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SHAPING COMPETENCY AS A READER AS A VECTOR OF CONTINUOUS EDUCATION
T. G. Firsova
In this article, the reading process is considered as a multifunctional social and cultural phenomenon, a basis of functional literacy, and a national intellectual resource. The author emphasizes the main stages and ways of students' reading competence development in the context of continuous education.
Key words: reading, reading competence, functional literacy, continuous education.
Since this article puts forward the thesis of a leading role of reading and reading competency in continuous education of a person, we should define the basic terms.
We must note that the concept of "continuous education" is applicable: (a) to a person (the defining fact is that a person studies permanently - throughout his or her life, irrespective of whether this process takes place in an educational institution, or the human being in question educates him or herself; (b) to educational processes (we mean the fact that a person is involved in the educational process at all stages of his or her development); (c) to the organizational structure of education (the principle of successiveness of educational programs must be implemented in the very network of educational institutions).
In the contemporary socio-cultural situation, reading acquires a complex notional structure. It is understood as a polyfunctional phenomenon of a personality, society and culture. The issues of improving the social status and prestige value of reading are on a par with the problems on which the well-being of the nation depends1. Book reading is viewed as a universal means of man-creation, self-identification, "not one of the methods of cognitive attitude to the word but a proper method of human being-in-the-world". V.A. Borodina defines reading as "a universum of personal development in the process of a person's ontogenetic development, in view of the achievements in reader studies during phylogenesis"2. Reading forms the groundwork for literacy (understood as the unity of reading and writing), education, competency and culture.The life of a future citizen in the information society depends on his or her competence and flexibility in reading. Reading competence, defined as "the quality of retaining the read information, shaped on the basis of universal human culture, making it possible to solve academic, social, professional and personal issues adequately, according to the situation in the wider social interaction and educational-professional activity 3 is a basic human competence.
1 Национальная программа поддержки и развития чтения. [An elecronic resource]. URL: http://www.fapms.ru/news/info/item2003/html. С. 6. (access date: 25.05.2014)
2 Бородина В. А. Читательское развитие личности: теоретико-методологические аспекты. Автореф. на соиск. уч. степени доктора пед. наук. СПб., 2007. С. 36.
3 Сметанникова Н. Н. Чтение и грамотность: Размышления в контексте Национальной программы поддержки и развития чтения // Как разорвать замкнутый круг: поддержка и развитие
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"Books have developed men since the beginning of time", an old Russian folk proverb says. However, it is no secret that a global tendency in the present-day world is a certain drop in interest in reading and, consequently, a reduction in the functional literacy of the majority of population. According to UNESCO, more than 771 million adults in the world cannot read, and about 100 million children do not attend school. The overwhelming majority of illiterate people live in 35 poorest countries, but there are many of them in the developed countries as well1. There is an alarming tendency towards growing functional illiteracy in a significant number of people. The loss of reading and writing skills has occurred to such an extent that they are unable to understand a short and simple text. In the 1990s, nearly a quarter of population of Canada was considered as functionally illiterate; there are about four million secondary illiterates in Germany. In 1996, about 20% of the population of France was secondarily illiterate. According to specialists, functional illiteracy is one of the primary causes of illiteracy, accidents and injuries in and out of work. V.P. Chudinova's article cites statistical data, proving a directly proportionate correlation between crime and functional illiteracy. The research states: "In the early 21st century, 60% of adult prison inmates in the USA were functionally illiterate or semi-literate, and 85% young delinquents had 3R problems"2.
It is evident that a falling share of actively reading populations brings about a growing deficiency of knowledge and constructive ideas in society, affects the quality of manpower, the general education level, the system of moral and spiritual values, and landmarks. Undereducated members of society who are unable to read serious literature are a social and cultural risk group. Their incompetence can bring about negative consequences because of ill-conceived socially significant decisions, inability to express their thoughts literately, non-understanding of the meaning of words in their mother tongue, and also the sense of ideas concentrated in written sources. All these factors obstruct the stable development of the state, and successful solution of accumulated problems.
In contemporary Russia, there is a discrepancy between the information space’s development, and the rate of its mastering by various categories of people; a disparity between the level of actual reading socialization, and objective requirements for the quality of reading, capable of ensuring success in education, professional activities and personal development. Reading competence is shaped along the "ontogenetic ladder": from the prenatal stage to the subsequent ones, each of which is a zone of immediate development as compared to the previous one. Here, the consumptive, the axiological, the creative, the cognitive, the affective, the aesthetical, the moral, the pragmatic (applied) and the assessing (reflexive) aspects of reading are involved to various extent, depending on the stage.
The development of a person as a reader can be conventionally divided into
чтения: проблемы и возможности: научно-практический сборник / сост. Е. И. Кузьмин,
О. К. Громова. М.: МЦБС, 2007. С. 53-61. С. 57.
1 See: Воронцов А. В. Чтение как социальная проблема. URL:
ftp://lib.herzen.spb.ru/text/vorontsov_chtenie2009.pdf
2 Чудинова В. П. Чтение детей как национальная ценность // Просвещение. 2009. Вып. № 1 (23). Март. С. 5.
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nine stages: (1) the prenatal (intrauterine) one when all the genetic and biopsychic prerequisites of intellectual and informational activity of a person are created; (2) the preparatory one, its scope is from the birth to the beginning of the period when a child begins to read on his or her own (4-7 years); (3) the initial one, coinciding in time with learning reading at the elementary school, but it may include the preschool period if the child has learned reading before school (from 4-7 to 11 years); (4) the shaping one, characteristic of secondary school students (11-15 years), (5) the perfecting one (15-18 years) - senior secondary school, college and other specialized secondary educational institution students; (6) the stabilizing one (18-25 years) when a person asserts him/herself as a professional; (7) the optimizing one (25-50 years), the development of a person as a reader stabilizes and optimizes; (8) the involutionary optimizing one (50-70-80 years) - depending on the state of physical and mental health of a person, sight and memory problems arise and regressive processes occur, but reading activity is optimized for account of general and professional erudition, life experience, and consciousness. The regression of different readers depends on the activity and intensity of intellectual informational activity: the higher their level, the less significant the regression of cognitive psychic phenomena; (i) the involutionary stage takes place after 70-80, when acute changes take place in all functions determining the quality of a reader's intellectual and informational activity1.
The experience of foreign countries which were able to reverse the reader crisis demonstrates that it is necessary to create a uniform line of successiveness between the elicited stages of development of a person as a reader at the state level. For example, in the USA there is a special "21st Century Literacy" program, under which special attention is devoted to functionally illiterate adult and immigrant families (under family literacy programs). The experience of Finland is illustrative: there, public libraries have developed a large-scale program of aid to the people in teaching them how to work with information, how to use computers, and how to master ICT. Special mobile libraries equipped for such classes with new hardware drive to remote regions. Over recent years, Great Britain has started a large-scale state program of reading support with emphasis on youth reading.
A resolution adopting the long-term National Program of Support and Development of Reading was adopted in the Russian Federation in 2007; there are various programs of republic-wide and regional significance. However, the lack of consistency and a single national project, and the shortage of qualified teachers in the sphere of reader competency improvement (we mean reading acmeologists, special tutors in the sphere of development and fostering of Readers), slow down the process of improving functional literacy standards in all social and age groups of the population. To reverse the "reading crisis" situation in Russia and to involve a person in continuous education, special attention must be given to the so-called risk groups, namely: (a) an illiterate population with a low level of basic literacy (completely illiterate people unable to read and write, and functionally illiterate persons, having a low level of reading and writing proficiency. As a rule, this includes immigrants and their children who speak a different language than that of
1 Бородина В. А. Читательское развитие личности: теоретико-методологические аспекты. Автореф. на соиск. уч. степени доктора пед. наук. СПб., 2007.
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the locals; (b) families having reading and literacy problems ("family literacy: and "family reading" programs are needed); (с) groups of adults of various age and skill levels, who need to acquire information processing and ICT skills; (d) students who need aid in development of various kinds of information: basic, functional, informational and ICT one.
The principal tasks of the government and society in this regard must be to liquidate "educational" and "digital" gaps in society, supporting reading, providing the population with access to information and the opportunity to get education throughout their lives. The national policy must be built so that reading would be understood as an element of nation building. In the context of continuous education, in the words of Samuel Smiles: "Books are the best friends in old age, and at the same time, the best leaders in young age".
Translated from Russian by Znanije Central Translastions Bureas
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