Social Skills Development In Modern Junior School

Abstract

The new standard of junior education in Russia formulates a necessity to develop a set of different social competences. We propose new diagnostic techniques to assess different aspects of social behavior. Our methods allow to estimate ability to interact constructively in the situation of cognitive conflict; readiness to listen and to conduct a dialogue; ability to distribute functions and roles in joint activity. We estimate the differentiating capabilities of the methods on the experimental results obtained in different schools of Moscow. Three different educational environments are treated. It is shown that in the situation of traditional junior education that is based on in individual work of students and special prescriptive type of “student-teacher” interaction (traditional educational environment) the ability of primary school graduates to work in a group is not developed. In these schools individual results are higher than the results of group problem solving. This fact is supported by a comparative assessment of the successful results in the school oriented on development of “children-children” interactions in educational process (so called “developmental education” worked out by D.Elkonin - V.Davydov).The obtained results prove that the technologies of developmental education are much more effective for the development of social competencies than traditional primary educational environment.

Keywords: Social competenceseducational environmentdiagnosticscognitive conflictjoint problem solving“Developmental education” school

Introduction

In the tradition of cultural - historical theory (Vygotsky, 1962), the emphasis is on the idea that the origin of internal forms of activity lies in the expanded forms of joint work of adults and children, children themselves. In this approach, a specially organized joint learning activity is considered to be a source of cognitive development of the child, on the one hand, and his socialization - on the other hand. System of “developmental education” worked out by Elkonin (1974) and Davydov (1972) is based on Vygotsky’s theoretical ideas and demonstrates their effectiveness in junior school education (Polivanova et al., 2013; Rubtsov, 2005; Zuckerman, 1993).

In the system of “developmental education” (DE) Elkonin (1974) and Davydov (1972) postulated the advantage of group and collective-distributed forms of organization of learning activity, involving interaction with both classmates and teachers, the inclusion of children in the collective discussion of learning problems (Garnier et al., 1991). In this case, the main method is dialogue, communication in the classroom, during which students are involved in joint activity, learn to formulate their points of view, compare them and logically resolve contradictions. At the same time, communication in joint activity allows to unite its participants, to carry out mutual informing of partners, to connect them more closely with the search for a joint solution to the learning problem. Some schools use ideas and technics of DE in their educational practice. Most of schools in Russia use another model of organization of learning activity, especially in junior school. Its typical features are individual training of skills, “student-teacher” communication, where the teacher puts a task, checks and assesses results, and a student just fulfils teachers commands. In this model communication is not integrated into the learning activity and doesn’t become a tool of problem solving.

Problem Statement

The new standard of junior education in Russia (2011) formulates a necessity to develop a set of different social competences. It’s a new trend in the development of the educational system that is a reaction to modern changes in educational content and values all over the world. But it also demonstrates that educational practice at last accepted Vygotsky’s theoretical ideas as an effective mechanism of child development by means of education. One of the attempts to introduce Vygotsky’s theory to educational practice is the so called “developmental education” worked out by Elkonin (1974) and Davydov (1972). Their theory of learning activity is implemented in a set of programs (math, native language, nature, arts) for junior school based on the following ideas:

• The goal of junior school education is assimilation of scientific concepts;

• The means of scientific concepts’ assimilation is “learning activity”.

The aim of the learning activity is to find a general way (method) to solve a learning problem, and the tools of learning activity’s implementation are different types of models and interaction with other students.

The general problem of our research is to find out how different junior school programs (and the correlating styles of “student-teacher” interactions) influence social competences’ development.

Research Questions

• To create diagnostic methods for evaluation of different social competences, such as an ability to overcome a group cognitive conflict situation, an opportunity to construct effective interaction for joint problem solving, to find strategy of communication adequate for special experimental conditions (for example, lack of information, distribution of elements necessary for problem solving between the group members and so on).

• To evaluate different school environments by the criterion of development of social competences.

Purpose of the Study

The aim of a study is to search factors of educational environment which influence the social competences development in junior school.

Research Methods

We have developed two methods to determine main social competences of junior school graduates.

Findings

In the “Conflict” procedure we compared individual and group solutions of the same problem in three samples of students, who study in different educational environments. Comparative analysis of the effectiveness of group work in a situation of socio-cognitive conflict was based on three indicators: the correctness of the result, coherence and coordination of actions of participants and strategy to overcome group disagreements.

The main indicator for assessing the level of consistency in our work was the comparison of the correctness of individual and group decisions. The degree of consistency of the group decision was determined by the way the group filled the empty cells: if the group draws a single pattern, it means that they came to a joint decision. If they write numbers taken from their individual forms, it means that they didn’t overcome a conflict and didn’t succeed in group work. The strategy of overcoming group disagreements was determined by the social parameters of interaction, revealed by us in the process of monitoring the work of the group.

The accuracy of individual and group decisions in the three student samples is shown in tables 1 and 2 . We see that the results of students in different school environments differ significantly both in individual and group decisions.

In individual work (table 1 ) students from the first educational environment demonstrate high results and fulfill correctly more than a half of a task (fill two and more sells of the matrix with correct numbers of pictures chosen in the individual sets). But in the joint work (table 2 ) their results increased slightly.

In “developmental” educational environment groups (table 2 ) work twice more effectively than their individual participants (1.3/3). It means that the adequate use of group forms in educational work significantly increases the efficiency of joint problem solving.

In the traditional educational environment individual results (table 1 ) are less than one correct cell. But was is more important, the results of joint problem solving (table 2 ) are worse than individual ones. It means that the group can be destructive if the students have no practice to interact constructively. That is, students of schools with a "traditional" educational environment are not able to build meaningful interaction, do not use constructive strategies for resolving group contradictions, and a cognitive conflict is translated into an interpersonal one.

At the same time, the positive attitude to work was quite high in all the surveyed samples. We received high rates of concerted student action (89, 91 and 60 per cent, respectively, in samples 1, 2 and 3). These data show that the readiness of children to work together is a necessary, but not sufficient condition for its high efficiency, implying, first of all, the formation of appropriate communicative competencies for educational activities.

The vast majority of groups of students in school with DE environment used a strategy of cooperation. All members of these groups actively interacted in solving the problem, offering their own versions of the solution. These data are consistent with the existing ideas that in the lower grades, enrolled in the programs of Elkonin (1974) and Davydov (1972), quite often there are attempts to keep the mismatch (conflict) in the complex process of finding an appropriate solution, and not the desire at all costs to approve their decision.

In the “Puzzle” technique, the basic principle of conflict was used to complicate the direct comparison of details (by the screens) and not to permit to solve a problem individually (by the distribution of details among the participants). The main indicator of group success in this technique is the number of correctly assembled geometric figures. But monitoring of group work permits also to evaluate verbal communication, containing a description and analysis of the characteristics of geometric details, their correlation and making a joint decision about the required figures. The results of “Puzzle” show that special limitations used in it permit to construct productive strategies of joint problem solving in schools where students have an experience of group work. In schools where group forms of learning activity are not used, these limitations completely destroy the process of problem solving.

Conclusion

According to the experimental data obtained, it can be argued that:

1. Methods "Conflict" and “Puzzle” have significant differentiating opportunities to assess the development of group work of children. They permit to evaluate the strategy and effectiveness of group work of students in the process of problem solving. The methods allow to identify universal communicative actions: the ability of a group of students to set a common goal, to agree on ways of action, to get out of a conflict situation and to resolve it constructively.

2. In the process of testing of these methods, 40 schools with a traditional educational environment (2100 students) were examined. On average, it was found that their ability to interact in the group while solving cognitive problems is formed insufficiently. In the organization of educational activities schools need to pay special attention to the formation of the ability of children to work together in the context of solving learning problems.

3. “Developmental education” school can be considered as an effective model for the formation of social competences in primary school.

References

1. Davydov, V. (1972). Types of generalization in learning. Moscow: Pedagogika.
2. Elkonin, D. (1974). Selected psychological works. Moscow: Znaniye.
3. Garnier, C., Bednarz, N., & Ulanovskaya, I. (1991). Apres Vygotski et Piaget. Bruxelles: De Boeck universite.
4. Polivanova, N., Rivina, I., & Ulanovskaya, I. (2013). Identifying the ability of primary school students to work together in a socio-cognitive conflict. Psychological science and education, 4. Retrieved from journal URL: http://psyedu.ru/journal/2013/4/Polivanova_Rivina_Ulanovskaya.phtml
5. Rubtsov, V. (2005). Social interaction and learning: cultural and historical context. Cultural and historical psychology, 1, 14-24.
6. Vygotsky, L. S. (1962). Thought and language. Cambridge, MA: MIT P.
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