Digital Footprint in the Educational Environment as a Regulator of Student Vocational Guidance to the Teaching Profession

The article is devoted to the digital footprint in education as a method of improving the career guidance of students of pedagogical higher education at all stages of their theoretical and practical training. The article discusses approaches to students’ career guidance and pedagogical orientation based on the analysis of their digital footprint in the learning environment and external resources. The review of researches in collecting, analysing and interpreting students’ digital footprint and in career guidance of future teachers is provided. Moreover, the article outlines preliminary adjustments to the concept of vocational guidance to the teaching profession in a digital learning environment. The authors analyse the possibility of using the technology of fixing and interpreting various digital data to manage the process of gradual development of career guidance grounded in the actualization of pedagogical orientation. As a result, the authors conclude that the use of digital footprint brings the process of students’ vocational guidance to the teaching profession to a new quality level by regulating the pedagogical orientation of future teachers and identifies areas of their professional interests and motives in order to individualize professional training. The practical result is a section «Vocational guidance» in the personal account of the pedagogical university student