Mutual Adaptation Technology Of Individual Activity Styles Of Language Teacher And Student

Abstract

This study follows the idea of humanizing the Russian education system. In the article, the process of individualization of teaching schoolchildren is considered one of the conditions that presuppose the development of students' social experience in the form of knowledge, methods, and experience of educational activities implemented into the function of designing an individually directed learning process. The article reveals the main theoretical provisions, mechanisms, and results of the author's technology approbation. The theoretical significance of the study lies in the fact that the logical substantiation of the style approach in the teacher's professional activity as a mutual adaptation of the individual styles of the teacher's and the student's activity, taking into account the accommodative and assimilative properties. The practical significance of the study lies in the fact that teachers and scienticts can use the developed theoretical provisions and conclusions of this study in the theoretical and praxeological areas of research on the problem of individualization of school education, the practical removal of conflict points in the interaction of the student's and the teacher's individual styles of activity. The formulated general recommendations for the educational process organization, taking into account the differences in the individual styles of teacher and schoolchildren's activity, reveal the pedagogical mechanisms of the student's transition from the cognitive-performing to the cognitive-strategic style of learning a foreign language. The developed technology of mutual adaptation can serve as a conceptual basis for the integral individualization of the process of teaching students a foreign language.

Keywords: Individual styles, mutual adaptation, teaching activity

Introduction

Individualization is one of the leading modern trends in the development of the Russian education system. Individualization involves creating optimal conditions for the formation of an active life position and personal growth of students. This process consists of searching for promising directions in the formation of individual styles of educational and professional activities of participants in the educational process. This problem is especially relevant in the context of organizing the language training of students. The language training of students is significant in the light of the processes of globalization and integration taking place in the world, and it is a vector of the development of the educational policy of our country. In this regard, it is necessary to search for ways to develop an effective individually oriented pedagogical technology as an organizational basis to develop a linguistic personality capable of carrying out intercultural communication at a high level.

The need to solve the problem of developing an effective individually oriented pedagogical technology in the theory and practice of pedagogy is relevant for the following reasons. First, there is a lack of the technological approach elaboration to the organization of the process of mutual adaptation of the individual styles of teacher and student activity in teaching a foreign language. Secondly, there is a lack of experience in its implementation in the school's educational practice, searching for ways.

Problem Statement

The study's problem was to identify the essence, content, and effective approaches to designing the technology of mutual adaptation of the individual styles of teacher and student activity in teaching a foreign language.

Research Questions

The subject of the research is to find ways to build and implement the technology of mutual adaptation of individual styles of the professional activity of a teacher and the educational activity of a schoolchild in the process of teaching a foreign language by choosing optimal strategies for learning / teaching a foreign language and strategies of communicative interaction by participants in the educational process.

Purpose of the Study

The purpose of the research is to develop, scientifically substantiate and test the technology of mutual adaptation of individual styles of educational and teaching activities of schoolchildren and teachers in teaching a foreign language.

Research Methods

At the first stage, we used the following methods: theoretical analysis of psychological and pedagogical, educational and methodological literature, curricula, textbooks for teaching foreign languages; analysis and generalization of the advanced experience of university teachers; empirical observation of teaching styles and pedagogical communication of trainers and teachers; pedagogical (ascertaining) experiment aimed at identifying the characteristics of individual styles of educational activity of schoolchildren and teaching activities of teachers.

At the second stage, we selected the necessary tools to determine the individual learning styles and styles of teaching a foreign language. At this stage, the methods of questioning, testing, and interviewing schoolchildren and teachers, observation of schoolchildren's educational activities, a pedagogical (formative) experiment were used, during which we carried out experimental work to test the effectiveness of the developed technology.

At the third stage, the experimental work results were processed and generalized; the obtained data were processed using mathematical statistics methods.

Findings

Theoretical results of the study. The analysis of psychological and pedagogical literature has been carried out. The analysis made it possible to study how the concept of "style" is presented in the scientific works of leading foreign and Russian teachers and psychologists. The concept of "style" is used for revealing the characteristics of the relationship between the objective requirements of human activity and the level of development of personal qualities, properties, abilities, and traits (Galskova & Gez, 2007; Markova & Narcosiev, 2019; Pask, 1976). In this regard, it becomes relevant to consider the influence of the requirements for the implementation of the style features of the student's educational activity and the teacher's professional activity. The previous served as a prerequisite for the theoretical substantiation of the step-by-step nature of the construction and implementation of pedagogical techniques that provides interconnection in the manifestations of the individual style of the student's educational activity, the teacher's professional activity, effective two-way goal-setting (teacher and student) and the implementation of organizational, educational actions of the student.

Methodological research results. In the study, a logical justification was made for the style approach used in the teacher's professional activity as a mutual adaptation of the teacher's individual styles and the student's activity, taking into account the accommodative and assimilative properties of the goals of teaching and learning. This rationale supplements school didactics with new knowledge about the subject-subjective nature of pedagogical strategies. Disclosure of the peculiarities of the relationship between individual styles of schoolchildren and teachers' activity creates an opportunity for effective differentiation of the learning process: a) based on the traditional adaptive scheme with a focus on the competence-performing activity of the student and the innovative-strategic teacher; b) with a focus on competence-creative (Leaver, 2000; Willingham et al., 2015).

The research aims to find the conditions for ensuring mutual adaptation of the styles of teacher and student activity in the process of teaching a foreign language. According to the hypothesis of our research, effective achievement of the goal is possible through the development and implementation of pedagogical technology. The author's technology is a project of the functioning of the pedagogical process. The technology's effectiveness is characterized by a set of indicators-signs: the presence of a goal, the integrity of its structural components, procedural, the ability to manage diagnostics, correctability of results, reproducibility in various conditions.

The starting positions in the development and testing of the pedagogical technology implemented in the formative experiment were the following theoretical provisions of the system-activity and subject approaches:

1. The actions of subjects based on foresight and carried out following the goal are the main characteristic of human consciousness (Merlin, 1986).

2. The formation of intermediate "goals-hypotheses" in human activity is one of the most important creative and reflexive processes (Serikov, 2017; Shamov & Guseva, 2018).

3. The subject of cognition carries out goal-setting. The subject influences the object of activity in the present (solving educational problems), in the future (solving production problems), and effectively improves intellectual-speech essence (Gardner, 1959).

Theoretical research has led to the identification of the following provisions. The implementation of the style approach in teaching senior schoolchildren a foreign language presupposes the sequential (step-by-step) implementation of the mutual adaptation of accommodative and assimilative manifestations of learning goals, joint educational actions of the student and teacher. At the same time, this process should consider the principles of expediency and differentiation in the implementation of intermediate goals and adequate actions to achieve them.

We developed the technology for the mutual adaptation of the styles of the teacher's professional activity and the educational activity of the student in the process of teaching a foreign language is implemented in three stages.

In the first stage (identification of styles), the performing effect is realized. At this stage, the educational activity goals of the teacher of the student's educational activity have a basic aspect. The principle of correspondence reflects the continuity of the learning process and the peculiarities of adapting the styles of the subjects of learning. Here, the foundations of the unity of learning goals and the self-organization of style activities are laid.

The second stage (neutralization of "conflict points") provides an adaptive effect and mutual stylistic orientation in the learning process. Target guidelines for educational activities are becoming more complex; there is a change in their focus. At this stage, it becomes necessary to coordinate the capabilities of the subjects of learning, ways of their development, and setting new goals associated with the self-motivation of students of their cognitive activity. At this stage, the basic principle is the principle of coordination of educational actions, which ensures the neutralization of "conflict points" by adapting the teacher's motivational attitudes and the student's actions to choose the optimal activity style.

The third stage (final-productive) is characterized by actions for the students to independently build intermediate goals and trajectories of language learning based on the development of adequate actions (strategic effect). They are manifested in the content of the author's training programs, in the implementation of which schoolchildren carry out, together with the teacher, the choice and implementation of an individual route and their educational activity style. The implementation of the principle of discriminatory ratio ensures the differentiation of the content of education and the optimization of the individual stylistic characteristics of the activities of the subjects of education. As a result, at this stage, the process of adaptation of styles is completed, and the actions of the subjects of learning become unified. Thus, the unity of the set pedagogical goal is achieved, t.e., a high level of mastery of a foreign language by students. At this stage, a new educational goal arises, which students begin to realize as their future target perspective – forming a linguistic personality.

We carried out the development of the experimental work content based on the integration of two subject areas, "Pedagogy and Foreign Language." When developing the experimental work, we were based on our chosen methodological approaches, and the technology implementation has disclosed step-by-step nature. We have carried out the integration of the two subject areas, "Pedagogy and Foreign Language," as an information and activity space, primarily having personal goal-setting and goal-realization factors. Hence, the formation of strategically expedient learning behavior. The disciplines that make up the subject area "Pedagogy" included the following topics: "Organization and self-organization of personal and professional development of students in the Russian educational system", "Choice of profession and interests of the individual", "Personal and role opportunities of the educational space of the school", "Self-motivation of life self-determination and individual perspectives of personal and professional development."

The subject area "Foreign language" included the following topics: "Social and role capabilities of a foreign language", "Foreign language is a source of alternative life self-determination", "Communicative-foreign language experience as a phenomenon of personal culture."

As forms and methods of organizing such work, we used communicative, didactic, and modeling strategies, training, and educational cognitive and imaginative discussions with schoolchildren.

In the study, two types of communicative and pedagogical pieces of training were developed and tested:

a) aimed at the value-semantic attitude to life self-determination;

b) providing a social-role-based choice of a further life path, taking into account the level of knowledge of a foreign language among students (cognitive, socio-cultural discussions implemented to promote the social-role self-determination of schoolchildren using the subject "Foreign language").

Cognitive discussions are associated with possible prospects for successful professional and alternative ways of life self-determination of schoolchildren. They are dominated by the teacher's actions to form the conventional beliefs of schoolchildren regarding the choice of a profession and their professional roles and to change erroneous judgments about its value with the help of philosophical reasoning, a semantic-didactic approach, a Socratic dialogue, a description of someone else's experience, an interpretive-colloquial method of creating a student the world through the knowledge of a foreign language. These forms are based on a foreign language text containing various examples of life experience. It requires both semantic and critical interpretation. Semantic interpretation prompts the student to verbal strategies of professional or non-professional self-determination, i.e., building life goals, their sounding. Critical interpretation encourages the student to engage in positional strategies, i.e., covertly implemented recommendatory ways of life in the text for the sake of a defined goal, taking into account their life plans.

The primary function of the above forms and pedagogical interaction methods between a student and a teacher is divergent, followed by transformation into accommodative. Initially, schoolchildren find in educational information distinctive orientations in future professional choices (divergence). Then schoolchildren adapt this knowledge to their actual, possible, and projected life situation (accommodation).

There is the content of the pedagogical experiment. The study was carried out in three stages from 2017 to 2020 based on the Linguistic School at the Department of Foreign Languages and Teaching Methods of the Armavir State Pedagogical University and gymnasium No 1, Armavir; 95 high school students and 12 teachers and teachers of a foreign language participated in it.

In monitoring, we carried out testing in which pupils of the experimental and control classes (groups) took part, in which the technology of mutual adaptation of learning and learning styles was tested. A total of 55 people took part in the testing. Testing has shown that only 37 % of respondents are aware of educational strategies. Moreover, 35.1 % of schoolchildren associated the term "educational strategy," first of all, with the organizational component of the learning process, that is, with planning their learning, based on the amount of time available and the amount of material to be memorized. For 22 % of schoolchildren, this term means global planning of their educational process (goals of entering a university and ways to achieve them). Only 13.5 % of schoolchildren showed knowledge of educational strategies relevant to our study. The data obtained form the basis of a formative experiment.

As for the individual-style profile of the teachers who participated in the experiment, we focused on the following manifestations of the styles of teachers, which can be characterized as follows:

• the teacher manages to create a self-creating atmosphere in the classroom;
• the teacher has an idea of ​​cognitive styles, learning styles and styles of foreign language acquisition by schoolchildren;
• the teacher seeks to motivate and methodically provide the educational process;
• the teacher understands the importance of students' autonomy, which is expressed in the professionally-oriented organization of independent work of students based on the use of individual educational trajectories.

The data obtained because of the survey demonstrate a tendency to improve the main indicators of the individual-style profile of the teachers who participated in the experiment. This manifested itself in the ability of teachers to implement cognitive styles, styles of teaching a foreign language to schoolchildren (an increase of 2.3 points) and in the skills and abilities to organize independent work of schoolchildren based on the use of individual educational trajectories (an increase of 2.1 points), as well as in the ability to apply educational strategies that match the individual goals and orientations of schoolchildren (gain 1.8 points).

The basis for the mutual adaptation of individual styles of educational and teaching activities of schoolchildren and teachers includes the characteristics of the individual style profile of teachers' personality. In our work, we used Shein's methodology, which made it possible to identify the specifics of objectively assessing the levels of manifestation of the teacher's main style characteristics in pedagogical communication.

The data obtained allowed making an objective conclusion that, as a result of the experimental work, there were significant positive changes in the indicators characterizing the styles of pedagogical communication between a teacher and schoolchildren. These indicators demonstrate the changes in style characteristics that have taken place from authoritarian-mono-logical to trust-dialogical (humanistic). These indicators also indicate the success of the mutual adaptation of the individual styles of the teacher's professional activity and the educational activity of the student in the process of teaching a foreign language.

In the study, it was found that the technology of mutual adaptation of the styles of the teacher's professional activity and the educational activity of the student in the process of teaching a foreign language makes it possible to determine and neutralize the effect of the "conflict of styles." It is the effect of the "conflict of styles" that creates difficulties in the implementation of an effective process of teaching schoolchildren a foreign language, intercultural and foreign language communication in various conditions and educational organizations.

In the experiment, it was found that within the framework of this technology, already at the first stages of education, the motivation and interest in the subject lost in many high school students increases. Increasing motivation is a prerequisite for the unity of goals and actions in the study of academic disciplines and in professional and life self-determination.

After the completion of the experiment, we performed a repeated diagnostic section using identical techniques. The dynamics of indicators of students' life self-determination is of interest. It was revealed that the number of schoolchildren who did not define their future professional path decreased by half and became 5.5% compared to the data obtained earlier – 10 %. The same result was obtained for an inadequate answer. It was admitted by 16.6 % of respondents, compared with 43% initially. The following judgments were obtained: "The goal of my life is stability, prosperity," "Leave a mark on children and students," "Ensure old age," "Achieve harmony in life," "Achieve spiritual and intellectual perfection," "See the world." Nevertheless, the answers are more filled with value-semantic content than the previous ones. They testify that the personal growth of a student is due to the developmental potential of the discipline.

It was found that only 27.5 % still associate their future only with family and raising children. This data is also almost half of the previous data. An essential distinguishing feature of this group of respondents' goal-orientation is the awareness of the importance of knowledge of their profession for the future family well-being, the ability to apply it for the practical moral design of the family model relationship system. An even more significant fact is the formation of a new group of respondents, whose life goal is simultaneously personal and professional career growth and family well-being – 33.3 %. Their answers:

"The general goal of my life is self-improvement in all spheres of life, primarily in the family and in the profession."

"The goal of my life is to put children on their feet and advance in their career."

"The goal is to raise children and, of course, professional self-education "," Leave a good mark in the face of your own children students."

Only 5.5 % of students did not answer the questionnaire. They have defined their life's purpose as a dedication to the profession without prejudice to other life values ​​– 47.2 %. Previously, this percentage was only 26.7 %. The empirical data obtained in the course of the study indicate the following. A new trend appears, namely, the value-semantic unity of professionally significant and family-creative life goals. This tendency replaces the previously indicated tendency, which consisted of alienating respondents from future professional self-realization in the field of teaching.

Experimental testing of the pedagogical technology of mutual adaptation of the styles of the teacher's professional activity and the educational activity of the student in the process of teaching a foreign language has demonstrated its effectiveness. This fact testifies to the achievement of the research goal, confirming its hypothesis and the solution of the assigned tasks. The approbation and implementation of the technology in the general education school's teaching and educational process have confirmed its scientific, theoretical, and practical significance.

Conclusion

As a result of the work carried out, we formulated the following conclusions:

1. One of the leading modern trends in the development of the Russian education system is individualization. Individualization involves creating optimal conditions for the formation of an active life position and personal growth of students. Individualization of a foreign language teaching presupposes the active use of a style approach in it, which ensures more remarkable universality, flexibility, and productivity of this process. The problem of individualization of teaching a foreign language and the use of a style approach in it was reflected in many domestic and foreign scientists' scientific works. Realizing the pedagogical potential of the style approach in teaching a foreign language is especially relevant concerning school education conditions in Russia and many foreign countries.

2. Effective individual-directed learning implies considering the individual characteristics of students and teachers. In the context of the new educational paradigm, the educator's function in the translation of social experience in the form of knowledge and methods of activity is transformed into a design function. In this regard, approaches to the design of individual strategies for educational activities, the development of tools for pedagogical diagnostics of the individualization process's effectiveness, productive assistance methods, forms of individual counseling, and forecasting are of particular scientific interest. We observe an insufficient elaboration of the technological approach to the organization of the process of mutual adaptation of the individual styles of teacher and student activity in teaching a foreign language and the lack of experience in its implementation in the educational practice of the school. This circumstance actualizes the search for ways to solve this problem in the theory and practice of pedagogy.

3. Effective forms and methods of organizing work on the mutual adaptation of the teacher's professional activity and the student's educational activity in the process of teaching a foreign language are communicative, didactic, and modeling strategies, training, and educational cognitive and imaginative discussions with students.

4. Mutual adaptation of the styles of mastering and teaching in teaching foreign language communication creates conditions for considering and increasing the role of the affective-motivational component of teaching a foreign language.

We have carried out an experimental test of the pedagogical technology of mutual adaptation of the styles of the teacher's professional activity and the educational activity of the student in the process of teaching a foreign language. The experimental work carried out has demonstrated its effectiveness, which indicates the achievement of the research goal, confirmation of its hypothesis, and the assigned tasks' solution. The approbation and implementation of the technology in the general education school's teaching and educational process have confirmed its scientific, theoretical, and practical significance.

Prospects for further investigation of the problem raised are as follows. Not all aspects of the mutual adaptation of the styles of the teacher's professional activity and the educational activity of the student in the process of teaching a foreign language are fully disclosed in the theory and practice of pedagogy. The technological approach developed by us can become the basis for future studies of the individualization of teaching a foreign language.

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