Mental development: concept, indicators. The concept of mental development and mental education
1. Relevance of the problem
2. Preschool childhood is the optimal period
for mental development and education
3. The concept of "mental development"
4. The concept of "mental education"
1. For the modern educational system, the problem of mental education is extremely important. Scientists predict that the third millennium will be marked by the information revolution, when knowledgeable and educated people will be valued as a true national wealth. Therefore, the need to competently navigate the growing volume of knowledge and information makes different demands on the mental education of the younger generation than 30-40 years ago.
The task of forming the ability for active mental activity is brought to the fore. In many countries of the world at all levels of the education system - from preschool institutions to universities - it is noted, on the one hand, increasing awareness, and on the other hand - decrease in overall quality knowledge, mental development of students.
2. Preschool childhood- the optimal period for mental development and education. This was the opinion of the teachers who created the first systems of preschool education - F. Frebel, M. Montessori. But in the studies of A.P. Usova, A.V. Zaporozhets, L.A. Wenger, N.N. Poddyakov found that the potential for mental development of preschool children is significantly higher than previously thought.
A child can not only cognize the external, visual properties of objects and phenomena, as it is envisaged in the systems of F. Frebel, M. Montessori, but is also able to assimilate ideas about the general connections underlying many natural phenomena, social life, to master the methods of analysis and solution varied tasks.
3. Mental development - This is a set of qualitative and quantitative changes occurring in thought processes in connection with a change in age and under the influence of the environment, as well as specially organized educational and training influences and the child's own experience.
Biological factors also affect the child's mental development:
The structure of the brain;
Analyzer status;
Changes in nervous activity;
Formation of conditional links;
Inherited deposit fund.
According to scientists (geneticists, psychologists), the prerequisites for mental abilities are inherent in the nature of a child by 50 - 60% (in foreign scientific literature a higher level is indicated - up to 80%). Moreover, it is emphasized that the mental properties of a child from birth are predominantly creative in nature, but not everyone gets the proper development.
Therefore, it depends on upbringing whether the baby's mental abilities will develop at all, and even more so - what direction they will receive.
4. Mental education - systematic purposeful influence of adults on the mental development of children in order to communicate the knowledge necessary for diversified development, adaptation to the environment; the formation on this basis of cognitive processes, the ability to apply the acquired knowledge in activities.
Mental education and mental development are in close interaction. Mental education largely determines mental development, contributes to its formation. However, this happens only if the patterns and possibilities of mental development of children in the first years of life are taken into account.
Theme. Features of the mental development of preschoolers
1. Criteria for mental development
2. Mental development of young children
3. The predominance of figurative forms of cognition
1. V quality mental development criteria child use:
The volume, nature and content of his knowledge;
The level of formation of cognitive processes (sensation, perception, memory, thinking, imagination, attention);
Ability for independent creative cognition.
From an early age, the child begins to form a set of individual abilities to accumulate knowledge, improve mental operations, in other words, his mind develops.
In preschool age, to a greater or lesser extent, such properties of mind, as its speed, breadth, criticality, flexibility of thought processes, depth, creativity, independence.
The mental development of preschool children depends on a complex of social and biological factors, among which mental education and training play a guiding, enriching, systematizing role.
2. In preschool years, higher rates of mental development are observed than in subsequent age periods. It is important not to miss out on opportunities for mental development during this time. Particular attention should be paid to mental development of early children age. Modern research has established that usually up to 2 years of age children live so richly that a very large amount of cognitive activity is observed. A child's brain develops surprisingly quickly: by the age of 3, it already reaches 80% of the weight of an adult's brain. There is a danger of underloading the brain, not giving it the "food" necessary for full development. As evidenced by physiological data, most of today's young children suffer not from an excess of information, but from its lack. The other extreme should not be allowed, when, through enhanced upbringing and training, the baby is overloaded with knowledge that is excessive in content and volume, trying to develop any high intellectual abilities in him.
A. V. Zaporozhets warned about the need to take into account that we are dealing with a growing organism, with a developing brain, in which maturation has not ended, the features have not yet developed, and the possibilities are quite limited. With intensive training, a child can learn knowledge, achieve high results, but this will cost disproportionate physical and neuropsychic costs. This implies a rule, which must be followed: do not overload, do not overwork the child's brain. Defects made in the mental development of a child during preschool age are difficult to eliminate at an older age. They have a negative impact on all subsequent development.
3. The main feature of the mental development of a preschool child - prevalence of figurative forms of cognition: perception, figurative thinking, imagination. For their emergence and formation, preschool age has special opportunities.
The mental development of a child cannot be considered in isolation from mental development, from the wealth of interests, feelings and other features that form his spiritual image. Indeed, the cognitive processes developing in a child are manifested in various types of activity.
Theme. The tasks of mental education.
1. The main function of mental education
2. Sensory education (development)
4. Formation of speech
5. Fostering curiosity, cognitive interests
6. Formation of a system of elementary knowledge
1. Mental education is carried out as a process of assimilation by the younger generation of the centuries-old experience of mankind, embodied in material culture, spiritual values, represented in knowledge, skills, abilities, methods of cognition, etc.
The main function of mental education children of the first years of life - the formation of cognitive activity, that is, such an activity in the course of which the child learns to learn about the world around him.
A small child learns the world around him in play, work, on walks, classes, in communication with adults and peers.
Cognitive activity is carried out in the forms of perception and thinking. With help perception the child learns the external properties of objects in their totality (color, shape, size, etc.). The reflection of these properties in the brain creates an image of the object. Thanks to thinking the child comprehends internal, hidden properties, connections between objects and phenomena (cause-and-effect, temporal, quantitative and other connections). The results of thinking are reflected using the words.
There is a close connection between perception and thinking. Perception is formed in the first months of a child's life, and Vygotsky attributes the beginning of the development of thinking to the age of about 2 years.
The development of thinking is based on perception, which provides sensory (sensory) experience for in-depth knowledge. Throughout the preschool age, perception prepares thinking, gives it "food" for analysis, comparison, generalization, and conclusions. Thinking, in turn, has a positive effect on the development and improvement of perception, enhancing its focus and productivity.
For the full mental development of a child in the first years of life, it is necessary to take care of the development of his perception and thinking. In this regard, the most important tasks of the mental education of preschool children are:
Sensory education (development);
Development of mental activity;
Formation of speech;
Education of curiosity, cognitive interests;
Formation of a system of elementary knowledge.
2. Sensory education(from lat. sensus - feeling) is an integral part of the mental and physical education of a child, aimed at developing his sensations and perceptions. It occurs in the process of a child's cognition of objects of the surrounding world, mainly due to the improvement of the functions of the central cerebral parts of the analyzers.
3. Development of mental activity is considered as the mastery of mental operations, cognitive processes and abilities. The positive result of mental activity largely depends on how much the adults were able to awaken in the child - interest in mental activities, to cultivate the habit of them.
At one time, K.D. Ushinsky wrote that "mental work is almost the most difficult for a person," therefore, a child should be taught to mental work "little by little, carefully."
4. Mental activity is impossible without speech. Mastering speech, the child also masters knowledge about objects, signs, actions and relationships, embodied in the corresponding words. At the same time, he not only acquires knowledge, but also learns to think, since thinking means talking about himself or out loud, and speaking means thinking.
Word - the material shell of thought. However, this thesis is true if behind every word of the child there is an image of the object that this word designates. If the child hears in the speech of adults or he himself uses words that are not behind images, mental activity does not occur.
5. Fostering curiosity, cognitive interests - one of the tasks of mental education of preschoolers, aimed at the formation of cognitive motives.
Curiosity and cognitive interests are different forms of cognitive attitude to the surrounding world. Curiosity characterized as a special form of cognitive activity, an undifferentiated focus of the child on the cognition of surrounding objects, phenomena, on mastering the activity.
Cognitive interest manifests itself in the child's desire to learn new things, to clarify the incomprehensible about the qualities, properties of objects, phenomena of reality, in the desire to delve into their essence, to find the connections and relationships between them.
6. Knowledge by itself does not yet ensure the fullness of mental development, but without them the latter is impossible. Therefore, the basis for the mental education of preschoolers is familiarization with the environment, in the process of which children acquire a variety of knowledge. Determining the volume and content of knowledge that ensure the full development of a preschool child is one of the traditional problems of pedagogy.
Theme. Sensory education
1. Sensory development of the preschooler
2. Learning perceptual actions
3. Sensory standards
1 The period of preschool childhood is a period of intense sensory development of the child - improving his orientation in the external properties and relationships of objects and phenomena, in space and time. Perceiving objects and acting with them, the child begins to more and more accurately assess their color, shape, size, weight, temperature, surface properties, etc. speech - to hear the subtlest differences in the pronunciation of similar sounds.
The ability of children to determine the direction in space, the mutual arrangement of objects, the sequence of events and the intervals of time separating them are significantly improved.
Sensory development of a preschooler includes two interrelated aspects: 1) the assimilation of ideas about the various properties and relationships of objects and phenomena and 2) the mastery of new actions of perception, which make it possible to perceive the world around us more fully and voluntarily.
2. Sensations and perceptions lend themselves to development, improvement, especially during preschool childhood. The domestic system of sensory education is based on the theory of perception developed by L.S. Vygotsky, B.G. Ananiev, S.L. Rubinstein, A.N. Leontiev, A.V. Zaporozhets, L.A. Wenger and dr.
For the development of perception, the child must master social sensory experience, which includes the most rational ways of examining objects, sensory standards.
According to the latest research, sensations and perceptions are special actions of analyzers aimed at examining an object and its features. To develop analyzers of a child means to teach him the actions of examining an object, which in psychology are called perceptual actions.
With the help of perceptual actions, the child perceives new qualities and properties in the object. The task of sensory education is to teach the child these actions in a timely manner.
Generalized methods of examining objects are important for the formation of operations comparisons, generalizations, to deploy thought processes.
3. Sensory standards is generalized sensory knowledge, sensory experience accumulated by mankind over the entire history of its development.
The external qualities and properties of objects of the surrounding world are extremely diverse. In the course of historical practice, systems of those sensory qualities that are most significant for a particular activity have emerged: systems of measures of weight, length, directions, geometric shapes, color, size; norms of sound pronunciation, system of sounds in pitch, etc.
Each sensory reference has its own verbal designation: measures of weight, measures of length, color spectrum, arrangement of notes on the stave, planar and volumetric geometric figures, etc.
The assimilation of sensory standards is a long and complex process, the main burden of which falls on the years of schooling.
In the first years of life, prerequisites for sensory standards are formed in children. From the second half of the first year to the beginning of the third year, the so-called sensorimotor pre-standards. During this period of life, the baby displays individual properties of objects that are essential for his movements.
In preschool age, the child uses the so-called subject standards: the images of the properties of objects correlates with certain objects.
In the first year of a child's life, the tasks of sensory education (the development of hearing, vision, the formation of objectivity of perception) are successfully solved in manipulative and objective activity. In the future, the richest opportunities for sensory development are fraught with such types of activities as play, work, constructive, and visual. Each of these activities has its own sensory basis.
Depending on the content of the activity and its motives, the acuity and subtlety of sensations change, since various features of objects appear in their practical meaning. Having mastered one or another feature of an object in one type of activity, the child uses it in other types of activity.
In the development of sensory cognition, speech plays an important role. The adult's word fixes the sensory experience acquired by the child, summarizes it. Verbal designations of signs and properties of objects contribute to their meaningful perception, clear distinction.
Theme. Sensory education system M. Montessori
1. Sensitive period of sensory development
2. Didactic sensory materials
M. Montessori (1870 - 1952) considered sensory development to be the basis of preschool education, which she carried out through the organization of the environment and classes with didactic material.
1. Efficiency in teaching Montessori associated with the allocation special (sensitive) periods of increased susceptibility to children to certain environmental influences. In the process of child development, Montessori distinguishes three phases: 0 - 6, 6 - 12 and 12 - 18 years old.
First phase (from 0 to 6 years old) is an most sensitive for sensory development. It is characterized by a global orientation of the child's cognitive activity towards the formation of a sensory image of the surrounding world. In accordance with the cosmic plan, the child “solves” the internal task of his development, which at this stage consists in creating an emotionally colored picture of the world around him, himself and his place in the world.
A child aged 0 to 3 years is, figuratively speaking, an "emotional tuning fork", a hypersensitive resonator of the emotions of the parents, mainly the mother. His absorptive thinking absorbs the ways of the emotional reaction of adults in relation to the events taking place in the world. For this reason, the most suitable environment for optimal child development is parental home and care.
2. Great attention of teachers is attracted by Montessori sensory materials and work with them. Games, classes, exercises with didactic materials allow you to develop a visual-distinctive perception of sizes, shapes, colors, and recognize sounds.
This is the sensory material that Montessori offers in his first foundational work The Method of Scientific Pedagogy:
Didactic material that was used in exercises for visual-distinctive perception of sizes, represents geometric inset bodies. Playing with such a set, the child himself learns to distinguish objects by their thickness, height and volume. All cylinders are removed from the nests, mixed. When examining the cylinders and nests, the child must return each cylinder to its place, so that it fits effortlessly in the nest.
Another set consists of large bars of gradually varying sizes: there are four groups of bars in total. Ten tetrahedral prisms, of which the largest has a base of 10 cm, and the bases of others gradually decrease by 1 cm. The length of each bar is 20 cm. The child builds a staircase, the steps of which become wider towards the top. He can control himself, because if he was mistaken, then the stairs will be wrong. The main feature here is thickness.
Children can play with each set individually or with all sets at the same time, then they can and should focus their attention on a certain parameter of magnitude, which is very useful for children.
Didactic material for visual-distinctive perception of forms - perception of visual-tactile-muscular. This material was constantly improved by Montessori, and in its final form it was: a box with a collection of geometric shapes; wardrobe with drawers in which frames with geometric tabs are placed; three series of cards. The child learns to correlate the shape with the cuts, at first he makes mistakes, goes through trial and error, and then quickly enough determines the shape he needs and quickly performs the action.
In games and exercises, visual impressions are combined with tactile-muscle perception, the child sees and feels the shape, then does the same with the hole into which this shape is inserted.
The same principle - combining visual perception and muscular-tactile perception - is used in card games. The child must impose a certain shape on the one drawn on the card so that they completely coincide.
Didactic material for visual-distinctive perception of colors: nurturing chromatic feeling.
Exercises in recognizing sounds aims to accustom the child's ear to all kinds of noises so that it can distinguish the lightest noise. This education of the sense of hearing also pursues another goal: it develops an aesthetic sense and helps to develop practical discipline.
Without adult guidance, rich sensory experience does not become the foundation for the development of a child's thinking.
1. Traditional content
2. Extended content
This is an acquaintance with color, size, shape, taste, smell, texture, heaviness, sound of objects of the surrounding world with orientation in space. At the same time, the task is to increase the sensitivity of the corresponding analyzers (the development of tactile, visual, olfactory, auditory and other sensitivity), which manifests itself in distinguishing the signs and properties of objects. At the same time, the child learns to correctly name the properties of Objects. (soft, hard, fluffy, rough, cold, warm, hot, bitter, sweet, salty, sour, light, heavy, bottom-top, close-far, right-left).
2. In the domestic system of sensory education traditional content expanded and supplemented by the inclusion of orientation in time, the development of speech and musical ear.
Orientation in time assumes that the child learns about the parts of the day, days of the week, months, year, and the fluidity of time.
Speech (phonemic) hearing - it is the ability to perceive the sounds of speech, to differentiate and generalize them in words as meaning-distinguishing units. With the development of phonemic hearing, the mastery of the norms of sound pronunciation is associated. The level of development of phonemic hearing is manifested when teaching a child to read and write, when he is faced with the task of sound analysis of a word. This means that he must move away from the meaning of the word, its meaning and work with the word as a sound complex, that is, a formal unit.
Ear for music- this is the ability to distinguish sounds by pitch, timbre, rhythmic pattern, melody.
Theme. Sensory education method for preschoolers
1. Teaching children to examine subjects
2. Formation of ideas about sensory standards
The method of sensory education of preschoolers provides for: 1) teaching children to examine objects; 2) the formation of ideas about sensory standards.
1. Inspection training is carried out as a specially organized perception of an object in order to identify those properties of which it is important to know in order to successfully cope with the upcoming activity. The same subject is examined in different ways, depending on the objectives of the survey and the qualities being examined themselves.
rules common to many types of survey:
Perception of the integral appearance of an object;
Mental division into main parts and identification of their signs (shape, size, color, material, etc.);
Spatial correlation of parts with each other (left, right, above, above, etc.);
Isolation of small details, the establishment of their spatial location in relation to the main parts;
Repeated holistic perception of the object.
An examination according to this scheme will help children master generalized methods of sensory cognition, which they can use in independent activity.
2. Throughout preschool childhood, the character of sensory cognition changes: from manipulating objects, the child gradually moves to acquaintance with them on the basis of sight, touch, and also "visual feeling".
To enrich the sensory experience of children, didactic games are used. Many of them are associated with the examination of the subject, with the distinction of signs, require verbal designation of these signs. In some games, the child learns to group objects according to one quality or another. Children compare objects with similar and different characteristics, highlight the essential ones. As a result, it becomes possible to bring children to generalizations based on the selection of essential features, which are fixed in speeches. Thus, children are led to mastering sensory standards.
A special role in the sensory education of children belongs to nature. Cognition of the natural environment is initially carried out by the sensory way, with the help of sight, hearing, touch, smell. The more sense organs are "involved" in cognition, the more signs and properties the child selects in the investigated object, phenomenon, and, consequently, the richer his ideas become. On the basis of such ideas, thought processes, imagination arise, aesthetic feelings are formed.
The teacher must create conditions for preschoolers to apply knowledge and skills to analyze the environment.
Theme. Development of mental activity
1. Development of forms of thinking
2. Development of basic mental operations
3. Development of memory and imagination
1. Thinking arises on the basis of practical activity from sensory knowledge, pushing the horizons of the latter.
In relation to a small child, the process of actions with cognizable objects is important. On the basis of practical actions, the baby learns to match objects, analyze, compare, group. Begins to function the first form is demonstratively effective thinking.
Gradually, the child develops the ability to think not only on the basis of direct perception of objects, but also on the basis of images. Formed pictorial thinking.
In the second half of preschool age begins to develop verbal-logical thinking. This form of thinking is most clearly manifested in the establishment of connections that exist between objects and phenomena. First of all, the child learns functional connections: the name, purpose of the object. More difficult for children are connections that do not seem to lie on the surface of objects, although they are accessible to sensory practice, experience: spatial, temporal, causal.
2. Within the framework of all forms of thinking, the development of basic mental operations. Teaching children to think is a task that adults must solve. It is not advisable even for young children to give knowledge in a "ready-made form" when the main burden falls on memory.
Should: teach the child to analyze, compare, contrast, generalize; lead it to classification; encourage people to make their own assumptions.
It is necessary to set tasks for children that stimulate their cognitive activity, requiring reflection, comparison.
3. In preschool age, such important cognitive processes as memory and imagination develop.
Thanks to memory the child remembers, stores, reproduces what he previously perceived, did, felt. Thinking is impossible without the accumulation of the necessary information, facts. However, while recognizing the exceptional role of memory in the development of cognitive activity, one should not nevertheless overestimate it. Memory is a storehouse of knowledge, a basis that cannot be dispensed with, but it cannot be limited in the development of children's cognitive activity.
It is necessary to develop the child's memory with the help of special games, exercises, memorization of poems, etc.
A large place among the cognitive processes of a person in general, and of a preschool child in particular, is imagination - creation of new images based on those that were perceived earlier, as well as newly acquired knowledge.
Imagination is woven into all complex mental operations, is the basis of the child's creative activity. The task of adults is to develop in every possible way in children the ability to imagine.
Initially, the child develops re-creating imagination, on the basis of which, with the accumulation of life experience and the development of thinking, creative imagination is formed. The child's recreational imagination should be developed by inviting him to mentally imagine what he is told, read, or in what sequence he will perform the task.
It is especially important to develop creative imagination, and for this, the child should be encouraged to find a solution to the problem, be encouraged to make small discoveries, just taught to fantasize.
For full-fledged mental development, not only the timely formation of cognitive processes is important, but also their arbitrariness.
Theme. Formation of speech
1. Enrichment and development of speech
2. Development of vocabulary and grammatical structure of speech
3. Development of phonemic hearing
4. Awareness of the verbal composition of speech
1. At preschool age, the circle of communication of children is expanding. As they become more independent, children move beyond narrow family ties and begin to communicate with a wider circle of people, especially with their peers. Expanding the circle of communication requires the child to fully master the means of communication, the main of which is speech. The increasing complexity of the child's activity also makes high demands on the development of speech.
The development of speech goes in several directions:
Its practical use in communication with other people is being improved;
At the same time, speech becomes the basis for the restructuring of mental processes, an instrument of thinking.
2. Throughout the preschool period continues grow vocabulary child. Compared to early childhood, the vocabulary of a preschooler usually triples. Moreover, the growth of vocabulary directly depends on the living conditions and upbringing; individual characteristics are more noticeable here than in any other area of mental development.
The preschooler's vocabulary is rapidly increasing not only due to nouns, but also due to verbs, pronouns, adjectives, numerals and connecting words. An increase in vocabulary by itself would not be of great importance if the child did not simultaneously master the ability to combine words into sentences according to the laws of grammar. During preschool childhood, it is learned morphological system of the native language, the child practically masters the types of declensions and conjugations in basic features. At the same time, children master complex sentences, conjunctive conjunctions, as well as most common suffixes.
3. Phonemic hearing is formed in a child on the basis of direct verbal communication. By the end of early childhood, children well differentiate words that differ from each other by at least one voiced or deaf, hard or soft sound.
Thus, the primary phonemic hearing is sufficiently developed very early. However, the child does not know how to perform a sound analysis of a word, to dismember a word into its constituent sounds and to establish the order of sounds in a word by the end of preschool age. Verbal communication not sets such tasks for him. Therefore, a child of five to six years old finds it difficult to analyze the simplest words containing, for example, three sounds.
Teaching children to analyze the sound of a word has shown that under certain conditions even younger preschoolers can distinguish the first and last sounds in a word, and for children of middle preschool age this task does not present any significant difficulties.
4. In contrast to the practical mastery of speech, which is very successful in preschool childhood, the awareness of speech reality itself (as a reality that exists independently) and awareness of the verbal composition of speech lag significantly behind.
For a long time, in the process of communication, the child is guided not by the verbal composition of speech, but by the objective situation, which determines the understanding of words for him. But to master the literacy, the child needs to learn to be aware of the verbal composition of speech.
Without special training, children treat the sentence as a single semantic whole, a single verbal complex that denotes a real situation.
5. One of the main functions of speech, which develops in preschool age, is the communicative function, or function communication. Already in early childhood, the child uses speech as a means of communication. However, he communicates only with close or well-known people. Communication in this case arises about a specific situation in which adults and the child himself are included.
Communication in a specific situation about certain actions and objects is carried out using situational speech. This speech is: questions that have arisen in connection with the activity or when getting acquainted with new objects or phenomena; answers to questions; finally, certain requirements.
Theme. Fostering curiosity and cognitive interests
1. Fostering curiosity
2. Nurturing cognitive interests
Children are inquisitive explorers of the world around them. This feature is inherent in them from birth. At one time I.M. Sechenov spoke about the innate and "extremely precious" property of the child's neuropsychic organization - the unaccountable striving to understand the surrounding life. I.P. Pavlov, called this property the "What is?" Reflex. Under the influence of this reflex, the child gets acquainted with the qualities of objects, establishes new connections between them.
Subject "research" activity, characteristic of a young child, develops and consolidates a cognitive attitude to the world around him. After children master speech, their cognitive activity rises to a new qualitative level.
1. Curiosity - a personality trait characterized by an active cognitive attitude towards reality. It manifests itself in children already in preschool age in two pronounced forms:
In the asked questions that reveal the active work of thought;
Experimenting with objects.
Curiosity stimulates the child to study the characteristics of objects and phenomena of reality.
In order to foster curiosity in children, it is necessary:
Establishing a close connection between learning and life, organizing students' independent observations, applying knowledge in practice;
Maximum assistance to the development of the interests and intellectual needs of students by organizing excursions, evenings of questions and answers, disputes, quizzes, discussions of watched performances and films;
Timely support curiosity and shape the direction of children's interests;
Take into account the individual needs of students and contribute to the implementation of their creative ideas;
Establish contact with the family in order to properly guide the behavior of schoolchildren at home.
2. Cognitive interest manifests itself in the child's desire to learn new things, to clarify the incomprehensible about the qualities, properties of objects, phenomena of reality, in the desire to delve into their essence, to find the connections and relationships between them. The basis of cognitive interest is active mental activity.
Cognitive interest different from curiosity breadth of coverage of objects, depth of knowledge, selectivity.
Under the influence of cognitive interest, the child turns out to be capable of a longer and more stable concentration of attention, shows independence in solving a mental or practical problem. The positive emotions experienced at the same time - surprise, joy of success - give confidence in their abilities.
The child's cognitive interest is reflected in his games, drawings, stories and other types of creative activity. Therefore, adults must provide all the necessary conditions for the development of such activities.
The successful activity of the child is a stimulus for the development of cognitive interests.
Theme ... Children's questions as an indicator of their cognitive activity
1. Communication questions
2. Cognitive questions
4. Change of questions in form and content
5. Answers to children's questions
Possessing tremendous incentive power, curiosity and cognitive interest make children actively strive for knowledge, look for ways to satisfy the thirst for knowledge. The child often asks about what worries him, asks to read, tell.
For a long time, the child's questions were considered the main form of manifestation of curiosity, cognitive interests. Based on motives, children's questions are divided into two groups: 1) communicative and 2) cognitive.
1. Communication questions the child asks in order to attract adults to their experiences, to establish contact with them. For example, 4-year-old Sasha asks his father: "When you were little, were you afraid to go to a dark room?" Such questions arise in children in moments of anxiety, joy, fear. They require a particularly sensitive attitude of adults: it is important to understand what excited the child, to delve into his feelings, to calm him down.
2. Many children's questions are based on informative motive: children ask them because of their curiosity, when they lack knowledge, strive to replenish, clarify, acquire new ones.
The source of cognitive interests is the child's varied experiences. Questions arise from direct acquaintance with any objects and phenomena, in communication with adults and peers, are often the result of his own reasoning.
3. Content of children's questions varied. According to the testimony of psychologists, there is not a single field of knowledge, which would not concern the questions of children. Children ask about the objects around them, distant planets and space, phenomena of social life, nature, the origin of man and all life on Earth, war and peace, norms and rules of behavior, the meaning and meaning of individual words and objects, etc.
The child's interest in certain phenomena of life in the world of adults also stimulates his questions. So, over the past five years, Russian children began to ask a lot about what is connected with religion, church, and rituals.
4. Questions over time vary in form and content. Children 2-3 years old are interested in the names of objects, their properties and qualities. They ask questions like: where? who? what? which?
Older children (4 - 4.5 years old) are characterized by active mental processing of impressions about the environment. Their questions are aimed at understanding the connections, relationships between objects and phenomena of reality:
To systematize your own ideas;
Finding analogies, common and different in them.
The questions get more complicated and are expressed in the form: why? why?
For children 5-6 years old, chains of questions about an object or phenomenon are typical.
The peak of questions falls on the age of 4.5 - 5.5 years.
5. At one time A.M. Gorky noted that the ability to sensibly answer a child's question is a great art. Modern science has data, based on which the teacher can master this art and positively influence the mental development of preschoolers with his answers.
The most important requirement for answers to children's questions is a respectful, careful attitude towards them.
Understand the motive of the question, try to understand what prompted the child to ask it. Often the question is cognitive in form, but it serves as an excuse for the child to call an adult to communicate, to attract him to his emotional state.
A cognitive question must be answered in such a way as not to extinguish the spark of childish curiosity.
In preschool years, it is dangerous to turn a child into a know-it-all, who thinks that he has heard about everything, learned everything, but in fact he just remembered a lot, but did not understand. As a result, the acuity and novelty of the perception of knowledge in subsequent years decreases.
Theme. Formation of a system of knowledge about the world around
1. Encyclopedic knowledge
2. The nurturing nature of knowledge
3. Subject content of knowledge
In the book "Mother's School" Ya.A. Comenius substantiated two principles for the formation of knowledge about the surrounding world:
The principle of encyclopedicity;
Knowledge should serve upbringing (the nurturing nature of knowledge).
1. At the preschool age, it is impossible to limit the knowledge of the child with any particular aspects of reality. The kid perceives the world as a whole, therefore, knowledge should be diverse (about nature, labor, heavenly bodies, economics, etc.).
2. Ya.A. Comenius identified another requirement for knowledge for young children: they must serve education.
Later, this principle was put in basis educational teaching (I.F. Herbart), which:
Gives knowledge, skills and abilities;
In parallel with this, it forms a certain worldview, morality, character and will of students;
Develops their cognitive abilities and other personality traits;
It organically links the acquisition of knowledge, abilities, skills by students, the assimilation of the experience of creative activity with the formation of an emotional-value attitude to the world, to each other, to the learning material being learned.
Both principles (the encyclopedic nature of knowledge, their upbringing nature) are taken into account when drawing up modern programs for preschoolers.
3. In recent years, many new programs have been developed, where the circle of knowledge about the surrounding world has been determined. Common to all programs is an attempt to place a person in the center of this knowledge (man and nature, man and the man-made world, man and other people, man and artistic images, man and his personality, individuality).
Any subject content of knowledge a preschooler can learn in different ways:
In the form of representations (images of specific objects);
In the form of concepts (generalized knowledge about a whole group of objects, united on the basis of common essential features);
In the form of knowledge-information that he receives from adults;
In the form of an explanation, a story from literary works that are read to him.
During the preschool years, a child attending kindergarten acquires two categories of knowledge. The first category consists of the knowledge that he learns without special training, in everyday life, communicating with adults, peers, in the process of games, observations. They are often chaotic, unsystematic, random, and sometimes distortedly reflect the surrounding reality.
More complex knowledge related to the second category can be learned only in the process of special education in the classroom. In the classroom, knowledge that children acquire on their own is clarified, systematized, generalized.
The highest level of mental development can be achieved if children are not given isolated information, but systematized circle of knowledge, reflecting essential connections and dependencies in a particular area of reality (the relationship between the growth of plants and the conditions of their existence, etc.).
The assimilation of systematized knowledge develops the child's ability to isolate the main aspects of reality and link them into holistic knowledge about the world, creates important prerequisites for mastering such forms of theoretical thinking, which are especially valuable with modern requirements for teaching in elementary school.
Theme. Mental education tools
1. Activity of children as a means of mental education
2. Works of spiritual and material culture - a means of mental education
Conventionally, the means of mental education are divided into two groups: 1) the activities of children and 2) works of spiritual and material culture.
1. Children's activities preschool age differs in type and content, and, consequently, in the ability to influence mental development. Undoubtedly, in various types of activity, different cognitive tasks arise before the child, the solution of which is an organic part of this or that activity.
Considerable time, especially among children of younger preschool age, is devoted to the so-called household activity, associated with the execution of the mode. The content of this activity is extremely beneficial for sensory development. In the process of performing routine procedures, children practice spatial orientations.
Mental education of preschoolers is carried out in game activities. In specially created games by adults (mobile, didactic) concluded a variety of knowledge, mental operations, mental actions that children must master.
Creative games by their nature are reflective: in them, children reflect their impressions of the life around them, the knowledge acquired earlier. In the course of the game, this knowledge rises to a new level: it is translated into the speech plane, therefore, it is generalized, transformed, and improved. Communication of preschoolers in play contributes to their mutual enrichment of knowledge, as children exchange opinions, seek advice from adults, and other sources of additional information.
Play is possible with the active work of the imagination, thanks to which children combine impressions, agreeing on the content of the upcoming activity, enter the role, use a wide variety of toys and objects.
Productive species activities (labor, constructive, visual) have their own specific capabilities for the further development of the planning function of thinking. The child must foresee the result of the actions he performs, determine the stages of the work, the ways of organizing it, etc.
Mental education in labor activities is aimed at enriching the sensory experience of children: familiarization with materials, their signs, properties, with their changes under the influence of transformative activities. Children develop a system of knowledge about materials, about labor tools and tools, about methods of performing labor operations, etc.
2. They enter a child's life early as the most important means of mental development items of material and spiritual culture: a variety of games and toys, manuals, books, paintings, architecture, sculpture, arts and crafts, etc.
In recent years, works of national culture have begun to be used more and more actively as a means of mental education: folk songs, dances, folklore, utensils, costumes and clothing, ornaments; folk traditions, customs, holidays. The cognitive content of the national culture is very great. Based on specific material, children form their initial historical ideas about the life and everyday life of their people, their national traits, crafts, etc.
Abroad, and in recent years in our country, museums (local history, art, historical) are used as a comprehensive means of mental education of children. Many museums organize studios, circles for children of preschool and primary school age on their base, and deploy special expositions.
Theme. Didactics as a special branch of pedagogical science
1. General concept of didactics
2. Didactics of kindergarten
1.Didactics- teaching theory, branch of pedagogy. Subject didactics is teaching as a means of education and upbringing of a person, that is, the interaction of teaching and learning in their unity, ensuring the assimilation of the content of education by students organized by the teacher.
Didactics is a theoretical and at the same time a normative and applied science.
Scientific and theoretical function didactics is the study of real learning processes, establishing facts and regular connections between various aspects of learning, disclosing their essence, identifying trends and development prospects.
Developing the problems of selecting the content of education, establishing the principles of teaching, standards for the application of methods and means of teaching, didactics performs normative and applied, constructive and technical functions.
The unity of the above functions of didactics is the understanding of the essence of the learning process, the implementation of its educational, upbringing and developmental functions.
Over time, mankind has accumulated rich experience in teaching the younger generation. There was a need for its analysis, generalization. This mission was carried out by Ya.A. Comenius, who laid the foundations of the theory of learning. His ideological successors in the development of the scientific foundations of teaching were I.G. Pestalozzi, I. Herbart, A. Disterweg, K.D. Ushinsky, D. Dewey and many other teachers. Since the end of the XIX century. begins an intensive study of the psychology of learning.
2. The upbringing and education of preschool children is a single integral pedagogical process, which is carried out throughout the entire stay of a child in a preschool institution in all types of activities and is aimed at solving the problems of his versatile development, preparation for school.
Kindergarten didactics is a branch of general didactics. It contains a theoretical substantiation of the goal of preschool education, presents its content, forms of organization, methods and means that ensure the holistic development of the child's personality and prepare him for school.
Theme. Formation of didactic ideas of kindergarten
1. Preschool didactics Ya.A. Comensky
2. The system of education in the kindergarten F. Frebel
3. K.D. Ushinsky about "book teaching"
4. N.K. Krupskaya on preschool education
5. Contribution of A.M. Usova in kindergarten didactics
6. Preschool didactics at the present stage
1.For the first time, the substantiation of the idea of sequential teaching of preschool children was given in the book I.A. . Comensky "Mother's School". Target preschool education the great teacher saw in the child's assimilation of various knowledge about the world around him, in moral development and preparation for school.
An outstanding educator has the honor of developing the first knowledge program in the history of pedagogy, designed to educate young children in a family. This program, which the author himself called "useful sciences", consists of knowledge grouped by topics designated by scientific terms.
The introduction of the child to this and similar knowledge from the field of physics, economics, geometry, chronology, astronomy, etc., according to Ya.A. Komensky, lays the foundations for general scientific education.
The book "Mother's School" defines the ways of mastering this knowledge, with clear preference given to the organization of sensory cognition.
2. The next significant step in the creation of kindergarten didactics was made F. Frebel, developed a kindergarten education system. This system is based on:
A detailed program that combines knowledge and ways of working;
Organization of training in the form of progressively more complex classes.
For the first time in the history of pedagogy, in the works of F. Frebel, a precisely described teaching methodology is presented.
3. K. D. Ushinsky considered the issues of education during preschool childhood in close connection with the issues of education at other age levels. He saw the tasks of preschool, "book education" in the development of the child's mental powers and speech, in the formation of the ability to control his mental processes and behavior.
Ushinsky considered it necessary to educate children in the habit of mental work, love for it and a conscious attitude. The successful solution of these problems is the key to a good preparation of the child for school.
Cognitive material, which is contained in the textbooks of K.D. Ushinsky's "Rodnoe Slovo", "Children's World", has not lost its pedagogical value even today, it is actively used in work with children of preschool and primary school age.
4. A number of theoretical and practical issues related to preschool education were also considered in the works N.K. Krupskaya. She believed that preschool education should guarantee the child the right to education, that is, the right to know the world around him, broaden his horizons, and accumulate knowledge. In this regard, she made many valuable concrete proposals for creating a program for a kindergarten.
5. A.P. Usova developed the theoretical foundations of teaching preschool children in kindergarten and family. Investigated ways to optimize their preparation for entering school; it laid the foundations of the psychological and pedagogical concept of readiness for school education. Under the leadership of Usova, the problems of content, forms and methods of teaching in kindergarten were investigated; the results of these studies were embodied in educational programs in preschool institutions of the USSR.
Usova has developed a regulation on two levels of knowledge, which preschoolers can master. She attributed to the first level those elementary knowledge that is acquired spontaneously, in the process of games, life observations and communication with others; to the second - more complex knowledge and skills, the assimilation of which is possible only in the process of purposeful learning. She believed that mastering theoretical knowledge in specially organized classes is necessary and plays an important role in the mental development of a child. Usova, however, warned about the need for the limited use of special training sessions, combining them with other forms of upbringing and educational work - pedagogically organized play and work activities available to preschoolers.
Usova made a significant contribution to the development of the problems of children's play.
6. Preschool didactics at the present stage intensively develops primarily due to the psychological substantiation of the content, forms and methods of teaching. Psychological and pedagogical studies of age-related opportunities for the assimilation of knowledge, ways of implementing the developmental function of preschool education have significantly enriched preschool didactics. The problem of the content of preschool education is being developed, new means are being investigated, in particular, information technologies using a computer. In recent years, the search for new forms of organization of education in kindergarten is underway.
Theme. Components of the learning process
1. The concept of "training"
2. Activities of the teacher
3. Child activities
4. Teaching
1. Education - purposeful, organized, systematic transfer of experience of social relations, social consciousness, culture and productive labor, knowledge about active transformation and protection of the environment to the elders and assimilation by the younger generation. It ensures the continuity of generations, the full functioning of society and the appropriate level of personality development.
Learning consists of two inextricably linked processes: teaching and teachings.
Teaching in kindergarten is one of the means of upbringing and educational work with preschool children. V content learning includes:
Familiarization of children with the world around them;
Development of speech and initial skills of counting, the ability to draw, construct, sing, move.
Features preschool education are: its oral character, wide involvement of life observations, subject and graphic clarity, didactic material.
From one age group to another, the content of the reported information becomes more complicated, their volume expands, and there is a gradual preparation of children for education in a general educational institution.
So, learning is a specially organized interconnected activity of those who teach (teaching) and those who are taught (teaching).
Components learning process are:
Teacher activity (teaching);
Child activity (teaching);
Learning.
2. Teacher activities, or teaching - This is a special activity of a teacher (teacher) aimed at communicating to students the amount of knowledge, abilities, skills and their upbringing in the learning process.
Subject teaching is the management of the child's activities (teaching).
Structure teaching includes:
Planning your own activities and educational activities of students;
Organization of these activities;
Stimulating the activity and consciousness of the activity of schoolchildren in the assimilation of knowledge;
Method, control, regulation of the quality of training and the implementation of educational actions by students;
Analysis of learning outcomes and forecasting the further development of the student's personality.
3. Child's activity in the learning process (teaching):
1) specially organized, active, independent, cognitive, labor and aesthetic activities of children, aimed at mastering knowledge, skills and abilities, the development of mental processes and abilities. General structure teachings includes:
Perception of educational material;
His comprehension, conscious creative processing;
Clear expression of the learned material;
Self-examination and application both in the system of educational exercises and in solving life problems;
2) organized cognitive activity, in the process of which students go from ignorance to knowledge, from incomplete knowledge to more complete and perfect, while relying on sensory perception, abstraction and practice.
Here practice also participates both as the initial moment of acquiring knowledge, and as a criterion for the correctness of cognizable generalizations, and as a moment of applying knowledge in further educational work and work, in socially useful affairs, in life.
There are, as S.L. Rubinstein, two types of teaching, as a result of which a person acquires new knowledge and skills:
One of them is specifically aimed at mastering this knowledge and skills as one's own straight goal;
The other leads to the mastery of this knowledge and skills, carrying out other goals. In this case, learning is not an independent activity, but a process that is carried out as a component and result of the activity in which it is included.
For preschool children, the second type of learning is very characteristic: they acquire knowledge through play, work and other activities.
4. In addition to teaching and learning, the third component of the learning process is learning - this is the result of the learning process, which is expressed in positive changes in the development of the child.
Theme. Characteristics of educational activities (D.B. Elkonin, V.V.Davydov)
1. Definition of learning activities
2. The structure of educational activities
1. The concept of "educational activity" very ambiguous. V broad In the sense of the word, learning activities are sometimes wrongly viewed as synonymous with learning, learning and even learning. V narrow sense, according to D.B. Elkonin, is the leading type of activity in primary school age. In the works of D.B. Elkonina, V.V. Davydov's concept of "educational activity" is filled with proper activity content and meaning, correlating with a special "responsible attitude."
According to D.B. Elkonin, learning activities- this is an activity that has as its content the mastery of generalized methods of action in the field of scientific concepts. Such activity should be motivated by adequate motives. They can be motives for acquiring generalized methods of action, motives for their own intellectual growth, their own improvement.
If it is possible to form such motives in students, then this will support, filling with new content, the general motives of the child's activity with the implementation of socially significant and socially appreciated activities. ...
Learning activity can be viewed accordingly as a specific type of activity. It is aimed at the student himself as its subject - improvement, development, and the formation of him as a person due to the conscious, purposeful assignment of socio-cultural experience to them in various types and forms of socially useful, cognitive, theoretical and practical activities.
2. Analysis of educational activities carried out by D.B. Elkonin and V.V. Davydov, showed that she has her own structure, specific structure and includes:
Educational task;
Educational activities;
Monitoring and evaluation.
The central place in the structure of activities belongs to learning task. It should not be understood as a task that the child must complete in class. An educational task is a goal, the essence of which is to master a generalized method of action that will help to complete similar tasks, to solve problems of this type.
Educational activities, with the help of which educational tasks are solved, consist of many different training operations. In order for children to master educational activities, it is necessary
Introduction
The works of V.V. Davydov and D.B. Elkonin. They emphasize the need to develop theoretical thinking as the basis for the mental development of schoolchildren. For example, D.B. Elkonin singled out educational and cognitive motives, educational tasks (and operations), control, assessment in the structure of educational activity. And if at primary school age separate components of educational activity are formed, then the teenager sets the task of assimilating its general structure. Self-regulation also appears in him - the conscious setting of goals and objectives related to the upcoming activities and subordination to them of the methods of his educational work.
Mental development is in the closest relationship with the mastery of knowledge, since mental activity, its creative nature is due to the richness of the content of the mind, however, the level of mental development cannot be unambiguously determined by the volume of acquired knowledge. Of great importance is the manifestation of cognitive activity by students in learning, the processing of acquired knowledge in consciousness, the transformation of knowledge into beliefs, mastering the ability to creatively apply them in practice. Only in this way will the mental abilities of children develop and improve.
Purpose of work: to study mental development, learning ability, training.
Work tasks:
1. Give a definition of the concept of "mental development", indicators of mental development;
2. Give a definition to the concept of "learning", consider the indicators of learning; the ratio of learning and learning;
3. Consider the main components of learning.
The structure of the work consists of an introduction, one chapter, three paragraphs, a conclusion and a list of references.
Mental development: concept, indicators
Mental development- quantitative and qualitative changes occurring in the cognitive characteristics of an individual over time. Mental development is a dynamic system, determined both by the assimilation of social experience in the course of the child's activity, under the influence of spontaneous and purposeful learning, and by the maturation of the organic basis. The maturation of organic structures, on the one hand, creates the necessary prerequisites for development, and on the other hand, it itself depends on the functioning of the corresponding organic systems in the process of carrying out activities. The mental development of a child is staged. At each age stage, specific prerequisites arise for assimilating new social experience, for mastering new ways of activity, for the formation of new mental processes. Mental development proceeds very differently depending on the living conditions and upbringing of the child. With a spontaneous, unorganized development, its level is reduced, bears the imprint of the defective functioning of mental processes.
In Russian psychology, the mental development of a person is understood as a qualitatively unique type of his functioning, characterized by the emergence of qualitatively new psychological formations and the transition of the psychological system to a new level of functioning (L.S.Vygotsky, D.B. Elkonin, V.V.Davydov). Many psychologists, in search of specific indicators of mental development, turn to the analysis of the mental activity of students, carried out in the process of school education, to the characteristics of the integral educational activity.
As indicators of mental development, the following are considered:
interiorization, i.e. transformation of practical (external) objective actions into mental actions (L.S.Vygotsky, P.Ya. Galperin, N.F. Talyzina); learnability, i.e. the ability to assimilate knowledge, methods of work, characterized by the rate of advancement (B.G. Ananiev, Z.I. Kalmykova); the ability to generalized transfer of mental operations to new material, to new conditions (E.N. Kabanova-Meller).
There are also other indicators of integral learning activity that can serve as characteristics of the level of mental development. Many researchers are looking for indicators of mental development in the features of cognitive mental processes, mainly in the characteristics of thinking and memory. This is due to the fact that it is the noted mental functions that ensure the assimilation of the incoming information and the adaptation of the individual to the environment, considered as the ultimate goal of the functioning of the human cognitive sphere. So, as indicators of the level of mental development are put forward: knowledge and mental operations (DN Bogoyavlensky, NI Menchinskaya, AA Lyublinskaya, AN Leontiev); operating with abstract relations, meaningful generalizations, theoretical thinking (V.V.Davydov, A.Z. Zak); categorical generalization, relations of substitution, the use of a symbolic plan (N.G. Salmina and others); logical thinking, analyzing observation (L.V. Zankov); an internal plan of action, that is, the ability to act "in the mind" (Ya.A. Ponomarev). It is especially necessary to highlight the indicators of creative thinking, which also characterize mental development: creative transformation of material in a problem situation (O. K. Tikhomirov, V. N. Pushkin); intellectual initiative as a continuation of the search for new knowledge beyond the requirements of a specific task (D.B. Bogoyavlenskaya); flexibility of thinking, the ability to find new ways of solving (Ya.A. Ponomarev); forecasting, goal-setting (A.V. Brushlinsky, O.K. Tikhomirov). None of the identified indicators of mental development is exhaustive, fully reflecting the features of the cognitive sphere of the individual at certain stages of development. It is hardly possible to find a universal characteristic of mental development, which could be measured with equal success in representatives of any age, regardless of their education, experience of the main activity and living conditions. As L.S. Vygotsky, "there can be no equal units for measuring all stages in the development of the intellect, each qualitatively new stage requires its own special measure."
At each age stage, two levels of mental development are distinguished: the actual and the zone of proximal development (L.S.Vygotsky). The actual is understood as the level of formation of mental processes, which has developed as a result of certain completed development cycles. He is diagnosed with intelligence tests and intelligence tests. What the child is still able to do only with the help of an adult indicates the zone of his proximal development. This indicator of mental development is determined using dialogical and educational diagnostic methods. One of the promising areas of modern diagnostics - criterion-oriented testing - allows you to assess the level of mental development in its specific manifestations, correlated with regulatory requirements. This allows you to indicate the directions of corrective work leading to the correction of the detected gaps and defects in mental development. ...
Previously it was considered unshakable that only his independent activity, but not imitation, is indicative of the level of a child's mental development. This has found expression in all modern test research systems. When assessing mental development, only those decisions are taken into account that the child made on his own, without the help of others, without showing, without leading questions.
However, this position, as the study shows, is untenable. Already experiments on animals have convinced that the actions that the animal is able to imitate lie in the zone of its own capabilities. In other words, an animal can imitate only such actions that are available to itself in one form or another. Moreover, as Kohler established, the possibility of imitation in animals almost does not go beyond the possibilities of their own action. This means that if an animal is capable of imitating some kind of intellectual action, then in independent activity it will, under certain conditions, reveal the ability to perform a similar action. Thus, imitation turns out to be closely related to understanding, it is possible only in the field of those actions that are accessible to the understanding of the animal. ...
The essential difference between the imitation of a child is that he can imitate actions that go far beyond his own capabilities, but they, however, are not infinitely great. The child is able, through imitation in collective activities, under the guidance of adults, to do much more, and moreover to do with understanding, independently. The discrepancy between the levels of solving problems available under the guidance, with the help of adults and in independent activity, determines the zone of the child's proximal development.
Let's give an example. Before us are two children with the same mental age of 7 years, but one of them, with the slightest help, solves problems designed for 9 years, the other - for 7.5. Is the mental development of both children the same? From the point of view of their independent activity, it is the same, but from the point of view of the immediate possibilities of development, it sharply diverges. What the child is able to do with the help of an adult indicates to us the zone of his proximal development. Consequently, with the help of this method, we can take into account not only the development process completed to date, its already completed cycles, the maturing processes passed, but also those that are now in a state of formation, maturation, development.
What a child does today with the help of an adult, tomorrow he will be able to do on his own. The zone of proximal development will help us determine the future of the child, the dynamic state of his development, taking into account not only what has already been achieved, but also is in the process of maturation. The two children in our example show the same mental age in terms of already completed developmental cycles, but their developmental dynamics are completely different. The state of mental development of a child can be determined, at least, by clarifying its two levels - actual development and the zone of proximal development. ...
The influence of learning on the mental (intellectual) development of students.
Intellectual development proceeds along two lines:
1) functional development of intelligence, which consists in enriching its content with new mental actions, new concepts;
2) stadial (age-related) development, which characterizes qualitative changes in intelligence, its restructuring. A. V. Zaporozhets, emphasizing the features of this line of development, writes that in this case “fundamental changes take place, which no longer consist in mastering individual actions in their sequential implementation at different levels, in different plans, but in the formation of these levels themselves, for example in the emergence ... of the internal plan of ideas, imaginary transformations of reality. " Currently, three stages of intellectual development are known in psychology: visual-active intelligence, visual-figurative and verbal-logical. The stage of development of intelligence characterizes the typical state of accumulated mental actions, i.e. in what form the subject usually performs them, is he able to be aware of them, use them arbitrarily, etc. It is important to note that these two lines of intellectual development are interconnected. On the one hand, the transition to a new stage presupposes the mastery of certain actions. Thus, the child's transition from the stage of visual-active intelligence to the stage of visual-figurative intelligence is facilitated by the mastery of generalized actions of substitution and actions of game modeling. Usually, the kid masters these actions in preschool age in the process of playing. (It is known, for example, that a child can replace a horse with a stick and ride it with delight.) Thus, the accumulations proceeding along the first (functional) line are not equally effective for qualitative (stage) changes in intelligence. A student can learn many new actions, but remain at the same stage of intellectual development. ...
On the other hand, stadial development affects the functional. So, if a child is at the stage of visual-active intelligence, then when assimilating each new action, he needs to begin assimilation from the material (or materialized) form. But if the student's intellect is characterized as visual-figurative, the material (materialized) form can be missed, then the perceptual form will be available to the child from the very beginning.
So, mental development has both quantitative and qualitative changes. The quantitative (functional) line of development directly depends on the activity of teaching: it is replenished through the assimilation of new actions. Qualitative (staged) changes are mediated by functional development. The decisive factor here is not the number of learned actions, but their content and characteristics.
One of the central problems of educational psychology is the identification of conditions, the implementation of which in educational activities leads to high indicators of student development. ...
Indicators of mental development
A conversation about developmental teaching will be pointless, "if the teacher is not clear enough about those aspects of mental development that it is desirable to form in the students of this class, in the lessons of this educational cycle, if those forms of educational work that lead to the necessary shifts in development are not determined." For their successful development, it is important for a teacher to know the main indicators, criteria for mental development.
Until now, the provisions of L.S. Vygotsky regarding the main indicators of mental activity in the learning process. He considered such indicators to be the degree of generalization, abstraction of concepts and the degree of their inclusion in the system. The highest level of mental development is the establishment of the relationship between different concepts. A very significant indicator of the mental development of schoolchildren is the use of rational methods of mental activity, for example, methods of abstraction, establishing different relationships in a given material (spatial, causal, etc.), considering an object from different points of view, imagination, memorization, etc. A correctly formed method of mental activity presupposes the ability to apply it in practice. ...
D.B. Elkonin considers the main criterion of mental development to be the presence of a properly organized structure of educational activity with such components as setting the problem, choosing the means of solving, self-control and self-examination; the correct ratio of subject and symbolic plans in educational activities.
The focus of L.V. Zankov was the general development of children. Three lines of development are distinguished: the development of observation activity, mental activity and practical actions. The student must master the techniques for performing each of them. The progress of general development is manifested in the extent to which students can combine all these techniques into a single system.
The most important indicators of the mental development of schoolchildren are the quality of mental activity: depth, flexibility, evidence, criticality, etc. Children with a low level of mental development poorly use the information inherent in the conditions of problems, often solve them on the basis of blind tests. The path to a solution turns out to be low-cost, overloaded with false judgments. Depending on how the indicators of mental development are understood, the approach to the conditions of mental development will also be different. For some, the main condition is teaching students generalized methods of mental activity, for others - the development of the qualities of the mind, etc. ...
Development processes do not coincide with learning processes, development processes follow the learning processes that create zones of proximal development. ...
The thoughts expressed by Vygotsky about the "zone of proximal development" of the child are of great importance for the teacher today, if he thinks about his mental development in the learning process. ...
mental cognitive learnability learning
The basis of mental development in early childhood is formed by the new types of actions of perception and mental actions that are forming in the child. According to LS Vygotsky, all mental processes develop around perception, through perception and with the help of perception. Perception can be considered the leading mental function of this period.
By the beginning of early childhood, the child develops an objective perception: he begins to perceive the properties of surrounding objects, to catch the simplest connections between objects and to use this knowledge in his actions with them. This creates the preconditions for further mental development, which occurs in connection with the mastery of objective activity (and later - the elementary forms of playing and drawing) and speech.
By the beginning of an early age, the child masters visual actions, which make it possible to determine some of the properties of objects and regulate practical behavior. A child of the 2nd year of life cannot yet accurately determine the properties of familiar objects - their shape, size and color, and the objects themselves usually recognize not by a combination, a set of properties, but by individual, conspicuous signs that were encountered in past experience. The basis for recognizing objects is primarily the shape of objects. At first, the child does not take into account color at all, and he recognizes painted and unpainted images equally well. This does not mean that children are color blind in early childhood. Psychophysiological experiments have shown that the child distinguishes not only the main colors, but also their shades, but the color is not yet a feature that characterizes the object.
Throughout an early age, the child's perception becomes more accurate and meaningful as he masters new types of perception, which make it possible to correctly highlight the properties of objects and learn to recognize objects by the combination of these properties. In connection with the development of visual correlation, a child of 2.5-3 years old becomes available visual choice according to the model (first in shape, then in size, and later of all in color), requiring him to realize that there are many different objects with the same properties ( for example, "yellow", "round",
"Soft", etc.).
Along with visual perception, auditory perception develops, especially speech perception, which is based on phonemic hearing: from the perception of words as undifferentiated sound complexes with features of rhythmic structure and intonation, the child gradually moves to the perception of their sound composition. Pitch hearing develops more slowly, so there is little point in teaching very young children to sing. But by the third year, children learn to perceive a relatively small difference in sounds in pitch, if this learning is introduced into the game, where, for example, a high voice belongs to a small toy animal, and a low voice belongs to a large one.
In connection with the emergence of play, the child receives an incentive to develop imagination, which in early childhood is of a recreational nature. A child can imagine things, events, actions from an adult's story, from a picture. In games, the child reproduces situations known from experience without building his own design. Creating drawings, constructions, he proceeds not from the images of the imagination, but from the assimilated actions, and only the completed result evokes the corresponding image in him. Children sometimes seem to have a rich and creative imagination. But this impression is associated with the apparent ease with which children create images, focusing on the slightest similarity of some objects to others. In reality, it is not the richness of the imagination that is manifested here, but its insufficient controllability, vagueness, a tendency to associate "everything with everything" on random grounds.
The predominant types of memory are motor, emotional and partly figurative. A child in early childhood remembers better what he himself did or felt than what he saw or heard. Memory, although it plays an important role in cognition, is still involuntary, and the child does not perform any special actions with the aim of remembering or recalling. For memorization, the frequency of repetition of actions matters.
On the threshold of early childhood, a child develops actions that are considered a manifestation of thinking - the use of a connection between objects to achieve a goal (for example, a child attracts a pillow on which an attractive object lies in order to reach it). Children solve most problems of this type by means of external orienting actions. These actions are aimed not at identifying and taking into account the external properties of objects, but at finding connections between objects and actions that make it possible to obtain a certain result.
Thinking based on external orienting actions is called visual, and this is the main type of thinking in early childhood. External orienting actions, as you know, serve as a starting point for the formation of internal, mental actions. And already within the limits of early childhood, mental actions appear in children, performed without external tests, in the mind. The child easily transfers the method, worked out in one situation, into a similar situation (for example, with a stick he can get a ball from under the sofa, etc.). This is based on tests done in the mind, when the child acted not with real objects, but with their images, ideas about objects and ways of using them. Thinking, in which the solution of a problem is carried out through internal actions with images, is called visual-figurative. In early childhood, the child solves with his help only a limited class of problems, more difficult problems are either not solved at all, or are translated into a visual-effective plan.
One of the most significant acquisitions of the child is the sign-symbolic function of consciousness. For the first time, the child begins to understand that some things and actions can be used to designate others, to serve as their substitutes. A symbolic (sign) function is a generalized ability to distinguish between a designation and a signified and, therefore, to perform actions of replacing a real object with a sign. This neoplasm goes a long way in its development, which begins in early childhood and ends in adulthood. It largely determines the intellectual and social development of the child, allowing you to carry out many types of activities, communicate with the help of speech, study, etc.
Speech development. Language is acquired with amazing speed, especially after children begin to pronounce their first words. For 2.5 years of early childhood, the child's speech develops from primitive naming to the conscious expression of thought, fluent speech, consisting of grammatically correct sentences. Without special training, by the age of 4-5, children master the rules of grammar of their native language. In their speech, they correctly use many morphological and syntactic rules, including inflection, the formation of tenses, and the composition of sentences. While mastering syntax, children simultaneously comprehend the meanings of words and sentences - semantics. But in order to communicate effectively, you also need to know how to clearly express your intentions and achieve your intended goal, and for this you need to master the pragmatic aspects of the language: intonation, pauses, conversation rules, forms of addressing people, etc.
The child's own speech is closely intertwined with his activity and gradually begins to perform the function of organizing his actions, entering them as an obligatory component. This allows him to guide him through speech, to carry out joint activities with him.
In the 3rd year of life, the child's understanding of speech not only increases in volume, but also changes qualitatively. The child loves to listen to the speech of adults, loves the radio, children's records, reading fairy tales, poetry, develops an understanding of the speech-story. But this understanding is carried out better within the framework of the visual situation. To develop understanding and listening to speech with a content that goes beyond the situation, special work with children is necessary.
The timing of the beginning of the intensive growth of the active vocabulary, the appearance of 2-3-word sentences and the first questions addressed to an adult depend primarily on the nature of communication between the child and adults. If adults speak little with the child, do not encourage him to actively use words, predict any desire of the child, without stimulating recourse to active speech, the development of speech may slow down.
The third year of life is characterized by the increasing speech activity of the child. The circle of his communication is expanding, he is proactive in starting a conversation even with strangers. Speech activity increases during games and independent activities of the child. In connection with the increased understanding of words and the rapid increase in vocabulary, speech becomes for the child the main means of communication.
Children of six years of age differ markedly from each other in mental development.
Here before us appear children with normal mental development, children with advanced development and mentally gifted (child prodigies), children with mental retardation, children with mental retardation.
It is not the teacher's function to diagnose this or that child; this is the business of other specialists. But navigate the range mental development of children his class he should. This will help, first of all, the child, for whose mental upbringing the teacher is responsible. Let's turn to the analysis of the most significant options mental development of primary school children.
Children with normal mental development are in the majority. A six-year-old child can himself solve more or less complex problems that require the isolation and use of connections and relationships between objects, phenomena, actions. True, the very application of their capabilities for each of the children has its own characteristics associated with the child's lifestyle.
Any normally developing preschooler from a good kindergarten can reveal the ability to be inventive, ready to search for new ways of acting in play, drawing, modeling, design while completing educational and work assignments.
All normally developed children of six years of age are mentally active; they invariably set themselves cognitive tasks, perceiving the world around them as their cognitive problem. Questions "why" and "why" are an indicator mental activity of the child. However, not all questions are addressed to adults. The child seeks to find the answer himself: he can conduct an "experiment" to clarify his questions; he can closely observe animals, people, natural phenomena; he can reason and draw conclusions.
Expanding the range of problems available to the child's thinking is associated with the assimilation of knowledge. The amount of knowledge and its quality is a prerequisite for a normal mental development of the child... The fact is that together with the assimilation of knowledge, thinking abilities are exercised. A child, in order to assimilate this or that information about the world around him, must be able to perform mental actions aimed at highlighting those connections and relationships that adults point to him and on which the success of his activity depends. A normally developed child can and knows how to incorporate the acquired knowledge into the solution of new problems.
As we said above, a six-year-old child thinks in images. Creative thinking best suited to the conditions of life and work preschooler, those tasks that arise in front of him in the game, drawing, construction, in communication with others. So, acting in the mind with images, the child imagines a real action with objects and its result, and in this way solves the problem that has arisen before him. Therefore, trying to figure out whether an object will float or sink, he connects buoyancy with the size of the object, the shape of the object, the material from which the object is made. These mental actions are available to the imaginative thinking of the child. As for the abstract, logical thinking, it is only mastered by the child. And although some logical judgments of six-year-olds give us a feeling of admiration and joy for success in mental development of the baby, but in general this is not the typical thinking of a normal six-year-old child.
Children with advanced mental development, or geeks, in the classroom a little. Determine at first the degree of advance in mental development it is difficult for the teacher, despite the fact that such children are usually in sight.
Children who are noticeably distinguished by their high level of intellectual development, exceptional abilities are usually called geeks(wunderkind - German, literally - a miracle child). These "miracle children" are far ahead of their peers, striking those around them with their development, ability to work and intellectual activity.
Undoubtedly, early mental recovery is a favorable sign. It contains the guarantee of successful mental activity in later life.
Six-year-olds clearly outperforming their peers in general mental development, require special attention of the teacher. These children learn to read and count early; they are most often carried away by any area of knowledge, and here they sometimes achieve amazing perfection.
Each such child is, of course, an exceptional phenomenon. Upon entering the school, his knowledge and his mental capabilities become a problem for the teacher and classmates. After all, his exclusivity requires a special approach.
If there is a child in the class with advanced mental development, then the program load is not enough for him. The main feature of children with advanced mental development consists in a pronounced mental activity, in an unsaturated need for mental stress, in an increased tendency to mental activity.
NS Leites, who has specially studied mentally gifted children for decades, writes that the absorption of such children in all kinds of exercises is an indicator of a rapid rise in abilities.
At primary school age, children with advanced mental development an extraordinary propensity for mental work is revealed. Mental activities become for the child a kind of game (mind game!), In the process of which he can show unlimited initiative, enjoy the problems that arise and their solution. Such children are carried away by mental work, they do not know boredom, they are not familiar with laziness. There are no distractions for them when they think.
Children who are ahead of their peers in mental development are distinguished by early overcoming of egocentric attitudes, the formation of an objective position in relation to the world.
In addition to extreme mental activity, the ability of such children to organize themselves should be noted. The child mobilizes all his strength to solve the task he has taken on. All of them can be surprisingly focused and maintain mental tension for a long time. "Their organization," writes NS Leites, "serving in an attitude toward overcoming difficulties, toward maintaining a striving for a goal, is, as it were, involuntary, inherent in them."
The whole complex of abilities, which determines the anticipation of mental development, requires special attention from the teacher to such a child. Such a child should be provided with tasks that would benefit his mind. Books on issues of interest to him, conversations on topics that are significant for him will support the baby in a normal mental state. Such a child cannot be left unloaded, he needs constant mental work.
Children with mental retardation is in almost every class. manifests itself in the rapid exhaustion of the child. In the lesson, such children cannot focus their attention on the teacher's explanation, they are not interested, bored, they cannot and do not want to do what is needed at the moment. These children cannot concentrate on the task at hand. As a result, they indulge in class, do not follow the rules of behavior, and interfere with the activities of the whole class. Besides, mental retardation often accompanied by pronounced egocentric thinking.
Reasons mental retardation many. Firstly, such children include those who have a defeat or underdevelopment of any of the sense organs (deaf, visually impaired). In the absence of timely compensatory education, such children lag behind their peers in mental development.
Of particular difficulty are children who have underdevelopment of the analyzers involved in the formation of speech (motor or auditory). Poor speech development determines the characteristics of the development of all cognitive activity of the child, which is reflected in school performance. However, this delay can also be eliminated. With appropriate speech therapy rehabilitation work, children can catch up with their normally developing peers.
Secondly, mental retardation may appear in children who have been ill for a long time and seriously, and during these years no one cared about their mental development.
Thirdly, mental retardation occurs in pedagogically neglected children. Deprived of full communication with elders, deprived of love and care for their mental development, children do not develop mentally. Conflicts in the family, drunken fights between parents, and communication depleted in content are a condition for a child to develop mental retardation. Formal communication, devoid of positive emotions, devoid of warmth, humor, goodwill in a family, boarding school or orphanage, also acts as a condition for a child to develop mental retardation.
Children whose family has settled in a foreign language environment and did not ensure the acquisition of the language of this environment in advance may seem to be underdeveloped. A teacher who speaks only Russian, who has arrived in a different language environment, where children speak their native language and have just begun to learn Russian, may have the same impression.
Failure development of cognitive activity not yet a reason for a child to be deprived of full education and upbringing. Research has shown that children with mental retardation with an attentive attitude to them, they show interest in classes, turn out to be quick-witted and learnable. They quite easily overcome egocentrism in thinking when they are clearly shown and explained the changes in objects that are taking place before their eyes.
You should know that from children with mental retardation need to be distinguished mentally retarded children... The reason mental retardation is a severe damage to the child's brain. This is due to underdevelopment, illness, injury and in a number of other cases. That's why mentally retarded is called a child whose cognitive activity is persistently impaired due to organic brain damage. Wherein mental retardation is not determined by a specific disease, but by the child's ability to mental activity, to study at school.
Mentally retarded there may be a child who has undergone encephalitis in preschool age, a complex form of influenza with complications in the brain, severe trauma, also a patient with schizophrenia, epilepsy. This also includes other states of pronounced intellectual underdevelopment. A special place here is occupied by oligophrenics. Oligophrenic children make up the bulk of the students in the auxiliary school. Oligophrenia- this is the name of the state of mental capabilities that occurs after a large number of different lesions of the central nervous system of a child in the period before the development of his speech, up to one and a half to two years. Such lesions include hereditary and intrauterine damage to the embryo (often the cause oligophrenia- alcoholism of parents), natural trauma, as well as diseases that affect the central nervous system of the child in the pre-speech period.
At oligophrenia the child's mental development occurs on an inferior basis, but at the same time he is practically healthy. Major defects oligophrenia: reduced curiosity and cognitive interests; weak ability to understand a problem situation and its solution; difficult receptivity to new things, poor learning ability; poverty outlook; small stock of ideas; primitiveness and concreteness of thinking.
Child with mental retardation must attend a special school. Diagnosis of mental retardation is carried out by at least two specialists: a neuropsychiatric physician and a pathological psychologist or a teacher-defectologist.
Children are diagnosed at the end of their first year of school. During this time, the teacher should try to do everything possible to advance the development of children with mental retardation and give them the happiness of learning and learning with normal children.
V.S. Mukhina
"A six-year-old child at school"