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THE STRUCTURE OF A PEDAGOGUE'S SOCIAL INTELLECT IN THE PARADIGM OF MODERN EDUCATION
E. Z. Ivashkevich N. A. Khupavtseva
The humanistic refocusing of education presupposes augmentation of the role of dialog in the modern world. The role of dialog was the object of philosophical analysis in the works of M. Buber, M. Bakhtin, H-G. Gadamer, V.S. Bibler, G.A. Ball et al. This analysis by itself is a reaction to the modern realities when it is essentially impossible to take hold of the Truth in all spheres of life, whether it is science, politics or art. Modern education is constructed in accordance with the principles of humanitarization. It acknowledges a person’s right to choose between different world outlooks and lifestyles. Besides, opposite positions that are viewed as competing ones are increasingly evaluated by pedagogues as not contradicting each other, but rather as being parts of dialogical interactions, in the process whereof they supplement and enrich each other.
According to G.A. Ball [1] and G.A. Kovalev [3], apart from the dialog being interpreted as a form of communication and a type of interrelations between subjects of certain joint activities (whether cognitive or practical), it is treated in the context of the dialogical nature of the very essence of those activities. This dialogical nature requires my partner to act as a person "having a different view" of the object of activities (in case of educational activities), as a certain opponent who is valuable and intrinsically necessary for each subject just because of that view. It becomes evident that the dialogical nature and the humanistic world outlook postulating mutual dependence of individuals and the inherent value of each of them necessarily presume each other.
The dialogical approach in the sphere of education is humanistic, culturological and personalistic at the same time. In respect of higher education, this approach is based on the following interconnected principles: 1. Cognition of the world by a student in the process of education must take place in a dialog with other methods of its understanding (ethical, aesthetical, moral, axiological, etc.) in the context of culture [1, p. 80]. 2) The dialogical understanding of the world around can be reached only in free, highly cultured communication with other people and oneself. Whereupon a person develops in dialogical communication with other subjects, in the process of understanding the world, itself and communication partners [2, p. 56]. 3) That is why the whole educational process must proceed from the priority of a student's and a professor's personalities, and educational activities must presuppose a dialog of personalities [3, p. 45]. 4) The latter presupposes humanitarization and dialogization of the whole process of studies and introduction of dialogical type subjects into the curricula of higher educational institutions. Such subjects might be able to unveil the dramas of ideas, persons and nations inscribed in original cultural artifacts. In our view, such artifacts should be widely used in the process of solving different didactic problems encountered in teaching widely different subjects.
Since the humanistic approach takes priority in modern education, we view social intellect in accordance with the concept of N. Cantor as some cognitive
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competence that permits people to perceive the events and objects of the world around us with a great extent of unexpectedness and to the maximum advantage for oneself. According to the scholar, the cognitive substructure of a person's psyche is defined as a totality of declaratory and procedural knowledge being actual knowledge at the same time. An individual uses the later in the process of interpreting texts and events, drawing up plans for the future and in the situations of everyday life. It is clear that just those perceptions and experiences of a person, as well as the rules of interpreting texts, events, activities and behavior amount in their aggregate to the cognitive substructure of a person to which the social intellect of an individual pertains as well. All those patterns taken together comprise the sphere of personal experience permitting an individual to solve specific problems of social life. It is just the repertoire of that knowledge that N. Cantor considers as social intellect. The dynamics of using social intellect permits a person to adapt to the world around him or her to the maximum. The scholar names the principal components of social intellect, namely: the ability to solve practical problems, the ability of verbal perception and reflection of the individual's social realm, social and communicative competences. Therefore, N. Cantor thinks, on one hand, that social intellect is a structure responsible for the integrity of actual knowledge that, in its own turn, is used in everyday life for solving various situations, problems and tasks and, on the other hand, social intellect is viewed as a certain ability of a person to be fully conscious of the decision he or she has made.
In our opinion, social intellect definitely includes declarative and operative (procedural) knowledge applied by an individual in real life for interpreting events, drawing up plans and forecasting both everyday life events and professional situations. Those perceptions, personal memories and interpretation rules comprise the cognitive substructure of social intellect. In its turn, the mnemic substructure is filled by the experience acquired by a person and the empathic one, by the person's potential of using the anticipation mechanism in solving various problems of social life.
The cognitive substructure of a pedagogue's social intellect includes the aggregate of sufficiently stable knowledge, views, events, interpretation of rules, behavior of persons, their relationships, etc. on the basis of the system of interpretations built at the microstructural and the macrostructural levels. The microstructure of the cognitive component of social intellect is determined by the functions of the latter: the cognitive and evaluative one, on which the competent processing and evaluation of the information perceived by a pedagogue depends; the forecasting one, on the basis whereof the development of personal interactions inter alia in the educational process is planned and forecasted; the communicative one, ensuring the efficiency of the communication process by itself (this function is connected with adequate perception and understanding one's communication partner); the reflexive one, finding its reflection directly in self-cognition. In its turn, the macrostructure of the cognitive component of social intellect manifests itself in a pedagogue's perception of him- or herself as a value, in the axiological and notional position in interpersonal relationships with one's colleagues, with students, as well as in the actualization of motivational and axiological orientations of a person, an axiological attitude to the professional and other kinds of activities.
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Continuous actualization of the functions listed above is the source of social intellect at the microstructural level. One can consider an aggregate of subjective benchmarks permitting an individual to find his or her bearings in the peculiarities of interpersonal interaction, to recognize other individuals' behavior and evaluate it adequately as the result of integration of those functions. The availability of subjective statistics of various modalities to a pedagogue can be considered as one of the principal results of a high level of social intellect. This is a space of subjective psychosemantic benchmarks, the symbolism of non-verbal behavior, speech production norms, etc.
The task of a social intellect at the macrostructural level is to provide opportunity to assess oneself and other individuals as personalities. Whereupon the axiological orientations of an individual pedagogue must not necessarily coincide with generally accepted social norms and even conflict with them, but there is always some socium and its specific representative who will support the individual world outlook, personal values and senses of an individual.
The mnemic component of a pedagogue's social intellect characterizes his or her ability to interpret life events and phenomena, and other people's behavior and one's own as the behavior of the subject of those events. The mnemic substructure is based on the personal experience of a specialist, wherein subjective statistics form the personal interpretation complex. In this case, polymodality means the availability of different interpretation complexes for a pedagogue corresponding to various spheres of his or her being. They may formally contradict each other, but in normal psychology they are intrinsically coordinated and so they ensure the integrity of the social intellect mnemic component.
The set of interpretations existing at the mnemic component level has its own hierarchy: Oneself - other persons - the world around. Each of those interpretations is presented at the mnemic component level in the form of its specific particular substructures. The nucleus of a personal interpretation complex is the aggregate of self-judgments accumulated by an individual. Whereupon the judgmental attitude to oneself is always subjectively incomplete and open. This presupposes a humanistically oriented education and a dialog of cultures. In view of interaction with the social environment, a person manifests the integral characteristic of individual experience: self-respect of a person linked to the concept of subjective value. The personal interpretation complex of a pedagogue is characterized by the potential of interpreting other persons, their behavior and actions. Those interpretations permit the persons involved in them to continuously expand and adjust the interpretation reserve of personal experience, and they ensure a test for compatibility and similarity of different interpretation complexes. Since a pedagogue must judge other persons, and the peculiarities of their behavior and acts on a permanent basis, in the process of life and professional activities he or she gradually develops various strategies of judgment in view of the criterion of compatibility of his or her world perception and that of other persons. In their turn, those judgment strategies form the respective personal interpretation complex in the interpersonal sphere that is the dominant one at the level of the mnemic component of social intellect. The empathy component of social intellect depends to a great extent on the form of behavior chosen by a pedagogue as the
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priority one, what he or she expects from the persons around him, what axiological interpretation complex in respect of the world around a person has developed, what potential of using the anticipation mechanism a for solving various social life problems a specific pedagogue has.
References
1. Балл Г. А. Психология в рациогуманистической перспективе: Избранные работы. - К.: Основа, 2006.
2. Библер В. С. От наукоучения - к логике культуры: Два философских введения в двадцать первый век. - М.: Политиздат, 1991.
3. Ковалёв Г. А. Три парадигмы в психологии - три стратегии психологического воздействия // Вопросы психологии. - 1987. - № 3.
4. Kihlstrom J. F., Cantor N. Social Intelligence Электронный ресурс: http://istsocrates.berkeley.edu/~kihlstrom/social_inteNigence.htm.
Translated from Russian by Znanije Central Translations Bureau
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