57. Basic psychological neoplasms of primary school age
The main psychological neoplasms of primary school age are:
Arbitrariness and awareness of all mental processes and their intellectualization, their internal mediation, which occurs through the assimilation of a system of scientific concepts. Everything except the intellect. The intellect does not yet know itself.
Awareness of one’s own changes as a result of the development of educational activities.
If learning is structured in accordance with the principles of the activity theory of learning, then by the end of primary school age the following are formed:
Educational activity and its subject.
Theoretical thinking, which, in accordance with the theory of V.V. Davydov, includes:
All these achievements and, especially, the child’s turning toward himself (“Who was I?” and “Who have I become?”) as a result of educational activities indicate the child’s transition to the next age period, which ends childhood.
58. Development of social behavior of a junior schoolchild
By the end of the first stage of school, the child’s perception becomes more complex and deepening, becomes more analytical, differentiating, and takes on an organized character. The attention of younger schoolchildren is involuntary, not stable enough, and limited in volume. Thinking in primary school children develops from emotional-imaginative to abstract-logical. L.S. Vygotsky pointed out that a child enters school age with a relatively weak intellectual function.
Children's thinking develops in conjunction with speech. Memory plays a major role in a student’s cognitive activity. His brain has a plasticity that allows him to easily cope with word-for-word memorization tasks. The formation of a young schoolchild’s personality occurs under the influence of new relationships with adults and peers, new types of activities and communication, and inclusion in a whole system of groups. Younger schoolchildren develop elements of social feelings and develop skills of social behavior. Junior school age provides more opportunities for the development of moral qualities of the individual. This is facilitated by the pliability and certain suggestibility of schoolchildren, their gullibility, tendency to imitate, and most importantly, the enormous authority enjoyed by the teacher. At this age, having left his family, the child enters the school community and must obey its demands, as well as the demands of neighbors, the street, and the camp. He can carry out both individual assignments and serious matters for the family, and learns the school routine. But, having mastered the laws of "community", he tries to break them, but sincerely repents of his actions. Some guys don't like friendships with peers and worry if a friend makes a new friend. They love games and take their role and the concept of justice responsibly. The teacher is an authority for him.
The will is not formed, motives are not realized. Increased sensitivity, the ability to deeply and strongly worry prevail over the arguments of reason, the student commits many rash actions. The development of a primary school student is a very complex and contradictory process. At this age, a growing person has a lot to understand, and therefore you need to make the most of every day of his life. The main task of age is to comprehend the surrounding world: nature, human relationships.
59.Self-awareness as the most important new formation of a teenager
adolescents, based only on factors external to mental development, are not adequate enough. Factors of both biological and social order do not directly determine development. They are included in the development process itself, becoming internal components of the resulting psychological formations. From this point of view, no theory of adolescence can be built on the basis of taking into account any one factor. Adolescence, according to L.S. Vygotsky, cannot be covered by one formula. To do this, the internal driving forces and contradictions inherent in this stage of mental development must be studied, and the central systemic neoplasm that performs an integrative function and allows us to understand the entire symptom complex of adolescence, the nature of the crisis occurring here and its phenomenology must be analyzed.
A new development of the critical phase of adolescence, clear evidence that adolescence has begun, is the so-called “sense of adulthood” - a special form of adolescent self-awareness. Note that this psychological symptom of the onset of adolescence does not coincide in time with the physiological symptoms: the feeling of adulthood can arise much earlier than puberty. The feeling of adulthood, according to D.B. Elkonin’s definition, is a new formation of consciousness through which a teenager compares himself with others (adults or friends), finds models for assimilation, builds his relationships with other people, and restructures his activities.
Another important phenomenon that determines the formation of a teenager’s self-awareness is egocentrism. David Etkind experimentally demonstrated the behavioral foundations of adolescent egocentrism. Teenagers overcome the “everyday” naive egocentrism of younger children, who consider their own point of view the only possible one for the simple reason that they do not distinguish their view of a certain fact from the fact itself and do not know about the existence of the possibility of looking at the same fact differently. Teenagers, on the contrary, are captivated by the variety of points of view that has opened up to them on one very fascinating fact - the fact of their own unique existence. But at the same time, teenagers fall into a new form of absorption in their own point of view.
60. Development of the personal sphere in adolescence
Adolescence is the most difficult and complex of all childhood ages, representing a period of personality formation. At the same time, this is the most crucial period, since here the foundations of morality are formed, social attitudes and attitudes towards oneself, towards people, and towards society are formed. In addition, at this age, character traits and basic forms of interpersonal behavior stabilize. The main motivational lines of this age period, associated with an active desire for personal self-improvement, are self-knowledge, self-expression and self-affirmation. The main new feature that appears in the psychology of a teenager in comparison with a child of primary school age is a higher level of self-awareness. Self-awareness is the last and highest of all the restructurings that the psychology of an adolescent undergoes (L.S. Vygotsky) The transition to adolescence is characterized by profound changes in the conditions affecting the personal development of the child. They relate to the physiology of the body, the relationships that adolescents develop with adults and peers, the level of development of cognitive processes, intelligence and abilities. In all this, a transition from childhood to adulthood is outlined. The child’s body begins to quickly rebuild and transform into the body of an adult. The center of the child’s physical and spiritual life moves from home to the outside world, moving into the environment of peers and adults. Relationships in peer groups are built on activities that are more serious than recreational games together, covering a wide range of activities, from working together on something to personal communication on vital topics. A teenager enters into all these new relationships with people, already being an intellectually sufficiently developed person and having abilities that allow him to take a certain place in the system of relationships with peers.
61. Main problems and neoplasms in adolescence
A new development of adolescence in communication with peers is the development and differentiation of feelings of friendship and love.
The youthful need for self-disclosure often outweighs interest in the other as he actually is, prompting one not so much to choose a friend as to invent one. Genuine intimacy of relationships in youth, i.e. combining the life goals and prospects of friends while preserving the individuality and characteristics of each is possible only on the basis of a relatively stable image of the “I”. While he is away, the young man often rushes between the desire to completely merge with another and the fear of losing himself in this merger.
To understand the psychological differences between adult friendship and youth friendship, three points are especially important: the relative completion of the formation of self-awareness; expansion and differentiation of the sphere of communication and activity; the emergence of new intimate attachments. Friendship is a type of stable, individually selective interpersonal relationships characterized by mutual affection of their participants, strengthening of affiliation processes, mutual expectations of reciprocal feelings and preference. The development of friendship involves following its unwritten “code”, which affirms the need for mutual understanding, frankness and openness to each other, trust, active mutual assistance, mutual interest in the affairs and experiences of the other, sincerity and unselfishness of feelings.
Modern researchers more often use observation as a method of collecting data at the initial stage. However, sometimes it is used as one of the main ones. 2.2 Experiment as a method of researching developmental psychology An experiment involves the active intervention of a researcher in the activities of a subject in order to create conditions in which a psychological fact is revealed. The researcher intentionally...
As I would like to briefly show, the person himself is given the role and place of psychic reality in the picture of the world. So, what is developmental psychology and what are its main problems? So far there have been several answers: 1. This is the science of the facts and patterns of mental development of a normal healthy person. 2. This is the concept of another person that every person who lives among people has...
New formations are achievements in development, characterized by a special type of personality structure and activity, as well as the child’s attitude towards himself and other people.
The central neoplasms of primary school age are:
1) a qualitatively new level of development of voluntary regulation of behavior and activity;
2) reflection, analysis, internal action plan;
3) development of a new cognitive attitude to reality;
4) orientation towards a peer group.
Primary school age is a stage of significant changes in mental development. Full life for a child of this age period is possible only with the determining and active role of adults (teachers, parents, educators, psychologists), whose main task is to create optimal conditions for the disclosure and realization of the potential capabilities of younger schoolchildren, taking into account the individual characteristics of each child.
The value of primary school age
The profound changes occurring in the psychological appearance of a primary school student indicate the wide possibilities for the child’s development at this age stage. During this period, the potential of the child’s development as an active subject, learning about the world around him and himself, gaining his own experience of acting in this world, is realized at a qualitatively new level.
Junior school age is sensitive for the development, formation, mastery and formation of the following characteristics:
1) motives for learning, development of sustainable cognitive needs and interests;
2) productive techniques and skills of educational work, “the ability to learn”;
3) individual characteristics and abilities;
4) skills of self-control, self-organization and self-regulation;
6) social norms, moral development;
7) communication skills with peers, establishing strong friendships.
The most important new formations arise in all areas of mental development: intelligence, personality, and social relationships are transformed. The leading role of educational activity in this process does not exclude the fact that the younger student is actively involved in other types of activities (games, elements of work, sports, art, etc.), during which the child’s new achievements are improved and consolidated.
Primary school age is a period of positive changes and transformations. That is why the level of achievement achieved by each child at a given age stage is so important. If at this age a child does not feel the joy of learning, does not acquire the ability to learn, does not learn to make friends, does not gain confidence in his abilities and capabilities, doing this in the future (outside the sensitive period) will be much more difficult and will require immeasurably higher mental and physical costs .
The more positive acquisitions a junior schoolchild has, the easier he will cope with the upcoming difficulties of adolescence.
More on the topic Central neoplasms of primary school age:
- Psychological characteristics of the main difficulties in the development of a teenager’s personality, ways to overcome them.
- 31. GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF MENTAL DEVELOPMENT OF PRESCHOOL CHILDREN. CHARACTERISTICS OF LEADING ACTIVITIES OF CHILDREN OF PRECHOOL AGE.
1. Development of arbitrariness of the processes of perception, attention, memory. Memory acquires a pronounced cognitive character, since mental operations now have a goal, and memorization processes are also purposeful. Memorization techniques are being intensively developed. It occurs before from the involuntary memorization of a preschooler to the voluntary memorization of a schoolchild, purposeful observation of an object. The ability to focus attention on uninteresting things is formed.
2. Development of mental operations of analysis, synthesis, generalization, comparison, classification, etc. This is the age of active intellectual development. Intelligence mediates the development of all other functions, the intellectualization of all mental processes and their awareness occurs.
3. Awareness of one’s own development, one’s own changes as a result of educational activities.
Consciousness of learning is characterized by awareness of responsibility for educational achievements, activity and independence in the assimilation and application of knowledge, mastery of methods of mental activity, which ensures self-management of educational activities. Leontyev divided actions into those that are actually conscious, “automated,” or consciously controlled, and actions that are only in the field of perception. For example, walking down the street with a friend and talking about something, the surrounding environment will be perceived, your movement relative to external objects will be consciously controlled, and the meaning of the interlocutor’s words will be actually realized. It is very important to understand the difference between an action that is actually conscious and one that is only under conscious control. At first glance, these concepts are similar to each other or even coincide, but Leontyev gives the following example: “Let us assume that a child is studying and in the process of learning performs one of the well-known exercises for spelling a capital letter in proper names, consisting of the following: In the textbook, you need to write down the names of the cows separately and the names of the dogs separately. In this case, his actions should be aimed at deciding whether the next name he reads is more suitable for cows or whether it is more suitable for dogs. This becomes the subject of his actual consciousness. Here again, the content actually recognized by the child does not coincide with what is subject to conscious assimilation: after all, what is required to learn is not the difference between, so to speak, “typically cow” and “typically dog” names, but the fact that proper names, in particular animal names (and at the same time absolutely the same, be it the name of dogs or cows), are written with a capital letter. It’s another matter when a child must, for example, write out words in an exercise that are written with a capital letter; in this case, his internal action will be aimed at distinguishing these words, guided by the rule communicated to him. Accordingly, the actual subject of his consciousness will in this case be precisely spelling of proper names»
In addition, there may be a discrepancy in learning between the requirement to understand the material, on the one hand, and the child’s awareness of it, on the other. Using the same spelling rules as an example, we will give the child an exercise to master the spelling of words with untestable vowels. To do this, he must read the riddle, draw the answer, and then sign the text of the riddle under his drawing. This exercise is designed to ensure awareness of cheating, and it really cannot be done “mechanically.” To draw the answer, the child must be aware of the text of the riddle. Consequently, the child, signing a riddle under his drawing, copies the text, the content of which he previously fully understands. Let us, however, approach the example under consideration from the other side and pose the question as follows: For what is this exercise given? Of course, it is not given to teach the child to understand riddles. Its direct task is the conscious assimilation of spelling patterns. But what necessary The child is aware when performing this exercise, i.e., awareness of what does it guarantee? Obviously awareness thoughts expressed in the text of the riddle. Consciousness spelling The sides of the text in this exercise are not provided with anything. After all, the only word in relation to which a question about its spelling could arise in the child’s mind is a guessing word, but it is precisely this word that the child should not write, but depict with the help of a drawing, and it is precisely this word that is not contained in what is being studied. spelling. The text of the riddle itself, which contains the spelling pattern being studied, can be rewritten by the child completely “mechanically,” that is, without being aware of its spelling side. It turns out, therefore, that the material of this exercise is indeed always conscious, but what the child recognizes in it is not at all what is required for conscious mastery of spelling. In this case, as in many others, we are dealing with a discrepancy between the fact that the child must be aware in the educational material in accordance with a certain specific pedagogical task, and what is the actual object of his consciousness.
The problem of the consciousness of learning appears as a problem of the meaning that the knowledge he acquires has for the child. The way I am aware of something, what meaning has for me what is conscious of me - determined by the motive of the activity in which a specific action is included. That is, how knowledge is acquired and what it becomes for the child is determined by the specific motives that prompted him to learn.
Motives can be divided into two large groups:
1. Motives inherent in the educational activity itself:
Motives related to the content of the teaching (the desire to learn new things, master certain skills, methods of action, etc.)
Motives related to the learning process (I like the learning process itself, interaction with the teacher and peers, etc.)
2. Indirect motives:
Social motives associated with the concept of duty, honor, etc.
Motives for self-improvement, self-determination
Motives for avoiding trouble
It should really be taken into account that there are so many people, so many motives, so many different goals, but in general the structure is as follows. It is clear that the success of learning knowledge and the degree of its awareness will be different in each case: whether the child learns the lesson so that his parents will let him go for a walk, to get a good grade, or because he likes the content of the subject itself.
The principle of conscious learning requires the child to understand the necessity of his learning in his future life, but understanding alone is not enough. Thus, the cognitive content of consciousness depends on the attitude towards the cognizable, on the motive that encourages cognizing. In this regard, Leontyev spoke about the need education motives of students, the importance of forming the right attitude to learning, the need for such an organization of the educational process in which students would not only be interested in the content of the subject, but also motivated to master it. He cited an interesting experiment in the house of pioneers, in the circle of aircraft designers. More than half of the children enthusiastically collecting model airplanes were not at all interested in the theory of why an airplane flies, but this is fundamental knowledge. No amount of calls to start studying these things had any effect. Then the experimenters came up with the idea of giving the beginners a new task; it was necessary not only to construct a model, but also to make it fly a certain distance. From this point of view, it is no longer possible to do without theory, and what previously did not carry any specific meaning for the child is now of paramount importance - in order to make the model fly, one must rummage through the literature, communicate with the instructor, etc.
Leontyev said that only what is the goal of activity is actually realized. Having thus changed the role of theoretical knowledge in the general structure of activity, he attracted children's interest in fundamental knowledge. All training must also be structured.
In psychology and pedagogy, there is such a thing as a child’s psychological readiness for school. This readiness requires the child to have a certain level of development, a certain ability to control himself and his behavior, a certain level of development of mental functions, the presence of certain skills to interact with adults and peers and, of course, a certain level of self-awareness. At school, all these skills of self-control and self-awareness continue to develop and become more complex. At one year of age, the child begins to separate himself from the objects of the outside world, at three - his objective actions from the objective actions of an adult - at the level of primary school age - with the help of an adult, he evaluates his mental qualities - thinking, memory, imagination. Thus, conscious learning, which is based on the mastery of educational activities, contributes to the formation of consciousness, self-esteem of the student, the development of volitional qualities, self-control skills, the organization of mental work, the development of cognitive processes, etc.
156. Education in adolescence.
Studying at school or college occupies a large place in the life of a teenager. Independent forms of study become attractive for teenagers. The teenager is impressed by this, and he learns ways of acting more easily when the teacher only helps him.
Of course, interest in a subject is largely related to the quality of teaching. Of great importance is the teacher’s presentation of the material, the ability to explain the material in an engaging and intelligible manner, which activates interest and enhances learning motivation. Gradually, based on cognitive needs, stable cognitive interests are formed, leading to a positive attitude towards academic subjects in general.
At this age there are new teaching motives associated with awareness of life prospects, one’s place in the future, professional intentions, and ideal. Knowledge acquires special significance for the development of a teenager’s personality. They are the value that provides a teenager with an expansion of his own consciousness and a significant place among his peers. It is during adolescence that special efforts are made to expand everyday, artistic and scientific knowledge. The teenager greedily absorbs the everyday experience of significant people, which gives him the opportunity to navigate everyday life.
Focus on work and socially useful activities. In orientation to work, in the formation of interests, inclinations and abilities in adolescents, an active test of strength in various areas of work activity plays an important role. At the same time, orientations are largely determined by the possibility of personal self-affirmation and self-improvement. Nowadays, teenagers have received a new motivation for participating in work activities - this is the opportunity to earn money. However, it is in adolescence that many adolescents feel the need for professional self-determination, which is associated with the general tendency of this age to find their place in life. The teenager begins to look closely at the variety of professions with growing interest. Making a preliminary choice, he evaluates different types of activities from the point of view of his interests and inclinations, as well as from the point of view of social value orientations.
Social pedagogy examines the process of education, the sociology of personality in theoretical and applied aspects. It examines deviations or conformities of human behavior under the influence of the environment, what is usually referred to as the socialization of the individual. According to scientists, social pedagogy is “a branch of pedagogy that considers the social education of all age groups and social categories of people, in organizations specially created for this purpose.”
Social pedagogy is the basis for branches of pedagogy that represent branches of social pedagogy.
The main psychological neoplasms of primary school age are:
1. Arbitrariness and awareness of all mental processes and their intellectualization, their internal mediation, which occurs through the assimilation of a system of scientific concepts. Everything except the intellect. The intellect does not yet know itself.
2. Awareness of one’s own changes as a result of the development of educational activities.
If learning is structured in accordance with the principles of the activity theory of learning, then by the end of primary school age the following are formed:
1. Educational activity and its subject.
2. Theoretical thinking, which, in accordance with the theory of V.V. Davydov, includes:
● meaningful reflection, i.e. search and consideration of significant reasons for one’s own actions;
● content analysis, i.e. isolating the essential relationship from particular features;
● meaningful abstraction, i.e. isolating the particular from the general basis;
● meaningful planning, i.e. building a system of possible actions and determining the optimal action that corresponds to the conditions of the problem;
● meaningful generalization, i.e. the discovery of a pattern or relationship between the universal and the particular and the individual.
During primary school age, the child actively develops motivational sphere , appear needs related to educational activities. The leaders at this age are cognitive needs. Central psychological neoplasm of primary school age - peer group orientation (I.V. Dubrovina). At this age, relationships between age-related friendships with peers and relationships of competition are intertwined: on the one hand, the child wants to “be like everyone else,” on the other, “to be better than everyone else.” Of great importance for the development of the personality of a junior schoolchild are motives for establishing and maintaining positive relationships with peers. In general, motivation develops in the direction awareness, acquires arbitrary. Educational activities require children responsibility and contributes to its formation as a personality trait.
At the age of 6-7 - 10-11 years it develops intensively self-awareness : the child begins to understand that he is an individual who is subject to social influences: he is obliged to learn and in the process of learning to change himself, appropriating collective signs (speech, numbers, etc.), collective concepts, knowledge, ideas that exist in society, a system of social expectations regarding behavior and value orientations; at the same time, the child experiences his uniqueness, his selfhood, and strives to establish himself among adults and peers. In educational activities, the student develops ideas about himself, self-esteem, and develops self-control and self-regulation skills.
At primary school age there is a transition from specific situational to generalized self-esteem. At this age it develops self-knowledge and personal reflection as the ability to independently set the boundaries of one’s capabilities (“Can I or can’t solve this problem?”, “What am I missing to solve it?”) (I.V. Shapovalenko). Reflection manifests itself in the ability to highlight the features of one’s own actions and make them the subject of analysis. By the end of primary school age, such strong-willed character traits as independence, perseverance, endurance.
Social situation of development of a primary school student. Characteristics of educational activity as a leading activity of primary school age. Structure of educational activities. Requirements of educational activities to the level of psychological development of the child. Cognitive development of children of primary school age. Development of perception. Features of the development of attention, memory and speech of primary schoolchildren. Mental development. The main directions of the formation of children's intelligence at primary school age. Stimulating the mental development of younger schoolchildren. Formation of the personality of a junior schoolchild. Self-esteem of junior schoolchildren. Features of the development of will. Personal new formations of primary school age.
Psychology of primary school age
| Social Development Situation | Leading Activity | Neoplasms |
| It is characterized by the following features: a teacher (“alien adult”) appears in the system of relations, who is an indisputable authority; in this period, the child first encounters a system of strict cultural demands imposed by the teacher, entering into conflict with whom, the child comes into conflict with “society” (at the same time, he cannot receive emotional support as in the family); the child becomes an object of evaluation, and it is not the product of his labor that is evaluated, but himself; relationships with peers move from the sphere of personal preferences to the sphere of partnerships; realism of thinking is overcome, which allows one to see patterns that are not represented in terms of perception. | educational It turns the child towards himself, requires reflection, an assessment of “what I was” and “what I have become.” | New developments: 1. formation of theoretical thinking; 2. reflection as awareness of one’s own changes. 3. ability to plan. Intelligence mediates the development of all other functions: the intellectualization of all mental processes, their awareness and arbitrariness occurs. Thus, memory acquires a pronounced cognitive character. This is due to the fact that the child begins to realize a special mnemonic task, and separates this task from any other. Secondly, at primary school age there is an intensive formation of memorization techniques. In the area of perception, a transition occurs from the preschooler’s involuntary perception to purposeful voluntary observation of an object, subordinate to a specific task. There is also a development of volitional processes. |
The leading activity is teaching. Studying at school and studying may not coincide. For teaching to become a leading activity, it must be organized in a special way. It should be akin to play: after all, a child plays because he wants to, it is an activity for its own sake, just like that. The product of educational activity is the person himself.
Social situation of development. Characterized by the following features:
– a teacher (“alien adult”) appears in the system of relations and is an unquestioned authority;
– in this period, the child first encounters a system of strict cultural demands imposed by the teacher, entering into conflict with whom, the child comes into conflict with “society” (at the same time, he cannot receive emotional support as in the family);
– the child becomes an object of evaluation, and it is not the product of his labor that is evaluated, but himself;
– relationships with peers move from the sphere of personal preferences to the sphere of partnerships;
– realism of thinking is overcome, which allows you to see patterns that are not represented in terms of perception;
1. formation of theoretical thinking;
2. personal reflection;
3. intellectual reflection.
4. ability to plan.
Personal reflection. At school age, the number of factors influencing self-esteem significantly expands. Children between the ages of 9 and 12 continue to develop the desire to have their own point of view on everything. They also develop judgments about their own social importance—self-esteem. It develops through the development of self-awareness and feedback from those around them whose opinions they value. Children usually have a high grade if their parents treat them with interest, warmth and love.
However, by the age of 12-13, the child develops a new idea of himself, when self-esteem loses its dependence on situations of success and failure, but acquires a stable character. Self-esteem now expresses the relationship in which self-image relates to the ideal self.
Junior school age is the completion of the development of self-awareness.
Reflection is intellectual. This refers to reflection in terms of thinking. The child begins to think about the reasons why he thinks this way and not otherwise. A mechanism arises for correcting one’s thinking using logic and theoretical knowledge. Consequently, the child becomes able to subordinate the intention to an intellectual goal and is able to maintain it for a long time.
During school years, the ability to store and retrieve information from memory improves, and metamemory develops. Children not only remember better, but are also able to reflect on how they do it.
Mental development. 7 – 11 years – the third period of mental development according to Piaget - the period of specific mental operations. The child's thinking is limited to problems relating to specific real objects.
The egocentrism inherent in the thinking of a preschooler gradually decreases, which is facilitated by joint games, but does not disappear completely. Children who think concretely often make mistakes when predicting the outcome. As a result, children, once they have formulated a hypothesis, are more likely to reject new facts than change their point of view.
Decentration is replaced by the ability to focus on several signs at once, correlate them, and simultaneously take into account several dimensions of the state of an object or event.
The child also develops the ability to mentally trace changes in an object. Reversible thinking arises.
Relationships with adults. The behavior and development of children is influenced by the leadership style of adults: authoritarian, democratic or permissive (anarchic). Children feel better and develop more successfully under democratic leadership.
Relationships with peers. From the age of six, children spend more and more time with peers, almost always of the same sex. Conformity intensifies, reaching its peak by the age of 12. Popular children tend to adapt well, feel comfortable among their peers, and are generally cooperative.
A game. Children still spend a lot of time playing. It develops feelings of cooperation and competition, and such concepts as justice and injustice, prejudice, equality, leadership, submission, devotion, and betrayal acquire personal meaning.
The game takes on a social connotation: children invent secret societies, clubs, secret cards, codes, passwords and special rituals. The roles and rules of children's society make it possible to master the rules accepted in adult society. Playing with friends between the ages of 6 and 11 takes up the most time.
Emotional development. From the moment a child starts school, his emotional development depends more than before on the experiences he acquires outside the home.
The child’s fears reflect the perception of the world around him, the scope of which is now expanding. Inexplicable and imaginary fears of past years are replaced by others, more conscious: lessons, injections, natural phenomena, relationships between peers. Fear can take the form of anxiety or worry.
Educational activities. At primary school age, educational activity becomes the leading one. Naturally, it has a certain structure. Let us briefly consider the components of educational activities, in accordance with the ideas of D.B. Elkonina.
The first component is motivation . Learning activity is multi-motivated - it is stimulated and directed by different learning motives. Among them there are motives that are most adequate to educational tasks; if they are formed in the student, his educational work becomes meaningful and effective. D.B. Elkonin calls them educational and cognitive motives. They are based on cognitive needs and the need for self-development. This is an interest in the content side of educational activity, in what is being studied, and interest in the process of activity - how and by what means results are achieved. The child must be motivated not only by the result, but also by the process of educational activity itself. This is also a motive for one’s own growth, self-improvement, and development of one’s abilities.
Second component - learning task , those. a system of tasks during which the child masters the most common methods of action. Children, solving many specific problems, spontaneously discover for themselves a general way to solve them.
Training operations(third component) are part of the method of action. Operations and the learning task are considered the main link in the structure of learning activities. The operator content will be those specific actions that the child performs when solving particular problems - finding a root, prefix, suffix and ending in given words. Each training operation must be practiced.
The fourth component is control . Initially, the children's educational work is supervised by the teacher. But gradually they begin to control it themselves, learning this partly spontaneously, partly under the guidance of a teacher. Without self-control, it is impossible to fully develop educational activities.
The last stage of control is grade. It can be considered the fifth component of the structure of educational activities. The child, while controlling his work, must learn to evaluate it adequately. At the same time, a general assessment is also not enough - how correctly and efficiently the task was completed; you need to evaluate your actions - whether you have mastered the method of solving problems or not, what operations have not yet been worked out. The latter is especially difficult for younger students. But the first task also turns out to be difficult at this age, since children come to school with somewhat inflated self-esteem.
Development of mental functions.Dominant function at primary school age it becomes thinking. Thanks to this, the thought processes themselves are intensively developed and restructured and, on the other hand, the development of other mental functions depends on the intellect.
The transition from preschool age to visual-figurative to verbal-logical thinking. The child develops logically correct reasoning: when reasoning, he uses operations. However, these are not yet formal logical operations; a primary school student cannot yet reason hypothetically. J. Piaget called the operations characteristic of a given age specific, since they can only be used on specific, visual material.
At the end of primary school age (and later), individual differences appear: among children, psychologists distinguish groups of “theoreticians” or “thinkers” who easily solve educational problems verbally, “practitioners” who need support from visualization and practical actions, and “ artists" with bright imaginative thinking. Most children exhibit a relative balance between different types of thinking.
In the process of teaching junior schoolchildren scientific concepts are formed. Having an extremely important influence on the development of verbal and logical thinking, they, however, do not arise out of nowhere. In order to assimilate them, children must have sufficiently developed everyday concepts - ideas acquired in preschool age and continue to spontaneously appear on the basis of each child’s own experience. Everyday concepts are the lower conceptual level, scientific ones are the upper, highest, distinguished by awareness and arbitrariness. A scientific concept in the process of assimilation goes from generalization to specific objects.
Mastery of a system of scientific concepts during the learning process makes it possible to talk about the development of the fundamentals of conceptual or theoretical thinking. Theoretical thinking allows the student to solve problems, focusing not on external, visual signs and connections of objects, but on internal, essential properties and relationships.
The development of other mental functions depends on the development of thinking.
At the beginning of primary school age perception not differentiated enough. Because of this, the child sometimes confuses letters and numbers that are similar in spelling (for example, 9 and 6). Although he can purposefully examine objects and drawings, he is allocated, just as in preschool age, the most striking, “eye-catching” properties - mainly color, shape and size. In order for a student to more subtly analyze the qualities of objects, the teacher must carry out special work, teaching him observation.
If preschoolers were characterized by analyzing perception, then by the end of primary school age, with appropriate training, synthesizing perception.
Memory develops in two directions - arbitrariness and meaningfulness. Children involuntarily remember educational material that arouses their interest, presented in a playful form, associated with vivid visual aids or memory images, etc. But, unlike preschoolers, they are able to purposefully, voluntarily memorize material that is not interesting to them. Every year, training is increasingly based on arbitrary memory.
Younger schoolchildren, just like preschoolers, have good mechanical memory. Improvement semantic memory at this age makes it possible to master a fairly wide range of mnemonic techniques, i.e. rational ways of remembering. When a child comprehends educational material, understands it, he at the same time remembers it.
At primary school age it develops attention. Without sufficient development of this mental function, the learning process is impossible. During the lesson, the teacher attracts the students' attention to the educational material, holds it for a long time, and switches from one type of work to another. Compared to preschoolers, younger schoolchildren are much more attentive. They are already able to concentrate attention on uninteresting actions, but they are still dominated by involuntary attention. Their attention is characterized by a small volume and low stability - they can concentrate on one thing for 10-20 minutes. It is difficult to distribute attention and switch it from one educational task to another. In educational activities, the child’s voluntary attention develops.
Personal development. A junior schoolchild is involved in socially significant educational activities, the results of which are highly or lowly assessed by close adults. The development of his personality during this period directly depends on his school performance and assessment of the child as a good or bad student.
Motivational sphere- the core of personality. At the beginning of his school life, having the inner position of a student, he wants to learn. And study well, excellently. Among the various social motives of teaching, Perhaps the most important thing is the motive of getting high grades. High grades for a young student are a source of other rewards, a guarantee of his emotional well-being, and a source of pride.
Other broad social motives for learning are duty, responsibility, the need to get an education (“to be literate,” as children say), etc. – are also recognized by students and give a certain meaning to their educational work. But they remain only “known”. The abstract concept of duty for him or the distant prospect of continuing his education at a university cannot directly encourage him to study.
Broad social motives correspond to the value orientations that children take from adults and mainly learn in the family. No less striking differences are observed in areas of cognitive interests.
An important aspect of cognitive motivation is educational and cognitive motives, motives for self-improvement. If, during the learning process, a child begins to rejoice that he has learned, understood, or learned something, it means that he is developing motivation that is adequate to the structure of educational activity.
Many schoolchildren who fall behind in their studies are intellectually passive.
Self-esteem, inflated at the beginning of training, sharply decreases.
Children with low and low self-esteem often have a feeling of inferiority and even hopelessness. Compensatory motivation reduces the severity of these experiences - focusing not on educational activities, but on other types of activities. But even in cases where children compensate for their low performance with success in other areas, a “muted” feeling of inferiority, inferiority, and acceptance of the position of a laggard lead to negative consequences.
Full development of personality involves the formation feelings of competence , which E. Erikson believes central neoplasm of a given age. Educational activity is the main activity for a primary school student, and if the child does not feel competent in it, his personal development is distorted.
For children to develop adequate self-esteem and a sense of competence, it is necessary to create an atmosphere of psychological comfort and support in the classroom.
The development of self-esteem of a junior schoolchild depends not only on his academic performance and the characteristics of the teacher’s communication with the class. The style of family education and the values accepted in the family are of great importance.
School and family are external factors in the development of self-awareness. Its formation also depends on the development of the child’s theoretical reflective thinking. By the end of primary school age, reflection appears and thereby creates new opportunities for the formation of self-esteem of achievements and personal qualities. Self-esteem becomes generally more adequate and differentiated, and judgments about oneself become more justified. At the same time, there are significant individual differences. It should be especially emphasized that in children with high and low self-esteem, it is extremely difficult to change its level.
