Testing as a way to assess the development of bachelors’ environmental competence at pedagogical universities

The paper is devoted to the problem of prospective teachers’ ecological competence development, as well as to the peculiarities of diagnostics of ecological competence components development. The goal of the paper is to show the experience of implementing a competence-based approach for a professional training of bachelors majoring in Pedagogical Education and methodological approaches aimed at assessing the process of professional competencies development. The paper deals with the concepts of «environmental education» and «environmental competence». The authors define the environmental competence of a pedagogical university graduate as an integrated quality of personality based on theoretical knowledge, practical skills in the field of ecology and readiness of a prospective teacher for environmentally adequate and professionally appropriate behavior in situations of moral choice. A student’s environmental competence is presented as a complex system that includes a number of components (cognitive, value-motivational, professional-activity). The authors describe means of assessing students’ environmental competence development, paying special attention to a pedagogical testing. The paper defines the main stages of designing a pedagogical test and the conditions for its use. The paper also contains the results of a pedagogical experiment which was done at Natural Geography Institute of Samara State University of Social Sciences and Education. The use of testing for professional education makes it possible to determine the compliance of the content, level and quality of students’ training, while systematic testing allows you to evaluate the process of pedagogical university students’ environmental competence development.