The Influence Of Cultural-Educational Environment On The Social Practices Of Students

Abstract

The article presents the experience of theoretical understanding of the problem of the relationship between eventfulness and cultural-educational environment, eventfulness and social practices in the aspect of influence on the choice of social practices by students. Purpose of the Study: substantiate the relationship between the eventfulness of the cultural-educational environment and the choice of social practices by students. The research methodology consists of sociocultural, activity, personal-activity, environmental, eventfulness approaches. Theoretical research methods are used: analysis, synthesis, interpretation, systematization. In the process of developing the problem, an analysis of the basic concepts is presented, the essence of the relationship between the eventfulness and the cultural-educational environment, the influence of these events on the choice of social practices by young people is emphasized. The following levels are singled out and described: formalized eventfulness as specially organized, having pedagogical goal-setting (for example, educational events); informal eventfulness which are filled with student practices as subcultural; individual eventfulness, which is determined by the processes of formation of the inner life-purpose space, in which the developed cultural-educational environment is joined. It is concluded that the cultural-educational environment is filled with events and quasi-events. The latter, as a rule, have different endowed and demanded significance. The formal, informal, individual eventfulness of the cultural-educational environment stimulates young people to choose typical social practices for the CEE.

Keywords: Cultural-educational environmenteventeventfulnesssocial practiceschoice

Introduction

The choice of social practices by modern youth is one of the most pressing socio-cultural and pedagogical problems. This choice determines the sphere of realization of their social activity, significant characteristics of social identity, the direction of professional and personal growth and self-realization.

Pedagogy traditionally keeps in focus the specific systems, processes, phenomena that affect the development of the individual. In connection with the long-term domination of the activity approach (personality-activity, system-activity), the specific place in the Russian pedagogical and educational tradition is the characteristic of activity as a condition, means, environment of personal development. But along with this rather narrow understanding of activity, in recent decades, pedagogy has increasingly drawn to the idea of practice.

Social practices make it possible to consider motivated and purposeful typical variants of human activity (groups, community) that have existed for a long time in a sociocultural space. For an actor (a person in an active position included in social practice), this space is a kind of environment that provides an important condition for its growth and development. On the other hand, mastering and assumption of the environment becomes the content of particular social practices. At the same time, the process itself has obvious "fidutial points" – events that, on the background of everyday life, are important milestones that determine both the measure of the actor’s involvement in the process and the consequences of this inclusion.

Contemporary attention to events and events can be viewed as a sign of a paradigm shift in humanitarian scientific knowledge, since the subjective evaluations of life activity episodes, the influence of subjectively significant episodes on self-construction, self-determination and self-realization are recognized as significant. In most cases, this kind of significance influences the choice of social practices by young people, which may not coincide with pedagogically expedient and specially organized types and forms of activity.

Problem Statement

The research problem is determined by the necessity of a theoretical substantiation of the influence of the eventfulness of the cultural-educational environment on the choice of social practices by students. In this regard, it is important to consider the relationship between the eventfulness and the cultural-educational environment, the eventfulness and social practices. Understanding this relationship will allow us to talk about the possible influence of the eventfulness of the cultural-educational environment on the choice of social practices by the individual.

Research Questions

The sociocultural approach is fundamental for the analysis of the indicated problem, since it allows us to consider culture and education as a dialectical unity of cultural and social (Neuliep, 2014).

The group of activity approaches (personality-activity, subject-activity, system-activity, etc.) traditionally occupies one of the leading places in Russian pedagogy. The activity approach allows you to focus on activity as the leading form of personality activity, its typical features and directions, providing the opportunity to consider various generalizations, including the use of the concept of "practice". On the other hand, the personal-activity approach puts the personality as the initiator and bearer of various activities at the center of scientific analysis. This context allows you to pay attention to the age-related condition of various types of targeted activity, preferences and choice of practices by young people.

Based on the environmental approach, an important subject of pedagogical analysis and the corresponding context of appeal to the study of pedagogical reality is environment and environment formation, the influence of the environment on personality development (Fraser, 2015; Kalochristianakis et al., 2016; Remm, 2015).

The least developed in pedagogy is the eventfulness approach. From the point of view of D. V. Grigoriev, this approach provides "a view of the educational process as a dialectical unity of bright, memorable events in a child’s life and everyday life with its daily, but no less important matters" (Dictionary-guide…, 2002, p. 11).

Purpose of the Study

Purpose of the Study: substantiate the relationship between the eventfulness of the cultural-educational environment and the choice of social practices by students.

The research methodology consists of sociocultural, activity, personality-activity, environmental, eventfulness approaches.

Research Methods

Research methods such as analysis, generalization, interpretation, systematization were used.

Findings

In the study, the definition of the content of basic concepts is of independent importance. Cultural-educational environment (CEE) is a phenomenon described in Russian social and humanitarian studies by a significant number of authors. Against the general background of the work of (Belozertsev & Shcherbakova, 2016) stands out, (Kharlamova, 2010; Belozertsev & Shcherbakova, 2016), representatives of the scientific and pedagogical group of Yelets State University (Integration of migrant…, 2011) and others. Moreover, under the environment, we understand "the state, the totality of conditions, components, active stimuli, irritants, agents of human exposure" (Tenyukova & Khrisanova, 2013, p. 270).

Cultural-educational environment – a type of environment with the following essential features:

– CEE is a component of the sociocultural environment that is forming in the space of interaction between culture and education as social institutions;

– education at the same time acts as one of the organizing mechanisms of culture (Troncon, 2014). "Education is a child of national culture, to understand the education system of a certain society means to understand the structure of its life, its mentality. At the same time, education is a channel for transmitting the values ​​of world culture, to the same extent as national culture is its component. We emphasize only the special character of Russian culture, which has formed in the zone of tension of different civilizational flows, which set the dominant of openness, receptivity to samples of other cultures, but also special, specific forms of their “fusion”. To a large extent, this feature is expressed in the institute of national education" (Klyukhina, 2010, p. 46);

– cultural diversity is integrated in specific educational forms (formal, informal (Gros, 2016), non-formal) that generate and structure the cultural-educational environment. On the other hand, education illustrates the very possibility of integrating cultures, coexistence of cultural diversity in fixed practices;

– the cultural-educational environment is not reducible to fixed forms (for example, traditional cultural-educational institutions) and cultural-educational practices accepted in society. A significant layer of it is made up of informal practices (for example, the practice of self-education, subcultural self-realization, etc.);

– CEE ensures the inclusion of personality "in cultural and social relations of various types and levels; the development of its motivational-semantic sphere" (Tenyukova & Khrisanova, 2013, p. 269);

– the cultural-educational environment accumulates values ​​of various levels, diverse sociocultural experience, which is used to one degree or another to ensure the socialization and inculturation of new generations. Kharlamova (2010) notes:

Carrying out the development and preservation of socio-historical experience, culture, together with this, acts as a complex of objective, social and spiritual conditions in which the processes of personality socialization take place. In turn, the institutions of socialization (school, family, church), carrying out educational activities in a certain cultural space, perform the most important cultural function – selection and intergenerational translation of accumulated social experience (p. 10).

Appeal to the cultural-educational environment allows, from all the conditions, determining the choice of activity by young people, to focus on the most essential, coupled with the cultural and educational characteristics of life. Belozertsev and Shcherbakova, (2016), notes:

The cultural and educational environment is a carrier of rich, diverse, including contradictory, information that affects the mind, feelings, emotions, faith of the individual, and therefore provides the possibility of his going out to living knowledge. In this understanding, the environment appears as a kind of laboratory of a person’s spiritual, social, professional experience, and the algorithm for studying it is synchronized with the process of personality formation (p. 123).

Note that CEE inevitably absorbs typical social and cultural practices. Practice is also a generalized, ultimate in meaning, characteristic of the activity of the masses, of society as a whole, but it is also an active development of the world by an individual. In this regard, it is important that she accompanies individual manifestations of personality (background practices that fill CEE), and reveals it, showing preferences, mastered types and forms of life, sociocultural experience.

Social practices scale the space of life. As a result, a person, on the one hand, refers to the already developed types of activity, their estimated characteristics, on the other hand, gets the opportunity to choose and transform, update these practices. The developmental potential of social practices is correlated with this (Preyer & Peter, 2018; Tuomela, 2002).

The developing possibilities of social practice are associated with the eventfulness of the cultural-educational environment, since it is events that become points of intense self-determination, inclusion, and self-realization in selected types of activity (Greguras, Diefendorff, Person, & Troster, 2014). Attention to eventfulness marks the deepening of scientific knowledge of pedagogical reality. The criterion of events is the emotional-sensory response of a person to what is happening, the preservation of impressions, their influence on further life activities (direct or indirect, instantaneous or postponed).

Events and eventfulness, as noted by Volkova (2010), are actively studied at an interdisciplinary level. Among the researchers of this issue, in particular, "in the philosophy it is studied by A. Gryakalov, T. Shchitsova, in the psychology it is studied by of V. Drummers, E. Isaev and V. Slobodchikov, D. Elkonin, in philology it is studied by V. Shabes. <...>. in education <...> G. N. Prozumentova, O. I. Genisaretsky, L. Goryunova" (p. 18). From a pedagogical point of view, the following characteristics of events and eventfulness are important:

• defines a person’s memory, its most stable part;

• connected with meanings, designated by a person as "mine", as a result of which it becomes decisive for self-determination and self-realization, affects the formation of identity. As O. I. Genisaretsky notes, "the eventfulness lies in the communication plane: a meeting with a person, with an idea, with some situation, but the meeting is “yours”" (Genisaretsky, 2019);

• events are not necessarily formalized, clearly organized. They can be spontaneous. Their essential characteristic is developments, discovery. Any event brings certain changes to the experienced reality. Eventually, events determine personality innovations.

Cheredilina (2013) states: "The event is distinguished by:

– singleness (repeated repetition of the same things doesn’t perceived as an event and becomes only a stage of a process);

– the probability or uncertainty of what is happening (unlike a process whose result is known in advance; “an event is something that could have happened in a different way”); <...>

– intentionality (inseparability from human consciousness, an event is that which is meaningful, including an event itself; the process proceeds independently of human consciousness)".

Taking in consideration the above, we note that the eventfulness of the cultural-educational environment for modern students has several levels.

First, formal eventfulness are specially organized and have pedagogical goal-setting. Educational events can be attributed to this group of events.

Secondly, the informal eventfulness, which is saturated with the entire student life of young people. Its carriers are the communities formed in the university. Most events do not have a clear goal-setting, moreover, they are not aimed at achieving pedagogical goals.

Thirdly, individual eventfulness. It is determined by the processes of the formation of the internal life-meaning space, in which the assimilated cultural-educational environment is inevitably included.

This combination affects the choice of social practices in which the student is included. At the same time, it is important that social practices to some extent are antagonists of eventfulness, since they include a significant block of standardized activity, stereotypes. But many of them on a subjective level are not perceived by students. So, volunteer activity, according to all essential characteristics can be described as a social practice, when included in it, is perceived as a personal innovation. The status of this social practice in the cultural-educational space (a measure of eventfulness) has a significant impact in the choice of activity. If you reduce volunteering to a routine and minimize eventfulness, the choice of this social practice will be unstable. Moreover, public opinion, a variety of student communications mark this social practice as not worthy of attention. Moreover, as we understand it, it remains pedagogically appropriate and socially valuable. Obviously, it is the pedagogical understanding of the eventfulness of the cultural-educational environment, its maintenance and enrichment that can provide a more likely choice of significant social practices.

Conclusion

The use of the concepts of “cultural-educational environment”, "social practices", and "events" in pedagogical analysis allows us to take scientific reasoning to a new level: to consider phenomena of a high level of generalization as the basis for the analysis and understanding of pedagogical theory and educational practice. Obviously, the introduction of the concept of "cultural-educational environment" into scientific circulation was the result of understanding the role of education in maintaining and developing culture, and culture as a necessary and significant component of education. Environmental logic emphasizes the level of conditioning. But not all components of the environment equally affect the personality and its many choices. Events occupy a special place in human life, the essence of which, their representation in life, as well as their designing and organization, are increasingly considered as an urgent pedagogical task. The cultural-educational environment is replete with events and quasi-events. The latter, as a rule, have different endowed and demanded significance. The formal, informal, individual eventfulness of the cultural-educational environment stimulates young people to choose social practices that are typical for this CEE.

Acknowledgments

This article was prepared with the financial support of the Russian Foundation for Basic Research, project 18-013-00613a "Socio-pedagogical determinants of the formation of integrative properties of educational systems".

References

1. Belozertsev, E. P., & Shcherbakova, I. B. (2016). Kul'turno-obrazovatel'naya sreda provincii i zdorovyj obraz zhizni studenta (teoretiko-metodologicheskij aspekt): monografiya [Cultural-educational environment of the province and a healthy lifestyle of a student (theoretical and methodological aspect): monograph]. Voronezh: Printing house I. A. Bolkhovitinova.
2. Cheredilina, M. Yu. (2013). Sobytijnost' kak kategoriya v teorii obrazovaniya [Eventfulness as a category in the theory of education]. Business Education Right, 1 (22), 127-130.
3. Fraser, B. J. (2015). Environments for Education International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences (Second Edition), 820-823. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-097086-8.92077-4
4. Genisaretsky, O. I. (2019, April 2). The development of events in the personal-tribal and thought-related relation [Electronic resource]. Retrieved from http://prometa.ru/olegen/publications/152
5. Greguras, G., Diefendorff, J., Person, C., & Troster, Ch. (2014, January). Environment Fit and Self-Determination Theory. Retrieved from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/263484230_Person-Environment_Fit_and_Self-Determination_Theory
6. Gros, B.  (2016, September 6). The design of smart educational environments. Retrieved from: https://slejournal.springeropen.com/ articles/10.1186/s40561- 016-0039-x
7. Integraciya detej migrantov v kul'turno-obrazovatel'nuyu sredu regiona: nauchno-metodicheskoe posobie (2011). [Integration of migrant children in the cultural-educational environment of the region: scientific and methodological manual] / ed. N. A. Belkanova; N. A. Belkanov, I. A. Korotova, V. V. Makarov, N. A. Nekhoroshikh, D. D. Polyakov, I. B. Stoyanovskaya. Yelets: YSU named after I.A. Bunina, 229 p. [in Rus.].
8. Kalochristianakis, M., Vonorta, H., Stamoulias, A., Lakka, E., Kontakis, K., & Malamos, A. (2016, July). Experiential educational environments for cultural heritage. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/ publication/306926537_Experiential_Educational_Environments_for_Cultural_Heritage/
9. Kharlamova, M. A. (2010). Pedagogicheskie vozmozhnosti kul'turno-obrazovatel'noj sredy provincial'nogo goroda Rossii v duhovno-nravstvennom vospitanii uchashchihsya [Pedagogical possibilities of the cultural-educational environment of the provincial city of Russia in the spiritual and moral education of students]. Author. (Diss. For Doctoral degree), Vladimir. [in Rus.].
10. Klyukhina, A. I. (2010). Vliyanie globalizacii na kul'turno-obrazovatel'nuyu sredu [Influence of globalization on the cultural-educational environment]. World of science, culture, education, 2, 45-47.
11. Slovar'-spravochnik po teorii vospitatel'nyh sistem (2002). [Dictionary-guide on the theory of educational systems] / comp. P.V. Stepanov. Moscow: Pedagogical Society of Russia, 32 p. [in Rus.].
12. Troncon, L. (2014, July). Educational environment. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/288277736_Educational_environment
13. Neuliep, J. W. (2014). Intercultural Communication: A Contextual Approach. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc; Sixth Edition.
14. Preyer G., & Peter, G. (2018). Raimo Tuomela’s Philosophy of Sociality. International Journal of Advances in Philosophy, 2(1), 1-14. Retrieved from: https://doi.org/
15. Remm, T. (2015). Sociocultural Space: Spatial Modelling and the Sociocultural World. Tartu: University of Tartu Press.
16. Tenyukova, G. G., & Khrisanova, G. G. (2013). Kul'turno-obrazovatel'naya sreda fakul'teta kak faktor professional'noj podgotovki pedagoga-muzykanta [The cultural-educational environment of the faculty as a factor in the professional training of the teacher-musician]. World of science, culture, education, 4, 269-272.
17. Tuomela, R. (2002). The Philosophy of Social Practices: A Collective Acceptance View. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
18. Volkova, N. V. (2010) Obrazovatel'naya sobytijnost' innovacionnogo opyta gumanitarnoj shkoly [Educational events of the innovative experience of the humanitarian school]. Bulletin of the North-Eastern Federal University named after M.K. Ammosova. 7(1), 78-82.