Volume:8, Issue: 1
May. 1, 2016
May. 1, 2016
Self-identity of a human being
is the pledge of his/her greatness.
A.S. Pushkin
KEYWORDS: professional subjectness of preschool educators, Federal State Education Standards, an educational design.
ABSTRACT: The paper presents the author’s speculations about modern education values and challenges in the situation of implementing current Russian Federal State Education Standards; professional competences preschool teachers need to develop their children’s subjectness as well as the necessary conditions for teachers to master such competences. Five years ago the topic of children and teachers’ subjectness development was discussed in the 2010 Russian-American Education Forum Online Journal (#5, August 1), namely, in the papers which described activities of an experimental site called Pedagogical Design as a Factor in Planning for Early Childhood Learning Activities (in preschool and elementary schools) [see 3, 4]. The search for solutions to the aforementioned problem is becoming increasingly vital not only for practitioners but also for the mainstream preschool educational process.
Introduction
The present-day level of social development, with its extremely high speed of sociocultural life, rapidly changing technologies and occupations, requires anyone who does not want to be an outsider to possess new skills and personal qualities and, primarily, a will and an ability to constantly improve one’s educational level.
In the current situation, the system of lifelong education, which is recently gaining popularity all over the world, may offer tangible help in building people’s individual life paths. However, in order to benefit from the existing opportunities, it is necessary for an individual to be a subject of one’s own education. The subject of his/her own education should, first of all, be able to understand what kind of education s/he needs (by analyzing and evaluating both the existing opportunities and his/her own possibilities and abilities), and whether it correlates with the chosen life priorities and, secondly, should be willing to obtain such education and, what is just as important, to purposefully organize this education through lifelong learning.
In this respect, the key goal of a secondary school is not only to transfer basic knowledge and skills to its students but also to create the environment that would allow students acquire the skills to learn with all the relevant personal qualities and conditions.
The idea of lifelong education is especially important for the present-day preschool children as it is impossible to predict today what kind of changes will take place by the time of their adulthood, which knowledge and skills they will need to live a decent life and be successful. That is why it is important, starting already from the preschool age, to do our best and gradually develop children’s subjectness in terms of their own education.
Federal State Education Standards adopted in Russia
The demand to develop students’ subjectness in relation to their educational activity is stipulated in the new Federal State Education Standards (“Second Generation Standards), which have been gradually implemented in mass practice since 2010.
According to Elkonin and Davydov’s concept of personality-developing instruction (which, in fact, constitutes the basis of the current Education Standards), the skill to learn, given favorite conditions, is initially formed at the elementary school level and later on develops through life. Following the ideas of the renowned Russian psychologist, Vasily V. Davydov, the skill to learn is understood as the subject’s ability for self-development and self-improvement due to the individual’s conscious and active acquisition of his/her new social experience [1].
Having analyzed the theory and practice of developmental education, I came to the conclusion that the full-fledged implementation of the school’s mission to develop students’ subjectness in terms of education is significantly hampered if the relevant preschool potential is not properly realized [2]. The Russian Federation Law on Education (#273-ФЗ, December 29, 2012) classifies a preschool as the first tier of general education.
The Federal State Education Standard of Preschool Education (FSESPSE), which is being actively implemented in the mass preschool practice in Russia, is closely related to the necessity of developing subjectness at the preschool age. Thus, one of the key principles underlying FSESPSE is to design “an educational activity taking into account individual characteristics of each child while the child himself shall become active in selecting his or her own education, and shall become the subject of education” [see 9, Clause 1.4].
The notion of subjectness and its preschool age development conditions
The root of the problem of how to form and develop individuals as subjects of their own activity lies in the subject- and activity-oriented approach elaborated by S.L. Rubinshtein [6, 7] and his followers (K.A. Abul'khanova-Slavskaya, A.V. Brushlinsky, E.V. Sayko, and others). This approach presents subjectness as an essential human quality revealed in the man’s ability to modify the environment (including the existing situation not only in one’s individual but also in the life of the society as well) and, along with that, to change a human being’s own self.
I distinguish two structural categories of subjectness: the subject’s own position and his/her own activity, correlating and appropriate with this position. The subject’s stand is essentially defined by such a quality as ability for self-identity, which is based on the reflection of quite a few aspects: one’s own identity and autonomy (“Who am I? Where, how, and who am I going with?”), values and purposes (“What am I doing this for? Which values are determining my actions?) and anticipated outcomes (“Which results do I want to achieve? Why do I consider these results important?). Thus, choosing key values and meanings, i.e., by producing new purposes forms a subject’s self-identity. Unlike an executor, a subject strives for self-realization in the process of any intentional activity. To achieve such self-realization, the subject tries to mobilize all possible (primarily internal) resources. Besides, the subject is characterized by a strong desire to become better, and to develop. The subject’s conscious activity is regarded as a wholesome structure of interrelated elements built in unison with all the stages of its execution.
Primary characteristics of a subject’s activity include the following:
A preschool child is undoubtedly unable to be the subject of his/her own activity. Thus, the subject is a child-adult event-related fellowship of the child and his/her close adult (the latter is in direct contact with the child and enjoys the child’s trust and confidence) [8]. The development of a child’s subjectness is possible only if it is really valuable for the adult participants of such fellowship, and they purposefully create conditions to ensure such fellowship. The carriers of such value should, first of all, be the preschool staff members. It is their professional stand which determines the value of preschool subjectness development and is an essential requirement in implementing the existing FSESPSE.
Lack of teachers’ professional subjectness – their views and the corresponding activity – explain the main problems which hamper the genuine implementation (rather than imitation) of the Education Standards (at the preschool level and higher). The first problem is that the preschool staff members do not fully understand the notions of subjecntess and subject (subject of learning and other types of activity, subject of education) and, consequently, do not perceive these categories as their own professional values. Such teachers do not demonstrate personal goal-setting or self-identity and, as a result, they lack their own professional stand. Besides, without being full-fledged subjects of their own life-long education, teachers do not understand that the implementation of such requires the knowledge of the subjectness development process in ontogenesis and conditions contributing to this process as well as the tools and methods that make it possible to duly apply such knowledge in practice: to design one’s own work with children and their parents in accordance with the teacher’s own stand.
Unfortunately, most short-term professional development courses (intended to implement the current Education Standards) practically pay no attention to the problems of teachers’ professional subjectness’ development. As a result, the declared process of crucial modification of educational values does not work: we do not observe a vital transition from acquisition of knowledge and skills to the development of children’s subjectness or their initiative, independence, and an ability to act in accordance with their own intentionally set goals.
Moreover, professional development courses intended to implement the new Education Standards tend to ignore another problem, and thus hamper the achievement of the planned reforms. I mean the situation when educators have a difficulty in mastering the project-technological type of management culture (this type gained its popularity in the whole civilized world as early as in the 20th century) [5]. The majority of educators, especially preschool and elementary school teachers, are not skilled in the basic methods of designing their own professional work. They are often guided by standard manuals and teaching aids without estimating their efficiency; they lack their own professional goal-setting (which requires a comprehensive analysis of the existing situation) or reflection on their own actions and results. Even those teachers who manage to achieve a relatively high quality of their students’ education often do this intuitively, without seeing the causes of such results. Problems in teachers’ professional growth and poor implementation of the new Education Standards is explained by the aforementioned circumstances and the necessity to carry out an individualized approach to children, which requires teachers’ ability for analysis, goal-setting, and reflection.
The project to develop preschool teachers’ professional subjectness in preschools located in the Moscow district of Yuzhnoye (Southern) Butovo.
I have recently started a project aimed at development of preschool teachers’ professional stand and their activity in a number of preschools. Before discussing the idea of the project, I should mention that, apart from the need to adopt the new FSESPSE all over Russia, many Moscow preschools undergo the merger processes when several preschools, kindergartens, and schools are merged into educational complexes with thousands of students and hundreds of staff members. Such a merger took place in one school which has a long history of cooperation with our Research Institute. The resulting Educational Complex located in the Moscow district of Yuzhnoye (Southern) Butovo consists of five schools and seven preschools.
My analysis of teachers’ activity in these preschools revealed a number of shortcomings typical for mass practice of preschool education. As for their professional stand, most teachers turned out to lack self-identity as it is: applying teaching guidelines developed by other educators and ready-made teaching aids (including traditional lesson plans) they are not used to reflect on their quality, correlation with the relevant age requirements or individual peculiarities of their students, or their own values and purposes. Consequently, they are typically unable to analyze the existing circumstances (starting from students and their parents’ inclinations and interests to the natural, sociocultural, physical, and spatial environment), their own goal setting, search for the ways to achieve goals and their reflection. At the same time, many teachers of the Educational Complex revealed their interest in professional self-development, desire to change the style of their work in accordance with the new requirements.
As stipulated by FSESPSE, each preschool should build their activity in accordance with the Core Curriculum, which is based on sample curriculums suggested by various authors but also considering specific circumstances. Moreover, such Core Curriculum must be adopted and carried out by all teachers. In this case I needed to set up a creative team to develop such a curriculum and determine the ways to put it into practice.
At the first stage of the project I initiated a constantly functioning workshop, which helped to provide conditions for teachers’ self-identity development. In particular, these conditions included the processes based on problem-solving and understanding the key points of the difference between the FSESPSE stipulated values and objectives, on the one hand, and teachers’ own professional activity (which often did not have any developmental impact on the students’ subjectness), on the other. When the process of the formation of self-identity was over, the workshop welcomed new participants who did not only reveale interest but proved their readiness and professional potential to make their own contribution to the processes of analysis, goal-setting, content selection and teaching design, which were necessary to create and implement the future Core Curriculum. At this stage I paid special attention to the creation of an event-based professional community of teachers who share their values in developing children as subjects of their activity. In fact, when professional subjectness of individual teachers is not fully developed, it is the professional community which serves as a collective subject of professional activity and their participants’ development. This community contributes to the development of teachers’ self-identity, helps to produce their own ideas and carry them out, conduct analysis and reflection of their actions and results.
I began my workshop with the consideration of such notions as a subject and subjectness which, being included into the FSESPSE, had not yet been explained. Along with that I try to avoid ready-made definitions and theoretical explanations. Instead, I encourage our participants to speak out, share their experience, offer their own ideas and make conclusions.
To find out the essence of the studied notions I often make use of various metaphors. For example, I have designed a metaphorical subjectness model in which an individual may act as the subject of his/her own activity given the individual meets the following requirements, and:
At present, the workshop participants are mastering this model in practice by carrying out their own ideas aimed primarily at the development of their students’ subjectness in cognitive and research activities. Such a choice at this stage is explained firstly by the fact that it is people’s own cognitive and research activities that make a significant contribution to the development of people’s subjectness in relation to their education. Only an individual who strives for cognitive attitude and inquisitiveness sees education as a true value. It is vital that this attitude to learning should begin since a preschool age when a child has inherent curiosity, which, given certain conditions, may later develop into inquisitiveness. Besides, our many years of research show that preschoolers often do not accept what is imposed on them without their will or emotional response. On the contrary, when a child has a question to ask, and s/he wants to get the answer while the adult skillfully organizes the search for the answer in such a way that the child may reveal initiative, then the latter acquires not only knowledge but also research tools and techniques. That is why I drew the workshop participant’s attention to the analysis of children’s questions and the organization of such types of children’s activities that enable children to find answers to their questions as independently as possible.
By encouraging teachers to set specific goals for children’s cognitive development and conditions to master research tools and techniques, I suggest that teachers should come up with their own problems for research projects considering children’s interests and teachers’ own ideas. I have organized a constant methodological support in the process of project planning and implementation including individual and group consulting. Besides, the workshop participants are involved in a peers’ review process by using the suggested guidelines, which will help them to track relationships between children’s interests and teachers’ objectives, conditions, results, and subsequent changes in children’s education and development.
Such combination of teachers’ practical activity, regular methodological support and workshop discussions provides a tangible development of their professionalism. As a result, even during the first stage the workshop participants have achieved a certain success in mastering the technology of analysis and goal-setting, in planning their work with children and building it as a system of various educational situations rather than copying someone’s ready-made conventional lesson plans.
Conclusion
The current sociocultural situation and the existing Federal State Education Standards of Preschool Education are aimed at the development of “each child as a subject of his/her relationship with oneself, other children, and the adult world” [9, Clause 1.6]. This is unattainable is the teacher is not the subject of his/her own professional activity.
Our common task (both of the professional community and the society at large) is to create strategies that will contribute to the formation and development of preschool teachers as subjects of their own professional activity and its design. Even based on my relatively short work experience in this subject, I might come to the conclusion that one of the key solutions of the aforementioned problem is to create such professional community that will be able to render constant help and support to teachers in their processes of reflection, self-identity, design, and implementation of their own pedagogical projects.
References
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