The development of teachers' professional competence, their skills of self-education, as well as their readiness and ability to adapt to the changing social, political and economical conditions should be reckoned among the most important goals of modernizing general secondary education in Kazakhstan. This goal was enunciated as a foreground one and reflected in a number of normative documents in the educational area, particularly, in the Conception of education development in the Republic of Kazakhstan till 2015 [1], State education development program in the Republic of Kazakhstan till 2020 [2].

Currently, there is a new specific direction in the educational field, called “mediatization”.  The term “media” implies all the means of communication and includes the “traditional” (press, radio, sound recording, cinema, television) as well as modern (mobile phones, I-Phones, CD, DVD, computer, Internet etc) mass communication media. Mediatization, as an integrative field of study, explores the ways in which media and media-related phenomena influence education and the mechanisms underlying this process. It also deals with the question, how traditional, as well as modern types of media and telecommunication technologies can be creatively used to facilitate person's self-realization and the self-actualization of its potential. In this context, a specific type of education – media education – has emerged. As Friesen and Hug mention, «media education has been promoted in diverse domains of practice, and it has become an established field in many universities. Today it is mostly seen as a branch of educational sciences and less as a specific concretisation of general pedagogy or educational theory» [3, p. 64]. Some authors, e.g. Hug [4], stress the necessity of discussing the use of media for the educational purposes and discussing other media-related questions as a part of school curriculum. In Germany this approach was called Medienpädagogik (media pedagogy). Hence, the importance of media education for teachers cannot be underestimated.

It is worth to mention, that in some types of learning a high level of teachers' media competence is not only a desirable characteristic, but a requirement for successful learning to happen. Technologies using computer learning environment certainly belong to the above-mentioned case.

However, the analysis of literature in the field of learning sciences showed,  that the problem of developing teachers' media competence learning still remains underinvestigated. Hence, the following contradictions can be observed in the theory and practice of education at the present moment:

• a contradiction between the integrative nature of teacher's media competence and the absence of theoretical and methodological systemic knowledge about, and support of, its training and development in the context of distance learning;
• a contradiction between the urgent need for gaining experience in applying methods of using media technologies in the learning process by contemporary schools and the factual absence of theoretical grounds and methodological support of this process.

These contradictions clearly show the necessity of doing research on the topic we present here. We would also like to mention, that teachers' media competence can be developed only as a result of a purposeful training, therefore we consider it reasonable to lay out the specifics of the phenomenon under investigation.

An analysis of the approaches to defining the concept “competence”, presented by different authors (V.A. Adolf,  [9], S.I. Fercho [10], S.Z. Bajchonova [11], A.A. Zhajtapova [12], M.Z. Zhadrina [13] and others) allows to state, that competence is an integrative personal characteristic of a professional, that promotes a rational and effective execution of a particular activity (in the framework of a specific profession), driving this activity to perfection.

According to A.V. Fedorov, media competence of a person is an aggregate of skills (motivational, contact, informational, perceptional, interpretative (evaluational), practical-operational, creative) to choose, use, critically analyze, evaluate, share and create media texts in different types, forms, genres and to analyze the complicated processes of media functioning in the society.  

It is necessary to stress, that media competence of a person and teacher's media competence can not match perfectly, moreover, they have fundamental differences, have their particular characteristics, determined preeminently by the pedagogical nature of teacher's professional activity and the characteristics, stipulated by this activity. Therefore, we claim, that personal media competence can be considered to be the first stage for the development of teacher's media competence.

Basing on the above-mentioned statements, we define the concept “teacher's media competence” as a personality construct that allows to carry out pedagogical activity productively, actively using facilities of media technologies; that is oriented towards realizing possibilities of professional self-realization and self-actualization in the opened educational media space and being characterized by presence of a number of components: value- motivational, content-related and procedural.

 The relevance of developing teachers' media competence demands revealing the main prerequisites for the achievement of this goal. The most important from them is the identification of component structure of the concept under investigation.  To get a holistic impression of the concept, we need to describe its components precisely enough, what will allow to set clear boundaries of the quality we are investigating and make it sufficiently easier to track the dynamics of its development. Description of the phenomenon's structure also allows to give it a detailed essential characteristic. The component structure of teacher's media competence is determined by the peculiarities of the contemporary teacher's professional pedagogical activity.

Distance learning is designed to foster the development of teacher's media competence. Only the teacher, who strives for professional growth, who has mastered media technologies for learning and educating and who is using them in practice, will work more effective than a teacher using traditional methods and tools of learning and upbringing.

Taking into account the multidimensionality of the phenomenon of interest and lack of research in this area, we considered it to be reasonable to introduce the structure of teacher's media competence.

Basing on different approaches to understanding media competence, we can single out the following components in its structure: value- motivational, content-related and procedural. The structure of media competence, defined in this way is expressed through components, oriented towards work with media information, media technologies and their methods, which, in consistence with systemic approach presuppose a synthesis of theoretical knowledge and specific skills and include a number of characteristics of teacher's professional pedagogical competence.

Basing on the definition of pedagogical system and taking into consideration criteria of its functionality, we designed a system of developing teachers' media competence in the context of distance learning.

The system designed includes target, content-procedural, organizational-technological and criterion-level components.

The target block of the system was formed on the analysis of normative documents (State education development program, Education law of the Republic of Kazakhstan etc.), in which the requirements for the teachers' professional competence are stated.

Content-procedural block is presented as a process of development of teachers' media competence, carried out within the framework of pedagogical process in which the interaction of university teachers, counselors, specialists, tutors and school teachers is organized.

Organizational-technological component of the system is represented in different organizational forms, tools and methods, aimed at achieving goals at each stage of the media competence development.

Criterion-level component of the system includes: psychological – pedagogical diagnostics, monitoring; criteria, indicators and levels of the teacher's media competence development, as well as the end result.

As a part of our research, on the exploratory phase of the experiment the first measurement of teachers' media competence (according to the criteria described above) showed, that most teachers are lacking the systemic knowledge about the essence of media technologies and their role and meaning for the society; knowledge about the methods of constructing learning sessions and educative events using media facilities is insufficient; the skills of deriving and presenting information using media are lacking, as well as skills to manage the media information flows. However, teachers are showing interest to  profession-relevant knowledge, feel the need for information enrichment with media facilities, strive for meeting the requirements of  the new media society in their professional practice.

Consistent with the conclusions from the exploratory phase of the experiment and with our research  goals, the whole experimental work was aimed at testing the effectiveness of the designed teachers' media competence development system in the context of distance learning and at implementation of a media competence developing method, which included three interconnected stages:

On the preparatory stage, the main goal was developing an attitude towards media and media technologies, their different manifestations and forms as having value (value attitude). To accomplish this purpose, we organized and conducted discussions, seminars and trainings with teachers. We also distributed a questionnaire to get an impression of media preferences in the group of teachers and this information has been taken into account during realization of the experimental program. 

On the stage of theoretical preparation, a distance learning course “Development of teacher's media competence” was designed with the purpose of deepening teachers' knowledge about media, forming personal and professional media orientation, a personal view on the media culture mastering the skills of using media technologies in their professional practice. The course was also tested in the Resource center (Ust-Kamenogorsk, Kazakhstan).

 On the third stage (practical preparation) the main goal was development and consolidation of knowledge and skills in a specifically organized media environment. Particular attention was given to work with media technologies and methods of their use in professional pedagogical practice. On this stage, the following technologies were used: trainings, chats, online-counseling, forums, and educational portal of the Resource center, what created an environment for professional self-realization of teachers in the media space and armed them with methods of using media technologies in the school learning process.

The sample of our experimental study consisted of learning  groups formed from teachers of regular schools (N= 350). The teachers' age varied from 24 to 60 years, the amount of work experience varied from 4 to 35 years. Different age categories were represented in the following way: age from 24 to 30  years - 12%, from 31 to 40 years – 36%, 41 - 50 years - 34%, 51 to 60 years – 18%.

The experimental work allowed us to modernize the process of developing teachers' media competence significantly, increase the overall level of  teachers' media competence, get visible results.

Analysis of the results obtained from processing of the experimental data allows to make a conclusion, that implementation of our program resulted with high level of content-related component (87% of teachers who participated in the experiment had high level and 10% - average level of this component) and high level of value-motivational component (79% of teachers had high level, 16% - average level after the experiment). Concerning the procedural component of teachers' media competence, its level is a bit lower than this on two other components (75% of teachers showed high level on this component and 23% - average level), what indicates the need for further improvement of practice-oriented procedural knowledge and skills of using media technologies in professional activity.

The effectiveness of experimental work on development of teachers' media competence in the distance learning environment was confirmed basing on an increased level of the following indicators: level of knowledge about the essence of media technologies, their meaning and role in the society; creative approach to the process of making media texts; ability to analyze complicated processes of media' functioning; knowledge about methods of designing lessons and educative events using media tools; knowledge of the main notions and terminology of media education; skills in selecting content and methods of learning and educative activity, based on the use of media; assuring the variety of learning and educative content based on the means of media; ability to manage the subject position of learner basing  on the means of media; interest to the professionally relevant knowledge and need for its obtainment using media; need for information enrichment through the means of media etc.

To conclude, the process of developing teachers' media competence in the distance learning environment presupposed design and implementation of the following interconnected stages: preparatory, theoretical and practical, with the leading role of the distance learning course “Development of teacher's media competence”, as well as didactic games, trainings, forums, counseling, use of the specialized informational learning portal of the Resource center (Ust-Kamenogorsk).