2 structure and main problems of educational psychology. Preventive work of a psychologist at school

IN educational psychology there are a number of problems, theoretical and practical significance which justifies the allocation and existence of this field of knowledge.

One of the most important in the development of children is problem of sensitive periods in a child's life. The essence of the problem is that:

¨ firstly, all sensitive periods of development of the child’s intellect and personality, their beginning, activity and end are not known;

¨ secondly, in the life of each child they are individually unique, occur at different times and proceed in different ways. Difficulties also arise with determining the psychological qualities of the child, which can be formed and developed in this sensitive period.

The second problem concerns the connection that exists between the consciously organized pedagogical influence on the child and his psychological development. Do training and upbringing lead to the development of a child or not? Is all learning developmental? How are the biological maturation of the body, learning and development of the child related to each other? These are just some of the issues that are part of this problem.

The third problem concerns general and age combination of training and education. It is known that each age of a child opens up its possibilities for intellectual and personal growth. Are they the same for all children, and how can these opportunities be optimally used? How to connect in pedagogical process educational and training influences so that they stimulate development?

The next one is the problem of the systemic nature of child development and complexity pedagogical influences . Its essence is to present the development of a child as a progressive transformation of many of his cognitive and personal properties, each of which can be developed separately, but the development of each affects the development of many other properties and in turn depends on them.

Another problem is the problem of the connection between maturation and learning, inclinations and abilities, genotypic and environmental conditioning of development psychological characteristics and child behavior. In a generalized form, it is presented in the form of a question about how genotype and environment separately and jointly affect the psychological and behavioral development of a child.

The sixth is the problem of children's psychological readiness for conscious education and training. When solving it, you need to determine what psychological readiness for training and education means, in what sense of the word this readiness should be understood:

¨ in the sense of the child’s inclinations or development of abilities for education and training;

¨ in the sense of personal level of development;

¨ in the sense of achieving a certain stage of intellectual and personal maturity.

Important and the problem of pedagogical neglect of the child(by which is meant his inability to assimilate pedagogical influences and accelerated development, caused by avoidable reasons, in particular the fact that more early stages the child was poorly trained and raised in his development).

The eighth problem is ensuring individualization of training. It means the need for a scientifically based division of children into groups in accordance with their abilities and inclinations, as well as the application to each child of teaching and upbringing methods that are best suited to his individual characteristics.

The last one on our list is problem of social adaptation and rehabilitation. Here we're talking about about the adaptation of children who find themselves socially isolated and unprepared for a normal life among people, to learn and interact with them on a personal and business level. For example, children who were sick a lot came from orphanages, boarding schools and other closed educational institutions. Social rehabilitation is the restoration of impaired social connections and the psyche of such children, so that they can successfully learn and develop like all normal children in communication and interaction with people around them.

Solving the listed psychological and pedagogical problems requires the teacher to have high professional qualifications, a considerable part of which are psychological knowledge, skills and abilities.

There are a number of problems in educational psychology, the theoretical and practical significance of which justifies the identification and existence of this field of knowledge.

1. The problem of the relationship between training and development.
One of the most important problems of educational psychology is the problem of the relationship between learning and mental development.
The problem under consideration is a derivative of a general scientific problem - the problem of the relationship between the biological and the social in a person or as a problem of genotypic and environmental conditioning of the human psyche and behavior. The problem of genetic sources of human psychology and behavior is one of the most important in psychological and educational sciences- from her the right decision depends on the fundamental solution to the question of the possibilities of teaching and raising children, people in general. According to modern science, it is almost impossible to directly influence the genetic apparatus through training and education and, therefore, what is given genetically cannot be re-educated. On the other hand, training and education in themselves have enormous potential in terms of the mental development of the individual, even if they do not affect the genotype itself and do not affect organic processes.

In Russian psychology, this problem was first formulated by L.S. Vygotsky in the early 30s. XX century He substantiated the leading role of training in development, noting that training should go ahead of development and be a source of new development.
This raises a number of questions:
How do training and education lead to development?
Does all learning contribute to development or only problematic and so-called developmental ones?
How are the biological maturation of the body, learning and development related to each other?
Does learning influence maturation, and if so, to what extent? Does this influence affect the fundamental solution to the question of the relationship between learning and development?
2. The problem of the relationship between training and education.
Another problem, which is closely related to the previous one, is the problem of the relationship between training and education. The processes of teaching and upbringing in their unity represent a pedagogical process, the purpose of which is education, development and formation of personality. In essence, both occur through the interaction of teacher and student, educator and pupil, adult and child, located in certain living conditions, in a certain environment.
The problem under consideration includes a number of issues:
How do these processes interdetermine and interpenetrate each other?
How do they influence various types activities for training and education?
What are psychological mechanisms acquisition of knowledge, formation of abilities, skills and assimilation social norms, standards of behavior?
What are the differences between pedagogical influence in teaching and upbringing?
How does the learning process itself and the process of upbringing proceed?
These and many other questions form the essence of the problem under consideration.
3. Accounting problem sensitive periods development in learning.
One of the most important problems in the study of child development is the problem of finding and maximizing the use of the sensitive period in his life for the development of each child. Sensitive periods in psychology are understood as periods of ontogenetic development, when a developing organism is especially sensitive to certain types of influences from the surrounding reality. For example, at the age of about five years, children are especially sensitive to the development of phenomenal hearing, and after this period this sensitivity decreases somewhat. Sensitive periods are periods of optimal development of certain aspects of the psyche: processes and properties. Starting learning something too early can have an adverse effect on mental development, just as starting it too late can be ineffective.
The difficulty of the problem under consideration lies in the fact that all sensitive periods of development of the child’s intellect and personality, their beginning, duration and completion are not known. Approaching the study of children individually, it is necessary to learn to predict the onset of various sensitive periods of development for each child.
4. The problem of children's giftedness.
The problem of giftedness in Russian psychology began to be studied more closely only in last decade. General talent refers to the development of general abilities that determine the range of activities in which a person can achieve great success.
Gifted children are “children who display one or another special or general giftedness”4.
Based on the above definitions, a number of questions can be raised specifically related to the identification and training of gifted children:
What is characteristic of the age sequence of manifestation of giftedness?
By what criteria and signs can one judge the giftedness of students?
How to establish and study the giftedness of children in the process of training and education, in the course of students performing one or another meaningful activity?
How to promote the development of giftedness in students educational process?
How to combine the development of special abilities with broad ones general education training and comprehensive development of the student’s personality?
5. The problem of children's readiness for school.

Children's readiness to learn at school is “a set of morphological and psychological characteristics older child preschool age, ensuring a successful transition to a systematic, organized schooling».

In the pedagogical and psychological literature, along with the term “readiness for schooling,” the term “school maturity” is used. These terms are almost synonymous, although the second one more reflects the psychophysiological aspect of organic maturation.

The problem of children's readiness for school is revealed through the search for answers to a number of questions:
How do the child’s living conditions and his assimilation of social experience in the course of communication with peers and adults influence the formation school readiness?
What system of requirements imposed on a child by the school determines psychological readiness for schooling?
What is meant by psychological readiness for schooling?
What criteria and indicators can be used to judge psychological readiness for school?
How to build correctional and developmental programs to achieve school readiness? Solving the listed and other psychological and pedagogical problems not mentioned here, but posed by practical activities, requires a teacher or educator to have high professional qualifications, a significant part of which is psychological knowledge, skills and abilities.

In the psychology of teaching and raising children, there are a number of problems, the theoretical and practical significance of which justifies the identification and existence of this field of knowledge. Let's consider and discuss these problems.

One of the most important problems in the development of children is finding and making the maximum possible use for the development of each sensitive period in a child’s life. The problematic nature of this issue lies in the fact that, firstly, we do not know all the sensitive periods of development of the child’s intellect and personality, their beginning, duration and end. Secondly, in the life of each child they are, apparently, individually unique, occur at different times and proceed in different ways. Difficulties associated with practical pedagogical decision This problem also consists in accurately determining the signs of the beginning of a sensitive period, as well as the complexes of psychological qualities of a child that can form and develop within a particular sensitive period. It can be assumed that for most of the psychological properties and behavioral characteristics of a child, not one, but several sensitive periods occur during his life. When studying children individually, it is also necessary to learn to predict the onset of various sensitive periods of development. In educational psychology today there is no unambiguous and completely satisfactory answer to most of these questions.

Another problem that has long attracted the attention of educational psychologists and which over the next few decades has been discussed with varying degrees of success by specialists from different countries, concerns the connection that exists between the consciously organized pedagogical influence on the child and his psychological development. Does training and upbringing lead to development, or does the child acquire as a result only a certain set of knowledge, skills and abilities that do not determine either his intellectual or moral development? Does all learning contribute to development or only problematic and so-called developmental ones? How are the biological maturation of the body, learning and development of the child related to each other? Does learning influence maturation, and if so, to what extent? Does this influence affect the fundamental solution to the question of the relationship between learning and development? These are just some of the issues that are part of the problem under discussion. In the next chapter we will look in more detail at the proposed solutions to these problems, the advantages and disadvantages of each of them.

The third problem concerns general and age-specific combination of training and education. Each age of a child opens up its own opportunities for his intellectual and personal growth. Are they the same for all children and how can we best use these opportunities? What should be given priority in each specific period of a child’s life - education or upbringing - and how to determine what at a given moment in his life the child most needs: cognitive-intellectual or personal development? Finally, how can educational and training influences be combined in a single pedagogical process so that they complement each other and jointly stimulate development? This is another set of issues logically united by a single problem that do not yet have a final solution.

Even if we imagine that the first three of these problems have already been solved more or less satisfactorily, many others remain. For example, the fourth problem can be called the problem the systemic nature of child development and the complexity of pedagogical influences. She has first of all theoretical interest, but practice directly depends on finding the right solution to this problem. The essence of this problem is to present the child’s development as a progressive transformation of many of his cognitive and personal properties, each of which can be developed separately, but the development of each affects the development of many other properties and in turn depends on them. According to what laws does the system of psychological qualities of a child develop and what are the key influences on it - those on which the transition of the system as a whole to a new quality depends? high level systemic development? Finding a solution to this problem requires not only a good knowledge of psychology, but also an appeal to general theory systems

Also in a certain logical connection with the third of the problems identified above is the fifth problem.

At the same time, it represents a separate, rather complex issue that requires special discussion. connections between maturation and learning, inclinations and abilities, genotypic and environmental conditions for the development of a child’s psychological characteristics and behavior. Is it possible to begin and conduct education before the child has developed certain neurophysiological structures as a result of the maturation of the body, before certain organic inclinations have appeared, or before those abilities, knowledge, skills and abilities have arisen and have received sufficient development? which it is impossible to raise the child’s development to a higher level? Is training itself capable of influencing organic development child, and if so, to what extent? How are abilities and aptitudes really related to each other? Does the development of abilities affect the acquisition of inclinations and are inclinations on their own, under conditions of spontaneous social influences or unorganized learning exerted on them, able to transform into abilities? In a more generalized form, the problem under discussion can be presented as a question about how genotype and environment separately and jointly affect the psychological and behavioral development of a child.

The development of a person’s psychological properties and characteristics cannot be imagined in such a way that they are absent for a certain time and then suddenly appear as if out of nowhere. Rather, the development process is a sequence of states that continuously replace each other, and in it any new property or its transition to a higher level of development is preceded by the existence of the same property in the embryo and its gradual evolutionary or rapid revolutionary change. This means that long before a certain property openly manifests itself outside, in the form of a highly developed quality, there must be a rather long period of its hidden transformation. In relation to most of the psychological properties and characteristics of the child, we know almost nothing about these periods. What are they? Where do they start and how long do they last? What is the ratio of hidden and open periods in development in relation to various psychological properties and characteristics of the child? This is another one of the rather difficult ones scientific problems educational psychology. In particular, it is also associated with the relatively independent problem psychological readiness of children for conscious upbringing and learning. In solving it, it is necessary not only to accurately determine what psychological readiness for training and education actually means, but also to find out in what sense of the word this readiness should be understood: either in the sense of the child having inclinations or already developed abilities to education and training, either in the sense of the child’s current level of development and zone of proximal development, or in the sense of achieving a certain stage of intellectual and personal maturity. The search for valid and sufficiently reliable methods of psychodiagnostics of readiness for education and upbringing, on the basis of which one could assess the capabilities and predict the child’s success in psychological development, poses no small difficulty.

Closely related to the one just identified is the problem pedagogical neglect of the child, by which we should mean his inability to assimilate pedagogical influences and accelerate development, caused by transient, removable reasons, in particular the fact that at earlier stages of his development the child was poorly taught and raised. How to distinguish a child who is hopelessly retarded in development from a pedagogically neglected one, so that, by creating for the latter a socio-psychological favorable conditions, eliminate his developmental delay, thereby preventing this child from falling into the category of hopelessly retarded? This is not only a pedagogical, but also the most acute moral problem of our days, and here the most stringent criteria for selecting children into auxiliary and special schools for the mentally retarded or morally corrupt - those that would not allow pedagogically neglected but correctable children to get there.

Another psychological and pedagogical problem is the problem ensuring individualization of learning. It means the need for a scientifically based division of children into groups based on their existing inclinations and abilities and the application to each child of such programs and methods of teaching or upbringing that are best suited to his individual characteristics.

IN recent years in educational psychology, new terms borrowed from the field began to be widely used social sciences. Among them are concepts social adaptation And rehabilitation. They are about adapting children who, for whatever reason, find themselves socially isolated and not ready for a normal life among people, to communicate and interact with them on a personal and business level. Among them, for example, there are children who have been sick a lot, long time lived in special institutions (orphanages), studied in special, closed educational institutions. Under social rehabilitation This means restoring damaged social connections and the psyche of such children so that they can successfully learn and develop like all normal children in communication and interaction with people around them.

Solving the listed psychological and pedagogical problems requires a teacher or educator to have high professional qualifications, a significant part of which is psychological knowledge, skills and abilities. All of this is clearly lacking in the majority of teachers who are currently engaged in teaching and raising children, since psychology has not yet been included in university teacher training programs in the full scope of the information that it has and which may be useful to the teacher in his practical work. In this regard, an additional psychological and pedagogical problem arises related to advanced training and retraining of teachers and educators in the field of psychology. Determining the content, volume, means and methods of such training is also one of the tasks of educational psychology.

There are a number of problems in educational psychology, the theoretical and practical significance of which justifies the identification and existence of this field of knowledge.

One of the most important in the development of children is problem of sensitive periods in a child's life. The essence of the problem is that:

firstly, all sensitive periods of development of the child’s intellect and personality, their beginning, activity and end are not known;

secondly, in the life of each child they are individually unique, occur at different times and proceed in different ways. Difficulties also arise with determining the psychological qualities of the child, which can be formed and developed in this sensitive period.

The second problem concerns the connection that exists between a consciously organized pedagogical influence on a child and his psychological development. Do training and upbringing lead to the development of a child or not? Is all learning developmental? How are the biological maturation of the body, learning and development of the child related to each other? These are just some of the issues that are part of this problem.

The third problem concerns general and age combination of training and education. It is known that every age of a child opens up its own opportunities for intellectual and personal growth. Are they the same for all children, and how can these opportunities be optimally used? How to combine educational and training influences in the pedagogical process so that they stimulate development?

The next one is the problem of the systemic nature of child development and the complexity of pedagogical influences. Its essence is to present the development of a child as a progressive transformation of many of his cognitive and personal properties, each of which can be developed separately, but the development of each affects the development of many other properties and in turn depends on them.

Another problem is the problem of the connection between maturation and learning, inclinations and abilities, genotypic and environmental conditioning of the development of psychological characteristics and behavior of the child. In a generalized form, it is presented in the form of a question about how genotype and environment separately and jointly affect the psychological and behavioral development of a child.

in the sense of the child’s inclinations or development of abilities for education and learning;

in terms of personal level of development;

in the sense of achieving a certain stage of intellectual and personal maturity.

Important and the problem of pedagogical neglect of the child(by which is meant his inability to assimilate pedagogical influences and accelerated development, caused by removable reasons, in particular the fact that at earlier stages of his development the child was poorly taught and raised).

The last one on our list is problem of social adaptation and rehabilitation. Here we are talking about the adaptation of children who find themselves socially isolated and unprepared for a normal life among people, to learn and interact with them on a personal and business level. For example, children who were sick a lot came from orphanages, boarding schools and other closed educational institutions. Social rehabilitation is the restoration of damaged social connections and the psyche of such children so that they can successfully learn and develop like all normal children in communication and interaction with people around them.

Solving the listed psychological and pedagogical problems requires the teacher to have high professional qualifications, a significant part of which is psychological knowledge, skills and abilities.

IN modern science and practice, there has not been a single, consistent and holistic theoretical model of development, training and education of the individual, based on systematized data from pedagogy, medicine and physiology, sociology, anthropology, general, age, pedagogical and social psychology. However, existing developments and achievements, some positive traditions make it possible to identify the main and promising issues and directions of socio-psychological study (and support) of numerous and always current problems education.

Education and its organized system is a social phenomenon (a snapshot or cast of society), therefore all social conditions and factors are involved in it: politics, economics, culture, ideology, etc. However, the creators, implementers and consumers of education are always specific individuals, subjects of the educational process. Therefore, psychological (personal and social) phenomena, patterns, mechanisms and aspects of education are essentially central and decisive.

Firstly, the mental and personal development of a child in ontogenesis always and only occurs in society. Being born biologically defenseless, a person is designed to live in a complex and special socio-cultural environment, i.e. created by all other people (predecessors and contemporaries) and largely determining the individual course, stages and results of the very existence and development of the individual. In the development of a child, the determining social factor, the real performer, are certain social institutions: family, nursery, kindergarten, school. IN adolescence, taking the path of choosing a profession, a person ends up either in production teams or in various educational institutions. So man is on everything life path is in constant and multi-level interaction and communication with other people, in constant socialization (see Chapter 20). These are traditional, classic and always topical questions and problems of social psychology.

Secondly, each person’s knowledge about the world around him, about himself and society represents a selective, but fairly structured, complex and conceptual education. However, they become such only if a systematic process of translation and assimilation of this knowledge is organized in the education system, taking into account the age and all other characteristics of the child’s and student’s psyche, with maximum regard for his individuality. In other words, it is always desirable individual approach to training and education, which is unattainable in the practice of modern mass and universal education. Formally, this problem is not socio-psychological, but the individuality of each schoolchild is in reality woven from his personal belonging simultaneously to many social (reference) groups, and not just to the purely age-related or some other stage of his mental development (see Chap. 20).

example

Illustrate significance in a general way age characteristics It is possible to conduct a number of experiments to study children’s understanding of the personal characteristics of people around them. of different ages. When analyzing children's descriptions of other people, it was found that preschool children pay attention mainly to external characteristics person (clothing, relationship status, appearance, etc.), junior schoolchildren already highlight some character traits, habits, inclinations, i.e. reveal a noticeable complication in the perception of others. With increasing age, descriptions reflect an increasing use of the actual psychological qualities of the observed person. All this is due not so much to physical age, but to the level of development of the psyche and holistic personality. Thus, relying on known patterns, it is possible and necessary to consciously promote the formation and development of students’ fundamentals social behavior and activity, thinking, speech, perception, consciousness.

Children of high-ranking officials and big bosses, for example, usually differ (behaviorally and psychologically) from their peers who have socially ordinary parents. With age, such differences are outwardly leveled out, but probably cannot disappear forever, because they leave indelible (and not always clearly recognized) traces in the psyche and have complexly mediated manifestations that apply to everyone. psychological areas and the results of the process of socialization of the individual.

Thirdly, this is the need to emphasize the special personal, social and socio-psychological significance of timely mastery of the child and schoolchildren in your own speech(see Chapter 17) and communication. Any communication, any interaction with peers and adults requires the child to have verbal skills and abilities. An unacceptable atavism of psychological illiteracy is the opinion that is still prevalent among parents and teachers that “the child will speak on his own.” Although speech acquisition cannot be considered a completely studied personal process, it can be stated with confidence that it is based on social essence man and his activities. In addition, speech qualitatively rebuilds, equips, improves and develops the entire human psyche (see chapters 17, 20). Speech delays or disorders are inevitably associated with intellectual, emotional and other personal problems, i.e. actually social, deviations in human development. Of course, these well-known facts do not yet provide an unambiguous answer to the practical question of how exactly a child learns to speak, but at least they encourage teachers and educators to arm themselves with basic knowledge of general and social psychology.

Fourthly, the pristine inclusion of a person in society is important, represented at different stages of personal development by various social structures: those with which he encounters every day (parents and relatives, educators, teachers, classmates, friends, etc.), and relatively distant, irregular (other nations, government, art, church, etc.). All this gives the child the opportunity and need not only to observe other people and understand how they interact, but also to certainly learn from them, imitate, and identify with them. In fact, the entire human psyche is not just socialized, but biosocial in nature and essence (see Chapter 20).

example

Researchers have found that children in Scotland and France, for example, have different attitudes towards the system of rules established in schools. Scottish schoolchildren tend to believe that teachers are obliged to implement rules of behavior and subordination at school, regardless of how these norms are perceived and assessed by students (positively or negatively). French schoolchildren believe that a teacher should always act only justly, regardless of what formal rules tell him to do. Of course, these facts reflect not only the national culture, ideology, ethics (or psychology) of the named countries, but also the peculiarities of the organization and functioning of different schools.

Fifthly, the socially organized educational process is an exclusively social phenomenon (in purpose, organization and execution), and even classical pedagogy is increasingly striving to become social pedagogy.

There is no universal pedagogy that is equally acceptable (or effective) for all schools, all nations and cultures, all children or adults, all times and nationalities. The problem of globalization or international unification of education is artificially contrived and essentially erroneous, if not vicious. To organize and implement a productive educational process, a competent teacher and educator must be guided not only by purely pedagogical tasks and rules, but also by a wide range of ineradicable and always specific socio-psychological phenomena, issues and problems. Teaching and upbringing is, by definition, a process of interaction between a teacher and a student, i.e. a deeply social and socio-psychological phenomenon. Knowledge is not transferred mechanically “from hand to hand”, but is acquired in the process of interaction and specific (subject-oriented) communication between both subjects of the educational process (see § 38.2, 41.3). In addition, the teacher always deals not only with a specific, individual student, but also with the whole great team, which lives, changes and, possibly, develops according to its own socio-psychological laws. In the psyche of each specific person they are necessarily represented as certain personality traits and features, and something psychologically group, common for a given school, class, for this or that microgroup of schoolchildren (but interests, academic performance, place of residence, social status parents, etc.). Therefore, almost all current and significant problems of education, i.e. training and education of the individual (see § 38.1), have serious, and sometimes decisive, socio-psychological grounds, which, unfortunately, have not yet received systematic scientific research, and most importantly – adequate and worthy practical implementation.

The social purpose of the education system is not psychologically reduced to the processes of transmission and acquisition of knowledge. Education is, in a certain sense, creation, the formation of the student’s holistic personality, the transformation and development of his entire psyche, which, of course, always belongs to a specific, individual personality (see Chapter 38). But in terms of its species origin, purpose and functioning, personality is a deeply biosocial phenomenon. The human psyche is inseparable not only from brain processes and executive anatomical and physiological structures, but also from human society (see Chapter 4).

Fundamental, key socio-psychological issue related to educational process, is a question about the purpose of state and mass education. What should a school graduate be prepared for: for work, for entering a university, or for the upcoming adult life? Educational goals are formulated state institutions and structures, and therefore necessarily contain ideological, political, economic and other social aspects. It is psychologically necessary that these aspects (and all kinds of laws) do not contradict real possibilities, aspirations and needs of the consumer of education - a living, concrete, developing personality: from a preschooler to an adult (see Chapter 38).