At the present stage of the society development there takes place a transformation of the education purposes caused by fundamental changes of public life,  bringing to the revision of science fundamentals, to the new type of scientific thinking. In these conditions higher education institutions face an essential problem of the personality orientation in the new space, formations of a competitive sociable expert. From here it is obvious that for the solution of this task there is needed the competence-based approach to the educational process focused on the formation of  competences permitting persons to adapt in the new changing world, to find new ways of development and self-development, to be able to analyze a situation, to estimate their own professional opportunities, to be guided in the norms and ethics of the relationships.

Therefore the issue of the competence-based approach to education requires scientific judgment and detailed research. The carried-out analysis of the scientific studies devoted to this subject permits to allocate in it some key concepts - "competency" and "competence". It should be noted that in scientific literature the unambiguous understanding of these concepts is absent, there is a set of various interpretations and definitions, besides, the issue of their ratio is disputable. A number of researchers consider the concepts "competency" and "competence" identical, some others - differentiated. Having analyzed these and other approaches, in our research, following S.Sh. Chernova, I.L. Zimnyaya, Ilyazova M.D., we will consider "competency" and "competence" as the mutually subordinated components of the subject’s activity, meaning by the concept "competency" the knowledge, experience in a certain area; a circle of powers, rights of anybody or an official; under "competence"  we will mean  possession a certain competency, that is knowledge and experience of their own activity permitting to take out objective judgments and to make exact decisions [3], [4],[6].

Proceeding from this point of view, we come to the conclusion that an expert competent of the business is to possess different types of competences on which the quality of his professional activity formation depends.

In scientific literature there is a set of various classifications and types of competences, but, in our opinion, the most important for students of technical colleges are common cultural, communicative, professional, as well as research competences. Allocating these types, we mean the need of developing a spiritual shape of a future expert, his general culture, his ability to self-development and self-improvement characterizing the future expert both as a personality and as an expert.

Common cultural competences assume familiarizing of not humanitarian students with the ideas of humanity, formation of a versatile erudite and sociable expert as a subject of culture, a carrier of high moral qualities and social activity. According to A.V. Khutorsky, common cultural competences mean the knowledge of features of national and universal culture, spiritual and moral bases of human life and mankind, culturological bases of the family, social, public phenomena and traditions, fundamentals of sciences, religions, etc. the development of this knowledge opens a scientific picture of the world, leads to its culturological and universal understanding [5], [10].

Common cultural competences, including a wide range of issues having a great value in human life are, in our opinion, the basic competences showing the level of culture and education of an expert.  Therefore the formation of common cultural competences of students is to be carried out in the course of the entire educational process, within each discipline.

Mastering common cultural competences provides a common cultural competence which, according to L.S. Troyanskaya, is "the integrative ability of a personality caused by experience of the cultural space development, the level of learning, good education and development, orientation to the use of cultural standards" [8],

Communicative competences promote the development of the communicative abilities directed to increasing the level of the speech culture which is shown in the ability to possess the thought and the word. S.V. Privalova notes the relevance of knowledge of speech communication to sociocultural norms and stereotypes. According to the scientist, there enters "the knowledge of methods of the speech dialogization: the ability to use the address in various forms, the ability to express sincerely the assessment of this or that fact; the ability to predict emotive reactions of interlocutors, knowing the means of communication intimization" [7].

Mastering communicative competences represents the communicative competence consisting in knowledge of rules and norms of speech communication, speech etiquette, orientation in the communicative means promoting self-expression and development of the character role in the sphere of professional activity.

 Professional competences are directed to vocational training of students, giving special knowledge, developing professional qualities necessary in the future professional activity. Defining social and professional suitability of experts, their successful adaptation in different social and professional communities, professional competences represent a universal ability of a person to use the acquired knowledge and abilities in the course of professional activity, as well as to use effective ways of performing their professional actions. Researcher V.I. Baydenko defines the concept of "professional competences" as knowledge and abilities needed for working in  specialty, the development of cooperation with colleagues and professional interpersonal environment, the integrated combination of abilities and purposes permitting to carry out work in present day conditions[1].

Professional competence as the development of professional competency is an indicator of the education quality. A.N. Dorofeyev allocates such its characteristics, as "topical qualification", "cognitive readiness", "communicative readiness", "creative readiness... ", "understanding of tendencies and main directions of the development of professional area and technological sphere...", "...the requirement, aspiration and readiness for professional self-improvement, corporate self-identification and positioning", "steady and developing professionally significant qualities... " [2].

Research competences consist in familiarizing of technical students with scientific and technical creativity, solution of research design tasks. For the formation of these competences there are to be developed special conditions, some effective methods aimed at the development of abilities: 

- to generalize and to estimate critically the information for the solution of objectives;

- to find various approaches to the solution of research tasks;

- to collect and compare the material for preparation and writing of abstract works, reports;

- to analyze the ready and obtained results of studies, to draw conclusions;

- to see and formulate the problem, to understand and to define the purpose of research work;

- to understand and to prove relevance, novelty, theoretical and practical importance of the study;

- to master independently new methods of research;

- to produce ideas, to plan and carry our studies;

- to represent and to defend the results of the work.

In our opinion, the formation of technical students’ research competence is to be based in the course of the educational activity. The continuity of the educational process at a higher education institution, the consecutive movement from theoretical knowledge to mastering profile disciplines, the development of the needed personal qualities in the educational process, the transition from educational-research to scientific-research activity provides the consecutive mastering of research competences.

From the literature analysis concerning the formation of certain types of competences it is obvious that it is difficult to allocate a uniform approach, a certain classification of competency and competence, the general system of concepts and categories. Besides, a lot of researchers allocate various subspecies in one competence. In our study we made an attempt not to compare types and subspecies of key concepts, but to consider their main types and to open their value for students of technical colleges.  

The formation of common cultural, communicative, professional, research competences at students of technical colleges permits to construct successful professional activity, to interact in collective, to treat the work creatively.

Thus, the competence-based approach to the educational process meaning the formation of various competences at students is needed for updating the content of education, therefore the idea of such an approach is topical and requires further studying.

2. Dorofeyev A.N. Professional competence as indicator of education quality / A.N. Dorofeyev // Higher education in Russia. 2005. No. 4. P. 30-33.

3. Zimnyaya I.A. Key competences as a new paradigm of modern education results // Eydos Internet journal. 2006. http://www.eidos.ru/journal/2006/0505.htm.

4. Ilyazova M.D. About structure of future expert competence // Integration of science and higher education. 2008. No. 1. P. 67-71.

5. Competences of education: experience of design // Coll. ofsci. proc. / Under the editorship of A.V. Khutorsky. M.: Scientific implementation enterprise "INEK", 2007. 327 p.

6. Ozhegov S.I. Explanatory dictionary of Russian. M.: Onyx. 2008.

7. Privalova S.V. Role of speech communication in personal development of a preschool child // Pedagogical education. 2009. No. 2. P. 92-99.

8. Troyanskaya S.L. Development of common cultural competence of students by means of museum pedagogics: Diss. … Cand. Educ. – Izhevsk, 2004 - 23 p.

9. Khovov O.V. Professional competence // Encyclopedia of vocational education: 3rd ed. / under the editorship of S.Ya. Batyshev. M.: APO, 1998. V.1. P. 454-455.

10. Khutorsy A.V. Didactic heuristics: Theory and technology of creative training. M.: MSU publ. house, 2003. 416 p.