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PSYCHOLOGICAL AND PEDAGOGICAL ASPECTS OF DEVELOPMENT OF STUDENTS’ SUBJECTIVITY
V. А. Lugovskiy Е. V. Medvedeva
In the contemporary training environment, preparing specialists with a high level of professional competence and versatile personal qualities, capable of continuous self-improvement, constant updating and expansion of the range of their knowledge and skills, i.e. capable of lifelong learning, is one of the central tasks of higher educational institutions. Thus, today it is important to identify the substantive and procedural aspects of the innovation educational process at higher professional training school, which may contribute to problem solving. Obviously, the professional training system should be changed in terms of replacing the ideology of “informative and descriptive teaching” with the ideology of methodological focus of education, which is designed to help students to switch from a content-reflective way of receiving scientific knowledge to a constructive and activity-based one.
We separate and consider one of the directions of improvement of the system of training at the higher school - development of students’ subjectivity in the educational process of a higher educational institution. It should be emphasized that the problem of development of subjectivity in the educational process of a higher educational institution is interdisciplinary and requires integration of activity of many professionals - teachers, psychologists, sociologists and others.
According to many researchers, subjectivity, as an integral quality of a person, reveals a person’s focus on self-improvement, optimality, its top - “acme”. Subjectivity is developed in practical activities. Consciousness, activity, ability to organize one’s time; all of this becomes a basis for acquisition of professional competence by students, and is a foundation for development of subjectivity and a person’s personal position. Subjectivity is a system quality of a student mastering new forms and types of activity and social relations, who has an individual set of personal and psychological functions that define and reflect the results of the activity carried out, simultaneously developing in it, and determining its essence-based, integral characteristics - the general ability of conscious, independent, purposeful, self-regulating conversion of basic capabilities and properties into socially important and professionally significant qualities. A student’s subjectivity manifests itself in his/her educational and cognitive activities, communication, and self-understanding. In terms of intrapersonal development for a student, a sense of his/her subjectivity means understanding the importance of his/her own role in achieving success.
Personal and professional development of students at a high school, and development of their competences is directly related to the learning process, and becomes possible in the presence of interacting agents. It should be noted that in modern pedagogy training, tis is understood as “expansion of the possibilities of personality development”, as management of the process of development of a person, and not as an impact upon it. B.B. Kossov said, “There is a process of
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personality development, which is regulated, adjusted, and enriched... by pedagogically organized activities and communication (individual, group, collective, mass). This is learning. Consequently, learning can be viewed as a mechanism of targeted pedagogical management of the process of subjective transformation of students.
We can mention three aspects of subjectivity formation of students as a basis for development of competence in the educational process of a university. Social and professional: identification with the socio-cultural and professional environment, acceptance of its values, understanding the social and professional meaning of training as a tool that helps to assimilate social experience, norms, rules and traditions. Individual and value-based: disclosure and deployment of “self-identity” of students in the activity, content-based and result-based, and procedural and dynamic characteristics. Operational and activity-based: achieving a harmonious combination of socio-professional and individual and value-based aspects, synchronization of educational activities of a teacher and personal and professional development of students through a combination of techniques and forms of organization of their interaction.
Personal and professional development of students at a higher educational institution may be represented by a sequence of stages: adaptation to conditions of a higher educational institution, acceptance of new social status; studying the requirements of educational and professional activities; self-realization in the educational process; self-projection of professional development. At the first stage, the dominating factor includes active adaptation of students to the new conditions, studying the requirements of a university, and students understanding their roles, responsibilities and rights. The second stage is aimed at active development and qualified fulfillment by a student of his/her social role and involves preparation for the future specialization, conscious management of one’s own activity and behavior based on the conscious motives and goals. The third stage is a purposeful formation of personal qualities and professional skills. Furthermore, in all types of activity there is a connection and combination of motives and goals, of internal intentions with the external educational influence. Self-determination and conscious self-regulation in various activities increase. The essence of the fourth stage is the manifestation of a student's subjectivity, performing an independent, purposeful transformation of the initial abilities and personal qualities into socially significant qualities, which are expressed in professional competence: the student implements the possibilities of achieving a certain level of qualification and comprehensive personal development in an environment of a higher educational institution, required for successful fulfillment of future professional activity.
Considering the stages of personal and professional development of students at a higher educational institution, it is necessary to bear in mind their dialectic and indirect relationship with the stages of teaching, one of which is the stage of formation of professional competence . The progress of personal and professional development of students at the stage of self-actualization runs parallel with such stage of pedagogical activity as formation of the initial skills of professional competence of an expert. The actions of teachers are aimed at creating the conditions, under which each student has the opportunity to continually improve his/her cultural level, to develop his/her moral and volitional
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qualities, to manifest and expand his/her interests, and abilities, and thus, to strengthen his/her educational and cognitive activities, to work in an organized way, with self control and purposefully, to subordinate short term objectives to long term ones.
Integrative and differentiated training, based on the idea of achievement of cognitive resonance - compliance of the level of difficulty of learning with the level of actual personal and professional development of each student, can be the technological basis for solving the psychological and pedagogical problem of development of subjectivity of students in the educational process of a higher educational institution. Technology of integrative differentiated training of students aims to achieve maximum results (in terms of rate and quality) in the process of acquiring competent qualities of students on the basis of differentiation and integration of teaching and learning. Its consistent, phased implementation promotes self-realization, self-actualization, development of an integrative “self” of students’ personality, harmonization of personal and professional “self” and the integral “self-concept”.
Exploring the process of subjectivity formation of students in a higher educational institution, you need to pay attention to the fact that the disclosure and implementation by students of their potential capabilities is a factor for development of competences. In order to make this factor positive, a student must deeply understand and consciously accept the external requirements and tasks, act not as a dispassionate actor, but as a writer and creator of his/her own actions (at the highest levels of development, even as a stage director), who has such a quality as the purposefulness of a reformer, based on subject activity, developed by a student himself/herself, organized and controlled by himself/herself. It actualizes his/her personal capabilities and serves as a source of socially relevant neo-formations.
System organization of the process of subjectivity formation of students in the educational process of a higher educational institution is able to provide: the achievement of a perfect combination of the development processes as selfdirection, based on the initiative, activity of students, on the one hand, training and education as a purposeful management of personal and professional development of a student, on the other hand - the adequacy of training and educational influence on identified individual characteristics of each student. This will help to turn intrapersonal potential into real competences of graduates.
Translated from Russian by Znanije Central Translations Bureau
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