TITLE: Developing Subjection of Kindergarteners by Introducing Them to Russian Nature and Culture

AUTHOR: Klarina, Lyubov M., Semerikova, Tatyana A., Bulatova, Lilia V.

DESCRIPTORS: kindergarten, subjection, Russian nature, Russian culture, identity, autonomy, reflexivity, goal-oriented activity, objective conditionality of actions, a pedagogical project.

SYNOPSIS: In this article, the authors present the design and results of an experimental project which allowed them to explore the conditions of the kindergarteners’ subjectivity development. The project was based on the Subject’s Activity Model as developed by Dr. Lyubov Klarina, and it helped to raise children’s interest in Russian nature and culture, contributing to the development of their civic and cultural identity.

Developing Subjection of Kindergarteners
By Introducing Them to Russian Nature and Culture

Klarina, Lyubov M.¹, Semerikova, Tatyana A.², Bulatova, Lilia V.³

In September 2007, the teachers of Preschool #1631 set up an experiment to explore conditions that contribute to the development of kindergarteners’ subjection.
This research is based on the Subject’s Activity Model as developed by Dr. Lyubov Klarina. The model describes subjection in terms of various closely interrelated parameters, (of course, these parameters are not enough to fully comprehend the definition of the subject though they are its indispensable attributes). These parameters are:

1) Identity. It is “a subjective sense as well as an observable quality of personal sameness and continuity, paired with some belief in the sameness and continuity of some shared world image.^4” (Erik Erikson). Striving to find his or her personal identity a human being seeks the answer to the questions, “What am I, who am I with, and where am I going?”

A small child has a sense of personal sameness with his parents; he looks for it subconsciously (the child is not concerned with reasons – he just wants to be like Father and/or Mother because the child loves them). As the child grows, it is necessary to create conditions so that the child’s identity grows as well: from the non-reflexive sameness of a child with his parents (closest, nearest and dearest adults) towards the sameness with social adults (instructors, teachers, mentors, etc.) as well as his peers. This is exactly what happens to a child of preschool or elementary school age.

2) Autonomy. Essentially autonomy as the realization of subjection may be briefly described as follows: “I – as a subject – act according to the law of my own will” (compare Immanuel Kant’s “I – as an ethical subject – act according to the law of my own will.”)

Autonomy rejects imitating familiar ways, acts, behavior, “beaten tracks” – it implies searching for one’s “own laws” to live by.

Having perceived one’s own identity as well as realizing and analyzing the degree and nature of autonomy available in all circumstances, the subject develops his self-determination as the subject of activity, i.e. his attitude towards this activity. Self-determination is based on reflexive abilities.

3) Reflexivity (from Latin reflexio – ‘bending back’) means a generic human ability to direct its own consciousness towards itself, towards the person’s own inner world and one’s place in interrelationship with others, towards ways and forms of cognitive and transforming activity.

Reflexivity, being an indelible feature of subjection, permeates all its characteristics. We identify:

• Reflexivity towards one’s own consciousness, self-determination and its basis – towards determination of one’s own attitude.
• Reflexivity towards one’s own activity and thinking – towards their basis, facilities and ways.

Preschool and elementary school age is the time when the child develops basic levels of reflection of the means and ways towards various types of activities:

• External reflection, or determining reflection level, which implies reflection on specific meaningful actions (“What did I/we do?”, “In what way?”) and activity experience overall (“How did I/we find out?”, “How did I/we manage to do it?”).
• Comparative reflection level which implies reflection on one’s own skills and achievements (“These are the strategies I have mastered, and these are the strategies I haven’t mastered yet, and these are the ones I intend to master.”)
• Emotional reflection level. “What especially interested (surprised, puzzled, gladdened) me today?” In particular, which means and problem solving strategies caused such a reaction?
• Communication and cooperation reflection level. “What did I/we say?”, “Which means and strategies do we need to understand each other better and coordinate our intentions (plans, actions, etc.)?”

By the end of preschool  (according to Victor Slobodchikov’s age typology) under favorable conditions the child develops a subjection attitude to her “wishes and skills” (Galina Tsukerman). It means that already at a preschool age a child is able to understand what, and to what degree she knows and can do something about, and is able to assess her own inner abilities to perform a certain act (at the same time trying to strengthen and develop such abilities). However, as a rule, it seems possible for a child to develop reflection, autonomy and identity only if she acts not on her own account but is involved in an active child-adult community which is a fully developed subject of the child’s activity and development.

To describe the subject’s positioning activity (or activity which meets the person’s position), we will make use of two more characteristics:

4) Goal-oriented activity as a human quality that implies concurrence in goals, values, products and results of the doer. While performing such activities the individual “transforms reality and reproduces himself in his activity” (see Khaykin, p. 203).

Apart from goal-oriented activities, there is another, more significant feature to describe the subject – non-adaptive activities meaning the desire of an individual to go beyond what has been achieved, to strive for the unknown, undeveloped, and not yet comprehended (see Petrovskiy).

The genuine subject of his own activity carries out personal intention in spite of any unfavorable conditions. Moreover, such a person tries to overcome possible external “obstacles” such as lack of support, pessimism and opposition, lack of time and money, etc. On the other hand, this subject must be able to adequately estimate if he is able to carry out his plan (or the plan should be altered, postponed, etc.).

Goal-oriented and non-adaptive activities, an ability to overcome problems when realizing the intention of his action – all of these are mastered by a child if a close adult (who takes the subject position) creates adequate conditions.

5) Objective conditionality of actions (cultural, social, and natural). This feature means that while performing any activity the subject has to take into account the laws of nature and society valid for the current period of human civilization. In other words, the person’s activity must be culture-based, socio-based, and nature-based.

Consequently, during the preschool time children acquire means and strategies of interaction with real-life situations. Such means and strategies must be available to children, be up-to-date and conform to the current stage of human society development. These include:

• means and strategies of empirical and logical cognition (including self-discovery);
• means and strategies of transformation, i.e. self-development, influence on others, productive activities (including drawing, design, literature, music, etc.), elements of work (including self-service), etc.;
• means and strategies of communication and value-based interaction.

It is very important that acquisition of the above means and strategies which are contemporary and available to children should be organized in such a way that children may use them interactively, i.e. actively influencing them. To achieve this, adults must create such conditions (in particular, those which will “trigger” a child’s reflection) that children will be able to comprehend the following:

• newly acquired means and strategies will introduce changes into a child’s interaction with the world;
• newly acquired means and strategies may be used not only to gain known goals and objectives but also to set and gain new (including more expansive) goals and objectives;
• newly acquired means and strategies may serve as a basis to create or adopt new means and strategies.

When the above conditions are met, children will develop their autonomy. The aforementioned model describes the subject of activity and may be visually presented in Chart 1.

Chart 1

In 2009-2010, educators and experimenters from our preschool applied the above model to launch a pedagogical project aimed at developing civic and cultural identity of kindergarteners by introducing them to Russian nature and culture. The idea was carried out in four stages:

The first stage focused on selecting the syllabus related to Russian nature and culture which would be interesting, challenging and emotionally responsive to children.
We are convinced that it is possible to develop subjection only if adults (who are involved in educational activities) consider children’s interests. This concept was suggested many years ago by the renowned Soviet psychologist Lev Vygotsky, who wrote, “In early childhood a child learns according to her own program; in school the teacher defines a child’s program of learning; a kindergartener is able to learn to the extent she accepts the teacher-defined program” (See Vygotsky).

At the beginning of the school year we selected two experimental groups – preschool and kindergarten. Then we arranged educational situations during which we learned from children that they are interested in the Russian countryside – village streets, houses, churches, and household. We wanted to find out how long children would be interested in these subjects. In order to do this, we continued to analyze the children’s creative works (mainly drawings, applications, and Lego-type objects). As a result, we concluded that the kindergarten group had stable interests in the national church architecture, and the preschool children were interested in building toy houses (old and modern rural cottages and vacation cabins).

The second stage of our pedagogical project focused on the choice of children’s activity types which are most productive for children to master the planned skills and to achieve the project’s goals.

We believe that it is productive activity that helps children feel like creators while obtaining the results of their work “here and now.” Indeed, it is productive activities that motivate a child to make his own independent steps from his own ideas towards the situation, from the plan towards its implementation – and thus to hold his personal position and accumulate his personal experience. Productive activities enable children to express and reflect what they see around them, what concerns them and triggers positive emotions.

We defined types of creative productive activities which were interesting to children. In the kindergarten group that was making paper and soft toys and objects, and in the preschool group those were application, 3-D modeling and drawing.

Having completed a versatile analysis of content and activity preferences of the children, we managed to define the following subjects which under favorable conditions will contribute to the civic and cultural identity development of the children:

• Russian nature and areas where various peoples of Russia live;
• various types of buildings in Russia (Russian traditional residential house, yurt, church, mosque, etc.);
• old artifacts, utensils, etc. used by peoples of Russia;
• literature and music in the middle, northern, southern, and eastern parts of Russia.

The third stage of our pedagogical project was the search for conditions of children’s activities’ organization that contribute to subjection development. We tried to design the educational process so that it would promote a child’s self-reliance and initiative as well as reflection in the process of interaction, creative activity and artistic design (for both experimental groups), and also cognitive activities for the preschool group.

To achieve this goal, we undertook the following:

• We determined which means and strategies, necessary for the above types of activities, each experimental group already mastered.
• We studied the principles of educational situations’ design that contribute to the subjection development of a child.
• Based on these principles, we worked out a system of educational situations which enabled sustained motivation of children to the selected content and activity types as well as encouraged mini child-adult projects within the main project.

It should be noted that the work during the experiment in Preschool #1631 involved both traditional preschool methods of teaching and unorthodox educational situations. Such educational situations may be both specially planned or show up spontaneously. Due to the proposed educational situations, the children gained a wider subjective experience (they revealed more active self-reliance and initiative in productive activities), they also acquired new means and strategies in dealing with creative content necessary to realize their ideas. As for the kindergarten group, the educational situations focused on group interaction skills’ development through dialogues, conversations and discussions. The children of the preschool group participated in team projects. In addition, mentors in the same group designed educational situations that contributed to developing children’s cognitive and research abilities, and accumulating experience in creative and cognitive problem solving.
During the fourth stage of the pedagogical project the main objective was to create the community of two mixed-aged groups: preschool and kindergarten. As a result of this stage, we worked out a system of games and educational situations, which developed the community of those two mixed-aged preschool groups.
We were impressed by the outcome: the kindergarteners assumed a role of “mentors” to their younger peers. “Little teachers” enjoyed sharing their experience of making paper toys in the papier-mâché technique. Besides, the kindergarteners were excited to describe their participation in child-adult projects, namely, how they participated in:

• discussing the project’s idea and planning its realization;
• collecting and analyzing data;
• carrying out the plan;
• presenting the results to all who were interested.

Considering the fact that the “little teachers” were children from the kindergarten group suffering from general speech underdevelopment, it was especially valuable that during the project they were intensively developing various speech abilities. We hope that next year the children from the former preschool group will proceed from being “students” to “teachers” for younger kids (especially when we noticed this desire by the end of our experiment).

In conclusion, we would like to point out that the problem of developing patriotism which is usually extremely difficult to work on in a preschool, was successfully accomplished through really interesting and motivating content. Our project made it possible to raise children’s interest in Russian nature and culture thus contributing to the development of their civic and cultural identity. Though the project demanded much effort and work of our teachers, it was rewarding and encouraged further research activities. We strongly hope that the experience we gained will make our next project even more productive. 

Bibliography

1. Vygotsky L.S. Learning and development of pre-school children // Selected psychological research. Moscow, 1956. [In Russian]
2. Klarina L.M. The problem of selecting an educational program and implementing it in a nursery school (requirements for educational environment design in a children’s educational institution: didactic, social and pedagogical aspects) // Getting ready for an attestation! Recommendations for pre-school teachers: Collected papers. – St. Petersburg: “Detstvo-Press”, 2005. Pp. 5-47. [In Russian]
3. Klarina L.M. Designing a pedagogical project to develop pre-school children’s subjection // Anthropological grounds of developmental pre-school education: Collected papers. – Moscow, 2009. [In Russian]
4. Petrovskiy V.A. Individuality in psychology: paradigm of subjection. – Rostov-on-Don, 1996. [In Russian]
5. Khaykin V.L. Activity (characteristics and development). – Moscow, 2000. P. 203. [In Russian]