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10DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIAL INTERACTION SKILLS IN CHILDREN OF PRIMARY SCHOOL AGE IN THE PROCESS OF COLLECTIVE ACTIVITIES ORGANIZING
Abstract
The urgency of the problem under investigation is caused by the need to create conditions for the social upbringing of primary school age children. The article is aimed at identifying approaches to the organization of an educational process which would help to develop the skills of social interaction in children of primary school age. The leading approach to the study of this problem is a socially-oriented approach that takes into account the patterns of personal social development by sharing values of the society. In the article, research approaches to the concept of "social interaction skills" are structured and effective technologies for their development in children of primary school age are determined. The materials of the article can be useful in organizing the educational process at the stage of primary general education.
Keywords
children of primary school age, social interaction skills, team work, social education
AUTHOR
Natalia Abramovskikh
Doctor of Pedagogical Sciences, Associate professor Professor of Preschool and Primary Education Theory and Methodology chair, Surgut State Pedagogical University, 9, Artyom St, Surgut, 628400, Russia
E-mail: natali-270171@mail.ru
1. Introduction
1.1. Urgency of the problem
Modernization of the present-day education, orientation to the innovative way of its development could not but affect the system of primary general education. The content of the "National educational initiative" project "Our new school" (project, 2009) set clear guidelines for updating the objectives and content of general education, which must provide for the younger generation not only fundamental knowledge but also the most important social skills necessary for successful socialization.The standards of general primary education of a new generation, approved by the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation, became a significant mechanism for changing the goals and content of education. New demands on the results of primary education are created within the framework of this document (Standard 2011). Young people should not only gain the certain amount of knowledge, learn how to read, write and count, but also acquire the skills which allow to analyze and apply information to solve problems, associate and cooperate fruitfully with other people, effectively participate in joint activities, set goals, plan and evaluate their own learning activities. At the same time,
5 Modern European Researches No 3 / 2017 mass practice does not have mechanisms for the purposeful development of schoolchildren's social skills in the educational process. Teachers have significant difficulties with the justification of the social education goals in modern conditions and with the choice of sound technologies for solving this problem.
1.2. Formulation of the problem
Thus, the elaboration of theoretical foundations and practical ways of implementing technologies for the development of social interaction skills in children of primary school age in collective forms of activity and the identification of pedagogical conditions that ensure the effectiveness of their development are the urgent problems of modern education.
However, the conducted studies showed that the problem of methodological support to the process of social interaction skills development in primary school children is not given sufficient attention. And it has led to a number of contradictions between:
- social order to bring up a person capable to successfully adapt and evolve in an ever-changing world, and established practice of social education in primary school that does not always ensure the effectiveness of social interaction skills development among children of primary school age;
- significant social and pedagogical potential of primary school in the formation of social qualities of children and the lack of scientific and methodological basis for the social interaction skills development in children of primary school age in collective forms of activity.
2. Methodological basis
2.1. Modern approaches to the education of a person
The most important goal of modern education and one of the priorities of society and the state is the upbringing of a moral, responsible, initiative and competent citizen of Russia. In the new federal state educational standard of primary general education the process of education is understood not only as a process of the knowledge system assimilation, the formation of skills that make up the instrumental basis for the learning activity of a student, but also as the process of adopting social, spiritual, moral, family and other values providing personal development (standard, 2011). The process of personal socialization is carried out within the framework of educational activities that ensures spiritual and moral development of a person. This educational system integrates all the main activities: lessons, extracurricular activity (cultural, social practices), family and those of social utility. Thus, the main essential characteristic of the personal socialization is the acquisition of social experience within the framework of the complex educational process realization. At the same time, it is necessary to emphasize that social experience results from active interaction of a person with the surrounding world and from developed skills of activity and communication. So the activity is the most important component of the student's social experience mechanism formation and represents both the method, the form and the condition for expressing the cultural-historical reproduction of social experience by a person.
As a public phenomenon, education is a complex and contradictory process of including the rising generation in the life of society, in social and productive activities aimed at the socialization of the child, social experience appropriation that ensures the development of personality and individuality.
Thus, modern science and practice considers upbringing as the basis and the main mechanism of personal socialization. The following essential characteristics of upbringing are distinguished:
- it is a purposeful mechanism of updating the ideas of children and youth development which allows them to acquire necessary social qualities;
- it is activity in engaging people's social experience in all its forms (values, regulations, knowledge, qualities and skills of communication), including purposeful individual abilities development process. The social experience of a person is the result of active interaction with the environment;
- activities being the main element of psychological and pedagogical social experience mastering determines the set of diverse social roles acquired by a person in the process of education, including the social experience of initiation to the values of society and the relationship with the environment;
- creation of optimal social and cultural environment should become the primary goal of socially oriented education, allowing a person to develop and acquire social experience; the educational process should help the person to acquire social identity and self-realization of creative abilities and natural instincts; remove contradictions between social and individual.
2.2. The concept of social education of a person interpretation
According to AI Levko, the term social education is currently used in two aspects (Levko, 2003):
1. Social education - is the education of a person in society, social environment, social community in the course of his or her interaction with them With this consideration of social education, the emphasis is made on the assimilation by a person of group samples, norms, stereotypes of collective activity, a particular social group or community style of thinking. The result of such education is to learn social roles, social values and norms of behavior and personality as an object of culture which is the product of socialization.
2. Social education is the process of acquiring by a person certain type of culture in the course of socialization and individualization on the basis of sharing the values of culture, as well as the performance of certain social roles In this approach the personality is an active subject of culture, possessing freedom, will, ability to creative activity. The emphasis is on the development of the cultural and social qualities of a person.
2.3. Scientific approaches to social education of a person
Modern psychological and pedagogical studies show that the realization of social education of students on the basis of cultural wealth can be carried out taking into account:
- general civil approach that takes into consideration human values and defining the culture as indisputable ideal, ideal target of society development. In the process of education great attention is payed to transmission of cultural standards and values to the rising generation. Mechanisms, methods and ways of the problem solutions are considered at the defined аспекте;
- multicultural approach, built on the basis of the diversity and pluralism of social education methods. At the same time each local culture is defined as one of the
7 Modern European Researches No 3 / 2017 possible, its basic values are determined, they are transferred to students. Special role here belongs to national, regional, family education of a person.
2.4. The goal of social education of a person
The result of social education is sociality as person's ability to interact with the social world With the development of sociality, a person gets the ability to social self-development and self-education.
The implementation of modern social education methods should contribute to the development of personality, to realization of his (her) potential and capabilities in society, that is, through the accumulation of social experience and social competence development (Zapiataia, 2011).
At the same time, social experience is a unity of various kinds of knowledge, skills, ways of thinking and activity; stereotypes of behavior, internalized value orientations and social attitudes, impressed feelings and experiences. It is the result of the child's actions, active interaction with the world around him. Acquiring social experience does not only mean the assimilation of necessary information, skills, images, but mastering of those specific ways of activity and communication, which give it as a result.
Thus, the most important component of the child's social experience development becomes the activity, which is both the way, form and the condition of the social experience cultural and historical reproduction expression, but it is by no means something external related to the internal structure of the person (Golovanova, 2005).
It should be emphasized that social experience is, on the one hand, the result of the interaction of the individual with the surrounding world, and on the other hand, it is always projected by a person's own activity in this interaction. Therefore, among the main elements of the psychological and pedagogical mechanism of a person's social experience development are his social relations, in which he deals with reality.
Social relations are manifested in all types of the student's activities: in the context of communicating with others, playing games, studying, socially useful and artistic work. Social relations are manifested in several aspects (Golovanova, 2005). They can be:
- functional role relations;
- emotionally evaluating relations;
- personally semantic relations.
Thus, the social upbringing of primary school age children ensuring their cultural and moral development is carried out by means of all the main activities: lessons and socially useful extracurricular activity (cultural practices), public and family work, it has a continuous and complex nature. Social education has as its main target the successful socialization of the younger generation in modern conditions and the self-development of a schoolchild as a subject of activity and communication.
2.5. The concept of "social interaction skills" in primary school age children
The deliberation of the problems of social interaction skills development among primary school children is a search for an answer to urgent questions: what are the typical ways by which people establish among themselves various relations, how they support these relations, what are the conditions for maintaining and preserving of social interaction, how they influence the social system stability, and how the nature of the social system affects the ways of its members' interaction.
Before speaking about the essence of "social interaction skills" conception in children of primary school age, it is important for us to define the essence of the concepts "social interaction", "social skill" which are presented in Table 1.
TABLE 1
Concept The content aspect
interaction A mixed effect of two or more independent variables on dependent variables when they act together. In study of the variables effect in the experiment, each individual effect can not explain the total change (Explanatory Sociological Dictionary, 1999)
social interaction human efforts to achieve influence on each other (Mardakhaev, 2002)
skill a method of performing actions and operations that has become automatic as a result of multiple exercises (Mardakhaev, 2002)
skill automatic action; it is developed by continuous repetition. In the process of training it is necessary to develop skills, especially general educational, that of interdisciplinary significance: written and spoken language, problems solving, counting, measurement, etc. (Kodzhaspirova, 2000)
social skill for example, the ability to speak and write clearly, use of time and finances efficiently, influence people making them to react with sympathy (Mardakhaev, 2002)
social skills (duties) a set of techniques and methods of social impact which a man is mastering throughout the life and uses them to enjoy life in a society, keeps the balance with the others (a concept is defined by V.Slot) (Kodzhaspirova, 2000)
The analysis of the concepts' essential characteristics and the synthesis of various viewpoints on the social skills nature allowed us to formulate a general definition of the social interaction skills concept. In this article, we consider the social interaction skills as socially defined ways of activity acquired by the subject which ensure his successful interaction with other people for the performance of socially significant activities. Social interaction skill is combination of knowledge about society, ways of interaction with other people, about personal place in the social world (Abramovskikh, Grigorieva, 2015). Great importance in the development of social interaction skills in children of primary school age has the organization of effective pedagogical communication, which in its turn, is also the interaction of all educational process participants. Cooperation can be the basis of pedagogical interaction, when all its participants attain mutual agreement and solidarity in understanding the goals of joint activities and ways of their
9 Modern European Researches No 3 / 2017 achievement. Pedagogical interaction can also be in the form of rivalry when the success of some participants in joint activities stimulate or inhibit more productive and purposeful activity of other participants. The teacher must determine the optimal strategies for pedagogical interaction organization aiming to create conditions for the social experience development of students in the educational process.
2.6. Structure of social interaction skills
One of the constructive interaction main tasks is the optimal ways of communication and behavior training and self-training, as well as the consolidation and subsequent development of personal-semantic regulation mechanisms. Social interaction is the process and result of people's joint activities which includes each participant of these activities. Activity itself develops and expands the sphere of everyone's knowledge and skills and simultaneously forms appreciative attitude to all participants of activity and to the process of activity itself.
Thus, social interaction skills include the following abilities:
- to take the initiative and come into contact;
- to make first favorable impression;
- to formulate questions and answer them;
- express one's thoughts briefly and accurately making conversation;
- to encourage the interlocutor to clarify his (her) position, statements;
- to listen, hear and understand the partner;
- to provide feedback, i.e. to show the partner that he (she) has been heard and understood;
- to create a positive emotional environment, to control the emotional tension in the conversation, in the debate;
- to see u and correctly interpret nonverbal signals of the partner (look, facial expression, gestures , posture);
- to control own expressional signals during communication;
- to use different effective models of communication;
- to use optimal communication styles in the process of interaction;
- to understand the specifics of speech genres and communicative means of goal achievement during interaction.
2.7. Conditions of social interaction skills development in children of primary school age
Based on the definition and structure of social interaction skills represented in Sec. 2.6. We can distinguish internal and external factors of their development. The internal factors include psychological characteristics of age and the person, the degree of the ability manifestation to interact and communicate. External factors include social conditions and social environment, communication and interactions experience. Certain factors should be taken into account in the organization of personal social education which results in development of social interaction skills. And the person exhibits stable desire and ability to provide effective interaction. The necessary conditions for the social interaction skills development are:
- emotionally positive background of dialogue under which we understand the creation of cooperation conditions, trust, sympathy, positive attitude to communication, secure environment when a student feels interest to himself as to personality and unconditional faith in himself (herself);
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- the inclusion of the student in a variety of activities that are functionally associated with developed skills of social interaction;
- a high level of psycho-pedagogical and methodological experience of the teacher, including methods of pedagogical diagnostics;
- development and application of effective methods, forms and means of training and education;
- systematic control of social interaction skills development dynamics;
- continuity and systematic purposeful work by social interaction skills development on all stages of school education.
2.8. Collective forms of activity as means of social interaction skills development among children of primary school age
It is essential for a primary school age child's social interaction skills development to join the class team. Practical learning by a schoolchild norms and rules of social conduct is based on constant personal interaction with classmates and teachers, on taking a certain position in the system of children's relations. Children of primary school age are actively developing communication skills, the ability to make and maintain friendship (Shapovalenko, 2005).
In the process of collective activity students acquire communication skills, learn to share the success and responsibility with others, learn new information about each other. Thus, two essential processes take place simultaneously and include education of the individual student, the development of the necessary personal qualities and creation, consolidation of a class as a team.
Scientific research helps to define the following technologies of younger schoolchildren collective activity:
1. Playing activities organization technology.
In the works of famous Russian researchers (NP Anikeeva, VM Bukatov, OS Gazman, VF Matveev SA Shmakov MG Yanovskaya etc.) various classifications of playing activities technologies according to the following backgrounds are discussed:
- according to educational activity - didactic and recreational;
- according to equipment - using natural materials, toys, sports equipment;
- according to creative level - games with rules, creative games;
- according to duration - short-term, long-term multifunctional competitions and tournaments, etc.
- according to cast character - the plot plays, drama plays.
Playing activity, being the main one in preschool years, however, does not lose its attraction for primary school children, allowing to solve the training and educational tasks by optimal for this age methods.
2. Technology of collective creative affairs.
The author of this technology is a scientist and a teacher IP Ivanov, who defined it as an integral part of "Pedagogy of common concern" practice (Ivanov, 1989). The basis of the technology is a form of education ("affair"), which is seriously opposed to the event and the game. An affair presumes the transformation of reality, taking into account the benefit for the people around. At the same time, from the education technology viewpoint, four main features are important: the social significance, productivity, collectiveness, creativity.
Mechanism for implementing a collective affair technology is a work of microgroups. The foundation of their joining to collective action is based on the following idea: all that is defined as the aim of collective action ("intelligence", an analysis of ideas and projects, planning, preparation and affair realization, brainstorming) begins and ends in microgroups, acting independently, but not in isolation from the others, solve their own problems. Competition trends do not interfere with the possibility of co-operation and co-operation of all microgroups merge into a common affair.
3. The technology of the class teacher educational work.
In the class teacher activities extracurricular educational work does a significant share. The content of this activity includes systemically important "blocks" that require special technology:
I. Organization of business and friendly communication between schoolchildren.
II. Individual educational interaction with the child.
III. Pedagogical interaction with students' parents.
At the same time, to solve the problems of social interaction skills development we must give the priority to organized communication technology. It should be applied taking into account the principles of student-oriented approach. This will allow to get the best results in its implementation in the system of primary education. From the viewpoint of modern scientists it is necessary to consider the following pedagogical conditions by its realization (Golovanova, 2005):
- organization of microgroups interaction in class;
- teaching children the culture of dialogue;
- humanization of boys and girls relations;
- establishing of class life "regulators": joint development of laws, rules, and traditions of the class;
- creating of success situations both for a single child and for microgroups, for all
class;
- giving children the opportunity to choose important from their viewpoint kind of activities freely, forms of their organization and communication;
- development of humanistic class interaction with other classes and creative school groups.
These conditions will have different significance for each class, but the technology of organized communication is such that the main concern of the educator become just children's relations. Therefore, these conditions become simultaneously specific goals of the class teacher.
3. Results
Study of theoretical approaches to the problem of social interaction skills development among children of primary school age in collective forms of activity showed that domestic and foreign psychological-pedagogical science have significant achievements in this field. This made it possible to define the concept of social interaction skills as the development of the socially established ways of working by the subject to ensure his successful interaction with other people to carry out socially important activities. Social interaction skills are a set of knowledges about society, about ways of interaction with other people, about their place in the social world.
4. Discussion
Analysis of psychological and pedagogical literature concerning the problems of personal socialization and personal social skills development (NF Golovanova, NV Kalinina, IS Kon, J. Meade, B. Sugarman, AV Mudrik, VA Slastenin) showed that the concept of "social interaction skills" has not got clear scientific definition. It is viewed through the prism of social roles, social situations, social competence, social interaction.
Inadequate attention to methodological support review and to the distribution of social interaction skills development technologies complicates the solution of this problem in the contemporary system of primary education. Therefore, this article focuses on the consideration of specific technologies, the development of social interaction skills among children of primary school age through the organization of collective activities.
5. Conclusion
Modern solution to the problem of social interaction skills development among children of primary school age does not depend directly on teaching and educational influence of the teacher, but on specially created interpersonal and socio-cultural conditions and opportunities in the educational environment for social development of a person. Modern society development trends require from the students to develop effective cooperation skills, the inclusion of students in different types of activities (communicative, cognitive, managerial, reflective), a variety of collective action forms. Special kind of pedagogical activity - teaching pupils humane and constructive cooperation, which is carried out through an organized communication of younger schoolchildren, contributes greatly to solving the problem.
6. Recommendation
The content of the article is aimed at identifying the nature of social interaction, the study of different approaches to the essence of pedagogical process organization which helps to develop the social interaction skills among children of primary school age, the definition of the teacher's activity theoretical basis on social interaction skills development among children of primary school age in collective forms of activity. The article may be interesting to the teachers involved in the educational process organization for primary school age children. It may also be useful for students, graduate students engaged in study of socialization problems among children of primary school age.
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