Psychological-Pedagogical Conditions To Shape System Of Value Among Teenagers

Abstract

The article discusses the problems of public education, which must be revised to reflect the new realities of social life that prompts the need to shape the scientific understanding towards the issue reflecting the value system formation among young people that is becoming an urgent problem to study in modern psychological and educational research. The priority task in parenting and educating is to develop a highly moral individual who shares the traditional spiritual values, has relevant knowledge and skills, and is able to reveal his potential in conditions of the modern society. Development relies on the system of spiritual and moral values that have emerged in the process of society cultural development, such as philanthropy, justice, honor, conscience, will, personal dignity, faith in goodness and desire to fulfill the moral duty to himself, his family and his Fatherland. Value system sets the features and the nature of relationship of run by an individual, his interaction with the surrounding reality, which, to some extent, determines his behavior. The current stage in the society development, the changes taking place in the world require the expansion and deepening the research investigating the value system features that are typical to younger generation, because such study, bringing better understanding of the issue, is necessary for our country to solve the problems that arise. Modern adolescents/teenagers are a special social group that represents a definite indicator to some changes observed in the society.

Keywords: Teenagers/adolescentsvalue systempersonality socializing

Introduction

At present, the development of the Russian society is linked with the processes of humanization and democracy, which creates conditions to make some qualitative improvements in people’s life not only materially, but spiritually and morally - the processes concerning the formation of value system among the younger generation. Personality shaping, its development and changes are taking place continuously, in phases when the internal driving forces allow an individual to independently determine his goals and objectives in the life path. Value system in an individual development is a certain regulator and mechanism to personal development, which determines the way in which the intended goals will be achieved.

Problem Statement

The changes happening in the society are able to alter the value system among present-day teenagers. This issue is research-based needed to understand what new realities exist to take them into account in structuring the process targeted at improvements in public education. In this vein, the issue towards the value system formation is becoming one of the urgent to study in the modern physiological and pedagogical research (Gogitsaeva, 2014; Zatorova, 2008; Semenov, 2007).

The relevance of this study concludes in a particular social situation in which the present-day teenagers are living: ex-values have lost their meaning but the new ones have not shaped yet. In this case teenagers are given a chance to do their own choice of those moral, political, social, and spiritual values that will be the fundamentals in building up a new future society.

Research Questions

Theory and methodology-based arguments towards personality formation among teenagers, as a full-fledge participant in modern social processes, has been always reflected in pedagogical, philosophical and culture studies publications, as well as, in sociology and social pedagogy research (Vakhitova, 2015; Guriev, 2014; Istratova & Koshel, 2014).

So, we see a wide range of studies towards the topic under discussion. However, they have not sufficiently studied the issue of psychological and pedagogical conditions influencing the formation of value system among the modern adolescents, which leads to the following contradictions: 1) the State sets the task of necessity to shape a highly moral personality, but there are no mechanisms towards the formation of value system, so the outcome is not satisfactory; 2) the younger generation rejects the value ideals of the past, contrasting its own picture of the world with it and does not see the mechanisms to assimilate this experience to digest the information. These contradictions led to necessity to take into consideration this research topic. From these contradictions the problem of the study follows: what psychological and pedagogical conditions contribute to the formation of value system in the environment in which the youth is living?

The study object is to the value system of adolescents at the age 14-16 years old.

The subject of the study is psychological and pedagogical conditions assisting in formation of value system among the modern adolescents. Value is called the notion of the greatest significance for an individual, which takes place a high position in his system of values and determines the nature of his personality.

The core in personality is a set of values that are important for a person in taking decisions and actions. The division into values-are-goals and values-are-means is one of the fundamentals introducing the grounds for values topology.

Rokich divides human values into terminal and instrumental ones (as cited in Zhazhina, 2012). Values are shaped under influence of the external factors - social, political, economic, and technological, as well as, educational ones within the family concepts (what is possible and what is impossible, what is good and what is bad). A child unconsciously assimilates or does not assimilate the most effective technologies of life. In a certain historical period and events the parenting and upbringing approaches are approximately similar based on common ideas and goals, therefore, the values shaped in one period of time are shared by the majority of people who belong to one generation (Borisova & Gurieva, 2014; Golub, 2009; Fedorishkin, 2006).

Purpose of the Study

The society-based values acquire their meaning and power, as the inner activity regulator, from the society inside and drive an individual to achieve the social meaningful purposes. At the same time, the presence in individual’s value system the society values determines the fact of individual’s self-satisfaction from doings targeted at personal needs, as it seems to him, whereas, he is acting in line with the society interests.

The purpose of the study is to identify and verify through experimental way how the psychological and pedagogical conditions influence the value system formation among young people aged at 14-16.

Research Methods

The methodology of the study includes the modern insights based on the integrating approach about the youth as a social group. We also apply some theoretical methods: analysis, synthesis, modelling, comparativeness, classification; and empirical ones: projecting, observations, interviewing (parents and teachers), surveys, testing at a certain level of value system in conformity with the method of M. Rokich, psychological and pedagogical experiment, concluding.

Findings

Specificity of psychological and pedagogical conditions implies the analysis on the mechanisms involved into shaping the value system among teenagers.

In school years, peers, some respected and important adults and mass media, inter alia the Internet have the significant impact on the personality development (Gukalenko, 2003; Kochisov, Gogitsaeva, Kochisov, & Kochisov, 2015; Fantalova, 2012). Such a diverse environment does not exclude either a negative impact on the personality and the possibility of asocial behavior formation. Up to 15 – 18 years old, the personality is thought to be formed and in its further shaping the contribution is made by the other institutions. They use other means capable to affect its moral and psychological changes. External factors that shape the personality can serve micro-factors, mezo-factors, macro-and mega-factors.

Individual experience of a teenager with all sets of components, such as: moral, ethical, emotional-semantic, objective, axiological, and evaluative, acts as a product of psychological and educational activities. Products of psychological and pedagogical activity can be assessed when performing training and control activities, solving problems according to criteria, as well as at exams and tests. Diagnosis of the result occurs when comparing the qualities of a teenager at the beginning of training and after its completion in all phases of human development.

Adolescence is built around an identity crisis. All changes in the self-consciousness of a teenager are of great importance for his development. Adolescence opens for a child a new world, including the inner one. The ability to be aware of oneself leads to personal reflection.

Researchers in this field note that teenagers feel particularly difficult, since they are in a situation of becoming and developing self-awareness. Going away from the old patterns transmitted by parents, separation from parents, ‘devaluation of parents, their words and actions’, as well as the importance of teenagers’ goals to achieve a better life that will be different from their parents. A teenager often destroys the entire value system that parents, education and the state have created. Finding ‘yourself and your own path’ is truly the main challenge for a teenager. The questions - ‘Who am I?’, ‘What is the meaning of life?’ ‘Where to go?’ are becoming the main questions for him.

In this critical situation for a teenager, he is seeking for the way out. We see the solution through a number of psychological and pedagogical conditions, such as: joint activities, skill-based actions, programmatic approach. Our study was drawn to the value system, which determines the characteristics and nature of the relationship of an individual with the surrounding reality and, thereby, to a certain extent, determines his behavior.

To conduct the study, we needed to form the experimental group consisting of school children at the age 14-16 years. The experiment was based in Municipal Secondary School No 3 in Vladikavkaz. The study involved 70 participants.

We have evaluated the value system of adolescents. This system is an important condition for the personal, professional, and self-determination and development of the modern adolescents. In total, 100 pupils of the 10th and 11th grades participated in the study. In the course of the study, a survey was conducted, as diagnostics ‘Value System Determination’ (Rokich, 1962), inter alia, we conducted some observation, conversation, training within the program ‘Basics of Culture’.

According to the results of Rokich (1962) technique: the level of ‘concrete’ values ​​is 40%, the level of ‘abstract’ is 60% and 57%, here the respondents answered with some contradictions, which indicates about instability in accepting the value system. Considered preferences per each schoolchild along 2 types of activity (the highest scores on the scales), the lowest rates were not taken into account. Accordingly, the percentage is not a multiple of 100%. According to the results of the survey we revealed the following: Material - 35%. Altruistic - 25%. Leisure - 10%. Appearance - 19%. Family-household - 9%. Status - 2%. The remaining values were distributed least.

Based on the facts above, we can conclude that the majority of adolescents have excessive demands to life, with some contradictory in goals. The results obtained allow to draw a number of conclusions: there are some gaps in educating policy in schools intended to young people; a decline in the formation of value system may entail distortions of a professional strategy of a life path (Gukalenko, 2003). In accordance with the results of the diagnostics, it was found that the majority of the respondents in the experimental group have in prevailing some instability of needs. The results of the study showed there is the need of launching the program aimed at formation of value system among the respondents of this group.

The program includes 5 topics:

Training on immersion (testing),

Values and their role in a person’s life. The place of values in my life.

Techniques of joint activities (multiple-purposed projects)

Social projects

Skill-based activities and final testing.

The entrance testing was conducted during preliminary stage in order to determine the initial level of the value system. Training-immersion with included classes on ‘Values and their role in people’s life’, ‘Values – what they matter for me’ allowed to shape trust-based relations between children and teachers (Alieva, 2006). Children determined what is valuable per each one and tried to identify the place of values in their life. The next step was the class titled “My strengths and weaknesses”. The class dealt with the concept ‘I am’ and the main components of this were considered. The adolescents could shape the insights about I am as dynamic concept, as real concept, as fiction concept, as ideal concept, as imaginative concept. The tasks as ‘Two sides of one coin’, ‘Your strength and weak sides’, ‘Who you are?’ seemed very interesting to the teenagers. They gained the holistic view about their personality and became more confident in their life positions. Modern young people more often express not adequate self-estimation and exaggerated demands towards the reality. Understanding the personality integrity allows to adjust self-estimation and the expectation expressed to the reality. After completing one set of exercises, the guys were ready to move on to the next stage. At this stage, the business game ‘Save the World in a Week’ was held with the teenagers. The game uses the technology of the game-living facilitating self-identity in the society.

Moving on to the next stage, it is important to note that the young generation, since ancient times, had and has the intention to cross out the experience of previous generations and create one’s own, this is the essence of human development and at the same time it is necessary to preserve the experience of the past generations, so that ‘not create a bicycle again’.

As part of this phase, the children needed to complete a social project. The authors at this stage applied the technology of joint activity. The experience in school as a teacher-psychologist makes it possible to see global problems in education related to the psychological and pedagogical conditions in formation of value system among teenagers. The standard lesson-based system is losing the importance for young people. Non-standard format as Youtube, for instance, is becoming more interesting teaching instrument through which learning material can be studied. The brain storming technique was pointed out by the children as one of the interesting and socially important activities. Then, the authors carried out the tutorial, i.e. they built an educational route remotely accompanied the execution of the project. The guys held a class at the school within the course ‘Fundamentals of Culture’. They were delighted with presentation of the project. A number of other projects were carried out. All projects were brought to a theoretical conclusion. Several projects have received the practical application.

At the final stage the own individual activity is being understood better due to self immersion into the topic to be interested, that helping the participants to digest information that was collected during the project. The guys, working over the projects, have been involved into activities that are meaningful to them. They are learning through creativity ‘skill-based actions’ in certain fields of knowledge. So, working over the project the guys deepened their knowledge in the history of the native city. They tried themselves as administrator, journalist, sociologist and video blogger. We received ‘skills knowledge’ in such areas as journalism, local history, video editing and organization of a sociological survey, gained experience as a teacher. During the classes, not all participated in the game exercises. Some initially refused to participate at all. The overall impression the guy taken from the classes is positive. While doing some project tasks, the guys were becoming more active and participated with interest (Gurieva & Udavikhina, 2015).

In conclusion we conducted the analysis targeted at programmes efficacy, achievements evaluation, problems identification and projecting the ways of their possible solutions. After the final testing was held that was based on the same techniques which were used in the initial diagnostics with the aim at verifying the efficacy of the program. In repeated testing there was found out that the group increased the level of the value system, the interaction in the group was improved. Some group members became more open in the dialogue. As a result of the experiment, the communication between teenagers (peers) became easier. At the end of the class, the teenagers shared their impressions about the classes. They came to the general opinion that they began to evaluate the real life differently; some of the guys reviewed their attitude towards education, parents and teachers.

Thus, after conducting the events, the final testing showed the following outcomes: the level of the value system of more than half the participants became more pronounced, and less than half the participants remained at the same level; the psychological climate in the group has become more favorable, the psychological atmosphere is light and good communication prevails, it has become more pleasant for the teenagers to be in a team.

At the re-diagnostics, the results showed a positive dynamics. Consequently, it can be concluded that the designed and tested program, training-immersion, game-living technology, technology of joint activities, tutorial and ‘skill-based knowledge’, influenced the development of the value system and turned out to be the effective remedial tool. Also, in our opinion, the most effective forms of working with a group were discussions, since everyone could express their opinions and the whole group was concentrated on seeking for the most optimal solution to the problem. In order to identify the effectiveness of the program that we implemented, a phase analysis was carried out according to the methods of the ascertaining phase of the study, which demonstrated a positive dynamics.

Also the qualities such as high demands, courage in protecting the opinion, responsibility and rationalism were more expressed at the end than they were identified at the initial phase.

Conclusion

To sum up, our research should say that the formation of the value system is a multi-dimensional, complex and lengthy process, but it is very needed in developing the personality of a teenager that will guarantee to him the successful socialization. The simulated psychological-pedagogical program targeted at shaping the value system among adolescents, being tested during the experiment, contributes much to the study final goals. We noted the positive dynamics in it. The schoolchildren within the program had the opportunity to develop self-awareness, namely the experience of adulthood and ‘I am’ concept. In the course of our study, the existence of the relationship of psychological and pedagogical conditions and the formation of value system was proved.

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