Digital Educational Resources In Teaching Humanities Based On Axiological Approach

Abstract

The authors of this article analyze the axiological approach in teaching in connecting with the digitalization of education. It becomes obviously that the development of pedagogical axiology as a methodological approach to understanding pedagogical phenomena facilitates the cultural crisis overcoming and the human value sphere formation. In the course of the study, based on a survey of Moscow universities students and senior schoolchildren, the possibilities of implementing the axiological approach when using the digital educational resources have been considered. Moreover, the participants’ opinion about the introduction of digital resources into the educational process has been revealed. The authors describe the ways of digitalization in educational process through the rational choice of content contributing students’ personal education and upbringing when studying English as a foreign language. It is concluded that the students’ cultural upbringing should remain as a priority direction of national development: the digitalization of education contributes to the implementation of the value approach in education and allows the teacher to take into account the interests and individual characteristics of the student when choosing content. Moreover, the formation of self-control skills and readiness for long life learning is possible due to the digitalization of education as well.

Keywords: Axiological approach, digital Educational Resources (DERs), digital socialization, interaction of subjects

Introduction

The informational processes in a society have caused the emergence of new technologies and teaching methods, being used by means of e-learning as well as information and communication technologies. The previous 2020 year has transformed the way people work and learn. The modern educational process is increasingly focused on the use of not only pedagogical methods, but also information and technological achievements. In particular, the use of digital resources, the information environment, electronic documentation, computer testing, and distance learning has become the norm of a modern university. Education, thus, is approaching the world in which the modern young generation organically exists (Varakina, 2019, p. 204).

It should be realized that digital technologies replacing old methods and techniques in education form a new educational environment which requires the identification of the philosophical and psychological foundations of digital pedagogy and the theory of digital learning. It should be noted that digital Educational Resources (DERs) allow the teachers to improve students learning behavior from passive reactive learning to active self-regulated one (Li, 2021).

Problem Statement

The essence of changes in the educational process of the information society, its features, key areas of development that allow education to reach a qualitatively new level of organization are presented in the works by Li (2021), Hunt et al. (2021). Ferretti et al. (2021). It goes without saying that the digitalization of education has both many supporters and a considerable number of opponents. Many of them consider the digitalization make education impersonal and formal. Some of them believe that the transition to a “digital school”, “digital society” and so on duplicate the existing functions by digital solutions: transfer the “paper work” to a different format without fundamentally changing functions and algorithms of actions. Many researchers are concerned about the position of the teacher in the process of digitalization, who is believed to be forced to work in the framework of this phenomenon, contrary to his wishes and attitudes. “A modern teacher is forced to live in the conditions of an emerging and transforming digital environment, regardless of his own interests, desires and needs” (Griban et al., 2019, p. 605). Along with globalization, the processes of informatization of culture lead to the formation of a new informational socio-cultural space, in which personal upbringing as a pedagogical component is gradually disappearing, becoming an extra effort of a modern teacher (Gryaznova et al., 2019, p. 47). In addition, researchers draw their attention to the dangers of reduction practices in digital learning: indeed, the basis of any purposeful transformation should be, first of all, a person and his or her system of values. It should be noted that in the scientific literature much attention is paid to the issue of the importance of the axiological approach in education. However, most researchers consider only the theoretical justifications for the need to implement the axiological approach. At the same time, few of them study the actual ways and methods of its implementation in the process of education and upbringing work with students (Kulikova et al., 2020, p.172). The personalism has become the value basis of personality-oriented education. When mastering the educational program, the student must acquire a set of general cultural and professional competencies the formation of which should be carried out as a process of satisfying his or her fundamental need for education. It should be noted that the student himself must be an active subject of the educational process, thereby contributing to the disclosure and improvement of his personal qualities, abilities and talents. Value of knowledge is included into the axiological system of society and does not need to be evaluated. Knowledge may have terminal and instrumental meanings, but its main purpose is to serve the formation of personality, and not to serve the existence and needs of controllers (Donskikh & Logunova, 2019, p. 64). In addition, the researchers give an important place to students’ self-control skill development, arguing that “the process of developing self-control can be guided by choosing the most appropriate method or educational strategy” (Belova et al., 2019, p. 232). However, the problems dealing with the implementation of the axiological approach in conditions of digitalization of education has not been sufficiently investigated. The authors aim to show based on teaching English as a foreign language that digitalization of education does not obstruct the implementation of the axiological approach, but rather contributes to it.

Research Questions

In this paper, we focus on the effectiveness of the digital educational technologies implementation in the process of education preferably from the personal upbringing points of view. We consider this problem be very important since improving the effectiveness of learning and acquisition of knowledge can be measured in points based on control works and tests results. The authors’ scientific interest is identify the relationship between the axiological approach and digitalization of education.

Purpose of the Study

The purpose of this work is to analyze the influence grade of the digitalization in the educational process being strengthened lately. At the same time, it should be realized that the development of technologies can not be beneficial if the aspect of the cultural education of students is missed. We consider that just the technology can intensify effectively the axiological approach in education. As scientists from Spain have noticed that fortunately, technologies have rapidly evolved, this makes it possible to individualise and personalise the teaching–learning process based on student performance, interests, search history, and so forth (Alberola-Mulet et al., 2021).

Thus, in our opinion, the problem of combining the strict requirements of the "streamed" digitalization, on the one hand, and the formation of the students’ imaginative thinking through visualization based on a foreign language from the other hand is becoming very relevant.

Research Methods

In the course of the study, the specific possibilities of Electronic Educational Resources to promote the implementation of the axiological approach have been examined: a survey has been conducted among senior schoolchildren and university students in Moscow about how comfortable they feel in the digital educational environment and whether they notice the implementation of the cultural and value approach.

They were asked the following questions:

Is digital learning perceived as inevitable?

How comfortable is learning in a digital environment?

What benefits of digitalization do you see?

What disadvantages of digitalization do you see?

What kind of training format would you choose?

mixed

remote

would prefer a traditional form of education

Do students influence the choice of tools and resources used in digital learning?

What distance learning tools have proved to be the most convenient / useful in learning a foreign language?

What is the problem of digital communication with teachers manifested in?

Has it become more convenient / interesting for you to learn a foreign language using digital resources?

Has your interest in learning a foreign language been increased?

What types of tasks presented with using ICT and distance technologies seem to you be the most effective in the process of learning a foreign language and why when you working independently at home or at the classroom to check homework?

The resources of using digital technologies based on English language teaching (ELT) have been studied according to the growing role of a foreign language mastering in the modern world. Moreover, ELT unlike the other subject allows to implement the axiological approach both through the content being chosen by the educator in accordance with his or her interests or needs of learning and through constantly students’ needs in expressing their opinion and taking part in a discussion.

According to Passov (2017), the purpose of foreign language education is not only teaching (communicative skills, communicative competence mastering) but educational (education of a spiritual person («homo moralis»), who is sure to be intellectually and creatively developed. Is it still possible under the circumstances of digitalization in education?

It should necessary to agree with the researches who state that «it's purposeful to consider the problem not within the term “foreign language teaching" but - from the culture dialogue viewpoint - during foreign language education” (Volynkina et al., 2020, p.89).

It is through culture that a person is offered and introduced ideas about himself and the world, through cultural values thought forms and life guidelines are formed (Kulikova & Todorova, 2019)

It is important to notice that the vocabulary of a language is influenced by national culture, people's living standards, customs and traditions, and many other factors. The nation mentality, the way of people's thinking are likely to be influenced by the grammatical and lexical structure of the language. Typically, the relationship between people's thinking process and the construction of phrases and sentences is based on certain grammar rules of the language being used in communication (Bolotov et al., 2021).

Therefore, “the concept of the emotionally-valuable component of the content of foreign-language education is intended to provide a harmonious preparation of the student as a multicultural linguistic personality for life” (Tatarinova & Lopareva, 2019, p. 312).

Thus, as shown by the results of the study, the English language occupies a leading position among the subjects both at the university and at school, in which electronic educational resources are intensively used.

Findings

In the course of the study, the Electronic Educational Resources (EER) being most popular with senior school children and university students were analyzed and the data obtained as the results of the survey were considered.

The survey involved 10-11 grades senior school children of secondary schools and students of the Russian State University named after A.N. Kosygin, Moscow Polytechnic University, Higher School of Economics, Sechenov Medical Academy, Moscow State Linguistic University.

It is not easy to measure the implementation degree of the axiological or emotional-value approach, but the results of the survey let us know that the participants noted an increase of motivation for the subject being studied. Therefore, they have realized the value of knowledge that will play an important role in their long life learning, for which they have acquired the necessary resources.

As the survey has shown, the digitalization of education has not yet been fully realized: only 63% of school teachers and 41% of university teachers use electronic educational resources in the educational process. We do not consider as digitalization the forced conduct of classes in remote mode because of the Covid-2019 threat.

Unexpectedly, many university students including IT students say that they would like teachers to turn to digital educational software more. The students themselves more often turn to educational resources on YouTube (87%) not on their teachers’ recommendation, but for their self-education, i.e. to clarify some unknown and incomprehensible facts.

The analysis of students’ answers to the question what types of tasks presented with using ICT and distance technologies seem to them the most effective when working independently in the process of learning a foreign language and why showed that the majority of students (72%) noted test tasks with automatic verification. The students explained that such tasks give them the opportunity to control the level of material mastering themselves. Moreover, the technology of the" inverted class" allows them to perfect independently their lexical and grammatical skills to automatism.

It should be noted that forums being normally used on the Coursera platform for teacher and students direct communication are the most important resources for digitalization of education. Thus, the lack of communication caused by the individual and remote nature of this type of activity is partially compensated. Moreover, it makes possible to conduct discussions on professional and educational topics.

The respondents have answered that they are not familiar with the concept of the axiological approach, and therefore cannot answer the question about its application. Nevertheless, they have emphasized that thanks to the use of EER in particular videos (on such platforms as English attack, YouTube, Puzlle English, Lingualeo etc.) they learned a lot of new things in related fields of knowledge and were able to express their opinion and find out their classmates’ opinion.

In particular, respondents noted more importance and value of virtual excursions and videos showing them very interesting things in the English-speaking countries than that of textbook texts.

The results of the study have shown that the students have read more books in English due to the existence of a virtual reading club, they have mastered the art of debate and learned to be tolerant towards those whose point of view seems to be wrong. Moreover, the students noted that reading literature in a foreign language using digital technologies increases motivation to read and makes the process more useful and less time-consuming due to the fact that resources allow, by hovering the cursor over a word, to immediately see its translation options, as well as enter the necessary words into the dictionary for further study.

Actually, when using such resources in the classroom with face-to-face communication, the students have more time for the business games and team projects developing their self-control skills, which are discussed in the articles by Belova et al. (2019).

This study has shown that digital technologies really duplicate to some extent pre-digital learning technologies that have proven their effectiveness. As an example, image description and analysis has long been used in teaching foreign languages for the purpose of developing language skills and forming values. However, with the development of technology, this type of activity has become more ordinary for digital natives format, which arouses more interest, and intensifies the motivation facilitating the implementation of the axiological approach through the formation of a value system in the process of image discussion.

However, digital resources allow teachers and students to work not only with images. In addition, special attention should be paid to such technology as Digital Storytelling, which occupies a key position among educational innovations widely used in modern education. There are many first-person stories on the web, recorded by native speakers.

Most digital stories can be of greatest value due to their educational and cognitive features, for example the web series Eva Stories, an adaptation of the diaries that Jewish girl Eva Heyman kept in Nazi-occupied Hungary in 1944. Surely, this kind of digital resources should be used for the students' values formation.

It should be emphasized that the axiological approach to a foreign language teaching is based primarily on the use of carefully selected texts, videos, the content of which influences the formation of a person’s life values system, taking into account social and cultural factors and features of a person's potential. Typically, a person's potential means his or her intellectual (mental), personal, moral and other resources (Kondakov, 2005). Thus, when teaching a foreign language, it is necessary to pay attention to the selection of language material that facilitates semantically to reflect in the individual consciousness of the student the perception of cultural values ​​through images, symbols, verbal forms influencing the formation of personality in the educational environment.

Conclusion

Digital pedagogy is a new architectonics of education that requires thorough comprehending and scientific evidence-based recognition. Digitalization and digit technologies should be based on universal human values ​​and preserve a unique socio-cultural code.

The main purpose of using electronic educational resources that provide the study of any subject at the level of basic general education is to improve the quality of education and increase the degree of its accessibility.

When delivered effectively rebroadcasts / EER can be a powerful educational tool to incorporate into a comprehensive continuing education strategy.

The main advantage of an electronic educational resource is that its content can be considered as additional and sometimes completely independent author's material offered by the teacher.

In addition, the digitalization of both public life and education in particular made it possible to meet not only with native speakers of target language, but also representatives of different cultures. This will make it possible not only to cultivate tolerance to existing cultural features, but also to penetrate into their essence, possibly, to understand their historical conditioning.

In addition, the gaming methods making the base of most digital Educational Resources (DERs) allow educators to develop a tolerant attitude towards other players, which in the future will certainly contribute to effective interaction in society.

Through digital resources, as well as content presented in social networks, modern education can and should implement an axiological approach to education, in particular in the process of a foreign language teaching. Certainly, this is an idealistic option but needed to be achieved in the educational environment.

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