Forming Students’ Humanitarian Culture Through Digitalization Of Additional Foreign Language Education

Abstract

The article considers and defines such concepts as "humanitarian culture", "students’ humanitarian culture", "digitalization of education". A special attention is paid to the role of additional education, in particular, foreign language education, in the formation of humanitarian culture, which is considered as an important part of lifelong education. An important issue is also the transformation of additional foreign language education within the framework of digitalization of all aspects of life and how the formation of students’ humanitarian culture should be carried out in this context. The authors of this work justify scientifically methodological, theoretical and technological foundations of the strategy of forming humanitarian culture of students within the framework of digitalization of additional foreign language education. These foundations play a significant role in the socio-cultural development of students, in improving their intellectual and creative abilities, determine the readiness for professional and other activities in conditions of uncertainty, and influence the formation of global citizenship of the younger generation by means of a foreign language based on the digital dialogue of cultures. Thus, the aim of the study was to give a scientific description of the strategy for developing students’ humanitarian culture in the context of the digitalization of additional foreign language education.

Keywords: Humanitarian culture, digital educational environment, additional foreign language education, education

Introduction

The main idea of the article is closely connected with the role that the humanities play in the modern educational space, the issues of obtaining knowledge of humanitarian nature. These form the ideological foundation of training a qualified specialist at all levels of the modern educational system, including basic and vocational education, as well as additional education of children, youth and adults, and, therefore, the formation of students’ humanitarian culture.

Additional education plays a significant role in this process, which is considered as an important component of lifelong education and has considerable possibilities for the individual’s development of mental and creative abilities (Shcherbatykh, 2018). The development of student’s humanitarian culture using the key elements of teaching a foreign language within the system of additional foreign language education contributes to ensuring their preparation for an active life in the modern changing world. These include the ability to build their behavior in conditions of uncertainty, their mastery of many contemporary forms of interpersonal and interethnic communication. Thanks to them, traditions of ethnocentrism are overcome, since the basis of human humanitarian culture is formed precisely from the value-functional and spiritual level of individual and social being.

One of the problems that is very important nowadays and is related to humanitarian culture of the individual is currently the question of its implementation in the conditions of the total digitalization of society in general and education in particular. The transformation of the system of additional education in the conditions of digitalization involves not only the use of new technologies for organizing the educational process, but also the introduction of new approaches to the creation and the use of digital resources, which should ensure high-quality and continuous additional education for young people in various forms. However, it is clear from practice that the rapid spread of digital technologies in the field of additional education, including a foreign language, is notable for the insufficient implementation of their powerful pedagogical potential for the formation of students’ humanitarian culture. We also pay attention to the fact that the institutions providing additional foreign language education are an excellent platform for the implementation of students’ humanitarian culture in the course of digitalization of education. To realize effectively the potential of digital technologies, it is necessary to set clearly the tasks of developing digital solutions for education, adapt the technological potential to specific tasks that teachers and students solve, mastering the skills, values and content of education in the digital era.

Problem Statement

This study is aimed at proving the methodological, theoretical and technological grounds of the strategy of forming students' humanitarian culture as an important component of professional competence of specialists using the potential of digital technologies in additional foreign language education.

Research Questions

The significance of the study is, firstly, proved by the special importance of solving the problem of forming humanitarian culture of students and, secondly, by the necessity to investigate the potential of additional foreign language education in the course of digitalization. In the conditions of the digitalization of life, transformations, crises and growing uncertainty, humanitarian support for productive advanced technological development is necessary. All generational, cultural and professional groups need to adjust to the new circumstances. Thereby, the research question of this article is the development of humanitarian culture of students by means of digital technologies within additional foreign language education.

Purpose of the Study

The purpose of the study is to describe scientifically the strategy of forming humanitarian culture on students through the digitalization of additional foreign language education as a factor of the preparation for life in the modern world.

Research Methods

The problem of teaching foreign languages and its educational potential in general are of great scientific and practical interest for researchers. Despite a large number of studies concerning the approaches to teaching a foreign language, modifying the content of foreign language education in additional education, the use of information and communication technologies in education, etc., the issue of developing students' humanitarian culture in current conditions of digitalization of additional foreign language education is raised for the first time. The proposed methodological toolkit, developed to provide a deep study of key aspects of the scientific goal set, obtaining scientific results containing elements of novelty, includes the following approaches and the corresponding methods:

- general scientific;

- competence;

- personal and activity;

- systemic.

The use of a general scientific approach, which includes the methods of induction, deduction, analysis and synthesis, makes it possible to reflect comprehensively all the aspects of the tasks set in the study. During the study, the generalization of foreign and Russian experience made it possible first-time ever to determine the content of forming humanitarian culture in the course of digitalization of additional foreign language education.

The competence-based approach is used to establish a set of characteristics that are a part of student's humanitarian culture and to develop the criteria for assessing its formation.

The personal-activity approach is used for choosing the technologies for the development of humanitarian culture. Using the questionnaire method, we managed to define the initial, intermediate and final levels of the development of students’ humanitarian culture.

A systematic approach to the research helped to carry out a comprehensive analysis, to assess the dynamics of development in the course of applying the proposed strategy; substantiate its effectiveness.

Findings

The result of the research was the theoretical and methodological substantiation of the strategy of forming humanitarian culture of students within the framework of digitalization of additional foreign language education and, as a consequence, their socio-cultural development, improvement of intellectual and creative abilities, readiness for professional and other activities in the conditions of uncertainty, the formation of global citizenship of the younger generation through a foreign language based on the digital dialogue of cultures (Popova, 2019).

The strategy of forming students’ humanitarian culture through digitalization of additional foreign language education is founded on the realization of theoretical and practical stages.

1. The theoretical stage is carried out by clarifying the conceptual apparatus and identifying the essential characteristics of the basic concepts. Basing on the analysis of theoretical sources (Shuleva & Pavlova, 2018; Zolotuhina-Abolina, 2019), the authors understand humanitarian culture as a peculiar type and style of world outlook, world perception, world attitude and world transformation, based on the harmony of the culture of knowledge, values, communication and creative action.

Its structure can be represented by four blocks:

- cognitive,

- communicative

- personal and activity,

- axiological.

The possibility of forming a person's humanitarian culture throughout their life, its dynamic nature explain the emergence of the concept of “students’ humanitarian culture” as an integral quality based on spiritual and intellectual qualities, and which characterizes the development of the student's personality, the level of their humanitarianism. In the digital era the content of the notion changes somewhat due to the conscious use of digital technologies, content and is explained by the context of digitalization in general (Kitova, 2018; Suroedova et al., 2021).

A number of works of modern researchers study the issues of digitalization in modern society. They consider various aspects of the development of society and education in the era of active implementation of innovations and digitalization (Bakulin, 2021; Belousova et al., 2021; Grevtsov et al., 2021; Ivanova et al., 2021; Parts, 2020; Romanenko et al., 2021; Shushara et al., 2021). The digital environment differs from the real one, and one of its features is the virtualization of the human environment. Thus, it is necessary to prepare young people for life in digital reality. This can be done only under the conditions and by means of a new digital environment. We believe that additional foreign language education has a significant potential for forming students’ humanitarian culture through digitalization.

The modern additional education at university is represented mainly by the programs of professional retraining and advanced training, which are successfully implemented through a distance-learning format, which involves the use of electronic educational resources, web platforms, web forums, etc. However, we consider it expedient to include here general education programs, research work with students while testing their results during online conferences, preparation and participation in online contests, Olympiads. Additional foreign language education can be defined as the process of developing students' foreign language communication skills during extracurricular hours, aimed at the formation of individual’s culture, creativity, intelligence, morality and patriotism (Gorbunov, 2017; Kopylova, 2017).

2. The practical stage consists in diagnosing the level of the development of the competencies studied and personality characteristics before and after the experiment and the experiment itself. The experiment on the effectiveness of the realization of the strategy of forming a model of students’ humanitarian culture through the digitalization of additional foreign language education was carried out during the program of additional professional education "Digital educational environment and business intercultural communication". The course is designed for 108 hours, 72 hours of classroom work and 36 hours of independent work.

The program used the following forms of interactive communication: media content of the Ted Talks portal, the DUOLINGO mobile application for learning English, YouTube, and mobile voice assistants. All this allowed us to implement successfully the aims of the program in the context of digitalization of additional foreign language education.

By analyzing the results of the experimental work, we managed to determine that the proposed pedagogical forms, means, conditions, technologies and methods for the realization of the advanced training program increased significantly students' interest in culture, history, literature of the countries of the studied language, their horizons expanded significantly, communication skills were formed. On the whole, the level of all formed components of humanitarian culture increased by 30%.

Conclusion

All the above mentioned is seen as a significant condition for preparing youth for an active life in a changing world. This includes socio-cultural development, improvement of intellectual and creative abilities, readiness for professional and other activities in conditions of uncertainty, their mastery of many contemporary types of interpersonal and interethnic communication. Due to that the traditions of ethnocentrism are overcome and global citizenship of the younger generation by means of a foreign language is based on the digital dialogue of cultures.

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Publication Date

06 December 2021

eBook ISBN

978-1-80296-118-8

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European Publisher

Volume

119

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Edition Number

1st Edition

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Subjects

Uncertainty, global challenges, digital transformation, cognitive science

Cite this article as:

Osipova, N., Puzatykh, A., & Shcherbatykh, L. (2021). Forming Students’ Humanitarian Culture Through Digitalization Of Additional Foreign Language Education. In E. Bakshutova, V. Dobrova, & Y. Lopukhova (Eds.), Humanity in the Era of Uncertainty, vol 119. European Proceedings of Social and Behavioural Sciences (pp. 194-199). European Publisher. https://doi.org/10.15405/epsbs.2021.12.02.25