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THE CONCEPT OF EDUCATIONAL RESULTS AS A COMPONENT OF INNOVATIVE PEDAGOGICAL THOUGHT IN THE 21st CENTURY
E. V. Chernobai
Educational modernization is currently envisioned along the lines of sustainable development, and the key resource for such modernization are teachers who are capable of learning and growing with an education system that is constantly changing in pursuit of new learning results. A teacher’s work will be effective if he or she is able to promptly adapt to the fast-changing environment and actively absorb social change, and this implies a rather different (in content and direction) level of professional "fitness”, where the teacher needs to understand the contemporary meaning of "educational results.” The meaning of the concept of "educational results” is undergoing significant changes today. Contemporary educational psychology and didactic science conceptualize "educational results” as propagation of motivational, operational and cognitive resources in a person that will determine that person’s ability to perform meaningful cognitive and practical tasks. To understand the essence of what is meant by "educational results” today, we should look at how the concept is defined within the Guidelines of Second-Generation Federal National Educational Standards for Secondary Vocational Training: motivational resources are the worldview, values, learning needs and interests, shaped in the process of education, that drive the person; operational resources include the universal and specialized methods of operation, mastered by the person; cognitive resources are, first of all, the knowledge that underpins a scientific world outlook, and "subject-specific” skills and competencies [2].
The planned propagation of motivational, operational and cognitive personal resources translates into "personal growth,” "meta-subject” and "subject” learning results. "Personal growth” results are shaped mainly by fostering motivational resources in students. "Meta-subject” results spring from the development of operational resources, and "subject” results are mainly formed with cognitive resources. It seems appropriate to describe those results as "key competencies” in line with the competency-based approach currently widespread in the international practice of teaching.
Personal growth results are the motivations, interests and needs the child develops through learning, the values that define how he feels about the world, himself, other members of the learning process, the
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process itself, the objects of study and the results of his learning. The personal growth results of education may be grouped by a range of criteria:
(a) by benchmark value category (moral, esthetic, political, etc.); (b) object of evaluation (how the person feels about himself, others, specific types of activity, etc.); (c) the nature of the person’s existential paradigm, and so on. However, to a varying extent, any education system will contribute to the shaping of the student’s worldview, sensibilities and value system.
To understand "personal growth results,” it is important to match them to what "personality” is made of. Summarizing what psychology and education researchers have to say about the "architecture of personality,” V.I. Andreev defined a number of personal qualities that should be the target results of the educational process:
(a) motivational qualities (school leavers must have a solid positive motivation for lifelong institutional and extramural education, as well as broad interests in learning, art and culture; they should be motivated for active work and positive social conduct);
(b) moral and mental qualities (a school leaver must be a spiritually enlightened, humane, honest, caring, modest, sincere, reflective, fair, kind person committed to continuous personal growth);
(c) physical qualities (a healthy, physically strong, dynamic, athletic, optimistic person capable of physical self-improvement);
(d) intellectual qualities (a thinking, creative, vastly knowledgeable person with advanced intuitive and analytical capabilities, a critical thinker, smart, resourceful, a quick learner);
(e) business qualities (a hard worker, enterprising, prompt, forwardlooking, disciplined, responsible, a person who always completes the work he/she started);
(f) social qualities (a person with a humanistic outlook, an active citizen, a person who understands other people and respects them, a person who treasures civil integrity, a patriot, a productive, creative team player);
(g) cultural qualities (a person with strong intellectual and physical work ethics, solid communication and social skills, a cultured person well versed in law, economics, environmental science and politics, a person with a strong esthetic sense) [1].
Meta-subject results include cross-disciplinary knowledge, but more importantly, universal methods of operation (cognitive, regulative, communicative and others) mastered by the student from several curricular subjects, which can be helpful in both further education and real life. As a methodology platform, the requirements for meta-subject results and their
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evaluation should be bolstered by the competency-based approach to learning outputs. One hallmark of that approach is that the emphasis in educational planning and result evaluation is not on isolated skills in relation to specific subjects, but rather skills of an integrated, crossdisciplinary nature, meta-cognitive skills among them, such as general learning skills, goal-setting skills, research skills, self-testing skills, and so on. As G.S. Kovaleva, E.A. Krasnovsky, O.A. Tatur and some other researchers aptly noted, the challenge here is to tie together the different modes of learning activity that are to be identified and evaluated. In effect, the testing of students’ training level is about testing their ability to perform certain intellectual acts with the learning material. With this approach, the subject-specific knowledge and skills that are in and by themselves the outputs of learning, come to simultaneously operate as means of development of universal learning competencies.
Subject results are manifested in how well the students have mastered specific components of the social and professional experience studied within the framework of individual curricular subjects. As A.M. Novikov is right in saying that until recently, the principal purpose of study was reduced to learning a generalized version of the products of previous human experience. Those generalized products are expressed in terms of scientific information; meanwhile, the activity, the process itself, and the means and methods of that activity were never taught and learned, remaining outside the learning process [3]. If personal growth is the central purpose of education, then the key is for the student to master the process itself and the works and mechanics of its operation, not just to learn information. Learning as a process is about the student learning "how,” not just learning "about.” Learning how to think, reflect and analyze promotes intellectual growth, while learning the methods of "subject-specific” activity promotes the development of hands-on skills.
References
1. Андреев В. И. Педагогика высшей школы. Инновационнопрогностический курс: учеб. пособие. - Казань: ЦИТ, 2006.
2. Концепция федеральных государственных образовательных стандартов общего образования: проект / под ред. А. М. Кондакова, А. А. Кузнецова. - М.: Просвещение, 2008.
3. Новиков А. М. Профессиональное образование в России. - М.: ИЦП НПО РАО, 1997.
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