Future Military Pilots’ Professional Competence Formation

Abstract

The article foregrounds the need for future military pilots’ professional competence formation taking into consideration the growing amount of armed conflicts. The analysis of the literary sources indicates that scientists are interested in improving the professional training of future military pilots, but not enough attention is paid to the formation of professional competence of these specialists. Our research set a goal to experimentally test the singled out organizational and pedagogical conditions for future military pilots’ professional competence formation (interdisciplinary integration with the goal of future military pilots’ tactical thinking forming; the use of simulator-based training to practice different types of combat flights by future military pilots; making use of operational pilots’ experience and analysis of combat employment of aviation for the purpose of updating air-tactical knowledge and improving air-tactical training of future military pilots) whether they contribute to the effective formation of the abovementioned definition. The experiment involved 227 persons (undergraduate future military pilots (20–22 years old)), the experimental group consisted of 127 persons, the control group made 100 persons. These groups were qualitatively homogeneous at the initial stage of the experiment. The implementation of distinguished organizational and pedagogical conditions into the educational process of higher military educational institutions provided an opportunity to effectively shape the professional competence of future military pilots, which is confirmed by the methods of mathematical statistics. Thus, the conducted scientific search confirms the effectiveness of proposed conditions of future military pilots’ professional competence formation.