Social pedagogues are specialists representing the nurturant profession that requires high professionalism and is still in great demand. The modern society needs highly qualified social pedagogues to address the issues of younger generation’s socialization in today's complex socio-economic and political context. Future social pedagogues improve their professional skills by mastering the profession through gaining the awareness of their professional level that motivates the career development. The excellence and necessary competences are incepted at the stage of professional education. The authors of this article investigate the features of future social pedagogues’ professional formation in the training systems of Russian and Kazakhstan. Research methods are analysis, comparison, generalization, synthesis, historical and pedagogical reconstruction. The article presents the results of a comparative analytical review of professional formation specifics in the national education systems of Russia and Kazakhstan. The comparison of professional formation specifics demonstrated the common problems of social pedagogues’ training determined by the shared historical past, the similarity of socio-economic factors in the development of the education systems. The identified differences imply the analysis of the ways to improve the training of future social pedagogues. The analysis shows that the professional success of social pedagogues is defined by focusing on social competences and social responsibility development as part of the training process. According to the authors, specialists' training based on the methodological principles of axiological approach contributes to the formation of future social pedagogues’ conscious attitude both to their education and their professional development.

The concept of generation is used to describe a group of people who were born in the same years and experienced similar social events, troubles and obligations under the conditions of the same age. Generational formation is generally classified according to age and sociological phenomena. However, today, factors such as technology, differentiating social values, changing career perceptions, education and working conditions reveal the necessity of evaluating the classification according to different dimensions. The field of professional competence is an important issue all over the world. Especially with the technology that has developed and continues to develop in recent years, the qualifications of teachers in this field are important. We live in the age of technology. The aim of this study is to determine the opinions of teacher candidates studying at the Faculty of Education about the ‘Media Literacy’ course. For this purpose, the case study method, one of the qualitative research approaches, was used. 71 students studying in the Faculty of Education at the university constituted the study group of the research. Semi-structured interview questions prepared by the researchers were used. In the analysis of data collection tools, the qualitative data analysis programme NVivo 8.0 was used and the results were interpreted with content analysis. When the results obtained from the research were examined, it was concluded that the media literacy course should be given in earlier periods. The most preferred media tools were television and the Internet. It has been concluded that media literacy provides human skills and teaching in the teaching process. Considering the results of this research, the importance of the media literacy course in terms of professional development at the university was emphasised. Keywords: Student, media literacy, technology, educational technology;