EXPERIMENTAL WORK ON THE FORMATION OF ENGINEERING COMPETENCE OF STUDENTS WITHIN THE EDUCATIONAL ENVIRONMENT OF A SCHOOL

In the current rapidly changing environment, there is a significant shortage of highly qualified engineering personnel who can quickly respond to the demands of the labor market. The acceleration of scientific-technological progress and the increasing share of high technologies application in the industrial and non-industrial sectors of the economy create the need in the early engineering education of the younger generation taking the path of professional identity with the possibility of forming the engineering competence necessary in the future to perform tasks at a high level. The paper considers the educational environment that contributes to the effective process of formation of the students’ engineering competence. The study involved the seventh-grade students: the experimental (forty-six students) and control (forty-five students) groups. The experimental work consisted of three stages. The analysis of the effectiveness of the influence of the selected educational conditions on the results of maturity of the students’ engineering competence indicates a significant positive dynamics of the general level of engineering competence maturity in the experimental group. In the experimental group, the proportion of students with the high level increased from 13.04 % to 36.96 %; intermediate level students - from 34.78 % to 50.00 %; and the share of students with the low level decreased from 52.17 % to 13.04 %. The results of experimental work confirm the influence of identified educational conditions (the application of 3-D modeling and prototyping technologies within the educational process; implementation of project activity in the Engineering study field; organization of science partnership between a school and a higher education institution) on the efficiency of the process of formation of the students’ engineering competence.