a teacher in light of changing learning needs

Abstract

The modern society sets new challenges for university students increasing the demand for the well-qualified, skilful workforce. These challenges inevitably bring about innovative tools and educational mechanisms which teachers can use to meet students’ needs and interests. The changing attitude of contemporary Russian youth to conventional educational methods has revolutionized the role of a teacher in the learning experiences and the image of a teacher in academic system as a whole. The paper analyses the students’ learning needs of methods of teaching a foreign language at technical university, and shows the impact of these changes on the teacher’s role and image in the educational process. Due to the technical progress and rapidly changing modern society, the approach to university learning and teaching undergoes significant transformations. The image of a modern student determines different rules and inevitably leads to the appearance of a new image of a teacher, thus, fostering new teaching methods. In our work, we focus on a social profile of a student of the XXI century, make an attempt to reveal the similarities and differences between students of the past and present days, and highlight the necessity of innovative teaching methods which can meet the needs of students and tackle important problems. New conditions of social and technological transformations of the XXI century are obvious and give rise to the search of new approaches in education.