Alexander Vladimirovich Zaporozhets (September 12, 1905, Kyiv, Russian Empire - October 7, 1981, Moscow) - psychologist, full member of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of the USSR, Doctor of Pedagogical Sciences, professor.
Graduated from the Faculty of Pedagogy of the 2nd Moscow State University. Professor of the Department of General and Applied Psychology, Faculty of Psychology (1966-1970). At Moscow University he gave a course of lectures on “Children’s and Educational Psychology.”
Founder of the Institute of Preschool Education of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of the USSR. Academician of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of the USSR.
Awarded the Order of Lenin, the October Revolution, the Red Banner of Labor, and medals.
Area of scientific interests: foundations of the general psychological theory of activity in the ontogenetic aspect. Revealed the role of practical actions in the genesis of cognitive processes (perception, thinking, etc.); put forward a theory of perceptual actions, on the basis of which a system of sensory education was subsequently developed. While studying the voluntary actions of a child, he revealed the importance of indicative activity in regulating behavior. In the last years of his life, he developed a theory of emotions as a special link in the semantic regulation of activity. He made a great contribution to general and genetic psychology, and to the psychology of preschool children.
Topic of the candidate's dissertation: “The role of elements of practice and speech in the development of a child’s thinking.” Topic of doctoral dissertation: “Development of voluntary movements.”
Books (4)
Selected psychological works. Volume 1. Mental development of the child
The volume “Mental Development of the Child” contains works on three thematic sections: “Development of perception”, “Development of thinking” and “Problems of mental development”, which present theoretical and experimental studies of the formation of mental processes in the activities of a child; the role of practical activity is revealed - the primacy of the child’s real actions in relation to his mental development.
Selected psychological works. Volume 2. Development of voluntary movements
The volume publishes the monograph “Development of Voluntary Movements,” which contains materials studying the formation of various types of motor skills in preschool children as a model for mastering skills and new types of behavior.
This work is a significant contribution to the psychological theory of the structure of activity. The volume also includes individual chapters from the joint work “Restoration of Movements” with A.N. Leontiev.
Psychology of action
Introductory article by L.A. Venger, V.P. Zinchenko.
This collection of works by A.V. Zaporozhets includes some of his works, previously published in the two-volume book “A.V. Zaporozhets. Selected psychological works. - M.: Pedagogy, 1986.”
A unified name and subject index, as well as a bibliography, have been compiled for this publication.
The book is intended for psychologists, teachers and students preparing for psychological and pedagogical activities.
(1905–1981)
Scientific creativity of A.V. Zaporozhets is a bright page in the history of Russian psychology of the twentieth century. Alas, the current generation of facilitators and coaches are not very interested in such pages, since they do little to contribute to the prosperity of their business. But in our country, by some miracle, there are still psychologists, for whom the history of the life and work of an outstanding colleague can serve as a useful and instructive lesson. Therefore, today it is worth touching the pages of this vivid scientific biography and, from the perspective of the new century, reflecting on the legacy of the great predecessor.
Alexander Vladimirovich Zaporozhets was born on September 12, 1905 in Kyiv into a modest, poor family. It would be wrong, however, to conclude that he came from a family of ordinary people, but rather, on the contrary, rebels and rebels. Zaporozhets's paternal grandfather, a veteran of the Crimean War, upon returning from the trenches of Sevastopol to his native village, organized a peasant gathering, at which he called on his neighbors to appropriate the landowner's land. This initiative, naturally, ended in hard labor, but much later, during the years of Soviet power, it was encouraged - grandfather was awarded a hefty land plot near Bila Tserkva, where Sasha spent a lot of time as a teenager, combining feasible peasant labor with natural boyish amusements. One of his 11 children, Sasha’s uncle P.K., also inherited his father’s rebellious spirit. Zaporozhets, one of the first associates of V.I. Lenin's "Union of Struggle for the Liberation of the Working Class".
Sasha’s mother Elena Grigorievna (nee Mankovskaya) was also distinguished by her restless and rebellious character. In Kyiv, on Reiterskaya Street, there is still a house that belonged to the Mankovsky family in the 19th century. In 1889, this house became a safe house for the Mankovsky sisters, first the eldest, Anna Grigorievna, a member of Narodnaya Volya, and from 1893, the youngest, Elena Grigorievna, a member of the RSDLP, a natural history teacher. This house was repeatedly searched, during one of which Elena Grigorievna was arrested and then sent to hard labor.
As often happens, marriage and the birth of a child drove the wind out of the revolutionary’s wild head and prompted her to remember her feminine nature. Moreover, the boy was born weak and sickly and required constant care and attention. Thanks to his mother’s dedication, Sasha was able to get back on his feet, and the painful childhood illnesses could be forgotten. Even tuberculosis, to get rid of which the mother, at the cost of incredible efforts, took her son to seaside resorts, receded without leaving a trace.
At the age of 15, the future psychologist suddenly developed a passion for theater. Very young, he entered drama school and, while still a student, stood out for his brilliant talent as a character actor. The promising young artist was noticed by the famous Ukrainian director Les Kurbas and invited to his Berezil theater. Later, already as a psychologist, Zaporozhets more than once met with former colleagues from Berezil, who never ceased to complain about which actor was lost to the theater. But these years of a kind of apprenticeship were certainly not in vain - one cannot help but admit that for a real psychologist, a certain amount of artistry is a great advantage.
Already in his declining years, in 1981, Zaporozhets wrote an essay about his first theater teacher for a collection of memoirs about Les Kurbas. This short essay clarifies a lot about his subsequent professional choice. Zaporozhets writes: “I think the idea of a “transformed ruhu” (“transformed movement”) is worthy of close study, original and deep in its psychological content. A.S. Kurbas suggested that the actor, first of all, focus on the content of his role and the performance as a whole, comprehend it and feel into the inner world of the portrayed hero, get used to the system of relationships and circumstances in which the hero will act, and comprehend the social significance of his experiences and actions. At the same time, he considered it necessary to develop in the actor the ability to relax, relieve muscle tension, get rid of the power of cliches, rigidly fixed and pragmatically directed “instrumental” actions that limit the “degrees of freedom” of human motor skills, encouraging it to sound like an Aeolian harp in unison with the internal symphony thoughts and experiences of the person portrayed. Thus, a new and, from my point of view, very productive concept of actor’s expressiveness was put forward, in some respects similar to the system of scientific concepts about living human movement that is being developed in modern psychology.” Zaporozhets made an invaluable contribution to this system of concepts.
He further writes: “Kurbas, with his idea of building a philosophical theater, the assertion that the work of an actor and director should be built not on bare intuition, but on a conscious attitude towards the events depicted, on a deep understanding of their inner meaning, perhaps awakened in me without suspecting it, interest in psychology, in the scientific knowledge of the inner world of a person, in the study of the origin of his thoughts and emotional experiences, the process of formation of his personal qualities. All this prompted me to eventually leave the theater, enter the 2nd Moscow University and study psychology. I became a student of the famous Soviet psychologist L.S. Vygotsky... It turned out that, despite the deep difference between my previous acting and subsequent scientific activities, there is some kind of internal connection between them and what was previously understood intuitively should now become the subject of objective experimental study and conceptual understanding.”
Thus, A.V. Zaporozhets came to psychology with already established interests and his own problems. Here, in a new field, in a new environment, he truly found himself. Because what a Wednesday it was! Back in the 80s, B.V. Zeigarnik bitterly ironized: “Nowadays, everyone is their own Vygotsky.” In the 20s, Vygotsky was the real one! Zaporozhets entered the close circle of his students and followers.
The atmosphere of search that dominated theatrical art (and art in general) in those years left a deep imprint on the future scientist. According to Zaporozhets’ wife T.O. Ginevskaya, his first teachers besides Kurbas were V. Meyerhold and S. Eisenstein. It was under their influence that his program of psychological research and the strategy for its implementation took shape. Therefore, it is not at all by chance that in the second half of the 20s. Zaporozhets became a student and follower of Vygotsky, and not other, at that time much more famous psychologists, such as P.P. Blonsky, K.N. Kornilov, G.G. Shpet, with whom he also had the opportunity to study at the 2nd Moscow State University. It is no coincidence that Vygotsky sent Zaporozhets to Eisenstein’s studio to plan and organize joint research work, which, unfortunately, was not destined to come true.
The further, now scientific, fate of Zaporozhets was inextricably linked with Vygotsky’s school. At first, it consisted of five students of the same year - in addition to Zaporozhets, these were L.I. Bozhovich, L.S. Slavina, N.G. Morozova, R.E. Levin, - as well as two senior, but also very young scientists - A.R. Luria and A.N. Leontyev (they were soon joined by D.B. Elkonin, who arrived from Leningrad). However, we have to speak very conditionally about seniority, and about age in general. Vygotsky was only 5 years older than his youngest student, Zaporozhets. Perhaps, thanks to such closeness in age, this scientific team, which has done so much for the development of psychological science in our country, united more quickly and easily.
While still a student, Zaporozhets began working as a laboratory assistant at the Department of Psychology of the Academy of Communist Education named after. N.K. Krupskaya, which was headed by A.R. Luria. In 1929, Zaporozhets took part in expeditions to Altai, traveling over 1000 kilometers on horseback along mountain paths from village to village. The purpose of the expedition was to study the relationship between the characteristics of a child’s mental development and socio-cultural conditions from the point of view of the “theory of cultural-historical development”. The results of the expedition served as material for the first published work of the young researcher - “Mental development and mental characteristics of Oirot children.”
In the 30s Zaporozhets became part of the Kharkov group of psychologists led by A.N. Leontyev. Together with Leontiev and under his leadership, he carried out a number of works on the problems of the emergence and development of the psyche in phylogenesis. Together with Leontyev, he formulated the now widely known hypothesis about the origin of the psyche and the emergence of sensitivity. The main meaning of the hypothesis is that the emergence of sensitivity and the appearance of an indicative reaction are possible only in a situation of active action in a search situation. Zaporozhets himself began independent research in the field of child psychology, and then headed the psychology department of the Kharkov State Pedagogical Institute and led it until the beginning of the Great Patriotic War.
During this first period of independent scientific activity, Zaporozhets devoted his main attention to the study of the genetic connection between the external, practical, activity of the child and the development of his internal, mental activity. From this point of view, the development of children's perception, thinking, and imagination was studied.
Zaporozhets, together with his colleagues (D.M. Aranovskaya, O.M. Kontsevaya, K.E. Khomenko, etc.) began the first studies of children's perception in the mid-30s. The subject of the research was the perception of fairy tales, fables, children's plays, and illustrations for works of art. An analysis of the formation of aesthetic perception in children of preschool and primary school age led Zaporozhets to the conclusion that in this process there are expressive movements of children that perform the function of “assisting” the heroes of the works, when the child becomes, as it were, a participant in the events taking place. This series of studies allowed Zaporozhets to introduce the concept of the action of perception into psychology.
In the 30s A.V. Zaporozhets carried out a large series of studies on the development of children's thinking. Initially, it was shown that this process is based on practical generalizations that arise in the child when solving similar practical problems and consist in transferring the method of action formed when solving one problem to another. Contrary to the opinion of such authors as V. Stern and J. Piaget, a preschool child is capable of reasoning intelligently and consistently and drawing conclusions if he relies on sufficient experience in dealing with objects. The generalized experience of such actions with objects forms the basis for children’s assimilation of the meanings of words and the acquisition of a planning function by speech in the subsequent solution of practical problems. The study of the importance of practical activity for the development of thinking formed the basis of Zaporozhets’s candidate dissertation “The role of elements of practice and speech in the development of a child’s thinking” (1936). In the cycle of these studies, the idea that action, and not meaning, as Vygotsky believed, is the initial unit of analysis of thinking, clearly emerged.
Analyzing thinking, Zaporozhets was also looking for a criterion for the intellectuality of action. He was aware that the presence of reasonable content does not necessarily have to be associated with a reasonable intellectual form, for although form and content are one, they are not identical. Indeed, from the outside observer, for example, forms of instinctive behavior can be perceived as highly reasonable. Zaporozhets was looking for a criterion of intellectuality in a change in the form, structure of activity, and above all, action. In the article “Action and Intelligence”, he noted that “intellectual action, even in the simplest cases, is two-act in the sense that one action serves as a goal for another... The action, which was previously single, seems to split into two parts - theoretical and practical: understanding the task and its practical solution."
Such a structural division of intellectual action and the identification of semantic and functional differences between its structural components, or acts, which was carried out by Zaporozhets in the late 30s, prepared the ground for a broader generalization made by him in the post-war years. It concerns the structure of human activity and consists in identifying the indicative and executive parts within any act of activity.
Based on the generalization of these studies, Zaporozhets prepared a doctoral dissertation, the defense of which was to take place in July 1941. Unfortunately, the dissertation and all research materials from the Kharkov period were destroyed by a fascist bomb that hit the house where Zaporozhets lived.
During the Great Patriotic War, the scientist worked in hospitals to restore the functionality of the upper limbs of wounded Red Army soldiers. The psychological and physiological foundations of the content and methods of functional movement therapy are outlined by him in a document written jointly with A.N. Leontyev’s book “Restoration of Movements” (1945). In the process of rehabilitation work with the wounded, cases were often noted when the implementation of individual work or sports tasks aimed at achieving an objective goal only externally changed the movements, but did not lead to a restructuring of their internal organization, leaving the subject indifferent to their goal. The reason for this was the lack of reserves for improving the functional system of movements contained in their internal organization. Observations and special studies allowed Zaporozhets to conclude that internal motor skills are associated with a person’s personal attitudes, the motives of his activities, which determine his attitude to the situation. Subsequently, Zaporozhets included into internal motor skills the image of the situation and the image of action in this situation. There is no doubt that the formulation of the problem of developing a broad system of internal motor skills is directly related to Zaporozhets’s own experience as an actor. In fact, in this cycle of research he opens a new chapter of psychology, which he will later designate as “motor skills and personality.”
In the post-war years, Zaporozhets headed the laboratory of psychology of preschool children at the Institute of Psychology of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of the RSFSR and directed the work of the team to analyze the process of formation of various types of motor skills in preschoolers, which was considered as a model for mastering any new types of behavior. It was found that the assimilation of any new actions begins with children examining the conditions for completing the task, followed by the implementation itself. In this case, the decisive role is always played by the first, indicative, link. The success of the action and the ease and speed of its assimilation depend on how systematically and completely the child examines the situation and identifies the points that are essential for completing the task. Therefore, the most effective way to teach new actions is for adults to fully orient the child in the task.
The facts established in the research led by Zaporozhets allowed him to come to the conclusion that internal forms of orientation come from its external forms; mental processes themselves are nothing more than orienting actions performed on the internal plane. It has been shown that any cognitive process is based on practical actions, in particular, that perception and thinking are a system of collapsed perceptual actions in which assimilation occurs to the basic properties of an object and, due to this, the formation of a perceptual or mental image.
The results of studying the indicative components of children’s activity in the process of mastering new actions were summarized by Zaporozhets in his doctoral dissertation defended in 1958 and presented in the monograph “Development of Voluntary Movements” (1960).
The hypothesis of mental processes as internalized forms of orienting actions laid the foundation for research conducted by Zaporozhets, his colleagues and students, starting in the mid-50s. at the Institute of Psychology of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of the RSFSR and then at the Institute of Preschool Education of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of the USSR, of which he was director from its founding in 1960 until the last days of his life. In this cycle of research, there was a return to the problems of the Kharkov period: the patterns of development of perception, thinking, emotions. However, this was a return on a new basis. The content and structure of those types of indicative actions that ensure the implementation of these mental processes at different stages of their development, and the patterns of transition from stage to stage were studied.
One of the main results of the research is the creation of a theory of the development of children's perception through the formation and improvement of perceptual actions. The theory is based on the doctrine developed by Zaporozhets about the processes of perception as a system of specific perceptual actions performed by a person, aimed at examining objects and phenomena of reality, identifying and recording their external properties and relationships.
Simultaneously with the study of the development of perception, Zaporozhets studied the development of children's thinking. In a number of works carried out under his scientific supervision, various types of mental actions that develop during preschool age were subjected to detailed analysis. Particular attention was paid to the most characteristic types of thinking for preschool children - visual-effective and visual-figurative. The peculiarities of the formation of thinking actions at various stages of early and preschool childhood, the patterns and conditions of the transition from visual-effective to visual-figurative and to verbal, reasoning, thinking, the possibility of forming in children generalized ideas about the patterns of the surrounding reality were studied. The research established the nature of those socially developed means, the mastery of which occurs during the development of a child’s visual-figurative thinking and allows him to build generalized ideas. The central type of such means are visual models that convey the relationships of things and phenomena.
In the last years of his life, Zaporozhets focused on studying one of the most complex and little-studied issues in psychology - the question of the origin and nature of emotions. This work is continued by his students and collaborators. Emotions are considered by Zaporozhets as a special form of reflection of reality, with the help of which behavior correction is carried out. Reflecting reality in the form of emotions is a “biased” reflection; in the course of it, special emotional representations are created that highlight and often exaggerate the features of objects, situations, ideas that determine their meaning and value for the child.
The reasons for the dependence that exist between the formation of mental processes and their qualities and practical activity appeared in a new light. After all, it is in the process of developing practical activity that the child learns to navigate the conditions of its implementation, he develops new types of orienting actions, and, consequently, new mental actions arise.
A.V. Zaporozhets died on October 7, 1981. The team of associates and like-minded people he united worked productively for several more years on the development of his ideas - until the dissolution of the previously world-famous Institute of Preschool Education in 1992. Alas, in fulfilling the formula “to the ground, and then...” we always succeed in the first part better than the second - the institute was later recreated in a reorganized form, but many former employees of Zaporozhets, who did not accept the new trends, never returned there. Many of them found themselves in the work of the Preschool Childhood Center at the Moscow Department of Education. Soon after its organization, the Center was named after A.V. Zaporozhets.
An excellent teacher and organizer, a man of rare spiritual qualities, A.V. Zaporozhets trained several generations of psychologists at Moscow State University. Many people remember the words he said more than once about psychology: “There are many more useful sciences, but there is none better.” Those who heard this from his lips believed these words forever.
1905-1981) - Sov. psychologist, student of L. S. Vygotsky. In the 1930s, as a member of the Kharkov school of psychologists, he stood at the origins of the activity approach in psychology, together with A. N. Leontiev, developing the problem of the emergence of the psyche in phylogenesis (see Sensitivity) . However, Z. made his main contribution to the theory of activity with his ontogenetic research. They showed that the origins of any child’s cognitive process lie in practical actions: thus, perception is a collapsed (interiorized) “perceptual action” that is likened to the basic properties of the perceived object; thinking arises initially as a practical ("effective") generalization, etc. Subsequently, he began to develop the idea of developing emotions as mastering actions to assess the meaning of the situation for the subject. The process of internalization was understood 3. as the transformation of initially external forms of orienting activity into internal ones. These views influenced the formation of the concept of the subject of psychology as an orientation activity in line with the activity approach. Based on a generalization of theoretical and practical (on the restoration of movements in those wounded during the Patriotic War) research, he created the concept of the emergence and development of voluntary movements and actions. See Sensory Standards, Theory of the development of perception through the formation of perceptual actions. (E. E. Sokolova.)
ZAPOROZHETS Alexander Vladimirovich
(1905-1981) - Russian psychologist, Ukrainian origin. Specialist in the field of developmental psychology and educational psychology, in particular the psychology of preschool children. Doctor of Psychological Sciences (1959), Professor (1960), Dr. Member. Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of the USSR (1968), academician-secretary of the department of psychology and developmental physiology (1965-1967), member. Presidium of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences, founder and director of the Institute of Preschool Education of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of the USSR. After graduating from the pedagogical faculty of the 2nd Moscow State University (1930), he worked as a laboratory assistant and then as an assistant at the psychology department of the Academy of Communist Education named after. N.K. Krupskaya. In 1931 he moved to Kharkov, where he worked as a senior officer. assistant, then head of the laboratory of the psychology sector of the Psychoneurological Academy. Since 1938 - associate professor and head. Department of Psychology, Kharkov Pedagogical Institute named after. A. M. Gorky. In the first years of the Second World War, he worked in a hospital and was involved in restoring the movements of wounded soldiers. In 1943, he began his teaching career at the department, then at the psychology department of Moscow State University. Since 1944, he headed the laboratory of psychology of preschool children at the Institute of Psychology of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of the RSFSR, where in 1958 he defended his doctorate. dis: Development of voluntary movements. In 1960, he became director of the Institute of Preschool Education of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of the USSR, which he created. Z.'s scientific activity is closely connected with the name of his teacher L. S. Vygotsky and his closest associates - A. R. Luria, A. N. Leontiev and their followers. From the very beginning, his diverse scientific interests were united by a single idea of the internal connection of the psyche with human activity. 3., along with A.R. Luria and A.N. Leontiev, was one of the creators of the psychological theory of activity and mental reflection, the foundations of which were laid in the works of L. S. Vygotsky. His research in the field of the emergence of the psyche became widely known. At the end of the 30s. 3., summing up the results of a series of studies on children’s perception of fairy tales and drawings, he came to the conclusion that perception is a special sensory Action. Subsequently, based on numerous studies of touch and vision, carried out jointly with students and collaborators, he formulated the main provisions of the theory of perceptual actions. This theory formed the basis for the development of methods and practices of sensory education and training of preschoolers. A special place in scientific biography is occupied by the study of movements and actions. This cycle of research began during the Great Patriotic War, when he developed methods of restorative therapy for hand movements. The study of the development of voluntary movements was continued in the post-war years and summarized in the famous monograph The Development of Voluntary Movements (1960). Moving from the study of perception to the study of human movements, Z. radically changed the formulation of the problem of forming actions, believing that the basis of this process is not the exercise of the motor sphere, but the construction of an image of the situation and the image of the necessary actions, an internal picture of movement. Like N.A. Bernstein, he considered movements as organs of individuality, which was reflected in his constant interest in the psychology of attitudes and understanding of attitudes not only as preparation for action, but also as a means of expressing the personal properties and qualities of the individual. Hence the transition 3. from the study of personal attitudes, including expressive movements, to the study of the emotional sphere of the individual is quite natural. Having come to science from art (he was a talented student of the Ukrainian director Les Kurbas), he retained an interest in art, manifested in the study of emotional actions. Dream 3 remained unrealized - to develop the ideas of L. S. Vygotsky, set out in his unfinished work Spinoza’s Doctrine of Passions in the light of modern psychoneurology, and to write a book about human emotions. One of the latest publications 3. was devoted to this topic: The role of L. S. Vygotsky in the development of the problem of emotions. N. S. Poleva
(30.8 (12.9).1905, Kyiv, - 7.10.1981, Moscow) - psychologist, full member of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of the USSR (1968), doctor of pedagogy. Sciences (1959), prof. (1960).
Biography
Alexander Vladimirovich Zaporozhets graduated from the pedagogical faculty of the 2nd Moscow State University (1925-1930). In 1929-31 AKV employee N.K. Krupskaya. In the 1920-30s. was one of the five closest Moscow students of Vygotsky (Zaporozhets, Bozhovich, Morozova, Levina, Slavina).
Since 1931 in Kharkov at the Ukrainian Psychoneurological Academy; at the same time since 1933 - associate professor, since 1938 - head. Department of Psychology, Kharkov Pedagogical Institute.
In 1941-43. Alexander Vladimirovich Zaporozhets worked at the experimental hospital for movement restoration at the Institute of Psychology (Sverdlovsk region).
In 1943-60. - Associate Professor, Prof. Department of Psychology, Moscow State University; in 1944-60 head lab. Psychology of Preschool Children Research Institute of Acute Pedigration; organizer, since 1960 director of the Research Institute of Preschool Education.
In 1965-67. Academician-secretary of the department of psychology and developmental physiology, 1968-1981. Member of the Presidium of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of the USSR.
Scientific activity Alexander Vladimirovich Zaporozhets
Alexander Vladimirovich Zaporozhets developed issues of general and child psychology, psychology of sensory processes and movement; contributed to the psychological theory of activity. Together with his students, he created a theory of sensory and mental development of the child, which helps solve problems in the upbringing and education of preschoolers.
He criticized the tendency to artificially “stimulate” mental development and premature inclusion of the child in complex forms of educational activity. He introduced into preschool pedagogy the concept of amplification (enrichment) of a child’s development through the optimal use of specifically children’s activities. In this regard, he perceived the transition to schooling for children from the age of 6 critically, believing that the extension of childhood is the greatest achievement of human civilization.
Main publications Alexander Vladimirovich Zaporozhets
1. Zaporozhets, A. V. and Lukov, G. D. (1941). Development of reasoning in a child of primary school age // Scientific notes of the Kharkov State University. ped. Institute (About the development of peace in the young child // Naukovi Zapiski Kharkiv. State Pedagogical Inst.), vol. VI, 1941.
2. Leontyev A. N., & Zaporozhets A. V. (1945). Restoration of movements. Study of hand function recovery after injury. M., 1945.
3. Zaporozhets A.V. (1960). Development of voluntary movements, M., 1960
4. Elkonin D. B., Zaporozhets A. V., Galperin P. Ya. (1963). Problems of developing knowledge and skills in schoolchildren and new teaching methods at school // Issues. psychol. - 1963. - No. 5
5. Zaporozhets, A. V. (1986). Selected psychological works: In 2 volumes M., 1986
Psychological and pedagogical ideas of A.V. Zaporozhets
Cossack education personality preschool
Introduction
Biographical information
The concept of personality and its development
1 Development in the game
2 Development in productive activities
Conclusion
Literature
Introduction
It is impossible to imagine Russian psychology without the remarkable humanist psychologist Alexander Vladimirovich Zaporozhets (1905-1981). In the 30s within the framework of research conducted at the Kharkov activity-based psychological school, he studied the problem of the emergence of the psyche in phylogenesis (together with A.N. Leontyev). It was shown that the basis of any cognitive process is practical actions, in particular, that perception and thinking are a system of collapsed “perceptual actions” , in which there is an assimilation to the basic properties of the object and, due to this, the formation of a perceptual or mental image. Subsequently, he began to develop a position on the development of emotions as a process of gradual mastery of the actions of assessing the meaning of the situation. He created the concept of the emergence and development of voluntary movements and actions, where, in particular, he summarized his experience in restoring movements in the wounded during World War II.
In this essay we will dwell on the ideas of A.V. Zaporozhets about personality development in preschool age (from 3 to 6 years). These ideas, in contrast to other aspects of his work (structure of action, development of perception, movement), have been analyzed much less, and his important provisions are still not sufficiently generalized and systematized.
Biographical information
Childhood and adolescence of A.V. Zaporozhets passed in Kyiv, where he was in the early 20s. He is interested in theater and participates in the studio of the then famous reformer of theatrical art Les Kurbas. It was at this time that Zaporozhets’ interest in psychology, in the scientific knowledge of the inner world of man, in the study of the origin of his thoughts and emotional experiences, and the process of formation of his personal qualities was formed. All this prompted him to eventually leave the theater, enter the 2nd Moscow University and begin studying psychology under the guidance of L.S. Vygotsky. However, special artistry was inherent in Alexander Vladimirovich throughout his life. It is no coincidence that his most fundamental works are devoted to the formation of the aesthetic perception of preschoolers.
At the end of the 50s. he becomes director of the Institute of Preschool Education and devotes himself to studying the psychology of child development. In fact, he was the first to develop such important problems as the child’s affective actions, the internal form of movement, the content of which includes the image of the situation. He implicitly opposed the theory of activity, replacing it with the psychology of action, which is objectified in the inner world of the child, his spirituality. On the basis of these complex but fundamental provisions, he substantiated the specific age periods of development of the child’s psyche and their enduring value.
To all this it is worth adding that all psychological concepts were built by A.V. Zaporozhets on his boundless love for children, and he himself created a scientific school of psychologists, including V. Zinchenko, N. Poddyakov, L. Wenger.
2. The concept of personality and its development
In the last years of his life, A.V. Zaporozhets came close to the problem of personality. Considering personality as a special holistic quality, he believed that the main line of its development lies in the development and complication of its orientations as the most important aspects of activity for the development of the psyche, on the basis of which the possibility of self-regulation of behavior appears.
The personality structure includes two interconnected subsystems: reflection and regulation. The reflection subsystem includes a number of genetic levels: perceptual, imaginary and mental actions, and the regulation subsystem consists of values, motives and emotions, developing in the direction from narrow individual ones, fixed on the child’s own biological needs, to broad social ones, focused on the needs of other people and moral norms. This structure develops in stages, while the lower levels do not disappear with the appearance of higher ones, but continue to function, playing a “latent” role in the overall determination of activity.
With this understanding of the personality, a true unity of mental processes and the personality itself is achieved: they are not identical, but also not divorced from each other; personality is a new quality that arises on the basis of a special synthesis of cognitive and regulatory mental processes and represents an alloy of orientations towards aspects of reality that are significant for a person.
Considering ways to use these provisions in the practice of preschool education, A.V. Zaporozhets put forward the idea of amplification (from the English amplify - expand, increase) - enrichment, nourishment of the development of the psyche and personality through a specially organized system of training and education. Such “feeding” should be carried out taking into account the significant opportunities for the child to acquire various knowledge and skills, provided that these processes are organized based on the psychological patterns of the structure of his activity and communication.
Recognizing that all aspects of a personality are important, A.V. Zaporozhets especially emphasized its moral, value, emotional and aesthetic qualities. It is characteristic that he began his scientific activity with the analysis of precisely these problems in the 30s. , he paid special attention to them in the last decade of his life.
He sharply protested against traditional ideas about the child as an asocial and selfish being, who must be remade into a social subject under the influence of external compulsions. However, the paradox is that the child really often turns out to be just like that! The whole point, according to A.V. Zaporozhets, is in the peculiarities of upbringing. If it is carried out carelessly or in the form of simple pressure on the child, without taking into account the laws of his development, then he turns out to be an egoist. But with purposeful upbringing, including the organization of collective activities aimed at achieving a socially significant result and requiring cooperation and mutual assistance, social (oriented towards other people) and moral (oriented towards social norms) motives of behavior are formed very early.
The foundations of a future personality are laid mainly in preschool age, and personality education is the central task of this period. Since personality is associated with mental processes, the essence of this work is the formation in the child of new levels in the structure of his personality - mental images and the foundations of social and moral regulation of behavior, which presupposes a proactive orientation towards the long-term social results of one’s own actions, taking into account social norms.
Such education of a preschooler’s personality is carried out in three main types of activity: play, productive activity and artistic perception. Considering play as the leading activity of a preschooler, A.V. Zaporozhets did not limit himself only to its analysis, considering other, non-leading activities important for development, without which the development of personality can neither be understood nor purposefully carried out.
1 Development in the game
In play activities, a preschooler acquires the most important psychological new formations: knowledge of new areas of reality, primarily social; mastering the functions and relationships of adults in society; the ability to act in terms of imagination; mastering the rules of relationships and social motives; the ability to behave arbitrarily, etc. A. V. Zaporozhets considered one of the main and initial new formations of play to be the child’s ability to go beyond the immediate environment and focus on a broader and less visual social context. This is achieved due to the fact that in the game in a visually effective form, i.e. in the only language available to him for mastering, modeling of these diverse aspects of reality is carried out using object substitutes and external actions with them. This reveals the general law of mental development: the new, unknown must be presented to the child and mastered by him in a materialized form, representing the translation of distant phenomena into the language of immediate situations and actions accessible to the child. The child’s ability thus acquired to liberate himself from his Self, from the environment and switch to something else that goes beyond the narrow circle of his relationships is the main source of subsequent neoplasms and underlies the development of personality in preschool age.
A.V. Zaporozhets emphasized that play activities are not invented by the child, but are given to him by an adult, the adult teaches him to play, transmits to him socially established methods of play actions. Mastering the techniques of various games according to the laws characteristic of mastering object manipulations, which are leading at the age of 1 to 3 years, the child, in joint activities with peers, generalizes these methods and transfers them to other situations. Thus, the game acquires self-propulsion, becomes a form of the child’s own creativity, and it is in this capacity that it creates developmental effects.
Speech plays an important role in play: it is through speech, used first in dialogue with peers and then to control one’s own behavior, that the child gains the first experience of self-regulation of his actions. At the same time, the motive for such regulation is the desire to communicate with peers in the game, the need to coordinate joint actions, and its means is speech (external or internal).
Thanks to the objects used in the game, including in the symbolic function (for example, sticks as a spoon), and speech (naming objects, actions with them and the meanings of these actions), the child begins to develop an internal plan of action. This is manifested in the fact that the child in his specific actions is guided not only and not so much by the directly perceived situation, but by the general concept of the game and the game rules, which are not clearly presented and are completely “in the mind.” Thus, behavior from impulsive, spontaneous (according to K. Levin) becomes voluntary, consciously regulated. Thus, mental development acts as a direct moment in the formation of complex behavior and personality as a whole.
So, holding a game in kindergarten and pretending how happy the kids will be when they see the playroom cleaned. and, on the contrary, they are saddened when they see a mess in it - allows the child to connect such disparate phenomena as, on the one hand, the current situation (a clean or dirty room) and, on the other, the subsequent reactions and actions of other people.
The meaning reflected in this way must necessarily be emotionally anchored. Emotions associated with meaning act as a psychological mechanism for regulating actions. Their formation also occurs in the game, only for this it is necessary to strengthen and specifically emphasize the emotional aspects of the situation being played out. A.V. Zaporozhets drew attention to a special psychological reality, underestimated by other researchers - to the activity of emotional imagination, which allows the child not only to imagine (cognitive processes), but also to experience (emotional processes) the long-term consequences of his actions for others. Empathy and sympathy for another person begins with the fact that, having entered the role of this person, the child carries out actions that model this role, in particular, he portrays delight or despondency (if this is specifically reinforced by the rules of the game); the reality of these actions, including emotional expressions, with elements of figurative imagination included in them, lead to the appearance in the child of real physiological changes (GSR, pulse changes, etc., which can be recorded by devices), characteristic of emotions, and thereby to real own experience for another person. (In other words, the experiences of another person during such a game are literally superimposed, implanted into their own intraorganic, interoceptive and therefore directly felt basal components of emotions.) Such actions are specially constructed by adults, and at the same time the child is given a socially developed language of feelings: names of emotions, their description, characteristics of expression, etc., which structures, shapes and correlates these sometimes vague and amorphous physiological changes with an imaginary situation. It is through this kind of experience that the child directly senses the meaning of his actions for another, identifies this meaning for himself and, when constructing socially oriented actions, subsequently focuses on it in the same way as he previously focused on his own narrowly individual emotional experiences in individually directed actions.
Consequently, a child’s ability to sympathize does not appear on its own, not from calls (“Come on, sympathize!”) and not from a rational assessment of the situation (“you need to sympathize here, because...”), but within a complexly organized game activities, taking into account a number of important psychological nuances. It was in this process of feeling for another, carried out in a dramatization game, that A. V. Zaporozhets saw the main way to solve the problem noted above - the child’s transition from an egoistic state to a moral personality.
The moral meaning of actions revealed to the child in a dramatization game is clarified and “tested” many times in other types of activities, as well as in various role-playing games. Following other researchers of the game, A.V. Zaporozhets highlights the presence of two plans of relationships in it: in accordance with the plot and roles (for example, daughters and mothers) and regarding the game (distribution of roles and agreement of rules). For moral development, it is important to use both of these plans, and one should not so much set exclusively moral plots as highlight for the child, by constructing special orientation activities, the moral and immoral aspects of situations and teach him to experience them; when organizing joint games, the child goes through a good school of relationships with peers, learns to independently build these relationships, encountering the characteristics and interests of partners and learning to take them into account. The influence of these aspects of the game on personality development is analyzed in detail in the works of S. G. Yakobson, S. N. Karpova and others.
2.2 Development in productive activities
Productive (practical, labor) activities performed by the child also have enormous educational potential in preschool age.
However, it is not thoughtless work that develops the personality of a preschooler, but only specially organized productive actions that meet the following requirements:
) they are not aimed at themselves (at achieving narrow personal benefits or receiving pleasure from the process of their implementation), but at other people, at their needs, interests, accepted experiences;
) do not arise spontaneously, but are specially built by adults as part of group activities;
) the child is purposefully given orientation towards the long-term consequences of his actions (or inaction) for the emotional states of other people and methods for such orientation are proposed;
) the gradual folding and internalization of such orientation is ensured, during which it moves into the internal plane and due to this it can advance the process of actually performing the action, taking place in advance.
It should be borne in mind that orientation towards real others is most accessible to a child when it is most “transparent” and involves taking into account the most natural signs from the point of view of his own experience. So, when in an experiment children were asked to make a linen napkin and a paper flag attached to a stick in different situations:
) for the sake of interest in the process of activity,
) for subsequent personal use,
) for the sake of satisfying the needs of other people, the best results were recorded in the latter case, which indicates a great motivating force for children with social motives in content.
However, when comparing the situation when the flag was made for the kids and the napkin for the mother, with the opposite situation, when the flag was intended for play, it was found that the action was performed more effectively in the case of a direct and obvious connection between the motive (to please another) and the task (to make an object), in In this example, the checkbox is for kids, since such a connection provides greater cognitive ease, and therefore the effectiveness of orientation in the semantic context of one’s own actions.
Such social motives by themselves are often not enough to determine social activity. A mechanism for emotional correction of such activity must also be formed, giving it stability. This mechanism is most clearly revealed in a situation where a child, guided by a social motive, is actively involved in an activity, but over time gives up the assigned task and begins to play with enthusiasm. After a few minutes, despite the fact that no one makes any comments to him, he begins to worry, become embarrassed, glance at the uncovered dinner table and, finally, sighing heavily, quits the game and returns to work. This regulation is achieved by the emergence of negative experiences caused by the discrepancy between real behavior and what the child has taken for granted. Such emotional correction of behavior, which mediates the internal determination of activity by motive, consists in coordinating the general direction of behavior with the social meaning of its activity that is significant for the child.
The prerequisites for such correction take shape in play (remember the activity of emotional imagination mentioned above), however, its complex forms arise during productive activity at its initial stages, the most important role in this process is played by an adult who is authoritative for the child, organizing the children’s activities, his actions and emotional reactions are set The child is given a standard of behavior, and his communication with the child builds in him specific ways of understanding his behavior and bringing it into line with this standard. Subsequently, if the child’s behavior deviates from the patterns, the child needs reminders from others, hints urging him to focus on the social meaning of actions. At the final stages, emotional correction can be carried out by the child independently, even before the activity, i.e. it acquires a proactive character.
When considering the mechanisms of such emotional anticipation, which underlie the regulation of behavior, it should be borne in mind that, firstly, in this case, the child relies on the images of various emotions available in his experience and stored in emotional memory, which he experienced in real life and polished in games, and, therefore, without such emotional experience, anticipation does not arise, and, secondly, it is built as a result of special internal orientation-research activity, in which an organic combination of both emotional (experiences) itself and cognitive processes (imagination, figurative and abstract thinking), ensuring the child’s “transition” to another distant situation. Consequently, such emotional anticipation is possible only on the basis of well-developed cognitive processes. This is how the intellectual, emotional and personal development of the child is tied into a single knot.
Thus, it can be assumed that a child can be “immoral” (does not do anything for the sake of others, and if he does it under pressure, he quickly leaves work without thinking about the experiences of others) because adults, in the course of joint activities with him: firstly, did not highlight for him the meaning of his actions for other people and did not form an orientation towards him (as a result, this reality remains closed for the child, and he, naturally, cannot build his actions in accordance with it) and, secondly, did not give him a specific mechanism for regulating such activity - emotional correction (he is not able to experience these meanings for himself). Or a child may be “unscrupulous” (i.e., he does not want to do anything for the sake of others, but in case of personal need he does it) because, while the mechanism of emotional correction is relatively mature, he has not sufficiently formed an orientation towards the needs and states of other people, they for they appear to be much less significant compared to their own momentary impulses. He may be “weak-willed” (i.e., involved in actions for the sake of others, but not completing them) because, with the relative formation of orientation towards others, he has not yet developed a mechanism for emotional correction. The ideas of A.V. Zaporozhets help, in our opinion, to clearly differentiate all these cases and provide the child with psychological and pedagogical assistance in a timely manner.
3 Personal development under the influence of a work of art
A.V. Zaporozhets, explaining the mechanism of the process of understanding a fairy tale, wrote: “The first steps that a child takes on the path to understanding a work of art can have a significant impact on the formation of his personality, on his moral development.”
He attached great importance to the development of a child's personality through art. He and his collaborators (D. M. Aranovskaya, V. E. Khomenko, O. M. Kontseva and others) managed to discover some specific “channels” through which art influences the individual, and to develop pedagogical techniques that enhance such influence. Having identified three main forms of artistic activity: perception, performance and creativity, A. V. Zaporozhets and his colleagues concentrated their attention primarily on the study of artistic perception.
The ideas of A. V. Zaporozhets about the perception of fairy tales were based on the statements of writers and critics. Thus, C. Perrault, introducing the fairy tale into literature for the first time in 1697 (“Cinderella”, “Little Red Riding Hood”, etc.), wrote that the fairy tale arouses in children the desire to be like those fairy-tale heroes who “achieve happiness, and together along with the fear of incurring misfortunes such as befall the wicked for their vices.”
A. V. Zaporozhets, being a member of the Kharkov psychological school, which put forward the theory of activity, saw in the process of perceiving a fairy tale mental activity with all its elements: motives, goals, means and results, calling it assistance, by analogy with the term “empathy.”
A three-year-old child, not yet fully aware of this, “contributes” to the characters. For example, he encourages the girl heroine of L.N. Tolstoy’s fairy tale “The Three Bears.” Covering the image of the bears with his fingers, he says: “Don’t be afraid!” Having seen on the TV screen the beginning of a demonstration of the folk tale “The Wolf and the Seven Little Kids,” previously read to him, he, almost crying, asks to warn the kids that the wolf is eavesdropping on them .
A. V. Zaporozhets, following his teacher L. S. Vygotsky, originally showed the role of the composition of a fairy tale in its perception. He believed that composition, from the psychological side, is a way by which the author leads the listener to the plot, directs his activity in the right direction; He also examined the role of individual elements of composition in the process of assimilating the content of a fairy tale.
A clear plot and a dramatized depiction of events in a fairy tale help the child to enter into the circle of imaginary circumstances and begin to mentally assist the heroes of the fairy tale.
Conclusion
In the psychological and pedagogical heritage of A.V. Zaporozhets found a holistic development of the idea of continuity in the upbringing of children of preschool and school age as a single process that ensures the personal, emotional and mental well-being of the child, revealing opportunities that serve as the basis for the success of school education and determining the prospects for the development of his personality.
A study of the scientist’s creative biography shows that it is closely connected with the formation of psychological and pedagogical science in our country. Life of A.V. Zaporozhets is a model and example of organization, will, a conscious attitude to his duty, which consisted of serving people through work in science, the desire to give his activities a higher meaning.
Provisions A.V. Zaporozhets about the enduring value of the early periods of childhood; the conclusion that individual mental processes of a child develop as properties of a holistic personality; belief in the potential capabilities of a preschooler; insistent demands to take into account the uniqueness and specificity of age are, in our opinion, the distinctive features of the creative heritage of a scientist who considers the upbringing of a child from the standpoint of productive humanism, aimed at creating conditions conducive to the disclosure of the potential strengths of the individual. Ideas by A.V. Zaporozhets that in early childhood a child acquires the foundations of a personal culture commensurate with universal human spiritual values, made it possible to formulate educational values that regulate the activities of the teacher and student.
Literature
1. Aranovskaya D. M. Dependence of a child’s understanding of a fairy tale on its composition: Abstract. Ph.D. dis. M., 1944.
Zaporozhets A. V. Psychology of fairy tale perception by a preschool child // Preschool education. 1948. No. 9.
Zaporozhets A. V. Psychology of a child’s perception of a literary work: Abstracts of reports at the All-Union Congress on Preschool Education. M., 1948.
Zaporozhets A.V. Some psychological problems of children's play // Preschool education. 1965. No. 10.
Zaporozhets A.V. Pedagogical and psychological problems of comprehensive development and training of older preschoolers // Preschool education. 1972. No. 4.
Zaporozhets A.V. Selected psychological works: In 2 vols. M., 1986.
Teplov B. M. Psychological issues of artistic education // News of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of the RSFSR. 1947. No. 11.
Zaporozhets A.V. On the importance of the early periods of childhood for the formation of a child’s personality // Modern problems of preschool education and pedagogical technologies: Collection of scientific works. - Smolensk: SGPU, 1998.- P.3-10.
Cultural-historical theory and its development in the scientific heritage of A.V. Zaporozhets // Modern problems of interaction of culture, art, education: Collection of scientific works. - Smolensk: SGGI, 2000. - P.21-24.
Mental development of children of primary school age: Textbook. - Publisher: V.A. Mikhailov Publishing House, 2000.
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