The purpose of this article is aimed at the development of pedagogical tools and methods of forming students' competencies in the course of higher education. The submitted paper presents the potential of information technology in forming professional competencies of the university students providing the students' classroom and individual organization. The grounds for the presented paper have become the ideas of competence-based approach, the system of modern didactic principles that intensify the students' learning and cognitive activities. The article describes the structure of modern e-learning system that satisfies the federal state educational standards and contributes to the students' professional competencies. This article is intended for the educators, researchers, heads of educational institutions engaged in the development of academic syllabi and pedagogical tools to provide university students with professional competencies.

The article deals with the issues of supporting and developing the gender identity of boys at the stage of preschool childhood. The authors argue that it is possible to form the socially determined ideas about males in boys and to teach them the gender behavior based on these ideas but it should be carried out at the stage of pre-school childhood. The article contains the material of the experiment including specially selected forms, methods and conditions for teaching boys the masculinity at a senior pre-school age. The scientific novelty lies in the fact that the totality of the findings contains a solution to the problem: the special forms and methods of working with preschoolers used in teaching allowed us to form specific features of gender-role behavior at a pre-school age. The theoretical significance is that the study defines the components of gender identity (cognitive, emotional-personal, behavioral) and their content, and identifies the factors that contribute to the development of gender identity in boys. The practical significance of the study lies in the applied orientation of the findings that can be widely employed in the practice of pre-school educational organizations.