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HUMANITARIAN STRATEGIES
IN THE FORMATION OF THE AUTHOR'S POSITION
OF A TEACHER IN LIFELONG EDUCATION1
М. N. Frolovskaya
Recently, the problem of education, linked to the idea of continuity, has become one of the topics discussed in domestic and foreign pedagogy. The European Union countries adopted a “Memorandum of Lifelong Education” that lays the foundation for a doctrine of “lifelong education”. The UNESCO International Congress defined the strategy of education in the 21st century in the following words: “to teach to be”, which conforms to the position of Mamardashvili, who saw education as a possibility for a person “to be”, to get established in the world. In keeping with the humanitarian paradigm, education is a process of “creating one’s own image in the culture and image of culture in oneself (V.S. Bibler), the birth in a person of personal in-nova-tions”. The key to understanding lifelong education is of course, the notion of “image”. This word in its origin has the following meanings: “face” (Slovenian), “picture”, “depiction” (Czech, German), “figure”, “view”, “method” (Old Russian).
The author's position of a teacher is inherently close to the professional image of the world. “The image of the world” was considered by A.N. Leontiev to be an integrated, multi-level system of beliefs of an individual about the world, other people, about him/herself, and one’s own activities. [4] Therefore, the author's position of a teacher in the first approximation can be considered as a universal of the pedagogical culture, and the attitude of a teacher to the pedagogical process, to himself/herself and other participants, which includes the axiological basis (values and meanings), the ontological component (interaction of the structural components of the educational process), and methodology (principles of style of the pedagogical thinking). A specific feature of the development of the author's position of a teacher is determined by: (a) awareness of personal motivation for learning; (b) desire for the immediate application of knowledge; (c) emotional perception of learning, and self-awareness as an independent, self-governing person with professional and life experience, from the point of view from which a person evaluates the incoming information. How is it possible to organize the process of lifelong education that is focused on selfrealization and self-improvement, the development of personal, the author’s position, and the position of a professional? The answer is obvious: in joint personally meaningful activity, using humanistic comprehension strategies. This means the transition from notion - to sense, from a subject - to man, from reflection of the scientific information - to the birth of attitude, and the building of “live” knowledge.
In Altai State University, an attempt is being made to organize lifelong education in the context of activity-based and meaning-based pedagogy. “... Human activities, in their performance and implementation, are always collective
1 The Article was prepared in Altai State University with a financial support of the Russian Humanitarian Science Foundation (grant No.13-06-00010, type of project "a").
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activities, and in terms of the mechanism of assimilation (development), are always individual activities” [5, p. 135]. This thesis of P.G. Shchedrovitsky is concretized in the organization of interaction, aimed at understanding and strengthening by the participants of the following: (1) methods to do with the activity; (2) ways to reorganize the activities; (3) forms of connection of individual activities to the collective and corporate activities. Hence, there is a need to create situations of understanding by each participant of his/her own professional position, by means of inclusion into the operation of humanitarian strategies. First of all, a reflection and understanding of both existing life experience and the results of professional training. To do this, a variety of forms of work are offered: (a) the preparation of a presentation of experience “Acting at the present time - building the future”; (b) the writing of an essay on “my professional image of the world”; (c) detecting the axiological bases, drawing a collage “the values of my professional activities”; (d) the creation of “portraits” of participants in the pedagogical process in a higher educational institution. Individual rethinking of the existing work experience is offered to a team of participants in education for discussion, during the course of which each participant clarifies his/her own position and passes on to “questioning”: the definition of the boundaries of one’s capabilities, limitations of development, obstacles in the way of understanding, detection of contradictions, and personally significant problems. Then the ways to overcome the identified barriers are clarified, as well as the methods of development. This phase of activity is organized in small groups, where everyone brings his/her own ideas into a collective project. If a person thinks about the boundaries of application of his/her professional activity, if he sees the changes that need to be made in his/her activities, it means that the person is a part of the inter-professional communication. At the same time, forms of interaction are not described by participants, but rather are lived out by them. A roundtable, a creative workshop, a business game, team work with use of specific situations - the above and other interactive forms of professional interpersonal communications contribute to individual understanding of the innovative content in the collective activities.
Pedagogical processes in high school are filled with texts. Understanding of cultural texts - this is also an understanding by a person of himself/herself. To do this, it is necessary to feel as if one is part of the world, and to see oneself in others. Lifelong education always implies dealing with texts (scientific, artistic), which may become a condition for the detection of one’s own interpretations through an understanding of the position of their authors. We read ourselves into the works of J. Korczak, J. Pestalozzi, E. Ilyin, and S. Amonashvili. The search for the key phrases and metaphors in the works, a collection of details, and filling-in the text allows us to find values and meanings: debt, experience, communication, and creativity. Author’s positions correspond with the views of students and teachers, thus, values of direct participants in the educational process of higher education are detected. The development of the author’s position of a teacher takes place in a circle: we organize the process of understanding of the subject content, during which we understand ourselves, while understanding others. The process of understanding is constantly moving from the whole to the part and back to the whole, expanding by circles the unity of the understood meaning. The hermeneutic circle, according to M. Heidegger, is a circle of anticipation,
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“understanding of what is contained in the text, is to develop a preliminary outline, which is subject to constant revision and deepening into the meaning of the text” [2, p. 318]. The joint birth of knowledge in the activities of both a teacher and a student becomes significant. The communicative didactics and dialogue are typical for knowledge, which becomes an event.
Meaning-based education is possible, when using the comprehension strategies that allow us to switch from the reproduction of information to the interpretation of personal knowledge. When students or listeners of the advanced training courses have to try to “grasp the meaning” of texts representing the opposing positions of the authors, they must “dip out” meanings of them and correlate them with their own position. These may be scientific texts, excerpts from literature, various musical pieces and paintings, documents, or memoirs. For example, students are asked to select an aphorism, the meaning of which is close to their academic position. The choice of aphorism itself, and the creation of one’s own text in its understanding, is a manifestation of the value-based, meaning-based attitude of students to the content of education, and clarification of their ideas. Everyone contributes something personal to understanding, and reveals the new meanings and essence, which are sometimes not known even to the author himself in their interpretation. Thus, as emphasized by M.M. Bakhtin, this not only opens their “existing meaning”, but makes an “addition to it, by means of artistic creation”. [1] Texts in the pedagogical process become the sphere of directed activity of authors, not only as a traditional creator of a work, but a person (a teacher, a student), who by his actions discovers the meaning of the work, making it a condition of his own existence. Let’s look at the text - teacher’s recognition. Students are asked to identify the pedagogical position of the author, and to prove their point of view with references to the text. When discussing the material, positions are expressed regarding values and meanings of the pedagogical activity of the author, and the nature of his relations with others. In the key works of the text, the humanitarian meanings are open: dominant over another person, one’s emotional attitude to him, an understanding of a human being, the position of teachers’ apprenticeships, and the focus on self-education and self-determination. First of all, each student mentions the concepts, which have value for him or herself. He/she defines the essence of the metaphor presented in the text (“a child - a book of nature”), and evaluates how the peculiarities of such interaction with a child are close to him/her. “Completion” of the heading takes place; suppositions are expressed regarding a possible title of the text and the personality of the author himself or herself. As a rule, the “pre-opinion” of students is close to the present situation: J. Korczak called his article “Education of a Teacher by a Child”. The organization of semantic work with cultural texts highlights new perspectives of the attitude towards history, society, and one’s own being. In other words, the individual being becomes a being “cut to the quick”: to understand oneself is to understand oneself before reading the text and to receive a condition of another “Me” from the text (P. Ricoeur). The implementation of humanitarian comprehension strategies helps to understand others, ourselves, to clarify the author's position, and at the same time, finding personal meanings facilitates our understanding of scientific knowledge:
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Efforts to detect one’s own meanings in the texts in relationships with others, helps a teacher and a student to create culture, and to enter into the world of senses. This “entry” is possible by co-understanding, co-learning, co-evaluation, and co-involvement into joint creation work. Lifelong education based on humanitarian comprehension strategies helps to solve such important problems as the development of communication and understanding; development of new ideas; understanding and prediction of potential problems; creation of a like-minded team, where everybody studies from everybody, and where there is a “growing” of the author’s position of a teacher.
References
1. Бахтин М. М. Эстетика словесного творчества. - М.: Искусство, 1979.
2. Гадамер Х-Г. Истина и метод. - М.: Прогресс, 1988.
3. Корчак Я. Антология гуманной педагогики - М., 1998. - 222 с.
4. Леонтьев А. Н. Образ мира // Избранные психологические произведения: в 2-х т. Т. 2. -М., 1983.
5. Щедровицкий П. Г. Очерки по философии образования (статьи и лекции). - М.: Педагогический центр «Эксперимент», 1993.
Translated from Russian by Znanije Central Translations Bureau
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