Content Component Of Pedagogic System To Form Legal Culture Of Law Teachers

Abstract

The objective need to solve the task of preparing appropriate pedagogical staff – teachers of law who can effectively form the basis of the legal culture of schoolchildren makes the problem challenging and urgent. The article singles out the socio-economic and pedagogical prerequisites, which actualize the problem of forming the legal culture of a teacher of law. It has been shown that legal culture develops on public and personal levels. At the level of public consciousness, legal culture accumulates everything that takes place in the legal sphere, which unites the law, legal science, legal consciousness, the practice of lawmaking and judicial activity, legal outlook, national roots, historical memory, legal customs and traditions. The structure of the legal culture at the individual level is represented by knowledge of law; skills and abilities of implementing legal activities at the level of prescribed legal norms; the experience of creative activity in the field of law in the form of a formed set of creative skills; the experience of the emotional value approach to the law. It is substantiated that the design of the content of the educational material at the level of the textbook is carried out on the basis of the principles of modularity, problematicity, historicity, independence, reflection. The form of implementation of these principles is reflected on the generalized structure of the training module, which includes nine interrelated units: problem formulation, actualization, historical and theoretical blocks, application, generalization, deepening and expansion blocks, the block of independent work and literature..

Keywords: Legal cultureteacher of laweducation contentdesign of education content

Introduction

Democratic reforms in the country created the prerequisites for transformations in the economic, political, social and spiritual basis of our society. Objectively assessing the pace and direction of this process, it should be noted that they have generated and highlighted many serious problems in society, including in the purposeful formation of the legal culture of the individual. This is manifested in the intensification of negative trends in the social environment: the problems of corruption in society and the education system become more acute, the number of offenses and crimes in the youth environment is growing, social disadaptation is aggravated, the system of educating young people in educational institutions is destroyed, there are no more or less guaranteed employment opportunities for university graduates etc. Such negative tendencies do not contribute to the formation of respect to law by the youth, rules of behavior in society; increase the legal culture of each member of society. Only radical changes in legal thinking, legal consciousness and legal behavior of a person will serve as a certain guarantee for the formation of legal society in our country.

Legal culture today is an attribute not only of a professional lawyer. In the modern conditions of social development, every member of society must have a certain level of legal culture, manifested not only in law-abiding, but also in developed legal activity, possession of skills to use legal knowledge effectively to achieve the planned results, in an effort to establish law as the most important value of society. This, in turn, assumes the formation of the foundations of legal culture for each student, including schoolchildren.

Problem Statement

State interest in the issue of the formation of legal culture is confirmed in government documents. According to the Law ‘On Education in the Russian Federation’ (Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Education, 2012), the content of education should be oriented ‘on ensuring the self-determination of the individual, creating conditions for his/her self-realization; on the development of civil society; to strengthen and improve the rule of law ...’ (Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Education, 2012, article 14) and thus is directly related to the problem of forming the legal culture of the younger generation.

In this regard, the task of preparing appropriate teachers – teachers of law, capable of working on the formation of the legal culture of schoolchildren, – becomes challenging. However, the analysis of the practice of forming a legal culture of future law teachers shows that graduates do not have a sufficient level of legal thinking and their legal knowledge is purely theorized. The educational process for the preparation of future law teachers takes place in isolation from the legal reality, which inevitably affects the level of legal culture of their graduates, leads to inertia of graduates’ thinking, makes it difficult for them to model non-standard ways of professional activity, does not lead to the formation of sustainable knowledge and skills of using law in their professional activity.

The determining role in the formation of a future teacher of law is played by the content of professional and pedagogical education. Therefore, the issues of designing the content of education that underlies the formation of the legal culture of future law teachers are among the basic in the corresponding pedagogical system. At the same time, teachers are experiencing certain difficulties in the process of designing the content of education, due to the insufficiently developed conceptual framework, the criteria for selecting and structuring the educational material, aimed at the effective formation of the legal culture of students..

Research Questions

To reveal the content and structure of the concept of ‘legal culture of personality’; to justify the conceptual basis of the formation of the legal culture of the future law teacher; to develop criteria for the selection of the content of legal education of the future teacher; to identify the creation features and structure of the content of legal education of the future law teacher.

Purpose of the Study

The aim of the research is to outline the conceptual framework, selection criteria and generalized structure of the training module aimed at forming the legal culture of future teachers of law.

Research Methods

Research methods are theoretical (analysis and synthesis, modeling, abstraction, generalization, extrapolation, transfer); empirical – the study of innovative experience in the development of educational content.

Findings

It should be noted that the legal culture as a holistic phenomenon was considered in the works of a number of Russian (Azarov, 1998; Kalandrashvili, 2000; Pevtsova, 2003; Sazanov, 2006; Amirov, 2012) and foreign authors (Fridmen, 1993; Van Hoecke, & Warrington, 1998). However, the analysis showed that most of the available definitions of legal culture are characterized by such drawbacks as: lack of a convincing methodological base in the form of reliance on the basic concepts of ‘culture’, ‘law’; the uncertainty of the subject of legal culture (as a result of which in one case the authors talk about legal culture, in the other – about legal culture of society, in the third - about the legal culture of the individual, etc.) and inadequate validity of the proposed structure of the analyzed concept.

In our study, we proceed from general concepts of culture, which is understood as ‘the totality of material and spiritual values ​​made and created by mankind in the process of socio-historical practice and characterizing the historically achieved stage in the development of society. In a more narrow sense, it is customary to talk about the material (technology, production experience, material values) and spiritual culture (science, art and literature, philosophy, morality, education, etc.)’ (Frolov, 1980, p.173). In another source it is noted that culture (from Latin cultura – cultivation, upbringing, education, development, reverence) is a historically determined level of development of society, the creative forces and abilities of man, expressed in the types and forms of organization of life and activity of people, in their relationships, as well as in the material and spiritual values ​​... ; in a narrower sense – the sphere of people's spiritual life. It includes the objective results of people's activities (cars, structures, results of cognition, works of art, morality and law, etc.), as well as human strengths and abilities realized in activities (knowledge, skills, skills, intelligence, moral and aesthetic development, world outlook, ways and forms of people's communication) (Prokhorov, 2001, p.607).

As we can see, culture includes two main components: objective results of people's activities and the actual human forces and abilities realized in the activity. Considering this, we understand the legal culture as a historically determined level of legal development of society as a whole and legal knowledge, abilities and skills of carrying out legal activities of each individual person. Legal culture as a phenomenon takes place on two levels: 1) as one of the forms of social consciousness (the norms of law reflecting the results of people's legal activity, presented in the form of constitutions, codes, laws, other regulatory documents, as well as monographs, and methodological publications in the field of law that disclose the content of legal knowledge); 2) at the personal level, reflecting the legal forces and abilities of the individual, implemented in legal activities and including those appropriated by the individual: knowledge in the field of law; experience in the field of law in the form of skills and skills in the implementation of legal activities at the level set by the society of legal norms; experience of creative activity in the field of law in the form of a formed set of creative skills: to identify and formulate the problem, to put forward and prove a hypothesis, to transfer knowledge and skills to a new situation, etc.; experience of value-based attitude to law.

The legal culture of a personality characterizes the measure of its ability and willingness to carry out various activities and communication in accordance with the requirements of law. Structurally legal culture of personality is an integrative unity of three basic components: cognitive, motivational-value and behavioral. The cognitive component characterizes legal literacy as a set of citizens’ knowledge of legal norms. Motivational-value component includes the formation of needs and motives in legal self-improvement, a conscious attitude to law as a value. Behavioral (activity) component characterizes the ability to use laws in practical life, apply legal knowledge to resolve specific legal conflicts.

Thus, legal culture of an individual is a complete personal education characterized by: the desire of the individual to expand legal knowledge, to percept legal attitudes and their practical embodiment in concrete actions; conviction of the need to carry out professional and other activities in strict compliance with the law; a manifestation of stable feelings of responsibility and ownership of the subjects of law, confidence and self-sufficiency in upholding and using subjective rights.

What are the criteria for selecting content aimed at shaping the legal culture of a future teacher of law? When selection criteria are talked about, researchers usually have in mind certain characteristics that the investigated phenomenon or process must satisfy. In pedagogical science, there are still no unified, generally accepted requirements for how these criteria should be singled out. However, most researchers share the view that when selecting the criteria for choosing a particular content of education, one should proceed from the goal to which the content of education is oriented. As you know, goals in the form of requirements to the results of education are formulated in the Federal State Education Standards in the relevant areas and levels of training.

With this in mind, and also relying on the above structure of the legal culture of the individual, we distinguish the following criteria for selecting the content of education: cognitive, motivational-value and behavioral. The first criterion focuses on the correspondence of the content of education to the requirements of the Federal State Education Standards of Higher Education, to the modern achievements of legal science. The second criterion is aimed at the formation of a value attitude to law, the adoption of the requirements of Law as legal norms, the adherence to which is the attribute property of a law-abiding citizen. The third criterion presupposes the selection of the content of education that ensures the formation of graduates' readiness to use legal knowledge and skills to solve professional and life problems in certain situations and in conditions of uncertainty (Firsov, 2006, p. 31).

Features of designing the content of legal education of a future teacher. Since education is a three-pronged process of education, upbringing and development, we regard the content of legal education structurally as a relationship of three components: the content of legal education, the content of legal upbringing and the content of legal development. Legal education provides for the formation of students' legal professional competencies, expressed in the system of legal knowledge, skills, and the ability to use them in their pedagogical activities. Legal upbringing is focused on the formation of the attitude to law and legal behavior as the most important value. Legal development presupposes organization of content that solves the problem of developing legal thinking among students and develops other mental processes (memory, imagination, thought operations, etc.)

The content of legal education at the curriculum level is reflected in the basic and variable levels through appropriate legal courses. For example, in the compulsory and variable components of the curriculum in the direction of ‘Pedagogical Education’ (‘Jurisprudence’ profile), the qualification of the bachelor's degree is presented by a set of 46 disciplines (Theory of State and Law, History of State and Law of Foreign Countries, History of the National State and Law, Constitutional Law of Russia, Constitutional Law of Foreign Countries, Labor Law, Legal Regulation of General Education, Theory and Methods of Teaching Law in Higher Education, Law and Anthropology of Education, Statutory Regulation of Higher Education, Anticorruption Culture of a Teacher etc.), including about 35% of them belonging to the base component, and the remaining subjects make up the content of variable components in Federal State Education Standards of Higher Education (2009).

The study made it possible to conclude that it is necessary to include the content component of a pedagogical system of forming legal culture into a special educational module (a training course) that reveals theoretical and practical issues aimed at shaping the anti-corruption culture of a future law teacher.

The design of the content of legal education is carried out in stages and includes: an adaptation stage, a stage of general legal preparation and a stage of special legal preparation. The main goal of the first stage (as a rule, this is the first year of study at university) is the actualization and maintenance of the students' positive attitude towards the chosen direction. Along with the disciplines of the human, social and economic cycle included in the curriculum, as well as the mathematical and natural-scientific cycle, we introduced the educational module ‘Anticorruption Culture of a Teacher’ due to the variable component of the base unit. The second stage (the second - the third year of training) is aimed at the formation of theoretical foundations for general legal and special legal training through the development of the disciplines of the professional cycle. At this stage, we introduced didactic units in the work programs of the disciplines of the general professional cycle on the formation of the anti-corruption culture of a teacher of law. The third stage (the fourth or fourth and fifth courses - in the case of training under the dual competence program) is focused on the formation of practical legal skills. Here courses were introduced for the variable component (Anticorruption Upbringing and Education, Normative and Legal Regulation of Relations in the Education System).

Now let’s consider the issue of designing the content of legal education at the level of educational material, presented in the form of textbooks and teaching aids. The traditional approach here is most often limited to the realization of the information function of education and is expressed in the fact that the authors of textbooks and teaching aids disclose the theoretical bases of a particular question, and formulate questions for self-control and (or) assignments for independent work. This structuring of the content of the educational material no longer meets the modern requirements for learning. We proceed from the assumption that modern textbook should be oriented not only to the fulfillment of the information function, but also to encourage students to learn different types of social experience (value-semantic, creative, etc.), so that in the course of training, along with subject knowledge and the key universal competencies were formed. The structure of such an educational publication should help a student to learn, support his motivation for learning, give an opportunity to address the history of the issue, deepen knowledge of a topic, help to self-test and reflect, formulate the skills to generalize, compactly structure the material, etc. (Federal State Educational Standard, 2009).

As an example, let us cite the structure of a textbook on Anti-corruption Education and Upbringing. It includes four chapters that reveal the socio-economic nature of corruption, the causes and conditions of its origins, forms of manifestation and issues of anti-corruption legislation. Each of the chapters is a complete module that includes eight units: actualization unit, historical, theoretical, application, generalization, deepening and expansion units, the unit of independent work and literature. The unit of actualization is focused on recollection of knowledge and skills that are known to the students from other courses or from life experience, which are important for mastering new material. The historical unit contains a brief material on the history of the issue. The theoretical unit reveals the current level of elaboration of the issue in the domestic legal literature. The application unit contains questions and assignments for students, suggesting their active efforts in understanding knowledge, on the one hand (the following tasks are given: highlight the essential characteristics ..., uncover the correlation of concepts ... etc.) and appeal to one's own experience of teaching, real practice educational process to confirm (or vice versa) the theoretical provisions - on the other hand (the type of assignments given are: pick facts from your experience ..., build a project of the logic of the educational process for one of the topics of specialty obtained, etc.). In addition, this unit also contains tasks for students to reflect on their own activities in mastering the chapter's material, during which it is proposed to comprehend the impact of the topic under study on developing their own motivation for learning activities, the formation of the emotional sphere, and so on. The unit of deepening and expansion is intended for those who show increased interest in the problem and seek to obtain further insight into its content. This unit may include an original article on the problem, material from a well-known monograph, analytical material, etc. The unit of independent work contains tasks for independent work, the content of which involves students to refer to original sources, analyzing real practice in combating corruption and preparing their product: a dictionary of basic concepts, an abstract, an analytical text, a table of interrelations of concepts, a crossword on a topic, etc. . Essentially, these assignments are nothing else than mini projects performed by students independently. It should be noted that a student has an opportunity to choose from a set of tasks that correspond to his abilities and interests, he himself determines the terms of submission and the form of reporting, having coordinated them with the teacher. Thus, students acquire the most important core competencies. The block of recommended literature contains a list of literature, designed in accordance with the requirements and including both the latest sources and the work of previous years, which reflect certain aspects of the topic. Almost every block has links to Internet sources.

Such a design of the content of a discipline simulates a non-linear model of learning, presupposing creating the conditions for motivated independent productive cognitive activity of students.

Conclusion

Legal culture develops on two levels: public and personal. At the level of public consciousness legal culture is represented in one of its forms (law), reflecting the objective results of people's spiritual activity, accumulated by mankind. Legal culture is an indispensable part of the culture of society. As an integrative concept, legal culture accumulates everything that takes place in the legal sphere, combining law, legal science, legal consciousness, the practice of lawmaking and judicial activity, legal outlook, national roots, historical memory, legal customs and traditions. On the personal level, reflecting the legal forces and abilities of an individual, implemented in legal activities, legal culture is represented by the individual: a) knowledge of law; b) the skills and skills of implementing legal activities at the level of prescribed legal norms; c) the experience of creative activity in the field of law in the form of a formed set of creative skills: to identify and formulate the problem, to put forward and prove a hypothesis, to carry out the transfer of known knowledge and skills to a new situation, etc .; d) the experience of the emotional value approach to law.

The design of the content component of the pedagogical system for the formation of legal culture involves the development of a complex of legal educational programs, taking into account various factors, among which the most important are: the requirements of the Federal State Educational Standards in the field (of specialty); accounting of forecast data on the socio-economic development of the sectors of the economy; the need to develop a democratic rule-of-law state; the level of scientific research in the field of content and technologies for organizing legal training.

Productive and integral formation of legal culture of students can be ensured provided that the design content of the material at a textbook is based on the principle of modularity, problematical, historicity and independence reflection. At the same time, the general structure of the training module (as a structural unit of a manual) should include the following interrelated units: problem formulation, actualization, historical, theoretical, application, generalization, deepening and expansion, independent work, literature.

References

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