Features of training using the Elkonin Davydov method. Why are “traps” needed? Construction of a lesson using D.B technology

In primary school they teach counting, reading and writing. This training focuses on literacy skills. Traditionally, the primary school was a four-year school and was a literacy school. But with the introduction of general secondary education, the goals began to change. The primary school must lay the foundation, the basis for mastering academic subjects in the middle classes and the foundations of science in the senior classes. Simple skills are not a sufficient foundation. In addition, the work of domestic psychologists, primarily L.S. Vygotsky and his school, opened up qualitatively new opportunities for pedagogy: not only to teach subject-specific knowledge, skills and abilities, but to purposefully to form and develop the general intellectual abilities of children.

Today, many primary school teachers are experimenting and developing their own courses. This is the complex work of many specialists - philosophers, psychologists, methodologists, experimental teachers. All these specialists are simply necessary in order to build a truly new pedagogy - a pedagogy of the formation and development of abilities. Such work has been carried out in our country since the 60s under the leadership of D.B. Elkonin and V.V. Davydov. Fundamental directions in psychology were compared - J. Piaget and L. S. Vygotsky, the approaches of A. Leontiev and S. Rubinstein, P. Ya. Galperin built his own methodology. In philosophy, there is a heated debate between traditional Soviet philosophers and the young avant-garde - E.V. Ilyenkov, A.A. Zinoviev, G.P. Shchedrovitsky. New approaches are being tested by E.V. Ilyenkov in a boarding school for the deaf-blind. The result is amazing - even in the absence of the main sensory channels of perception, you can teach a child to think! And not just, but theoretically - to model, use categories and concepts.

Here you need to decide right away. Today they say: "Why a special term" developmental training? With any training, the child develops."

But is school traditionally tasked with “developing such and such an ability”? The programs state: must know and be able to. This is what the teacher achieves. And what abilities there are, how they are structured, how to diagnose them and how to work with them - a traditional teacher has nothing to do with this. He even believes that abilities are something innate, and generally doubts that they can be form.

Elkonin-Davydov’s approach is specifically constructed as a pedagogy of abilities. To emphasize the idea, one could even say: RO is aimed at developing thinking abilities in the first place, and teaching mathematics and the Russian language second. That is why “developmental education” is not a metaphor, but an exact term. And this term is strictly applicable only and specifically to Elkonin-Davydov’s training.

Basic ideas of developmental education

1) The idea of ​​educational activities.

This idea of ​​D.B. Elkonin is fundamental. It allows you to understand how teaching differs from everything else that a person does. In every activity a person changes, transforms some object to get the result. For example, it transforms the conditions of a problem to obtain an answer. Or it transforms, changes the form of a word to determine the letter in the spelling. This is all - substantive actions. But educational activity is special - there is a person in it transforms himself. Transforms himself from “I-don’t know how” to “I-can”, from “I-don’t know” to “I-know”. In this way, educational activities are fundamentally different from school work. In the latter, the student performs many tasks, but does not consciously train in any way. For him, in general, methods of action are not the main thing. And in educational activities, the student is aimed precisely at ways - adopt a new effective method, understand it, master it, train it - this is a specifically educational task.

Educational activity is a high culture of self-learning with the help of adults and friends. Children do not know such a culture. It needs to be instilled in students.

Means The first main task of RO is to teach children to learn.

Training systems that have stood the test of time inspire trust and respect. It is precisely these educational methods that include the developmental technology of D.B. Elkonina - V.V. Davydova. The program’s forty-year “experience” indicates that it is in demand in elementary schools.

The essence of the developmental education system

As is already clear from the name, the origins of the educational program are psychologists D.B. Elkonin and V.V. Davydov. The purpose of their work was to identify the developmental features of children of primary school age from the point of view of psychology. The studies conducted (based on the developments of L.N. Vygotsky) showed that during this period the child develops to a greater extent under the influence of the learning process. This fact was the basis of D.B.’s pedagogical system. Elkonina - V.V. Davydova.

Scientists made the assumption (which was later confirmed experimentally) that it is more logical and natural to adapt not the child to the conditions of the educational system, but to change the methods and techniques of teaching to suit the most harmonious relationships between adults and children, schools and students.

The 1995–1996 academic year became the time of recognition of the D.B. system. Elkonina - V.V. Davydov along with the traditional form of training and the methodology of L.V. Zankova.

The features of pedagogical technology are the following:

The pedagogical technology is non-selective; it can be applied to children with different levels of intelligence, personal characteristics and existing knowledge.

The program has been implemented in schools in Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Latvia, and Ukraine. Non-CIS countries are also interested in such a system: Norway is a country where children are taught using the principles of developmental education not only in primary school, but also in middle and high schools, colleges and some universities.

Advantages and disadvantages of the theory

All participants in the educational process receive certain benefits associated with the peculiarities of teaching and learning according to the D.B. system. Elkonina - V.V. Davydova.

For schoolchildren this is as follows:

For teachers working according to this system, there is an opportunity to organize exciting lessons for schoolchildren, observe the process of formation of individual growth of students and form them as independent individuals, as well as more easily obtain the highest category as a result of successful teaching using D.B. technology. Elkonina - V.V. Davydova.

Parents who dream of raising a smart and developed child can have no doubt that the system will help them raise a thinking and equal interlocutor who will not get confused in a critical or non-standard situation and will make the right decision.

The disadvantages of the system may be the following:

• impossibility of continuing technology education in the future (at middle, senior level);
• the difficulty of understanding the basics of the system for parents who studied using traditional methods;
• a low level of teacher proficiency in educational program techniques can lead to the opposite result - students’ reluctance to attend school and the inability to obtain the desired effect.

The absence of a scoring system can be a repulsive factor for some parents, since many simply do not understand how a child’s knowledge, actions and performances are assessed.

Construction of a lesson using technology D.B. Elkonina - V.V. Davydova

Lessons are based on textbooks for students in the main disciplines: Russian language, mathematics, literary reading, the world around us. The federal list of textbooks recommended by the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation contains all publications of the Elkonin-Davydov developmental system, except for the surrounding world.

Various forms of discussion included in the outline of the educational process are one of the conditions for effective training using the technology in question. During “peaceful” disputes, students gain basic knowledge of the subjects.

The main features of the lesson structure:

The stumbling block for many in the D.B. system. Elkonina - V.V. Davydov was the absence of assessments in their traditional sense. A's, fours, threes, twos are not given to children under any circumstances. Instead, the child should receive a description of his actions and knowledge, the choice of method or method of solving the problem or task. A teacher, evaluating a completed assignment in the Russian language, for example, writes in detail about where and what letter is missing, and whether there are any mistakes in the words. Very often, the teacher does not indicate the location of the error, but invites the student to find it on their own.

The goal of the grade-free system is not to eliminate twos and threes as a fact, but to instill in children from primary school the ability to independently and objectively evaluate their activities. The student, together with the teacher, classmates or parents (at home), must learn to characterize his actions in the lesson, evaluate the steps he took to find the right solution, draw conclusions and learn what is necessary to avoid repeating mistakes.

You should not take the absence of marks literally, replacing the point system with the issuance of stickers, suns, flags, postcards and similar signs.

Math lesson

This is how a mathematics lesson in elementary school can be conducted on the topic “Repetition of measuring quantities using a measure and describing it with an arrow diagram,” the purpose of which is to analyze the conditions for constructing a number line. The lesson is conducted in the form of a game using methods of observation, search, and class discussion.

To relieve mental stress, physical education is held at one stage or another of the lesson.

Example of a Russian language lesson

A lesson on the topic “Checking spellings of weak positions in the root of a word using a strong position” is conducted to control and evaluate students’ knowledge.

1. At the beginning of the lesson, the teacher invites the students, holding hands, to greet each other with sincere smiles and wishes for success.
2. Children are shown slides with the topic, plan and objectives of the lesson. Students can work independently, in pairs or in groups. They are asked to write related words to the word “mushroom”, then switch places with their deskmate and check each other’s work.
3. The teacher leads children with questions to the relevance of using related words to check weak positions against strong ones. During the lesson, students complete the appropriate tasks shown on the slides.
4. The lesson is continued in group mode. Students from different teams check each other’s work and evaluate it using pre-established signs.
5. At the end of the lesson, students discuss the results of the work and the quality of the knowledge gained, thanking those who helped them cope with the tasks.

A dynamic pause can be aimed at sporting events of a particular time period, taking place in the country or abroad. Most often these are simulation exercises or small physical education sessions.

Pair work in lessons and joint discussion are not prohibited.

Literary reading

The lesson on the topic “Capricious mood” is conducted according to a combined principle (in the form of an observation lesson).

1. The teacher quotes the statements of Jean-Jacques Rousseau about talented children, urging his students to feel like themselves.
2. The children are invited to remember the fairy tale “The Flower of Seven Flowers” ​​by Valentin Kataev. The teacher activates the students by asking them to evaluate the mood of the seven-flowered flower, the image of which is displayed on the screen. Schoolchildren answer: happy, sad, funny, boring, and so on.
3. The children, together with the teacher, discuss how they could guess this, and come to the conclusion that with the help of color. Students (as instructed by the teacher) independently compare cards of different colors and verbal denotations of mood, then they all look at the board together and compare the results.
4. The teacher, by recording a child’s cry and reading Agnia Barto’s poem “The Roaring Girl,” creates a problematic situation, asking schoolchildren to come up with the name of the work themselves. Students remember the correct one and name other famous poems by the author.
5. Then everyone opens their textbooks and reads the poem in question independently and chooses unclear terms and unfamiliar words. The teacher and the children try to explain these concepts to everyone. The teacher, using leading questions, activates the children’s work in identifying the main character, her behavior, and encourages them to find confirmation of this in the text. The exclamation mark helps students understand the intonation accents of the mood and demands of a capricious girl.
6. At the end of the lesson, the teacher invites students to evaluate musical works from cartoons, highlighting a suitable fragment for a capricious mood, and sum up the lesson by answering the teacher’s questions.

During the lesson, you can offer to read the poem by role, come up with images of the face of the seven-flowered flower to display his capricious mood. You can create mini-theaters and stage the work, and then evaluate the performance of each group with argumentative opinions.

The world

A lesson examining the properties of air can be structured like this:

Development of thinking according to the Elkonin-Davydov method
How is “upbringing” understood in the Elkonin-Davydov educational system?
Professional consultation and literature on the Elkonin-Davydov method.

Born in 1904 in the Poltava province, he studied at the Poltava gymnasium and at the Leningrad Pedagogical Institute. A. I. Herzen. Elkonin created an original concept of re-education of mental development in ontogenesis, the basis of which is the concept of leading activity. This concept was developed on the basis of the development of the ideas of the cultural-historical concept of L. S. Vygotsky and the activity approach in the version of A. N. Leontiev. He also developed a psychological theory of play and studied the formation of a child’s personality.

(August 31, 1930 - March 19, 1998) - Soviet teacher and psychologist. Academician and vice-president of the Russian Academy of Education (1992). Doctor of Psychological Sciences (1971), Professor (1973). Since 1953, he worked in the institutions of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of the USSR (vice-president since 1989). Honorary Member of the US National Academy of Education (1982). Member of the editorial boards of the journals “Questions of Psychology” and “Psychological Journal”. Follower L.S. Vygotsky, student of D.B. Elkonin and P.Ya. Halperin (with whom he later became friends until the end of his life). Works on educational psychology are devoted to the problems of developmental education and age-related norms of mental development. Davydov’s theoretical developments were introduced and tested in practice at Moscow experimental school No. 91. Based on his theory of various types of human thinking, specific programs and teaching aids in mathematics, Russian language, chemistry, geography and other subjects were created and implemented. In modern pedagogy, there is an educational system of developmental education by D.B. Elkonina - V.V. Davydov, textbooks for which are recommended for primary schools and some senior classes of secondary schools. In addition, Davydov was professionally involved in philosophical problems, in particular, for many years, in the institution entrusted to him, he supported the activities of several theoretical and methodological seminars on fundamental problems of thinking and activity, cultural-historical psychology, etc. His friendship with famous philosophers who constituted the ideological opposition Soviet pedagogy - E.V. Ilyenkov, A.A. Zinoviev, G.P. Shchedrovitsky and others, made it possible to pose and largely solve a number of fundamental psychological problems regarding the mechanisms of learning and development. In his works, V.V. Davydov repeatedly spoke quite boldly about official pedagogical dogmas. The “last straw” was the book by A.S. Arsenyeva, E.V. Bescherevnykh, V.V. Davydov et al. “Philosophical and psychological problems of educational development”, published under the editorship of V.V. Davydov (M.: Pedagogika, 1981), after the publication of which Davydov was expelled from the party in 1983, removed from the post of director of the Institute of General and Pedagogical Psychology of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of the USSR, and even suspended from working with his favorite experimental school No. 91. However, after a few years , in 1986, awarded the prize. Ushinsky for achievements in pedagogy, and later reinstated in the party and in 1989 again appointed director of the same institute.

Elkonin-Davydov system

A system that has become popular in Moscow schools is the theory of educational activities and methods of primary education by D.B. Elkonin and V.V. Davydova. The Elkonin-Davydov system has been developed since 1958 on the basis of experimental school No. 91 of the Russian Academy of Education. A feature of this psychological and pedagogical concept is the various group discussion forms of work, during which children discover the main content of educational subjects. Knowledge is not given to children in the form of ready-made rules, axioms, or schemes. In contrast to the traditional, empirical system, the courses studied are based on a system of scientific concepts. Children in primary school are not graded; the teacher, together with the students, evaluates the learning results at a qualitative level, which creates an atmosphere of psychological comfort. Homework is kept to a minimum; learning and consolidation of educational material takes place in class.

Children do not get overtired, their memory is not overloaded with numerous but unimportant information. As a result of training according to the Elkonin-Davydov system, children are able to argue their point of view, take into account the position of others, do not take information on faith, but demand evidence and explanations. They develop a conscious approach to studying various disciplines. Training is carried out within the framework of regular school programs, but at a different quality level. Currently, programs in mathematics, Russian language, literature, natural science, fine arts and music for primary schools and programs in Russian language and literature for secondary schools have been developed and are being practically applied.

Technology of developmental education D.B. Elkonina - V.V. Davydov is fundamentally different from others in that the emphasis is on the formation of theoretical thinking in schoolchildren.

Theoretical thinking is understood as a person’s verbally expressed understanding of the origin of this or that thing, this or that phenomenon, or concept. A theoretical concept can only be learned through discussion. What becomes significant in this teaching system is not so much knowledge as methods of mental action, which is achieved by reproducing the logic of scientific knowledge in children’s educational activities: from the general to the particular, from the abstract to the concrete. It was important to establish the role and significance of primary school age in the general system of ages. This problem was solved in the concept of D.B. Elkonin (Selected psychological works. M., 1989), the works of some other members of the team (see: Davydov V.V. Problems of developmental education; Repkin V.V. Formation of educational activities in junior school age // Bulletin of Kharkov University, 1978. N 178, etc.)

The system began to take shape in the late 50s; it began to spread in mass schools in the 80s and 90s of the 20th century.

In the 1960s a scientific team was created under the leadership of psychologists D.B. Elkonin and V.V. Davydov, who studied the significance of primary school age in human mental development. It was revealed that in modern conditions at this age it is possible to solve specific educational problems, subject to the development of educational activity and its subject, abstract theoretical thinking, and voluntary behavior control.

In their experimental study, scientists sought to strictly follow the essential points of L.S.’s hypothesis. Vygotsky and, based on broad factual material, turn it into a detailed theory of developmental learning. This required the development of several auxiliary theories that specified and deepened the main points of L.S.’s hypothesis. Vygotsky.

First of all, the main psychological neoplasms of primary school age were identified:

• Ш educational activity and its subject;
• Ш abstract theoretical thinking;
• Voluntary control of behavior.

It was also discovered that traditional primary education does not ensure the full development of these new formations in younger schoolchildren, does not create the necessary zones of their immediate development when working with children, but trains and consolidates those mental functions that basically arise in children in preschool age ( sensory observation, empirical thinking, utilitarian memory, etc.). It was necessary to organize (at first on an experimental basis) such training for younger schoolchildren that could create in them the necessary zones of proximal development, which over time turn into the required new formations. This work began in the 1950s. and this team continues to this day.

Based on the corresponding premises, an auxiliary theory has also been developed, revealing at the modern logical-psychological level the content of the main types of consciousness and thinking and the main types of mental actions corresponding to them (V.V. Davydov and others).

According to Elkonin and V.V. Davydov, the basis of the mental development of younger schoolchildren is the formation of their educational activity in the process of their assimilation of theoretical knowledge through meaningful analysis, planning, reflection (the theory of educational activity and its subject is presented in the works of V.V. Davydov, V.V. Repkin, G.A. Tsukerman, D.B. Elkonina, J. Lompshera, etc.). Children’s implementation of this activity determines the development of their entire cognitive and personal sphere. The development of the subject of this activity occurs in the very process of its formation, when the child gradually turns into a student who changes and improves himself.

Basic principles:

• Ш deduction based on meaningful generalizations;
• Ш content analysis;
• Ш meaningful abstraction;
• Ш theoretical substantive generalization;
• Ш ascent from the abstract to the concrete;
• Ш meaningful reflection.

Features of the technology.

• * Denial of the concentric structure of curricula.
• * Failure to recognize the universality of using specific visuals in elementary school.
• * Freedom of choice and variety of creative homework.
• * Features of the lesson in this system are collective mental activity, dialogue, discussion, and business communication between children.
• * Only problematic presentation of knowledge is acceptable, when the teacher comes to schoolchildren not with ready-made knowledge, but with a question.
• * At the first stage of training, the main method is the method of educational tasks, at the second - problem-based learning.

A learning task in this concept is similar to a problem situation:

• - acceptance from the teacher or independent formulation of an educational task; - transformation of the conditions of the problem in order to detect the general relationship of the studied object;
• - modeling of the selected relation to study its properties in subject, graphic and letter forms;
• - transformation of the relationship model to study its properties in its “pure form”;
• - building a system of particular problems solved in a general way; - control over the implementation of previous actions;
• - assessment of mastering the general method as a result of solving a given educational task.

The quality and volume of work are assessed from the point of view of the subjective capabilities of students. The assessment reflects the student’s personal development and the perfection of his educational activities.

Training according to this system significantly increases the theoretical level of education by teaching schoolchildren not only knowledge and practical skills, but also scientific concepts, artistic images, and moral values. The teacher's goal is to bring the personality of each student into development mode, to awaken the need for knowledge.

Some features of the Elkonin-Davydov SRO.

By the beginning of the 60s. XX century D.B. Elkonin and V.V. Davydov completed the first cycle of independent work devoted to the study of age-related opportunities for the acquisition of knowledge by younger schoolchildren. It was experimentally proven that the ideas established in traditional developmental psychology about the “norms” of the intellectual development of schoolchildren’s thinking are valid only for a certain model of learning and that the developmental potential of learning is determined not so much by the methods of organizing (forming) the actions of students, but by the real content of their activity unfolding in the process training. This marked the beginning of the development of the theory of educational activity and the theory of content-based (theoretical) generalization, which subsequently formed the basis of the theoretical concept of developmental education. At the same time, a method for solving the problems posed was also determined - a genetic modeling experiment in the form of systematic schooling.

Important components of thinking are such actions as analysis, planning and reflection, which have two main forms - empirical-formal and theoretical-substantive. The characteristic feature of theoretical-substantive reflection is that it is associated with the reflection of essential relations of one’s own actions. Content analysis is aimed at searching and separating the essential from the particular features in a certain holistic object. Meaningful planning consists of searching and constructing a system of the most important actions and determining the optimal action.

V.V. Davydov, having examined the general didactic principles of consciousness, visibility, continuity, accessibility, and scientific character, asserts a different, actually psychological-pedagogical nature.

Firstly, the principle of continuity is transformed into the principle of qualitative differences in the stages of learning, each of which corresponds to a different stage of mental development.

Secondly, the principle of accessibility is transformed into the principle of developmental learning, filled with new content.

Thirdly, the principle of consciousness receives new content as a principle of activity. Based on this principle, students do not receive information in a ready-made form, but only by finding out and establishing the conditions of their origin as methods of activity. The third principle served as the basis for the formation of a new model of learning as a transformative-reproducing activity of students.

Fourthly, this is the principle of clarity, fixed by V.V. Davydov as the principle of objectivity. By implementing this principle, the student must identify the subject and present it in the form of a model. This is an essential characteristic of the transformative-reproducing activity of learning, when the model, sign-symbolic representation of its process and result occupy a significant place.

Developmental training in educational activities based on mastering the content of academic subjects should be developed in accordance with its structure and characteristics (V.V. Davydov). Accordingly, V.V. Davydov formulates the main provisions that characterize not only the content of educational subjects, but also those skills that must be formulated in students when mastering these subjects in educational activities:

• 1. The assimilation of knowledge that is general and abstract in nature precedes students’ acquaintance with more private and specific knowledge; the latter are derived by students from the general and abstract as from their single basis.
• 2. Students acquire knowledge constituting a given academic subject or its main sections by analyzing the conditions of their origin, thanks to which they become necessary.
• 3. When identifying subject sources of certain knowledge, students must be able, first of all, to discover in the educational material a genetically original, essential, universal relationship that determines the content and structure of the object of this knowledge.
• 4. Students reproduce this relationship in special subject, graphic and letter models, which allow them to study its properties in its pure form.
• 5. Students should be able to concretize the genetically original, universal relationship of the object being studied in the system of private knowledge about it in such a unity that ensures the thinking of the transition from the general to the particular and back.
• 6. Students must be able to move from performing actions in the mental plane to performing them in the external plane and back (Davydov V.V., 1986, P. 130).

Thus, developmental education in the Elkonin-Davydov system should form theoretical thinking in schoolchildren, that is, it should be focused not only on memorizing facts, but also on understanding the relationships and cause-and-effect relationships between them. Theoretical thinking is understood as a person’s verbally expressed understanding of the origin of this or that thing, this or that phenomenon, concept, the ability to trace the conditions of this origin, to find out why these concepts, phenomena or things acquired this or that form, to reproduce in one’s activities the process of the origin of this thing . The logic and content of educational subjects and the organization of the educational process are built on this Elkonin-Davydov system, which should be based on the theory of the formation of educational activity and its subject. In this case, the student learns not so much knowledge in general, but learns to learn in the process of forming universal educational actions, developing theoretical thinking, analytical abilities in the student, and developing the logic of scientific knowledge in the student from the abstract to the concrete.

Report on the subject "Pedagogy"

Completed by: Gaidai Y.A. (applicant)

Omsk Academy of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation

“... children are not our future, but we are the future of children”

A.F. Kiselev

Elkonin Daniil Borisovich (1904 - 1984)

Daniil Borisovich Elkonin belongs to that glorious galaxy of Soviet psychologists who form the backbone of the world-famous scientific school of L. S. Vygotsky. D. B. Elkonin spoke with pride that he was a student of Lev Semenovich and a colleague of his other students and followers. Having deeply accepted the ideas of this school, D. B. Elkonin, over the course of several decades, originally specified them in his experimental and theoretical works, thereby creating his own scientific direction in child and educational psychology.

D. B. Elkonin combined the talent of a scientist who can deeply analyze fundamental scientific problems and the abilities of a researcher who effectively solves applied psychological issues that are of serious importance for pedagogical practice. He owns remarkable theories of periodization of child development and children's play, as well as methods of teaching children to read. His colleagues, relatives and friends spoke of him as a person with an extraordinary and generous soul, a life-loving and resilient person who managed to retain great intelligence and kindness until his last days. He had a truly noble character as a scientist and citizen.

D. B. Elkonin was born in the Poltava province, studied at the Poltava gymnasium and at the Leningrad Pedagogical Institute. A. I. Herzen. Since 1929 he worked at this institute; For several years, in collaboration with L. S. Vygotsky, he studied the problems of children's play. From 1937 until the start of the Great Patriotic War, he was a primary school teacher in one of the Leningrad schools, taught at a pedagogical institute, and created school textbooks on the Russian language for the peoples of the Far North. During this period, D. B. Elkonin defended his Ph.D. thesis on the development of speech in schoolchildren (1940). Throughout the Great Patriotic War, D. B. Elkonin was in the active army and was awarded military orders and medals. After the war, he taught psychology at the Military Pedagogical Institute of the Soviet Army. Since September 1946, he worked part-time at the Institute of Psychology of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of the RSFSR. Demobilized from the army in 1953 with the rank of lieutenant colonel, he then became an employee of the Institute of Psychology in the same position. He successively headed the laboratories of psychology of primary schoolchildren, psychology of adolescents, and diagnostics of mental development of schoolchildren. In 1962 he defended his doctoral dissertation, and in 1968 he was elected a corresponding member of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of the USSR. For many years he taught at the Faculty of Psychology of Moscow University.

D. B. Elkonin conducted his research on child psychology in close collaboration with such students of L. S. Vygotsky as A. N. Leontiev, A. R. Luria, A. V. Zaporozhets, L. I. Bozhovich, P. I. Galperin. V.V. Davydov. Danil Borisovich maintained extensive and fruitful scientific connections with child and educational psychologists of other countries (GDR, NRB, Poland, etc.), in particular with those American scientists who relied in their research on the ideas of L. S. Vygotsky (with J. Bruner , Y. Bronfenbrenner, M. Cole, J. Wertsch, etc.).

D. B. Elkonin is the author of several monographs and many scientific articles devoted to the problems of the theory and history of childhood, its periodization, the mental development of children of different ages, the psychology of play and learning activities, psychodiagnostics, as well as issues of child speech development and teaching children to read. Daniil Borisovich devoted several articles to the scientific views of L. S. Vygotsky and repeatedly gave reports about him in various audiences, but his greatest contribution to the development of not only domestic but also world pedagogy was the development and implementation of a new teaching system, the so-called “Developmental education” »

System of "Developmental training"

In pedagogy and psychology, the question of whether education can have any impact on the mental development of a child, mainly mental, has been discussed for a very long time. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the dominant position was about biological predetermination, both of the course of the development process and of the level that each individual child can achieve. According to these views, learning has no effect on the process of mental development. In the thirties, the most prominent Soviet psychologist L.S. Vygotsky put forward the opposite point of view, pointing out that learning has a decisive influence on the processes of mental development and that only such learning is good if it has such an influence. He and his collaborators were able to show that the developmental significance of learning depends, first of all, on the assimilation of scientific knowledge and a system of scientific concepts. However, this hypothesis, very bold at that time, rested on the idea of ​​children entering the system of organized education as unable to master scientific concepts and therefore initial education should be limited only to the assimilation of elementary ideas about the surrounding reality and elementary practical skills of reading, writing and counting. This idea persisted for quite a long time, and partly still exists today. Thus, the initial period of education (primary school age) is, as it were, taken out of the general system of scientific education, which begins only with the child’s transition to the middle grades. Children come there already knowing how to read and write correctly, knowing nothing about the laws of language that underlie the skills they already possess; They already know how to multiply and divide multi-digit numbers, but they know nothing about the system of scientific mathematical concepts that actually underlie the actions they perform. A number of researchers have found that mental development in these conditions in children occurs very slowly and, upon entering adolescence, where systematic acquaintance with the theory begins, they find themselves insufficiently prepared and begin to experience difficulties and fail. It was natural to assume that the level of development that children achieve before entering the middle classes is largely determined by the content and technology of education that are established and traditionally assigned to the initial period of education.

Vygotsky's followers (D.B. Elkonin, V.V. Davydov) tried to develop his ideas - based on the psychological theory of activity of A.A. Leontiev. In the context of activity, the development of the child began to come to the fore in the learning process as the process of his becoming a subject of various types and forms of activity. In front of a group of scientists, including D.B. Elkonin, the question arose: “how can we prove that the possibilities for mental development of children are significantly higher than those that we get when training according to traditionally established programs and methods?” There was only one way to prove this: it was necessary to try to radically change the content of training, introduce the assimilation of scientific concepts, starting from the very beginning of education, while finding a teaching technology in which the assimilation of such concepts would become possible for younger schoolchildren, and then see how children studying under these new programs and new technology will develop mentally. At the end of the fifties, such an experimental laboratory school was created, in which a group of specialists from the Institute of General and Educational Psychology of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences worked. The work turned out to be very difficult. It was necessary to experimentally try different versions of the program; determine the system of concepts that should be embedded in these programs; find and try different technologies - find out what the teacher should do and what actions the students should perform in order to master this complex content. In the course of the work, the scientific hypotheses that were originally included in the experiment were also clarified. It took a number of years of intensive work to create the first versions of new content and new teaching technology.

The results were very encouraging. The children here showed significantly better results in all parameters of mental development than children who studied using traditionally established programs and technology. Only after this did the need and opportunity arise to expand the research in order to verify the results obtained under experimental conditions, and to deepen the research, to penetrate into the psychological mechanisms of the formation of students’ educational activities. Then a group of scientists from other cities - Kharkov and Tula - joined the research. In the course of many years of experimental research, it was shown that, firstly, children seven to nine years old, without much difficulty, with interest and enviable ease, master the general, basic concepts that underlie modern linguistic and mathematical knowledge; Children arise and develop a broad orientation in those areas of reality that are generalized in the corresponding systems of concepts that children are theorists - that is, they can develop a desire to search for those fundamental relations that state the corresponding areas of knowledge. Secondly, that for these children learning turns into a passion for the very content of learning, and the work of acquiring knowledge turns into a play of their own intellectual powers - they are fascinated by the content of the activity they perform and the method of performing it. Thus, a new psychological theory of learning was born, revealing the prospects and possibilities of the education of the future.

The main differences between the classical traditional education system and the D.B. Elkonina - V.V. Davydova.