THE ESSENTIAL CHARACTERISTICS OF SOCIOCULTURAL COMPETENCE OF SOCIAL WORKERS

Abstract

The article analyzes the socio-cultural competence as a part of a social worker’s professional competence. It is noted that the scientific and pedagogical literature there is not uniform approach to the definition of «socio-cultural competence». It was generalized definition of socio-cultural competence of social workers: it is social worker’s personal characteristics that reflected in the presence of objective ideas and knowledge of different cultures, which is implemented through practical skills that can successfully to perform professional tasks. It was found socio-cultural competence as a social worker’s prerequisite for its readiness to professional activity. There are two aspects of socio-cultural competence of social worker: individual and institutional. The basic difficulty of development of socio-cultural competence was defined: a lack of understanding of the essence of competency approach in training, structure and content of socio-cultural competence; lack of experience to use the specific social/socio-pedagogical technologies for focused work on forming socio-cultural competence of future social workers; lack of diagnostic and control tools and criteria for diagnosing the level of both general and socio-cultural competence of specialist.