Features of the moral development of children up to school age.
Methodology for studying time perspective
for preschool children “Time Perspective Test”
(I.E. Valitova)
Material: a set of unfinished sentences (I try... What I think about... I would be glad... I hope that... I am sure that... I dream... I want...); ball.
Carrying out the technique carried out in game form. The researcher throws the ball to the child, naming the beginning of the sentence; the child must throw the ball back after finishing the sentence. The child's answers are recorded.
Surveillance options: 1) orientation to the present; 2) an indication of school, success at school; 3) indication of other types of activities; 4) indication of future profession; 5) an indication of your personal qualities; 6) desires in the future. Distance is noted: 1) near future; 2) distant future.
IN preschool period Forms of behavior appear that are associated not only with the identification of one’s own “I”, but also with a fundamentally new type of relationship of the child to the world around him - the child’s predominant orientation towards the social environment. This is evidenced, in particular, by the predominance of themes related to the image of a person in the work of preschoolers. This creates a favorable basis for the formation of primary forms of socially significant values and moral criteria.
According to J. Piaget Children's moral sense arises from the interaction between their developing mental structures and gradually expanding social experience.
The development of moral sense is carried out in two stages (Table 10.3):
stage of moral realism– children judge the morality of an act or behavior by its result, without being able to evaluate and take into account intentions;
stage of moral relativism– children understand that the rules are created by people themselves and in a number of situations people are forced to deviate from them or change them. This leads them to realize the relativity of the morality of an act. When assessing it, they begin to proceed from the intentions and motives of a person, and not from the results and consequences of these actions.
Table 10.3
The theory of two stages of development of moral consciousness by J. Piaget was developed L. Kohlberg. Based on discussions by children, teenagers and adults of the series short stories moral content he came to the conclusion that there are three levels of formation of moral self-awareness in people (Table 10.4).
One of the most famous systems belongs to Jean Piaget, who based his system on the analysis of the development of thinking. According to Piaget, intelligence, as a living structure, grows, changes and adapts to the world. The differences between children and adults are due not only to the fact that children know less, but also to the fact that the way children know is different from that of adults. Piaget suggested that children have certain cognitive (thought) limitations. As a person grows and gains more knowledge, the ways in which information is processed in his cognitive structures become more complex. The scientist identified three main periods in the mental development of a child; within each period there are several stages. All children go through periods and stages of development in a certain sequence, each new stage builds on the previous one, and this order is unchanged for all children.
The first period of development is called sensorimotor by Piaget, since before the age of two years, children become acquainted with the world mainly through sensations - looking at, grasping, sucking, biting, chewing, etc.
The second period - specific operations, includes two stages: preoperative and operational. The first stage is preoperative, typical for ages from two to six years. At this age, children form concepts and use symbols, but do so based on their experience. Unlike adults, children can only see things from their own perspective (egocentrism) and focus on one relationship at a time (centration). Often the child cannot think through the consequences of a particular chain of events. At the beginning of this stage, children take names so seriously that they sometimes cannot separate their literal meaning from the essence of the thing. So, a child can call the water in the mug “drink”, and the water in the bathtub with another word, which means “bathe” in his vocabulary.
In cases where the occurring phenomenon does not fit into the child’s existing experience, he may resort to “magical” ideas about causes and effects - for example, attempting to “spell” the bus so that it arrives sooner. Also, the thinking of children of this age is characterized by “animism” (Latin “anima” - soul) - the animation of surrounding objects. For example, a child may think that the elevator was “angry” with him and therefore slammed the door on his coat. At this stage, the child often has difficulty classifying objects and concepts.
At the second stage - the operating stage (from seven to eleven to twelve years old) children begin to use logic in thinking and classify objects according to several criteria. The child's thinking at this stage takes into account the hierarchy of classes. Yes, the car is large group, within which there are subgroups of car brands, and within these subgroups there may be even smaller subgroups. Logical operations successfully applied to actions with specific objects.
Third period - formal transactions, from twelve years of age or a little later. The teenager’s thinking develops so much that he is able to operate abstract concepts, not based on visual images. Teenagers are not only able to think and talk about freedom, love, and justice; they can build their own conclusions and put forward hypotheses, reason by analogy and metaphorically, generalize and analyze their experience.
The theory of cognitive development created by J. Piaget outlines the differences between the form and content of cognition. The content of children's cognition is everything that is acquired through experience and observation. The form of cognition is a special structure of human mental activity. As Piaget says, a person assimilates what surrounds him, but he assimilates it according to his “mental chemistry.” The knowledge of reality always depends on the dominant mental structures. The same knowledge can have different merits depending on what mental structures it is based on. The most important pedagogical principle for Piaget is the recognition of the child as an “active explorer” who comprehends the world according to his own mental structure.
Studying the development of thinking, Piaget pointed to the interaction of moral feeling with the developing mental structures and the gradually expanding social experience of the child. According to Piaget, the development of moral sense occurs in two stages. At the stage of moral realism, children are confident that existing moral precepts are absolute and the degree of violation of these precepts is directly proportional quantification what happened. Thus, a child will consider a girl who set the table and accidentally broke twelve plates more guilty than a girl who intentionally broke only two plates in a fit of anger at her sister (following Piaget’s example). Later, children reach the stage of moral relativism. Now they understand that existing rules in some situations they can be significantly adjusted and the morality of an action depends not on its consequences, but on intentions. This Piagetian theory of two stages of moral development was greatly developed by Lawrence Kohlberg (see below).
6. Piaget Jean (1896–1980) - Swiss psychologist, founder of the Geneva school of genetic psychology. IN initial period In his activities, he described the features of children’s ideas about the world. Subsequently, J. Piaget turned to the study of the development of intelligence, in which he saw the result of the internalization of external actions and put forward the concept of staged development of the psyche.
Developmental psychology (age psychology) covers life throughout its entire course, from infancy to old age. It includes child and youth psychology, adult psychology and gerontology (in its psychological part). The growing tendency to study specific processes - speech development, moral, social, cognitive development, development of personal identity - leads to an increasing specialization of psychological disciplines. This section examines cognitive, moral, and linguistic aspects of development;
other problems of personal development will be discussed in the section
Cognition
Consciousness, perception, and memory are all aspects of cognition, abilities that develop as the organism grows and matures. In a child, the first cognitive units, “schemas,” become the main features of an object, perceived during a quick acquaintance with it, for example, a dome as hallmark Capitol in Washington. Images, unlike diagrams, are more detailed. Children often have an eidetic imagination; in other words, they can "see" an object in great detail for 45 seconds after it has disappeared from view. This ability of young children should not be confused with hallucinations. By the time a child starts school, he or she is able to recognize symbols, such as road warning signs or letters of the alphabet. Then they get used to it general concepts, combining specific, separately existing objects. Finally, when the mind acquires the ability to make connections between different concepts, it moves on to rules, such as the formal rules of mathematics and logic.
Cognitive development
A very important and widely accepted theory of cognitive development was proposed by the Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget. Piaget discovered that the child's psyche is structured completely differently than the adult's psyche. For example, children believe that if an object moves, then it is alive, and the name of the object seems to “sit” inside it. Children's question"Why?" associated with the belief that every thing has its purpose. Give a scientific answer to the child’s question “Why do the stars shine?” - means not to understand him at all. There is a noticeable lack of social orientation in children's conversations: children are more likely to talk in front of others than with others. Unlike self-centered adults, who become so of their own free will, children are self-centered because they are almost unable to put themselves in the shoes of others or accept someone else's point of view.
For babies, "out of sight" literally means "out of mind": the object not only disappears from sight, it ceases to exist. The baby's psyche is not able to perceive the constancy of the existence of things. A five-year-old child is already capable of this, but he does not yet have the ability to create the mental representations necessary to understand the constancy of the mass or volume of an object despite a visible change in its shape. A child of five years old (or younger) does not realize that the amount of water poured from a wide, low glass into a narrow, tall glass remains unchanged - he is sure that there is “more water.” Children find it difficult to distinguish between appearance and reality. Piaget came to the conclusion that reality reaches the individual not from the outside, but from the inside, through his own logic, depending on the structure of the psyche. According to Piaget and other structuralists, the psyche is not " clean slate“, as the English philosopher J. Locke believed, it operates with the characteristics of the external environment from the standpoint of its structural development. A child’s image of reality is not a passive copy, but an active reconstruction of the world.
Intelligence and intelligence tests
In 1869, the English scientist F. Galton introduced methods of statistical analysis into psychology. Galton applied mathematical methods to measure intelligence and came to the conclusion that intelligence is inherited. Soon the era of testing began in psychology. French scientists A. Binet and T. Simon developed a scale for measuring intelligence to analyze mental abilities a normal child. L. Theremin, a psychologist who worked at Stanford University (USA), modified this scale in relation to American conditions. The Stanford–Binet scale has been used for many years in the United States to test schoolchildren.
Psychologists have questioned Galton's thesis about the inheritance of intelligence from the very beginning. The problem is not only whether the level of intelligence (quotient) intellectual development, or IQ) congenital, acquired or both, but also in the very nature of intelligence. Some psychologists are wary of identifying intelligence with the “subject” that is measured by the proposed tests. In the United States, there is a widespread belief among black educators and psychologists that intelligence tests are “unfair” because they give an advantage to representatives of Anglo-Saxon culture. To prove their point, they developed tests based on the traditional values of black culture, on which white Americans score lower. Essentially, this work, emphasizing the role of environmental factors, was intended to refute the conclusions made by such supporters of the idea of \u200b\u200bthe innate nature of intelligence as A. Jensen or W. Shockley. It's about O test results, which revealed interracial differences in IQ that are believed to be genetically determined. Despite these differences of opinion, there are facts on which psychologists are unanimous. In children, IQ measurements are more stable when obtained over a short period of time, but as they grow older, this indicator stabilizes. How older child, the greater the predictive value of IQ regarding future achievements. Scores on intelligence tests are a good indicator of future academic success. However, a child's IQ value sometimes changes dramatically with age; At the same time, there is a tendency for indicators to improve in boys and deteriorate in girls. An increase in IQ is usually accompanied by an increase in independence, aggressiveness and competitiveness.
Moral development
Piaget identified two stages of moral development in children: heteronomous and autonomous. Younger children in the heteronomous stage view moral rules as absolute, sacred, and unchangeable. Disobedience, which periodically occurs, always seems to them unforgivable, and they define evil depending on the damage caused, in other words, they evaluate it according to the consequences. Mitigating circumstances, such as good intentions, are not taken into account. In one of Piaget's experiments, children were asked which of two girls was more to blame: the one who, wanting to help her mother with sewing, accidentally cut a large hole in her dress, or the one who secretly took scissors from her mother and cut a small hole in the dress. Disregarding the first girl's good intentions, the young children considered her more culpable because she had caused more damage. Older children consider intentions to be the criterion for the morality of an action. They view moral rules as arising from mutual agreement and respect. Objectivism and absoluteness of morality give way to subjectivism and relativity. The discoveries of Piaget and others lead to the conclusion that moral development is primarily cognitive development; in other words, it depends on the gradual structuring of the psyche of a growing person.
Psycholinguistics: Language Acquisition
Speech is an ability unique to humans. Researchers have tried to prove that language is not a monopoly of people; To do this, chimpanzees were trained to transmit messages by pressing computer keys. But pressing keys in a certain sequence is not at all proof that the monkey has mastered the logical syntax of the language and understands its meaning.
Language acquisition begins to emerge in a child at about one year of age in the form of “holophrastic” speech, or one-word sentences. By the age of two, the child masters telegraphic speech such as “there is no dog.” When the same word is added to a number of others (“no dog,” “no cookie,” “no shoe”), a “pivot” language arises. By the fourth or fifth year, children seem to miraculously master the language, although no one teaches them grammar.
The two main theories of language development are the empirical (environmental) one, which explains language acquisition by learning, and the “natural” one, which explains it by innate mechanisms.
Skinner's theory of verbal behavior
Skinner applied his theory of operant conditioning to the development of language; According to his views, verbal behavior, like any other, arises as a consequence of operant learning. Thanks to rewards (reinforcement), children establish a connection between stimulus and response. Using differentiated reinforcement, parents control the sounds the child makes, rewarding the correct ones. Speech thus turns out to be a means of obtaining rewards. Verbal behavior is also usually reinforced in situations that can be described as “demand” (children repeat words related to the satisfaction of their needs, such as “candy” or “play”), “touch” (children learn words that are responses to stimulus objects or objects that they like to touch), “echo” (imitation of the speech of others) and “self-reward” (reinforcement is the pleasure that the child receives from what he himself said).
Skinner's theory is not widely accepted. Many psychologists believe that reinforcement is not sufficient to explain language acquisition. Others believe that a completely different mechanism is at work here. Studies have shown that parents often imitate children's speech, and not vice versa. However, Skinner's ideas found practical application; for example, operant conditioning has been shown to be useful in language development in retarded children.
Social language learning theory
Some learning theorists argue that children can learn without receiving reinforcement, but by using abilities to imitate, observe, model, and by helping or doing things for adults. However, modeling and imitation are clearly not enough for language acquisition. With their help, it is also impossible to explain the speed of language acquisition by a child. Moreover, children's language is amazingly inventive and innovative; it is not simply copying what the child hears from parents and other adults.
The Innate Language Ability Hypothesis
A prominent proponent of this hypothesis, linguist N. Chomsky, believes that the human brain is programmed to master language. Language is inherent only to man as biological species and is a property of all representatives of this species. Moreover, in all its variants, the language follows the same basic logical structure, a universal syntax - a “deep structure” that does not need to be taught, in contrast to the “surface structure”, i.e. specific idioms of a particular language.
According to Chomsky, the fact that the same grammatical rules underlie all languages can be explained by only one hypothesis: the psychophysiological correlates of these rules are an inherent property of the human brain. The brain must be equipped with a software "language acquisition device" that allows the child to construct phrases that he has never heard before. The psyche of even a two-year-old child is structured in such a way that it gives him the opportunity to master grammatical principles regardless of stimulus-response learning. Chomsky's views on an innately existing basic grammar are in good agreement with the biological neurological theory of language proposed by E. Lenneberg. However, not a single psycholinguistic theory has received universal recognition to date.
Encyclopedia “The World Around Us” (“Collier’s Encyclopedia”)
In the research of Jean Piaget and the Geneva system he created psychological school the qualitative originality of children's thinking, the special children's logic, different from that of adults, is shown, and it is traced how thinking gradually changes its character throughout childhood and adolescence.
Basic concepts and principles. A child, like an adult, has certain patterns of action that allow him to solve various cognitive problems. These action patterns will be relatively simple in an infant searching for an object hidden under a pillow, but very complex in an adolescent. problem solver hypothetically, using formal logic. But, regardless of the degree of difficulty of the problems facing the child, he uses two main mechanisms - assimilation and accommodation. When a new task changes and fits into an existing scheme of actions, assimilation occurs - the inclusion of a new problematic situation into those that the child copes with without changing existing patterns of action. During accommodation, action patterns are changed so that they can be applied to new task. In the process of adapting to a new problem situation, assimilation and accommodation are combined, their combination gives adaptation. And adaptation is completed by the establishment of equilibrium, when the requirements of the environment (task), on the one hand, and the action patterns that the child owns, on the other, come into agreement. Intellectual development, according to J. Piaget, strives for a stable balance. On every age stage balance is disturbed and restored; complete logical balance is achieved in adolescence at the level of formal operations.
Intelligence, therefore, has adaptive nature. In addition, we can talk about the active nature of intelligence. The child learns the reality around him, objects that exist independently of him. And, in order to understand objects, he transforms them - he performs actions with them, moves them, connects them, combines them, removes them and returns them again. Cognition at all stages of intelligence development is associated with actions and transformations. Initially, in a small child, this external actions with objects. Actually intellectual activity derived from material actions, its elements represent internalized actions. As a result, knowledge of the environment becomes more and more adequate. Based on action, new intellectual structures are formed.
The intellectual development of a child is spontaneous; it goes through a number of stages, the order of which always remains unchanged. Until the age of 7-8 years, a child’s interaction with the world of things and people is subject to the laws of biological adaptation. However, biological maturation here comes down only to the opening of development possibilities; these opportunities still need to be realized. The age range for the appearance of one or another stage of intellectual development depends on the activity of the child himself, the richness or poverty of his spontaneous experience, and on the cultural environment. TO biological factors on a certain level Development is accompanied by social ones, thanks to which the child develops norms of thinking and behavior. This is a fairly high and late level: only after a turning point (about 7-8 years) does social life begin to play a progressive role in the development of intelligence. The child is socialized gradually. Socialization - the process of adaptation to the social environment - leads to the fact that the child moves from his narrow position to an objective one, takes into account the points of view of other people and is able to cooperate with them.
Stages of intelligence development. Stages are steps, or levels, of development that successively replace each other. At each level a relatively stable equilibrium is reached, which is then disturbed again. The process of development of intelligence represents a succession of three large periods, during which the formation of three main intellectual structures occurs (see the simplified diagram given in Table I.6.). First, sensorimotor structures are formed - systems of sequentially performed material actions. Then structures of specific operations arise - systems of actions performed in the mind, but based on external, visual data. Even later, the formation of formal logical operations occurs.
Table 1.6
Formal logic, according to J. Piaget, is highest level in the development of intelligence. The intellectual development of a child represents a transition from lower to higher stages. But at the same time, each previous stage prepares the next one and is rebuilt at a higher level.
The sensorimotor period covers the first two years of a child's life. At this time, speech is not developed and there are no ideas, and behavior is based on the coordination of perception and movement (hence the name “sensorimotor”).
Once born, the child has innate reflexes. Some of them, such as the sucking reflex, can change. After some exercise, the child sucks better than on the first day, then begins to suck not only during meals, but also in between - his fingers, any objects that touch his mouth. This is the reflex exercise stage. As a result of reflex exercises, the first skills are formed. At the second stage, the child turns his head towards the noise, follows the movement of the object with his eyes, and tries to grab the toy. The skill is based on primary circular reactions - repeated actions. The child repeats the same action over and over again (say, pulling a cord) for the sake of the process itself. Such actions are reinforced by the child’s own activity, which gives him pleasure.
Secondary circular reactions appear at the third stage, when the child is no longer focused on his own activity, but on the changes caused by his actions. The action is repeated in order to prolong the interesting experience. The child shakes the rattle for a long time to prolong the sound that interests him, runs all the objects in his hands along the bars of the crib, etc.
The fourth stage is the beginning of practical intelligence. The action patterns formed at the previous stage are combined into a single whole and used to achieve the goal. When a random change in an action produces an unexpected effect - a new impression - the child repeats it and consolidates it new scheme actions.
At the fifth stage, tertiary circular reactions appear: the child already specifically changes actions to see what results this will lead to. He actively experiments.
At the sixth stage, the internalization of action patterns begins. If earlier child performed various external actions to achieve the goal, tried and made mistakes, then now he can already combine patterns of actions in his mind and suddenly come to the right decision. For example, a girl, holding objects in both hands, cannot open the door and, reaching for the door handle, stops. She puts the objects on the floor, but, noticing that the opening door will hit them, she moves them to another place. It takes about two years for an internal action plan to be formed. This ends the sensorimotor period, and the child enters a new period - representative intelligence and concrete operations. Representational intelligence - thinking with the help of ideas. Strong imagery started with underdevelopment verbal thinking leads to a kind of childish logic. At the stage of pre-operational ideas, the child is not capable of evidence or reasoning. A striking example of this is the so-called Piagetian phenomena.
Preschoolers were shown two clay balls and, making sure that the children considered them the same, before their eyes they changed the shape of one ball - they rolled it into a sausage. Answering the question whether the amount of clay in the ball and the sausage was the same, the children said that it was not the same: there was more in the sausage because it was longer. In a similar task involving the amount of liquid, children judged the water poured into two glasses to be the same. But when they poured water from one glass to another, narrower and higher, and the water level in this vessel rose, they believed that there was more water in it because they “poured it.” The child does not have the principle of conservation of the amount of substance. He, without reasoning, focuses on the external, “conspicuous” signs of objects.
The child does not see things in their internal relations, he considers them as they are given by direct perception. He thinks that the wind blows because the trees sway, and the sun follows him all the time, stopping when he stops. J. Piaget called this phenomenon realism. The preschooler slowly, gradually moves from realism to objectivity, to taking into account other points of view and understanding the relativity of assessments. The latter is expressed, for example, in the fact that a child, who considers all big things to be heavy and small things to be light, acquires a new idea: a small pebble, light for a child, turns out to be heavy for water and therefore drowns.
A child who has pre-operational ideas is also characterized by insensitivity to contradictions, a lack of connection between judgments, a transition from particular to particular, bypassing the general, a tendency to connect everything with everything, etc. This specificity of children's logic, as well as realism, is due to main feature the child's thinking - his egocentrism. Egocentrism is a special intellectual position of a child. He views the whole world from his own point of view, the only and absolute one; he does not have access to an understanding of the relativity of knowledge of the world and coordination different points vision. The child’s egocentric position is clearly visible in the experiment with a mountain model. The three mountains looked different from different sides of the layout. The child saw this mountain landscape from one side and from several photographs could choose the one that corresponded to his real point of view. But when he was asked to find a photo with a view of the doll sitting opposite him, he again chose “his” photo. He couldn't imagine that the doll had a different position and saw the layout differently.
The example given applies to preschoolers. But egocentrism is a general characteristic of children's thinking, manifesting itself in every period of development. Egocentrism intensifies when, during development, the child encounters new area knowledge, and weakens as he gradually masters it. The ebb and flow of egocentrism corresponds to the sequence in which balance is disturbed and restored.
The stage of pre-operational ideas ends with the emergence of an understanding of the conservation of the amount of matter, the fact that during transformations some properties of an object are preserved, while others change. Piaget's phenomena disappear, and 7-8 year old children, solving Piaget's problems, give the correct answers. The stage of concrete operations is associated with the ability to reason, prove, and correlate different points of view. Logical operations, however, need to be supported by clarity and cannot be performed hypothetically (that’s why they are called concrete). The system of operations that develops in a child around the age of 11 prepares the ground for the formation of scientific concepts.
Last, highest period intellectual development - the period of formal operations. The teenager is freed from concrete attachment to objects given in the field of perception, and acquires the ability to think in the same way as an adult. He views judgments as hypotheses from which all sorts of consequences can be drawn; his thinking becomes hypothetico-deductive. Egocentrism of children's thinking. Jean Piaget lived a very fruitful life in science - he worked intensively for 60 years. Naturally, his psychological views changed during this time, and the theory developed. At the beginning of its scientific activity, in the 20s, J. Piaget considered the development of a child’s intelligence as a change in the stages of autism, egocentrism and socialization. L.S. given by Vygotsky detailed analysis this scheme and the very concept of egocentrism.
The autistic thought is subconscious, it does not adapt the child to the external reality around him, but itself creates an imaginary reality: this is mirage thinking, daydreaming. Autistic thought does not strive to establish truth, but to satisfy desire; appears in images, not in speech; individual, it is difficult to convey to others.
Socialized, directed thought, on the contrary, is conscious, pursues clear goals, adapts the child to reality, is expressed in speech and contains truth or error. Egocentric thought is the main intermediate form between the logic of autism and the logic of reason. Therefore, it has features of autism, in particular the focus on satisfying the child’s desires. The roots of egocentrism are in the child’s asociality, which lasts until the age of 7-8, and in the egocentric nature of his practical activities.
J. Piaget judges a child’s egocentric thinking by his egocentric speech. This speech has no communication function. When two small children discuss something, each of them talks about himself and himself mainly because he cannot take the point of view of the interlocutor. The result is not a dialogue, but a “collective monologue.” In general, egocentric speech is monologue. The child, without addressing anyone, speaks to himself as if he were thinking out loud. Egocentric speech accompanies the child’s activities and experiences; it is, as it were, a by-product of child activity; if it were not there, nothing would change in the child’s actions. It gradually disappears and dies off at the threshold of school age.
L.S. Vygotsky, interested in facts child development, identified by J. Piaget, explained them differently. But first of all, he conducts a study of egocentric speech. In his experiment, a child encounters a difficulty in his activity, for example, while drawing, at some point he does not find the right colored pencil. When difficulties arise, egocentric statements increase twice as much. What is the child talking about? “Where is the pencil? - the preschooler asks himself. - Now I need a blue pencil. It’s okay, I’ll paint it red instead and wet it with water, it will darken and look like blue.” From this example alone it is clear that in egocentric speech the child is trying to comprehend the situation, pose a problem, outline a way out of the difficulty, and plan immediate actions. In the same situation, the student did not say anything out loud, he peered and thought about the situation; At the stage of difficulty, his inner speech turned on.
According to L.S. Vygotsky, egocentric speech has two functions: on the one hand, it accompanies children’s activity, on the other hand, it serves as a means of thinking, forming a plan for solving a problem. When egocentric speech dies out at the border between preschool and school age, it does not disappear completely, but turns into inner speech. Egocentric speech is thus not necessarily an expression of egocentric thinking. Performing the functions of action planning, it comes closer to the logic of realistic, socialized thinking, and not to the logic of dreams and daydreams. As for autistic, “mirage” thinking, it cannot be the primary stage on which all the others are built. Thinking like new mental function appears for better adaptation to reality, and not for self-satisfaction. Autistic thinking is a late development, fertile ground for the exercise of sufficiently developed thinking abilities. Daydreaming and play of imagination appear only in preschool age.
According to J. Piaget, the development of children's thinking goes from autism - through egocentric speech and thinking - to socialized speech and logical thinking. According to L.S. Vygotsky, from originally social speech baby development is underway through egocentric speech to inner speech and thinking (including autistic).
Piaget's phenomena. As shown above, preschool children have no idea about the conservation of the amount of a substance. It appears spontaneously after 7-8 years. In this regard, the question arises: is it possible to form this idea in preschoolers, i.e. “remove” Piagetian phenomena from them? Can children at this age stage think logically and under what circumstances?
J. Bruner changed the course of one of J. Piaget's experiments. The children were given a task involving glasses of water. First, they compared the amount of water in two vessels and found that it was the same. Then the vessels were covered with a screen and the children were asked whether the amount of water would change if it was poured from one glass into another, wider one. Most 4-5 year old children said that there would be the same amount of water left. At the third stage of the experiment, water was poured from one glass behind the screen and the screen was removed. Now the children saw that the water level in the new wide glass was lower than in the second one, and most children already believed that there was less liquid in it.
J. Bruner showed that, without having a visual picture, in a purely theoretical sense, preschoolers know that the amount of water does not change from transfusion. But each property of a thing for a child is its characteristic as a whole, and the level of liquid that they see becomes an indicator of its entire quantity. Perception and visual representations often lead to the erroneous interpretation of changes in the visible signs of a thing as a change in its identity: one parameter changes, which means the whole thing changes.
Children understand the principle of conservation of quantity of matter in the following way: A thing can look different and still be the same thing. How can children come to this understanding? Another experiment was carried out by J. Bruner with clay balls. All 6-year-old children who took part in it had the Piaget phenomenon. One group of children was asked to change the shape of the balls. By manipulating the material, they rolled out the ball, turned it into a long sausage, and rolled the clay back into a ball. The second group observed the deformations of the clay, which were carried out by a psychologist; children told what they see, i.e. gave verbal designations to the resulting forms (long and thin; short but thick, etc.). In the third group, the children acted themselves and spoke out what they did. When, after the formative experiment, Piaget's problems were again given, the third group showed top scores. J. Bruner came to the conclusion: preschoolers can discover the principle of conservation of quantity of matter through action and symbolically (using verbal designations).
The concept of conservation of the amount of substance in six-year-old children was also formed in the experiment of L.F. Obukhova. She taught children to determine the size of quantities using a common measure and evaluate them according to the results of this preliminary measurement. A task with liquid in vessels was used: the same amount of water was poured into two tightly closed bottles, then one of the bottles was turned over so that the water level in it increased. Children measured the amount of water in bottles with one measure - a mug. First, to find out if the amount of water in the bottles was the same, they measured the water in the first and second stages (when the water levels were the same and different). Then they began to measure the water only in the first case, when it was clear that the water was the same, and at different water levels, without resorting to measurement, they answered correctly: the amount of water has not changed. Finally, when the conservation principle was formed, they immediately gave the correct answer without using their own yardstick.
Ideas about measurement and the experience of practical actions “remove” the Piaget phenomenon in preschoolers. At the same time, it is most difficult for them to identify the parameter by which a thing should be evaluated (for example, volume, not height); it is easier to determine by this parameter equal quantities. This is why children behave so paradoxically in the middle of the experiment. Confident that the quantity of water in the bottles is equal, they check this fact using the chosen measure.
Long-term work with children was carried out - organization various kinds measurements and comparisons, teaching children accurate, accurate measurements, ways to record the results obtained (putting aside chips according to the number of measures put aside or counting), explaining that each quantity can only be measured by its own measure and that the same thing can be measured in different ways - by length, by area, by volume, by weight, etc. As a result, preschoolers gave correct answers to Piaget's most difficult problems, but constantly noted that “it seems like one thing, but in reality it turns out something else.”
To better understand some of the processes that occur during cognitive development, it is important to first examine several important ideas and concepts introduced by Piaget. Below are some of the factors that influence children's learning and development.
- Action diagram. This concept describes both mental and physical actions associated with understanding and learning about the world around us. Schemas are categories of knowledge that help us interpret and understand the world. From Piaget's point of view, the schema includes both knowledge itself and the process of obtaining it. Once the child has new experiences, the new information is used to change, supplement, or replace the pre-existing schema. To illustrate this concept with an example, we can imagine a child who has a diagram about a certain type of animal - a dog, for example. If until now the child’s only experience has been acquaintance with small dogs, then he may believe that absolutely all small, furry four-legged animals are called dogs. Now suppose that a child encounters a very large dog. The child will perceive this new information by incorporating it into an already existing scheme.
- Assimilation. The process of incorporating new information into pre-existing schemas is known as assimilation. This process is somewhat subjective in nature, because we, as a rule, try to slightly change the new experience or information received in order to fit it into already formed beliefs. The child’s perception of the dog from the above example and, in fact, the definition of it as a “dog” is an example of the assimilation of the animal with the child’s schema of the dog.
- Accommodation. Adaptation also involves changing or replacing existing schemes in the light of new information - that is, a process known as accommodation. It involves the very change of existing patterns or ideas as a result of the emergence of new information or new impressions. During this process, completely new schemes can be developed.
- Balancing. Piaget believed that all children try to find a balance between assimilation and accommodation - this is achieved precisely through a mechanism called equilibration by Piaget. As the stages of cognitive development progress, it is important to maintain a balance between applying pre-formed knowledge (i.e., assimilation) and changing behavior in accordance with new information(accommodation). Balancing helps explain how children are able to move from one stage of thinking to another.
- 8. Moral formation of personality, basic patterns
A significant contribution to the study of the moral development of children was made by L. Kohlberg, who developed a cognitive-evolutionary approach to the moral development of children. Kohlberg's system identifies six evolutionary stages, grouped into three moral levels:
Level 1. Pre-conventional morality:
Stage 1: Punishment and obedience orientation.
Stage 2. Naive-defining hedonism, i.e. focus on achieving pleasure.
Level 2. Conventional morality:
Stage 3. The morality of maintaining good relationships.
Level 3. Post-conventional high morality moral principles:
Stage 5. Social contract orientation morality.
Stage 6. Morality individual principles conscience.
L. Kohlberg's theory was further developed in the works of M. Blatt, who expressed the idea that if children are systematically introduced into the area of judgments on moral themes a step above their own, they are gradually imbued with the attractiveness of these judgments, which becomes a stimulus to the development of the next stage of their moral consciousness.
L. Kohlberg and his followers made a number of important conclusions regarding the moral development of children.
1. The development of children's moral judgments can be influenced by adults, including teachers. The movement from one stage to another, higher one, naturally occurs over several years, but this process can be accelerated.
2. Under favorable conditions, the moral development of children becomes irreversible, that is, moral degradation becomes impossible.
3. Effective moral growth of children is ensured by a number of circumstances: the presence of situations moral choice, shift social roles, using in practice the acquired moral and ethical knowledge and moral beliefs of Slepukhina G.V. The problem of moral development of the individual in domestic and foreign psychology// “History of domestic and world psychological thought: Comprehending the past, understanding the present, foreseeing the future: Proceedings of the international conference on the history of psychology “IV Moscow meetings”, June 26-29, 2006.” / Rep. ed. A.L. Zhuravlev, V.A. Koltsova, Yu.N. Oleinik. M.: Publishing house "Institute of Psychology RAS", 2006. P. 310. .
When considering the problem of moral development of the individual, the views of domestic psychologists.
L.S. Vygotsky argues that the result of moral development, even before it begins, exists in the surrounding social environment in the form of some ideal form. In accordance with this social environment is understood not only as a condition for the moral development of the individual, but also as its source, and moral development itself is carried out in the process of assimilating these models. It involves the consistent assimilation of patterns presented in moral norms, principles, ideals, traditions, in the appropriate behavior of specific people, their qualities, in characters literary works etc.
Important theoretical basis development of psychological aspects of moral development of the individual is the theory of relationships by V.M. Myasishcheva. According to this theory, a person included in the system public relations, objectified in the form of relations dominant in her environment to nature, social and personal property, to people, to work, gradually assimilates them, and they become the individual’s own relations to the reality with which she interacts.
Considering the problem of moral formation of personality, L.I. Bozovic proves that it is not an isolated process, but is connected with social and mental development. According to the author, there are two points of view on the process of formation of moral norms of behavior, which is understood, firstly, as the result of the internalization of externally given forms of thinking and behavior and their transformation into internal mental processes; secondly, as a consistent (natural) transformation of some qualitatively peculiar forms moral development into others, more perfect.
Thus, the views on the problem of moral development of both foreign and domestic psychologists are based on the idea that it is not an isolated process, but is organically included in the holistic mental and social development personality. At the same time, at each age stage, those mechanisms that allow solving current problems of personal development acquire special importance. Knowledge and consideration of the characteristics of moral development at each age stage and the specifics of the levels of moral development will make it possible to organize a system of targeted influence that will ensure the achievement of a high level of moral development of the individual.
1 The place of childhood in the development of personality
If in relation to the development of cognitive processes one could say that childhood is decisive in their formation, this is even more true in connection with the development of personality. Almost all basic properties and personal qualities human beings develop in childhood, with the exception of those that are acquired with the accumulation of life experience and cannot appear before that the time when a person reaches a certain age. In childhood, the main motivational, instrumental and style features personalities Nemov R.S. Psychology. Textbook. - M.: Vlados, 2001. P. 342. .
We can distinguish several periods of moral formation of personality in childhood.
1. Infancy and early childhood. Since involuntary behavior dominates in the infant’s behavior, and conscious moral choice is not represented even in rudimentary form, the stage under consideration is characterized as a time of pre-moral development. During this period, the child acquires readiness for an adequate response (first sensory, and then generalized verbal) to the simplest external regulatory influences.
Through intelligently organized “behavioral” practice, the child is prepared for the transition to the next, fundamentally new stage of their spiritual formation, which is generally characterized by the formation in children of an initial readiness to voluntarily, on the basis of an elementary awareness of the meaning of moral requirements, to subordinate their behavior to them, to put “need” above “want”, and insufficient awareness of moral actions manifests itself in a child at this stage of development mainly in that they are guided not by his own convictions, but by the moral ideas of those around him, uncritically assimilated by him.
In early childhood, the origins of children's moral development are formed, when, against the background of directly motivated activity, the sprouts of voluntary positive directed behavior first appear.
Early childhood is the most important stage in the development of the child’s personality. It is during this period that the child begins to master the world around him, learns to interact with children, and goes through the first stages in his moral development Shamukhametova E.S. On the issue of the moral development of a preschooler’s personality // Journal “Our Psychology”, 2009, No. 5. P. 16..
The initial stage of moral development of the individual is characterized by superficial mastery external mechanisms moral regulation. The child, guided by external sanctions, does not immediately delve into the development of moral requirements. Self-regulation at this stage is poorly developed.
2) The second period is junior school age. The boundaries of primary school age, coinciding with the period of study in primary school, are currently established from 6-7 to 9-10 years.
At primary school age, during the period of children’s actual moral development, their moral sphere undergoes further changes. Play as the leading activity of a preschooler is now replaced by the child’s daily fulfillment of various school duties, which creates the most favorable conditions to deepen his moral consciousness and feelings, strengthen his moral will. The dominant involuntary motivation of behavior in a preschooler gives way in new conditions to the primacy of voluntary, socially oriented motivation.
Educational activity becomes the leading activity at primary school age. It determines the most important changes occurring in the development of the psyche of children at this age stage. Within educational activities psychological new formations are taking shape that characterize the most significant achievements in the development of younger schoolchildren and are the foundation that ensures development at the next age stage.
Personal development junior school student depends on school performance and the child’s assessment by adults. A child at this age is very susceptible to external influence. It is thanks to this that he absorbs knowledge, both intellectual and moral.
Certain moral ideals, patterns of behavior. The child begins to understand their value and necessity. But in order for the development of a child’s personality to be most productive, the attention and assessment of an adult is important. The emotional-evaluative attitude of an adult to the actions of a child determines the development of his moral feelings, individual responsible attitude towards the rules with which he becomes acquainted in life.
At the same time, even the most high level moral development of a junior schoolchild has its own age restrictions. At this age, children are not yet capable of fully developing their own moral convictions. While mastering this or that moral requirement, the younger student still relies on the authority of teachers, parents, and older students. The relative lack of independence of moral thinking and the greater suggestibility of the younger schoolchild determine his easy susceptibility to both positive and bad influences.
2.2 Moral development of a teenager’s personality
Next stage covers adolescence - it is presented as a stage of moral initiative of the pupil, which is understood as a person’s completely conscious and voluntary subordination of his behavior to moral principles.
The teenage period differs from primary school in that during these years adolescents form their own moral views and beliefs.
During the transition period, dramatic changes in motivation occur: motives associated with the emerging worldview and plans come to the fore. future life. The structure of motives is characterized by the presence of a certain system of subordinate motivational tendencies based on leading socially significant motives that have become valuable to the individual. Motives arise from a consciously set goal and a consciously accepted intention. It is in the motivational sphere that the main new formation of adolescence is located.
The beginning of adolescence is characterized by a qualitative shift in the development of self-awareness: the teenager begins to form the position of an adult, the emergence of which means that he has subjectively already entered into new relationships with the surrounding world of adults, with the world of their values. The teenager actively appropriates these values, they constitute the new content of his consciousness, they exist as goals and motives for behavior and activity, as requirements for himself and others, as criteria for assessments and self-esteem Mukhina V.S. Age-related psychology: phenomenology of development, childhood, adolescence: Textbook for students. universities - 4th ed., stereotype. - M.: Publishing center"Academy", 1999. P. 218..
The teenager develops conceptual thinking. He has access to an understanding of the connections between a specific act and personality traits, and based on this, the need for self-improvement arises.
Realizing your increased mental and physical strength, teenagers strive for independence and adulthood. The increased level of moral consciousness allows them to replace the uncritical assimilation of behavioral norms, characteristic of preschoolers and children of early childhood, with a critical one, and individual conscious and internally accepted moral requirements become his beliefs.
The morality of a teenager in its developed forms is qualitatively very close to the morality of an adult, but still has a number of differences, the main one among them being the fragmentation of the teenager’s moral conviction, which determines the selectivity of his moral initiative.
But, despite the development of a teenager’s moral attitudes and will, he still retains the traits of a being who is carried away, highly impressionable and, under certain conditions, inclined to relatively easily fall under the influence of others and change his moral ideals and aspirations.
In the moral development of adolescents, there is a contradiction between the uncritical assimilation of group moral norms and the desire to discuss simple rules; a certain maximalism of requirements; a shift in the assessment of an individual act to the person as a whole.
As J. Piaget's research has shown, in the period between 12 and 13 years, the moral development of the individual acquires new meaning when values and ideals that go beyond the scope of his specific life become significant ( social justice, freedom, friendship, love, sincerity - all these concepts for teenagers are emotionally charged and personally significant) Karelina I.O. Developmental psychology and developmental psychology: lectures. Tutorial. - M.: Gardariki, 2009. P. 165. .
During adolescence, moral beliefs arise and take shape, which become specific motives for the behavior and activities of a teenager. In conviction, a broader life experience schoolchild, analyzed and summarized from the point of view of moral standards. Intimate and personal communication with peers is of decisive importance for the moral development of a teenager: the teenager masters the norms of relationships between adults, he develops own beliefs, he begins to evaluate himself and the other person from new adult positions.
A moral worldview is formed, under the influence of which the leading place in the system of incentives begins to be occupied by moral motives. The establishment of such a hierarchy leads to the stabilization of personality qualities, to the formation of a moral position. Mukhina V. S. Developmental psychology: phenomenology of development, childhood, adolescence: A textbook for students. universities - 4th ed., stereotype. - M.: Publishing center "Academy", 1999. P. 225..
2.3 Personality formation in early youth
The youthful period of a person’s moral formation, his moral sphere, gradually loses the features of “childhood”, acquiring the basic qualities characteristic of a highly moral adult.
In youth, a person is already able to have a clear scientific presentation about morality, about the truth or falsity of various moral norms. All this leads the adolescent period to overcome fragmentation, increase the autonomy of moral convictions and reflect them moral behavior personality.
In youth, the ethical criticism that arises even in adolescence sharply intensifies, allowing one to take very little on faith. At this age, there is a need for critical re-evaluation and rethinking of what was once thoughtlessly perceived.
Thus, fragmentary amateur activity in the sphere of morality inherent adolescence, in adolescence is replaced by all-encompassing amateur activity, which allows the entire youthful period of moral development of the individual to be defined as a period of global moral amateur activity.
It should be noted that the moral improvement of a person who has achieved in adolescence reference level morality can last a lifetime. But over the years, no fundamentally new formations arise in the moral sphere of this person, but only the strengthening, development and improvement of those that appeared earlier occurs. In social terms, the moral model of boys and girls represents the moral level from which a person who has ascended to it can be recognized as highly moral, without making allowances for age.
In youth, a person faces the problem of choice. life values. Youth strives to shape internal position in relation to oneself (“Who am I?”, “What should I be?”), in relation to other people, as well as to moral values.
Moral issues attract the attention of boys and girls in connection with the beginning of the time of love, the establishment intimate relationships with people of the opposite sex. Their searches related to moral choice, at this age they usually go beyond the circle of immediate communication.
If for children of primary school age the source of formulation and solution moral problems are significant adults - teachers and parents; if teenagers, in addition, seek their influence among their peers, then boys and girls, in search of rules for answering the same questions, turn to sources that adults usually use. Such sources become real, diverse and complex human relationship, scientific and popular, fiction and journalistic literature, works of art, print, television.
Among those moral problems that have worried and continue to worry youth for thousands of years are the problems of good and evil, justice and lawlessness, decency and unscrupulousness, and many others. They cover the circle moral issues, the correctness of which goes beyond the personal or intimate interpersonal relationships and affects human existence Nemov R.S. Psychology. Textbook. - M.: Vlados, 2001. P. 381..
It should be noted that nowadays boys and girls have a more open, unbiased, bold view of the world, including the formulation and solution of many problems of a moral and ethical nature. Their views on justice, honesty, and decency change. Many in their youth are characterized by categoricalness and straightforwardness, a demonstrative denial of moral axioms, even to the point of moral skepticism - all this is a reflection of their own moral search, the desire to critically rethink the “elemental truths.” And yet by the end of school most of boys and girls represent people who are practically morally formed, possessing mature and fairly stable morality.