far too little attention has been paid to presenting a universal conception of MI
education development as pedagogical phenomenon in the system of higher education.
Taking the afore-mentioned into consideration, the aim of the paper is to present
the theoretical framework of research into the development of MI education as a
modern pedagogical problem. Accordingly, the present study attempts: 1) to analyze
scientific and educational literature on the research problem; 2) to provide the
terminological framework of the study; 3) to outline main directions of MI education
development, and 4) to specify the place of this pedagogical phenomenon in the system
of higher education.
The research methodology involves using a number of theoretical methods.
Induction and deduction enable collecting theoretical and factual data as well as its
generalization. The authors use analysis and synthesis for specifying the content of MI-
related core terms and main directions of MI education development. The comparison
of the terminology used by leading international, interregional and national MI
associations helps to distinguish differences in its usage. The historical method gives a
general insight into the process of establishing and developing MI as a scientific field,
academic discipline and specialty in the system of higher education.
Medical informatics: a terminological aspect of the pedagogical problem. The
thorough study of MI-related scientific works and official documentation of
professional associations reveals a terminological dissonance in presenting the
development of MI education as a pedagogical problem. In order to understand the
origin of MI’s debatable nature, we first make an attempt to trace the birth of a scientific
field that deals with information and ways of its handling.
We determine that the history of the science about information dates back to the
end of the 19
th
when the mankind observed a rapid development of industrial
relationships and an increase in document quantity. At that time, the Belgian scientist
P. Otlet worked on developing theoretical and practical framework for collecting,
processing, storing and distributing documents in order to ensure their effective
circulation in the most important spheres of the human life. Therefore, nowadays the
scientist is often regarded the founder of ‘documentation’, a forerunner of the science
about information [4].
The next evolutionary stage in the development of the science about information
covers the time after the Second World War. Cybernetics as a new scientific field
appeared and gradually began gaining its popularity in scientific enquiries of that time.
It was regarded to be the science of managing complex systems of technical, biological
or social origins. However, in the former Soviet Union’s republics, cybernetics was
established as a science studying general laws of retrieving, storing and processing
information in complex management systems [8; 16]. This fact explains why the term
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