Professional training of future educational managers in the context of current trends in digitalization of education

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to provide a scholarly justification of the specific features of professional training for future educational managers in the context of the current regulatory and legal framework, modern higher education standards, professional standards for heads of educational institutions, and relevant international frameworks for educational leadership and management. The article focuses on identifying the regulatory, content-related, and competency-based guidelines for training specialists capable of ensuring effective management of educational organizations under the conditions of reform, digitalization, internationalization, and increasing requirements for the quality of education.

Methods. The study uses an analysis of Ukrainian regulatory and legal acts, higher education standards, professional standards for heads of educational institutions, educational and professional programmes of Ukrainian higher education institutions, as well as international documents and competency frameworks developed by UNESCO, IIEP-UNESCO, ISTE, and European approaches to educational leadership. The methods of comparison, systematization, generalization, and content analysis of educational programmes were applied.

Results. It has been established that professional training for future educational managers in Ukraine is carried out mainly at the second, master’s level of higher education within the specialties D3 “Management” and A1 “Educational Sciences”, whereas bachelor’s programmes in this field are limited. The analyzed educational programmes demonstrate the orientation of higher education institutions toward the development of managerial, strategic, analytical, communicative, digital, leadership, and project competencies. It has been proved that the modern regulatory and legal framework is gradually reorienting the training of educational managers from a traditional administrative model toward a competency-based, practice-oriented, and professionalized model of management activity. Digital competence, the ability to work with educational data, strategic thinking, inclusive management, academic integrity, transparency, responsibility, and readiness to act under conditions of change are becoming particularly important.

Conclusions. It is substantiated that professional training for future educational managers should develop as an integrated system that combines the requirements of national legislation, higher education standards, professional standards, international competency frameworks, and the real needs of educational practice. A promising direction is the further renewal of educational programmes with a stronger emphasis on the digital, strategic, ethical, inclusive, and practice-oriented components of future educational managers’ training.