The Concept Of Value Self-Determination Of Children And Youth

Abstract

The concept of value self-determination of an individual is presented taking into account such trends of modern life as turbulence, value uncertainty, singularity. The concept enriches the insufficiently developed pedagogical aspects of scientific knowledge about the influence of childhood psychological trauma on the value self-determination of children and youth. As a methodological basis for the concept, a systematic approach is substantiated that describes value self-determination in terms of "situation", "being", "event"; anthropological, characterizing the non-systemic aspects of value self-determination in terms of “experience”, “co-experience”, “attitude”; axiological, the units of research of which are “value”, “meaning”, “self-determination”. The structure of value self-determination integrates the processes of "crystallization" of values ​​as a conscious or unconscious process of value formation, generated by acute and intense experience, has been substantiated; value generation of meaning - awareness of the personal meaning of values ​​in the process of “experiencing the past”; value formation of meaning as a specially organized process of comprehending the meaning and acquiring the personal meaning of values ​​in specially designed situations of communication and activity.

Keywords: Self-determination of children and youth

Introduction

The self-determination of children and youth in the world of values ​​has always been and continues to be in the focus of pedagogical science, since the process of upbringing is aimed at developing the child's ability to choose values ​​that he will both consciously and unconsciously be guided by in his life. The modern federal state educational standards of general education of the Russian Federation are focused on value development, the personal results of which include the traditional values ​​of the family, Russian civil society, the multinational Russian people, humanity, etc. (Danilyuk et al., 2009).

Problem Statement

The study of the value self-determination of children and youth requires taking into account such trends of modern life as turbulence, value uncertainty, singularity, since these processes have a significant impact on the formation of value-semantic concepts, value relationships, behaviour, giving them new features and properties. So, for example, the turbulence of modern life, reflecting the unpredictability and swiftness of its changes, which cannot be described in terms of "controlled chaos", manifests itself in the continuous change of habitual and stable ideas of people about values, about what should be, reasonable and useful. Therefore, the turbulent nature of modern life sets the same rapid variability of values ​​and gives dynamism to the process of value self-determination.

The phenomenon of value uncertainty is caused by the inability of society to purposefully set value guidelines for the development of the social and spiritual life of a person who finds himself in a situation of an unstable present and an unpredictable future. Uncertainty means freedom of choice, mobility, a wide range of opportunities to try yourself in different spheres of life.

In the aspect of value self-determination, this means the unlimited possibilities of using a person's inner resource based on a wide range of values ​​that are not set from the outside. Singularity characterizes the significance of individual life events for the value self-determination of a person, the consequences of which cannot be modelled due to their uniqueness and singularity. In other words, the singularity of modern life from the standpoint of value self-determination reflects the uniqueness and intrinsic value of the individual life experience of an individual.

Research Questions

Problem analysis of the phenomenon of "value self-determination", the study of the features of modern life served as the basis for setting the problem in the experimental plane of research aimed at solving several issues:

• The first question of the research is to study the degree of research of the phenomenon of "value self-determination" in pedagogical and psychological science and the definition of unfilled "gaps" of scientific knowledge.
• The second question posed concerns the definition of methodological approaches to the consideration of the nature of value self-determination.
• The third question of the research involves obtaining new scientific information about how psychological trauma of early childhood affects the processes of self-determination in the field of values.
• The fourth research question of this work is related to the search and updating of methodological approaches and conceptual foundations of the process of value self-determination.

Purpose of the Study

The purpose of the study is to develop a concept that includes a methodological substantiation, structure and content of value self-determination of children and youth.

Research Methods

The research was carried out by a set of interrelated theoretical and empirical methods adequate to the studied phenomenon. So, to answer the first question of the research, we used the method of comparative analysis of various approaches to understanding value self-determination in the works of Vshivtseva (2013), Gorshkova (2013), Kiryakova (1996), Nevleva and Cohan (2016), Teplyakov (2013).

The analysis made it possible to fix and analyze various points of view and positions in relation to the essence of value self-determination, to reveal its differences from other types of self-determination. It was found that the value self-determination of a person occurs in the context of cultural transformations, value relativism and is considered as:

• a multilevel dynamic system that regulates life goal-setting based on the systematization of values;
• complex dynamic personal education, developed on the basis of value orientations;
• the process and result of acquiring meanings in the world of values on the basis of personal experience when correlating it with the cultural and historical achievements of mankind.

The identification of insufficiently studied areas of scientific knowledge about the phenomenon of value self-determination in various categories of children was carried out by the method of problem analysis. The value self-determination of adolescent students in the process of school education in general education schools is quite fully presented in the works of Grigorenko (2013), who described its procedural characteristics and stages. Reprintseva (2017) described the level structure of a student's value self-determination in the process of studying school disciplines. The formation of value orientations of schoolchildren by means of cultural technologies is substantiated in the study by Surkova (2009). Difficulties and contradictions of value self-determination are identified and described in the works of Klimov (2007) and Krivtsova (2014). It should be noted that researchers have turned to the problem of preparing teachers for solving problems related to value self-determination. For example, the formation of a future teacher's readiness to organize the value-orientated activity of students is presented in the works of Zhmetko (2007).

Problem analysis has shown that to date, sufficiently rich theoretical and empirical material has been accumulated about the prerequisites, reasons, content, mechanisms of value self-determination, which took place in conditions of relative political, economic, and social stability. In addition, insufficient research has been established of the influence of singular events, for example, children's psychological trauma of children on the process of value self-determination, which made it necessary to turn to a causal analysis of works devoted to the study of psychological (mental, mental) trauma, its sources, mechanisms of formation, influence on the process of value self-determination of the individual.

During the analysis, it was found that the classical psychoanalytic theories of Freud (2006), Jung (2017) considered mental trauma as a deeply rooted and unconscious affect, the source of which is a split human psyche, and the consequences are various neurotic disorders. In these theories, trauma was considered in the context of psychological defences - denial (refusal to acknowledge a fact or event), transformation (emotional reassessment of a traumatic event), identification (getting used to a traumatic situation, "getting used to" it), substitution (replacing some reactive actions with others), compensation (making up for imaginary or real shortcomings through personal efforts). In modern psychoanalytic theory, Johnson (2001) associates psychological trauma with early solutions to such existential problems of human existence as satisfaction of needs, attachment, self-determination and self-realization. From the point of view of Selye (1979), psychological trauma is considered as a form of reaction to stress factors that overload a person's adaptive capabilities. In the understanding of Levin (2001), psychotrauma is an individual reaction to a situation or event that “breaks through” a person's protective capabilities, causing mental stress, frustration, stress, depression, which a person is unable to overcome on his own. Researchers are unanimous in the opinion that psychological trauma, especially those associated with disorders of children's attachment, are pathogenic factors of value self-determination, since they distort, deform and polarize the value sphere of the child.

For example, in the works of Keck and Kupecki (2012), there is a lot of experimental evidence that in the life experience of a forming personality with antisocial and criminal values ​​there were psychological trauma associated with early isolation, loss of love or trust in parents, their prolonged absence or death, frequent change of guardians, life in institutions that do not provide conditions for the development of personal attachments. The presented points of view, revealed by the method of cause-and-effect analysis, reflect a different understanding of the essential characteristics of psychological trauma, nevertheless, common in all definitions is their indirect influence on the value self-determination of a person.

The fourth research question demanded an appeal to the methodological analysis of approaches to the modern understanding of the essence of value self-determination. We assumed and present evidence that the most significant methodological approaches can be three - systemic, anthropological, axiological. The systematic approach allows you to see a picture of the real life of a forming personality, to understand the circumstances and causes of its social situation of development, to identify general trends and foundations of the process of value self-determination as samples and norms of "ought", adopted in a given society; the conditions in which they are assimilated; expected results of their manifestation in behaviour, communication, activity. Consideration of value self-determination from the standpoint of a systems approach allows us to describe its general characteristics in terms of “being”, “situation”, which seems to us a necessary but not sufficient condition. It is necessary to take into account the fact that this phenomenon has non-systemic grounds associated with the child's individual experience of his situation, different perceptions of its value and meaning, which gives the process of value self-determination the unique character of an “isolated case” (Raschetina, 2019).

The study of non-systemic aspects of value self-determination required turning to the anthropological approach, which considers the individual as a living feeling, experiencing being, possessing reason, consciousness and spirituality, capable and striving for self-change. From the standpoint of the anthropological approach, value self-determination acts as a deeply internal personal process described in terms of "experience", "co-experience", "attitude". Theoretical comprehension of value self-determination from the standpoint of the anthropological approach complements the system segment with the study of the subjective world of experiences, events and attitudes towards these events, the ways of living in difficult situations chosen by the individual and solving the problems of his own life. We believe that comprehending the objective within the framework of the systemic approach and the subjective within the framework of the anthropological gives us the keys to understanding how these two worlds intersect in the consciousness and emotional attitude of the individual, how personal meanings are formed in values ​​transmitted from the outside, and how they are transformed into internal plan.

Objective and subjective realities "intersect" in the individual's worldview, forming points of "crystallization" of values ​​that are born on the basis of personally significant experiences of facts, events, situations. This understanding of value self-determination turned our research to an axiological approach, in which the individual is viewed as the main value, “axiological spring”, and his value self-determination is the main goal of personality development and the main goal of education. The units of research from the standpoint of the axiological approach are “value”, “meaning”, “value self-determination”.

The development of the concept of value self-determination was carried out by the design method, during which empirical material was taken into account, containing data from the biographies of 982 children of various categories - students of general education schools, university students, inmates of orphanages, centres for helping families and children, cadet corps, Mariinsky gymnasiums, educational colonies for minors (Yakovleva, 2020).

The concept substantiates and describes the structure of value self-determination, which includes the processes of “crystallization” of values, value generation of meaning, value formation of meaning. We introduce the working concept of "crystallization" of values ​​for the figurative representation of the process of superposition of objective and subjective reality, which gives an interference picture, in which there are points of coincidence of externally transmitted values ​​and values ​​of the actual experience of a forming personality. These are points of formation, growth and enhancement of the significance of events, phenomena, people, points of their "crystallization" into future stable personally significant value meanings, goals of life and tools for achieving these goals. If the externally set values ​​and their personal meanings are directly opposite (do not coincide), they are extinguished, and there will be no crystallization. The "embryos" or microscopic fragments of the future structure of values, on which they will grow, are experiences and emotional reactions to the situation of development. The stronger the experience, the longer and more intense it is, the sharper the reaction, the greater, resistant to decay, and potentially capable of growth, the "embryo" on which value will crystallize. The environment in which future values ​​will crystallize are the circumstances of the individual's life, playing the role of a "supersaturated solution" of events, circumstances to which he needs to somehow adapt, and sometimes just survive. The crystallization medium can be described by a set of properties, including favourability/pathogenicity, homogeneity/anisotropy, constancy/variability, intensity/weakness. Thus, by the process of crystallization, we mean a deeply internal conscious or unconscious process of the formation of values, generated by an acute and intense experience.

In his memories, a person often returns to childhood experiences, reflects on them, subjects them to reflection, reliving past events anew. In the course of this process, called by Husserl (2009) "the experience of the experienced", the value-semantic foundations of their emotions, feelings, moods, experiences, actions, activities are realized and understood. " Reflection of the past is the advancement of an individual along the line of “experiencing the past” - “awareness of its meaning” - “awareness of its value”. The forms of reflection can be autobiographies, essays, diaries, letters to a friend, written poems and stories, the content of which reveals their childhood experiences and psychological trauma.

Therefore, the second process of value self-determination, we consider the value generation of meaning - the awareness of the meaning of values ​​through actual experience, the experience of the past, the experience of the future. Value-generating meaning also means the birth of new values, the replacement of values ​​that have lost their significance for the individual with others that are more relevant at the moment of development.

When we understand how and what values ​​are crystallized in the process of experiencing, how their meaning is generated in the process of experiencing the experience, we can turn to another “access code” - value formation through the word. Valuable meaning formation includes awareness of the meaning of a word, comprehension of the system of connections that stands behind a word that denotes the value of a certain value, for example, the meaning of the words "man", "life", nature, "work". At the same time, the process of awareness should be complemented by an emotional response. W. Frank argued that every situation of experience has a meaning that cannot be given, but can be found. According to Frankl (1990), even suffering has meaning, since it contains a requirement that must be heard in order to become different, and one of the ways to acquire meaning is to experience the values ​​of creativity; love as the main way to understand another person and the deepest essence of his personality.

We share his position that the formation of personal meaning can be actualized and supported in spontaneously arising and specially created communication situations, in educational, labour, sports and other events that cause bright positively coloured experiences. The ability to induce such experiences is possessed by cultural artifacts - literary, musical, artistic, choreographic, which excite value-rich images when perceived. By value sense formation, we mean a specially organized process of comprehending the meaning and acquiring a personal meaning of values ​​in specially designed situations of communication and activity.

Findings

A problematic analysis of the phenomenon of "value self-determination" showed that his research refers to the period of relative stability of society (political, economic, social) and does not take into account such trends of modern life as the dynamism and speed of change in all areas of human life (turbulence), the diversity of values ​​(value uncertainty), the significance of single individual events, for example, psychological trauma of early childhood (singularity). In addition, the problem analysis showed that the processes of value self-determination were mainly studied in general education schools, that is, adolescents and young people of boarding schools (orphanages, centres for helping families and children, cadet corps, Mariinsky gymnasiums, educational colonies) and organizations of secondary vocational and higher education. Methodological approaches to the process of value self-determination have been substantiated. The systematic approach takes into account the trends of modern life, allows us to identify aspects of orientation and self-determination in the world of values ​​that are common for all categories of children and youth. It is shown that the study of non-systemic aspects of value self-determination as an intrapersonal process determined by unique events in the life of an individual is possible on the basis of an anthropological approach. The modern understanding of value self-determination from the standpoint of the axiological approach allows us to understand the result of the "interaction" of externally set values ​​and the birth of their personal meaning in an individual.

The influence of psychological trauma as a singular event on the process of value self-determination is shown. Of particular importance are the psychological trauma of early childhood - isolation, loss of love or trust in parents, their prolonged absence or death, frequent change of guardians, various forms of abuse that distort, deform the value picture of the world.

The presented concept is built taking into account the trends of modern life, the uniqueness and intrinsic value of the individual life experience of an individual. The structure of value self-determination is substantiated, which integrates the processes of “crystallization” of values, value generation of meaning, value formation of meaning. By the process of “crystallization” of values, we mean a deeply internal conscious or unconscious process of the formation of values, generated by an acute and intense experience. Value-generating meaning is the awareness of the meaning of values ​​through actual experience, the experience of the past, the experience of the future. Value generation also means the birth of new values, the replacement of values ​​that have lost their significance for individuals with others that are more relevant at the moment of development. Value-based meaning formation is viewed as a specially organized process of comprehending the meaning and acquiring the personal meaning of values ​​in specially designed situations of communication and activity.

Conclusion

Let's analyse the presented concept from the standpoint of completeness/incompleteness of its individual provisions. The concept is built taking into account the trends of modern life - turbulence, value uncertainty, singularity, each of which requires further detailed consideration.

The dynamism and speed of changes in all areas of human life is a continuous and fundamentally unfinished process that changes both the surrounding world and the human personality. This requires further empirical research using the methods of factor analysis, which establishes the relationship and mutual influence of political, economic, social and other changes on the value world of a person.

To develop the concept, additional research is also needed on value uncertainty, aimed at obtaining empirical data on the influence of such phenomena as globalization, multiculturalism, value relativism on the diversity of values. These data will enrich the concept with ideas about the diversity of values ​​in the modern world in the categories similarity/opposition, development/destruction, unity/struggle.

The concept shows the significance for value self-determination of single individual events on the example of psychological trauma of early childhood, which, of course, is insufficient. Further research is needed in the field of expanding the spectrum of singular events that affect the value self-determination of various categories of children and youth.

To study the processes of early "crystallization" of values ​​in various categories of children and youth, further empirical studies are planned on large samples of children, aimed at obtaining new scientific knowledge about the mechanisms of conscious or unconscious value formation processes generated by acute and intense experiences of the past, present and future.

Unfinished and open remains the position of the concept of the process of value formation of meaning as a specially organized process of comprehending the meaning and acquiring the personal meaning of values ​​in specially designed situations of communication and activity. This provision requires additional consideration of the mechanisms of meaning formation, technological description, organizational and methodological support in the conditions of raising children and youth in educational and social organizations of various types.

References

• Danilyuk, A. Ya., Kondakov, A. M., & Tishkov, V. A. (2009). The concept of spiritual and moral development and education of the personality of a citizen of Russia. Enlightenment.

• Frankl, V. (1990). A man in search of meaning. (Ed.) L. Ya. Gozman and D. A. Leontiev. Progress.

• Freud, Z. (2006). Basic psychological theories in psychoanalysis. Translated by M. V. Wolf, A. A. Spektor. M.: AST.

• Gorshkova, V. V. (2013). Value relitivism in the context of the dialogue of cultures, Materials of the XIII International Likhachev Scientific Readings "Dialogue of Cultures: Values, Meanings, Communication". (SPb).

• Grigorenko, D. L. (2013). Value self-determination of adolescent students in the process of school education. St. Petersburg.

• Husserl, E. (2009). Ideas for pure phenomenology and phenomenological philosophy. Academic project.

• Johnson, S. M. (2001). Character psychotherapy. Center for psychological culture.

• Jung, C. G. (2017). The problems of the soul of our time. Peter.

• Keck, G., & Kupecki, R. (2012). Raising an orphan child who has experienced mental trauma. Moscow.

• Kiryakova, A. V. (1996). The theory of personality orientation in the world of values. Publishing house of the OGPU.

• Klimov, V. V. (2007). Valuable self-determination of the individual: difficulties and contradictions. OSU Bulletin, 7, 111 - 116.

• Krivtsova, E. V. (2014). Research of personal value self-determination. Bulletin of the KemSU, 1(57), 77-81.

• Levin, K. (2001). Dynamic psychology: Selected works. Under the general editorship of D. A. Leontiev and E. Yu. Patyaeva. M.: Smisl.

• Nevleva, I. S., & Cohan, J. S. (2016). Culture as a system of values: a psychological and cultural excursion. Nauchnye vedomosti, 24(245), 177-180.

• Raschetina, S. A. (2019). Conceptual substantiation of the problem of value orientation of a child in unstable conditions of society. MNKO, 5(78).

• Reprintseva, Yu. S. (2017). The level structure of a student's value self-determination in the process of studying school geography. Bulletin of TSPU, 8(185), 122-124.

• Selye, G. (1979). Stress without distress. Under the editorship of E. M. Kreps. Progress.

• Surkova, L. V. (2009). Formation of value orientations of schoolchildren by means of cultural technologies of social and cultural activity: [abstract of Ph.D. diss. Sciences]: 13.00.05 (Tambov).

• Teplyakov, N. N. (2013). Personal values and out of transformation. Izvestia VGPU, 2(77), 12-16.

• Vshivtseva, L. N. (2013). Values of cultural and civilizational development of modern Russia, Materials of the XIII International Likhachev Scientific Readings "Dialogue of Cultures: Values, Meanings, Communication", 281-282.

• Yakovleva, N. F. (2020). Biographical method in the study of the value self-determination of orphans. Methods of pedagogical research at the post-non-classical stage of the development of science: a collection of articles YII All-Russian scientific-practical conference “Pedagogical science and modern education. - Part 1. Publishing house of the Russian State Pedagogical University named after A.I. Herzen, 174-178.

• Zhmetko, O. A. (2007). Formation of the future teacher's readiness to organize the value-orientated activity of students: [abstract of Ph.D. dis. Sciences: 13.00.01] Samara.