Educational And Professional Community Role In Youth Upbringing At Modern School

Abstract

The problem of community is less a social than life-related, personally-meaningful one in the development of modern young people. Upbringing and development in educational and professional community should be considered in their interrelationship; community is an integral external condition which sets the standard of cultural norms and values while supporting self-determination and self-realization of young boys and girls who reveal subjective position when interacting with peers and adults. The paper stresses the value of the environment created at an educational institution; educational and professional community is understood as a significant element of the environment in young people’s upbringing and development. Community, including educational and professional community, is manifested in relationship with generally important and interesting activity, open personally valuable fellowship which requires understanding and expression of one’s point of view. Education and professional training are the leading activities for young people. That is why educational and professional community is especially relevant in the environment of an educational institution. The paper looks at characteristics of educational and professional community and its influence on the younger generation through conditions to realize young people’s leading activity and achieve the goals and objectives of the given age period.

Keywords: Interactioncooperationadolescenceenvironmenteducational and professional community

Introduction

The current re-evaluation of goals and objectives in young people’s education, upbringing and development, a shift towards personality-oriented model of education sets forth certain requirements to the environment of an educational institution. The search of most effective ways of interaction with the young generation is based on state regulations in the system of education aimed first of all at the formation of versatile, creative and socially active individuals capable of constant self-education and self-improvement.

Environment created in an educational institution is of great importance for young people’s upbringing and development. Condition of the environment and the dynamics of its processes affect the changes in personality development. Educational institution environment (EIE) must create conditions for realization of young people’s leading activity – educational and professional activity (Leontyev, 1977) – and achieve the goals and objectives of the given age period.

Problem Statement

The time of early adolescence raises problems in satisfying existential needs of an individual as described by Fromm in his anthropological and culturological concepts (Fromm, 2013). First of all, these are needs for self-determination in life, self-expression, self-realization, socialization and stable social environment. This is the time build most important new formations in the character: the growing feeling of identity, actualization of self-determination and self-realization (Erikson, 1994), development of reflection (Slobodchikov), and purposeful interaction with other people. In general, the specific nature of adolescence may be described by Berne:

“It means deciding what you are going to be the rest of your life…” (Berne, 2012).

Consequently, in educational institutions it is necessary to pay a special attention less to young people’s acquisition of particular academic knowledge, but to the formation of their own “I” as an active subject of activity.

Research Questions

The presence of reference groups among boys and girls gains a special significance. It is important that reference groups, which have a crucial influence on young people’s self-determination and self-expression, should be communities that include influential adults. Such communities can maintain young people’s activity, stimulate self-realization, and help understand themselves and their actions when interacting with peers and adults. Moreover, such community actualizes the process of self-determination and understanding one’s own life values and meanings (Shustova, 2003, 2009).

Purpose of the Study

Our aim was to reveal the role of the educational professional community in the education of modern boys and girls, supporting their conscious self-determination and self-realization in independent activity and communication.

Research Methods

Methods used in this study include text analysis, theoretical comparative analysis of the problem based upon the study of Russian and foreign psychological and pedagogical literature.

Findings

Environment may be considered through unities which exist and function in this environment. Rubtsov points out that community is a key characteristic of environment (Rubtsov, 1996). Community with others is the most important factor of upbringing and human development. It is people around who enable the person to express himself, actualize the ability to see, understand and develop one’s own self through another person, help men to achieve their goals in cooperation, and understand their value. The role of community in upbringing is hard to underestimate. Unfortunately, modern education does not pay enough attention to social groups, collectives as well as social and psychological unities in which and through which a man’s upbringing and development take place. The collectivist upbringing (upbringing through a collective) has been substituted by personality-oriented one, but it cannot substitute the community-based way of human development (Tagunova, Selivanova & Valeeva, 2016).

The term “community” was coined in science by the German sociologist  Tönnies in 1881 (Tennies, 1957). He distinguished two categories of social associations – community (Gemeinschaft) and society (Gessellschaft), noting that community is based on the feeling of belonging and solidarity. In psychology the notion of “community” has been thoroughly researched by Slobodchikov. He sets the notion of “community” apart from social associations, introduces the notion of co-eventful community, which Slobodchikov finds a necessary situation to develop a human being and, what is more – an ingredient of its subjectness.

A special significance is given to the position first suggested by Novikova (1978). Any children’s collective has a twofold structure: it serves both as an organization, a system of formal links and relationships, and it reveals itself as a community, a system of emotional and psychological links and relationships. According to Selivanova (2016); Selivanova, Stepanov & Shakurova (2016), this concept currently needs some correction, but even today its statement concerning a twofold structure of collective as an organization and psychological community and a tool to shape such schoolchild’s aspects as self-determination, self-understanding and individual interests are highly relevant. A major contribution to the problems of upbringing related to modern children, teenagers and adolescence in the children’s community was made by the research of Education Development Strategy Institute of the Russian Academy of Education headed by Selivanova. In 2012, a collective monograph “Children’s community as an object and subject of upbringing” (Detskaya obshchnost', 2012).

At any moment of life a man is involved in a whole range of different structured and non-structured communities (depending on subjective significance, origin, duration of existence, size, character of activity and communication, etc.). And each of these communities puts the man into a unique social and psychological situation of interpersonal interaction and special conditions for the man’s upbringing and development. The community factor in upbringing and development of a school student is seen as consistency of internal and external conditions. According to Rubinshteyn, “Internal conditions are influenced in their formation by external ones; however, they are not their direct mechanical projection. Internal conditions appear and change in the process of development and determine the specific range of external forces which may be applied to a certain phenomenon” (Rubinshteyn, 1976). The community as an independent subject develops along with the development of its participants’ subjectness and affects the formation and development of their subjective qualities.

The processes of upbringing and development in a community should be regarded in their interrelationship and interdependence. The child-adult community is the necessary external condition which sets the standard of cultural norms in relationships and activity. At the same time it also motivates young people’s random activity in self-realization, encourages them to understand themselves and maintain subjective position while interacting with peers and adults. Such external conditions positively affect a man’s inner world (internal conditions), support the “self-” processes: self-comprehension, self-determination, self-realization, self-regulation and purposeful self-development (Petrovskiy, 1997).

The notion of educational and professional community (EPC) was defined by Kosaretskiy (1999). In his opinion, it is a special form of fellowship among students and teachers of educational institution where joint activity is realized with a special objectness, a sort of educational and professional cooperation, which is different from learning or professional discipline-based activities. Educational and professional cooperation is an impulse triggering the community. It sets the system of open and equal relations, develops the purposeful orientation and a value-based space, which unites students.

Discussion

Let us take a closer look at EPC characteristics: value-semantic, activity-based, communicative and reflexive. The above characteristics are interrelated and present the EPC’s integrated condition and functioning.

The value-semantic characteristic of the community reflects the following: value-based orientation and personally-related meanings of participants, shared aspirations of interacting participants and the global value-semantic space appearing here. It is important for young people to have situations enabling interactions with peers and influential adults who may develop young people towards self-determination and realizaion of meanings. It is not less important to find likeminded people whose similar views and ideas help to clear out one’s own position.

According to Slobodchikov, “Community is used for people to meet; it is created by joint efforts of its participants. Community members contribute norms, goals, values and meanings of communication and interaction thus making it truly even-related community” (Slobodchikov, 2005). An integrated value-semantic space provides the key ground to maintain the community and its functioning. It actualizes the awareness of the participants’ shared values and meanings, their ability for self-determination in life and development of reflection, which is especially important for adolescence.

Value-semantic space is the basis for mutual understanding and openness in communication, which enables young people to express their opinion, listen to the other point of view, compare and analyze various positions, understand and clarify their own position and its value-related grounds. An integrated value-semantic space may lead a man to discover new knowledge, one’s individual meaning, and a new experience of self-realization.

The activity-based feature of community manifests itself in joint activity of students and pedagogues. EPC is formed and preserved due to joint activity of pedagogues and young people – through learning and professional cooperation, joint search to solve a relevant task (jointly defined and significant for everyone) in different ways (Sorcinelli & Austin, 1992; Rogers, Lyon & Tausch, 2013).

Learning and professional cooperation implies the educational organization by means of open communication of the teacher with students, establishment of business contacts, joint goal setting and activity planning, search for productive ways to achieve the goal, team activity to meet the goals, collective analysis and reflection of the outcomes (Aspy, 1978). It is important to find something to bring young boys (girls) and the teacher together while looking for the opportunity for everyone to achieve their own interests (Organizational Psychology, 1998). Learning and professional cooperation as well as the developing community are becoming some kind of a channel to direct the teacher’s educating influence towards the student.

The communicative feature is represented by a social and psychological system of connections and relationships within the community. This is a flexible balance of connections and relationships which constantly turn into each other, come into agreement and develop. Such a flexible system of connections and relationships of students and teachers contributes to a live and direct communication which has an influence on the personality. The community raises the teacher-student relationships onto a higher level, releasing them from the formalized and institutionally set ones into the space of human relationships which imply equality and openness, freedom and personal responsibility (Buber, 2013).

To maintain this system it is important to establish a positional interaction within the community; it is understood as an open expression of each participant’s point of view while being able to listen and analyze a different position and later to understand (reconsider) and change one’s own position. The position is defined as activity in realizing one’s values.

Positional interaction transfers its subjects into an integral value-semantic space, gives birth to new meanings, enriches and transforms the old ones, motivates the participants towards purposeful cooperation, understanding of shared and significant goals and objectives and formation of a joint realization program where everybody feels their own contribution and personal responsibility (Nikitina & Shustova, 2010, Shustova, 2009).

The reflexive feature of EPC is revealed in the constant reflexive activity (individual and collective) with the analysis of everything what is going around for a certain individual and the community at large. Reflection implies manifestation of joint cognitive processes and serves as the merging chain of all community characteristics. It is reflection, collective analysis and modern reflexive discussions of the participants contribute to value-semantic environment of the community, setting vital and collective goals of the activity, channel a purposeful joint activity and cooperation, and record the obtained results and their significance for everybody (Shustova, 2016). Joint reflection enables each personality to understand their own interests, values and meanings if activity. It also actualizes subjective qualities (responsibility, initiative, independent creativity).

Conclusion

Thus, EPC may be described as a special environment of young people’s upbringing and development. Community may be designed and implemented by teachers and students in the educational establishment as the shared interests, values and achievements, learning and professional cooperation, significant fellowship and joint event-based experience.

EPC may be manifested both inside the constant formal group (learning group, athletic team, etc.) and as a new informal community. It may exist both for a long time and within rather limited terms. In the practice of educational institutions, EPC may be created on the basis of an interest club, project-based and volunteer activity, games, training sessions, events, workshops, class hours, creative workshops, meetings with interesting people, quizzes, exhibitions, competitions, interesting and memorable lessons, etc. The more of such communities will unite the teacher and students, the more effective their upbringing and development will be. Consequently, to achieve results, the teacher must strive and stimulate the manifestation of such communities in the process of an educational institution.

The publication has been prepared according to the State Assignment of Institute for Strategy of Education Development of the Russian Academy of Education for 2017-2019 (№27.7091.2017/Bch, with the title of “Theoretical and methodological foundations in training of future teachers to upbringing and career-oriented activity as part of comprehensive and supplementary education”).

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21 August 2017

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Shustova, I. Y., & Svorotova, Y. V. (2017). Educational And Professional Community Role In Youth Upbringing At Modern School. In S. K. Lo (Ed.), Education Environment for the Information Age, vol 28. European Proceedings of Social and Behavioural Sciences (pp. 540-546). Future Academy. https://doi.org/10.15405/epsbs.2017.08.63