Social design educators, art tech and professional skills of the future in the current discourse on
the application-oriented university. The authors investigate the ways of training professional
competencies of future social teachers is improved with art technologies as a part the university
curriculum. Professional competence is seen as a structure, which includes value-motivational,
cognitive, operational-technological and reflexive components of the unity system ensuring sociopedagogical work.
The research was performed quasi-experimentally using mixed methods in a pedagogical
university. The initial sample included four complete aspirant groups of bachelor students in Social
Pedagogy (N = 84) that were randomly distributed across the experimental group and a control one. In
the treatment group the students worked within a semester-long module ―Art Technologies in SocialPedagogical Work‖, which integrated elements of visual art, drama, music and narrative/digital
storytelling technologies across structured sequences of theory, experience-based exercises and microteaching. The control group studied the same topics in a traditional lecture–seminar mode devoid of
art-based techniques. Professional competencies were measured by a Likert-scale self-assessment
instrument and set of case-based diagnostic tasks before and after the intervention; qualitative data
came from reflective journals, and project portfolios.
Quantitative findings reveal statistically significant and large effects across all 4 competency
elements in the treatment group, with barely perceptible non-significant changes among controls. The
gains are particularly strong in functional-technological and reflective competencies and evidenced
by higher scores on case-specific tasks. Qualitative findings indicate change in students‘ construction
of the social teacher; enhanced confidence with specific methods, deeper reflexivity and an increased
level of commitment to teaching.
The paper concludes that art technologies as embedded as structured pedagogical technologies
(notation episodic activities), are a productive and theoretically justified tool to develop the
professional competences of the future social teachers. Implications for curriculum development,
teacher training and further research on social pedagogy are considered.