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THE PEDAGOGICAL CONDITIONS AND METHODS FOR ENSURING A CONCEPTUAL ORIENTATION IN MODERN EDUCATION
E. G. Belyakova
In the context of an ever-increasing flow of information, a learner should be able to search for, assimilate, and use significant information consciously in problem situations that require the application of value-mediated and responsible decisions. At the same time, a contradiction can be ascertained between the demand expressed by society for a modern person to have a conscious attitude towards reality and the unpreparedness of education to create the corresponding conditions for development of the axiological and conceptual sphere of a learner’s personality. In this context, the problem of the creation of meaning acquires particular importance as the necessary content and quality of the modern educational process, ensuring the learner is established as a meaningful subject of the cultural and historical process. The creation of meaning is a process and the result of the interaction between students’ personal values and pedagogical values, as well as the values represented in cultural texts, as a result of which, personal meaning becomes multidimensional and takes the form of the personal and conscious value position that a learner relies on to determine his or her own socially and personally significant goals.
Realization of the psychological and pedagogical mechanism for creating meaning can be achieved if: (a) the specificity of the process for creating meaning is taken into account in the learning process as one that is deeply personalized and "coming from the subject”, i.e., not according to an external demand, but in connection with an emerging inner need and readiness for personal growth; (b) the important aspect of establishing an axiological and conceptual sphere for educational subjects is taken into account as the initial base and a continual "projection” into the system of life relations and a person’s real activities and self-development; (c) in the process of axiological and conceptual exploration, one of the main means of it actualization is through dialogical interaction focused on the projection of "points of axiological and conceptual growth” in the present and in a relevant teaching situation; (d) a significant role in the construction of such contact is given to the pedagogue and his or her readiness and ability to take a take meaning-oriented position and to organize conditions conducive to the foregrounding of meaning. Thus, provision of a conceptual focus in education is possible in the context of introduction of new content and
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technological elements into the learning process - humanitarization of educational content, foregrounding of the role of the subject of learning, and creation of the preconditions for the assimilation of educational content in the form of participatory, personally-valuable knowledge that becomes a part of the learner’s life experience and the basis of his or her creative selfrealization.
On the basis of philosophical, cultural, psychological and pedagogical studies of meaning and understanding (M. M. Bakhtin, A. A. Brudnyi, A. N. Leontiev, D. A. Leontiev, V. P. Zinchenko, A. F. Zakirova, V. V. Znakov, A. N. Slavskaya, etc.), we have proposed an integrative model of meaning, realized through various forms of understanding on the basis of specific psychological mechanisms that respectively define their specific educational conditions and resources.
Phenomenological understanding (preunderstanding) is based on a previous subjective experience of the perception of phenomena, objects, events, and situations. Foregrounding of preunderstanding always precedes assimilation of new knowledge and is an important prerequisite for the formation of the need to understand. In a number of approaches in modern pedagogical science, a learner’s need to rely on previously developed methods for perceiving the world is clearly indicated. Reliance on subjective experience is a necessary component of the pedagogical process in student-centered learning. Cognitive understanding correlates with the success of assimilating scientific and objective knowledge as social implications. In this case, understanding included in intellectual activity acts as its essential component and is present in all phases throughout the course of the thinking process, taking on various forms (comprehension of problems, problem situations, and methods to solve them, etc.). Understanding as a cognitive process provides for the establishment of new connections between newly revealed properties of the object of knowledge and an already known entity, as well as the formation of preliminary meaning for the new properties of the object and determination of their place and role in the structure of mental activity.
The ability to take a meaningful value position in dialogue and the formation of a subjective attitude to reality express the essence of interpretive understanding (A. N. Slavskaya, A. F. Zakirova), which is produced with the participation of mental processes, but not limited to them, insofar as it is always associated with personal arguments. Existential understanding manifests itself through the ability to comprehend reality through the prism of assimilated value categories and objective knowledge, to implement assimilated meanings in the context of one’s life, and to
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manifest oneself as a practical realization of the essential conscious knowledge in culturally consistent, socially and personally meaningful activities.
Various forms of understanding are included in this unified, cyclical activity and determine the result - the axiological and conceptual selfdetermination of the subject of education. Accordingly, the selected forms of understanding can be viewed simultaneously as levels of understanding achieved at different stages of the process of creating meaning. The procedures and techniques for foregrounding meaning correspond to the stages for the creation of meaning and their characteristic forms (levels) of understanding. The procedures include traditional and new means of stimulating a learner’s consciousness: interpretive techniques, active methods of psychosocial learning (discussion, business games, roleplaying games), reflective and directed procedures, and technologies for creating narratives and meaningful life planning. The use of methods that are different in nature is determined by the specifics of the foregrounded forms of understanding in the process of creating meaning. We have identified four stages of the creation of meaning and their characteristic forms (levels) of understanding.
1. The stage of foregrounding preunderstanding. Foregrounding of personal meanings is organized with the help of open-ended questions, in the process of interpretation of texts of different types and modality (visual imagery, metaphors, incomplete sentences, artistic, journalistic, scientific and popular texts) through dramatization and role playing that allows meanings in communicative and active forms to be foregrounded through narrative procedures (creation and presentation of author's narratives (diaries, essays, writing) and journalistic texts (reports, scientific and popular articles) that reflect a personal attitude to the situation or event), with the help of assignments on a conscious choice in the context of a meaningful situation, by means of reflexively directed dialogue, and psychotechnical procedures that create the conditions for an informed choice and argumentation by means of a chief axiological and conceptual component.
2. The stage of cognitive understanding. At this stage of development of objective knowledge, procedures for the foregrounding of meaning are provided which are primarily based on cognitive mechanisms of understanding, but are realized simultaneously through the suggestion of meaning, the perception of socially and personally significant problems as situations with value choices, and a multifaceted reflection of the axiological foundation of one’s own decisions. Procedures include questions on the
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meaningful orientation of a topic, the interpretation of examples specially selected by the teacher and children, which indicate the social and personal value of knowledge (situations, facts, documents, author's narratives, journalistic texts), assignments for the exploration and acceptance of value-mediated decisions in socially and personally meaningful situations.
3. The stage of interpretive understanding. The development of learners’ meaningful and personal value-positions takes place in a dialogue of meanings. The teacher provides the conditions for the foregrounding of the personal values of participants in the dialogue and establishes a multifaceted understanding of the subject, as well as value comparison of the positions of the participants in the dialogue, argumentation, and reflection. The teacher uses the potential conflict of interpretations, showing the ambiguity of the situation and the need for a conscious choice, creates the conditions for the resonance of meanings in the dialogue through a substantive synthesis of points of view, stimulates the analysis of learners’ own life experience, and connects these new meaningful contexts of interpretation through humanitarian texts.
4. The stage of existential understanding. The conditions for foregrounding consciousness as the ability of learners to build their life priorities and goals on the basis of meaningful, essential knowledge and a generally-accepted system of values is provided for mainly by means of procedures for life planning through the creation of narrative texts and through the learners’ assimilation of experience of active realization of accepted values and its reflection. At this stage, stimulation of the creation of consciousness is most effectively provided for through the creative activity of students in the context of a varied and rich educational environment. At this stage, practical experience and active implementation of the adopted values takes on particular importance. In an educational institution, this experience can be obtained in terms of simulated and real life situations, including through the organization of social practices and learners’ design and research activities.
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