The Contribution Of Independent Activities In The Pedagogy Study At High School

Abstract

The hereby study, underlines the role of independent activities in the pedagogy study at high school level. The curriculum of pedagogical subjects suggest creating some different situations of training, by the teacher, efficient and which to generate various learning experiences, positive, desirable and appropriate to the established instructive-educational objectives. The independent activity is an important educational mean and it can be used in different formative and informative teaching purposes, which means the attainment of wide range of fundamental objectives: discovery, fixing, consolidation, thoroughgoing, essentiality, exemplification, application, acknowledgement review, skills shaping and intellectually and/ or practically habits. Independent activities have an important role in shaping and developing metacognitive competences of students and in developing their metacognitive behaviour. Independent activities imply the concentration of students` efforts with the purpose of using abilities and strategies which would favors the development of strategic learning competences and the achievement of higher learning performance. By getting involved in independent activities, the students settle their learning objectives; they manage their own learning process, as well as the time and strategies necessary for reaching the goals and achieving the learning tasks. It is desirable that the independent activities to value the strategic learning, assuming self-analysis tasks, selection, the adaptation of task approaching and resolving strategies, self-monitoring the obtained performances, as well as the approaching exchange, if necessary. Independent activities valorise personal, collective, cognitive and metacognitive reflection.

Keywords: Active and interactive pedagogyindependent activitiespersonal reflectionstrategic learning

Introduction

The interactive training promotes independent activities of productive type, finalized with the elaboration of intellectual products – definitions, explanations, scheme, sketches, drawings, posters, ideal models or materials, papers, projects, essays etc. – which to essentializes the new contents and to involve the student with his whole personality. The interactive training gives a special importance to the necessity of assuring high qualities of students thinking, as well, that is active thinking, divergent, logical, critical, evaluative thinking and the manifestation of student’s creativity.]

Problem Statement

According to “Praxiology Dictionary of Pedagogy”, (Bocoş, 2016), the term “independent activity” can be defined as follows: “Intellectual activity or psychomotor, individually or collective, based on the personal efforts of those who are learning and which are not supported by the teacher.” The independent activities can be carry on by the students in formally contexts, no formally or informally, in the purpose of achievement, by self-efforts, of new knowledge, behaviours, competences and finding originally solutions, creative to the problems which they confront. As for the formal and no formal activities, they are made under the surveillance and control of the teacher, who establishes the tasks, content of these activities and evaluates their accomplishment grade, but without his direct participation or support.

The independent activities have a complex character: they assume cognitive/ intellectual involvement, psychomotor, affective and emotionally, a deep interior reflection, an active and motivated learning behaviour, which determines permanent cognitive (re) organizations and facilitates the production of something new, with originally character, creator, in personal plan as well as in general plan. So, the independent activities assume self-involvement, self-information, self-organization, self-learning, self-monitoring, self-management of the activity. The independent activities can be organized for obtaining some various educational finalities, that is of some main objectives: discovery, secure, consolidation, thoroughgoing, essentialization, exemplification, application, recapitulation of knowledge, competences and intellectually and/ or practical skills.”

In the educational current context, in which “the permanence of the permanent education” has become a mark, the independent activity represents a way as well as an educational purpose. This fact has immediate repercussions at the specific activities level deployed by the teacher, who is organizing it, supervises it, values it or makes it right according to the type of formal, non-formal or informal educational contexts in which it produces, so that the pedagogy of independent activity is shaped.

For a long time the phrase “independent activity” was considered as synonym to that of “individual activity”. But the independent activity can be individual or collective/ by cooperation/in group. The independent activities have a complex character: they assume cognitive/ intellectual involvement, psychomotor, affective and emotional, personal reflection, a learning behaviour active and motivated. These determine permanent cognitive (re) structures and facilitates the achievement of a new product, in personal or general plan. At the same time they ask self-involvement, self-information, self-organization, self-learning, self-monitoring, self-management from the involved student/students (M.-D. Bocoş, 2013, pp. 169-170).

Research Questions

Purpose of the Study

Research Methods

Throughout the experimental research we used a various range of methods, among which we state: questionnaires translated and adapted by us in order to find out the features of efficient teaching, in the opinion of teaching staff and of students in pedagogic high schools, whether the students use independent learning consciously, as well as reflexive thinking in learning, during pedagogy lessons, the extent to which students in pedagogic high schools use metacognitive strategies in their study. We also proceeded to the study of curricular documents, we analyzed the products of students` activity, and we applied pedagogic knowledge tests to students.

Findings

In this regard, for the XI grade, with pedagogic profile, teacher-schoolman specialization, at the subject Students class management, we suggested an educational program formed from a totality of independent activities. We choose to present as example two models of independent activities in relation with the thematic contents present in the school program approved through The Order of the Ministry of Education and Research no. 4875 from 6.11.2002.

Conclusion

In a research regarding the development of critical thinking, Dumitru (2000), apud. Joița, (2002) deduces that „the metacognitive or strategic learning” is a solution in order that the students to become more conscious by their own cognitive processes, to learn how to learn efficiently. But this thing is a consequence of the way, model used by the teacher in teaching, in resolving the problems.

According to the researches of Brown (1981), Cerghit, (2008), an instruction which pretends to be efficient includes a component of own evaluative reflection and own control, in which the students have to be trained, learned to realise their own learning, warned by the way in which the metacognitive strategies can affect their performances, in a positive way. In this way, they become more motivated to sign on in metacognitive activities and they will understand that this kind of activities can transfom them in successful students, with high performances. Finally, the forming of the metacognitive skills assume involving in various activities, training in various contexts and flexible application of the strategies and learned knowledge.

References

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