Person-Oriented Approach In The System Of Modern Higher Pedagogical Education

Abstract

The paper discusses the issues related to the implementation of the “educational dialogue” model as one of the aspects of a person-oriented approach in education. It is emphasized that the important mission of modern higher pedagogical education is to form a comprehensively developed person able to develop in accordance with a rapidly changing reality. The modern world is characterized by unpredictability and instability, as well as transformations in all spheres of human life with understanding the need to meet the trends and challenges of education. It is argued that the main mission today is to reorient students from passive adaptation to an active position, reaccentuate pedagogical education from the usual priority of obtaining ready-made knowledge to its active acquisition and absorption, and to reveal the fundamental cognitive potential of a person in accordance with its cultural and psychophysiological characteristics. The efficiency of the model of educational dialogue in modern pedagogical education was proved in accordance with the problem statement and objectives of the study.

Keywords: education, personality, dialogue, globalization, communication, self-fulfillment

Introduction

Currently, in the context of globalization, multiculturalism and variability, and the expansion of international interactions in all spheres of life, significant changes are taking place, including in education. The peculiarity of the transformations is that they are reflected in the modernization of pedagogical education, the essence of which is the formation of a comprehensively developed person able to develop in accordance with a rapidly changing reality. The current sociocultural situation of Russian reality is characterized by the strengthening of the role of higher education in its economy, since it is the educational environment that serves the basis for the formation of the intellectual and human capital of our state.

Talking about the peculiarities of global problems, the authors highlight the unpredictability and remoteness of consequences, as well as interdependence and internal inconsistency. At the same time, there is an understanding that it is human activity that drives global processes thus making them difficult to solve. Thus, it is appropriate to say that in the modern conditions of modernization of higher education, in particular pedagogical education, the issues related to the new educational paradigm come to the fore. The new paradigm defines the vectors of the development of pedagogical education, which are justified by socio-cultural and competence-based aspects. The modern sociocultural aspect confirms the need to form a flexible personality capable of adapting to innovative changes, adequately carrying out innovative transformations in political, economic, scientific and industrial spheres. The gap between education and new unstable realities is characterized by the exclusion of students from the learning process. Besides, the focus of the educational system only on the transfer and absorption of ready knowledge leaves a student with no chance of being successful in a constantly changing world. In this regard, today one of the priority tasks is to reorient students from passive adaptation to an active position, reaccentuate pedagogical education from the usual priority of obtaining ready-made knowledge to its active acquisition and absorption, and to reveal the fundamental cognitive potential of a person in accordance with its cultural and psychophysiological characteristics.

Problem Statement

The problem of the study consisting of a person-oriented approach in higher pedagogical education becomes especially relevant due to the vector of its development in the direction of forming the personality of the future teacher with the needs for self-change and readiness to implement innovative activities thus creatively transforming the surrounding world. Modern socio-cultural conditions make higher pedagogical education consider the problems of the formation and self-development of the personality of the teacher, the formation of competencies to make independent innovative decisions in professional activity.

The higher pedagogical school needs innovative changes, since the existing pedagogical system should correspond to modern challenges and trends, as well as each graduate of a pedagogical university should acquire the ability to projectively look at his/her professional future. A modern teacher must be competitive and flexible in the global labor market. It is important for him to be ready to carry out other activities and be engaged in other professions, which is not possible in line with the traditional pedagogical paradigm of higher education in our country.

Today, it is not enough for pedagogical universities to form only subject domain competencies among students, the emphasis shifts towards the development of leadership, the ability to advance creative activity, and the ability to realize personal potential in the new socio-cultural conditions of the multipolar world both in professional and intercultural interaction. The unified Russian educational space determines the need to transfer regional pedagogical universities to the mode of accelerated development and training of the creative personality of students.

The authors of works (Vygotsky, 2016; Gizhov & Kapichnikov, 2016; Kagan, 2018; Somkin, 2019) rightly emphasize that the priority tasks in the process of innovative renewal of the system of higher pedagogical education include the formation of general cultural, general professional and professional competencies among university students, which significantly increase not only quantitative, but also qualitative indicators of the educational process.

Research Questions

The traditional system of higher pedagogical education, which implied strict management and control, proved to be insufficient. Authoritarianism and focus on the transfer of a certain amount of knowledge, which are the result of the natural-scientific determination of social consciousness and the education system as a whole, do not justify the modern social order of society. In connection with the above, the authors justify a person-oriented approach that defines personality as inherent value orienting the educational process to the transition to a dialogue model that contributes to the disclosure of the personal potential of students.

It should be noted that from psychological and pedagogical perspectives the phenomenon of a dialogue was analyzed in the works of outstanding scientists of different years. So, L.S. Vygotsky (2016), M.S. Kagan (2018), A.A. Leontiev (2008), С. Rogers (2007) indicate the importance of a dialogue in the development of communicative abilities of students, formation of critical thinking and independence of judgment. The leading position of the person-oriented approach determines the dialogic interaction in connection with its humanistic meaning. A well-known domestic scientist A.V. Mudrik (2001) focused on the expediency and need to use dialogic techniques in higher education.

It should be noted that pedagogical education with its focus on human sciences and initial desire for a dialogue is always turned to the problems of personality formation, to the implementation of personal creative self-discovery and self-realization. Currently, the dialogue in pedagogy is understood both as the methodological foundation of a person-oriented approach and as a means of its practical implementation. It is the design of dialogic interaction that updates the context of the intersubjective learning model. This model requires the teacher to enter a dialogue, in which the student, as a rule, takes the position of the expected interlocutor. A.A. Bodalev (2015) and R. Vella (2018) analyze the issues of the relationship between the dialogue of consciousness and modern education. The authors reveal the essential functions of a dialogue in the individual identity. They developed original methods for their further study.

As part of the problem posed in the paper, the authors conducted the study among second- and forth-year students of Chechen State Pedagogical University, which made it possible to identify the low level of speech communication among most of them. At the same time, second-year students demonstrated the lack of elementary communication skills, the inability to think rationally, the inability to process large amounts of information and the unwillingness to listen and accept the logic of another. Besides, the introduction of new information and communication technologies leads to transformations in the lifestyle and behaviors of most students. Therefore, in our opinion, continuous learning and self-education become a reality and a necessity.

Purpose of the Study

The purpose of the study is to identify the mechanisms of the educational system that can support the personal vector of education at the level of the state standard. In our opinion, in order to address this purpose it is necessary to solve the following tasks: - to change the methodological basis of learning; - to implement a dialogic model of learning in the system of pedagogical education.

Research Methods

To solve the tasks and verify the initial positions, the study used a set of theoretical and empirical methods taking into account the specifics of each stage of the work: theoretical analysis of the scientific literature on the problem of research; diagnostics; modeling and designing the educational process aimed at successfully resolving the use of the educational dialogue as a format of interaction between the teacher and students.

Findings

The history of pedagogical science indicates that the classical model of European education used monological relations as the predominant type of communication in the 18th century. The dialogic model is dominating in the development of the communicative competencies of students. The federal state educational standards of higher education emphasize that the indispensable condition for the formation of a specialist is communicative competencies based on the idea of dialogics as the only form of the existence of human consciousness. The dialogic model in the modern view is aimed at forming the basic competence – the ability for continuous learning. According to the philosophical principle, a dialogue is the only acceptable way of communication between people. Here it is appropriate to address the ideas of L.S. Vygotsky (2016), who emphasized the importance of internal speech for the development of thinking.

Dialogue and dialogic relations are key in the development of thinking. The dialogue is life, ideas and thoughts of each person. This is a form of communication that allows seeing, hearing, understanding and accepting another person. Subject-semantic connections embodied in statements become dialogic, while the word reflects the position of the author (Bobyleva, Kapichnikov & Kapichnikova, 2017). Domestic pedagogical practice is known to utilize the experience of a dialogic model for building the educational process. Many innovative teachers back in the 1980s of the last century turned to the bivalent scheme “I – You” expressing unique, universal positions of those that enter into the dialogue.

In the context of the studied problem we use the category “educational dialogue” in our work. Guided by the principles of the FSES HE 3++ and the technological basis of a person-oriented approach, the educational dialogue is interpreted as a special type of activity characterized by goals and objectives and included in the learning process. This definition provides an opportunity to explain the internal content of the activities of the subjects of the educational dialogue, which is significantly different from traditional monologism. Modern pedagogical science gives the following classifications of dialogic education methods: - first group (essay, laboratory work, analysis of scientific or literary text) built on the internal dialogue of a subject and oriented to the development of analytical thinking; - second group includes methods based on the pedagogical communication of the two; - third group contains communication of several subjects of the educational process (discussions, debates, business (role) games expressed in the format of a polylogue.

Here it is appropriate to note that the above methods were used at one time by the American psychologist С. Rogers, who distinguished two types of personal-oriented (or semantic) learning: - informational, characterized by the transmission and assimilation of a certain set of facts; - significant, which is based on the personality’s motive for self-development and self-change. С. Rogers formulated five conditions for the implementation of this approach. The first condition is to fill the content of training with the real problems of students. At the same time, the teacher’s function is to create an atmosphere that fosters a situation that is significant for the student. The second condition is the congruence of the teacher, i.e. his ability to be himself, what he is in reality. The third condition is that the teacher accepts the students as they are. The fourth condition is tolerance as the leading position of the teacher in relations with students and the refusal to dominate any (“the only true”) point of view. The fifth condition is related to the creation of a psychological climate that would contribute to free manifestation of these trends.

Thus, we concluded that none of the speakers in the educational dialogue can occupy a central position.

The educational dialogue cannot be reduced only to the assimilation of the subject, since this process implies the expansion of knowledge horizons through the intensive exchange of not only knowledge, but, most importantly, value meanings. One of the universally recognized indicators of individual maturity is the willingness to engage in a dialogue. As evidenced by the many years of experience of the authors, students with varying degrees of activity are engaged in communication. Each group includes students imitating their participation in a dialogue, or with a predominant desire to defend their own position, determined to critically perceive someone else’s point of view, or, students oriented to a dialogue, to spiritual self-enrichment, to develop and even revise their position. Definitely, the key condition for the dialogue is that the personality of the teacher expressed primarily in the ability to conduct different dialogues at different levels of communication must be dialogic.

The reflection of the studied problem makes it possible to confirm the efficiency of the dialogic model of training. It consists in its orientation towards the general cultural development of the student’s personality. In dialogic education, a complex set of interpersonal relations serves the center of educational activity in a class or a group. In the dialogue, an individual does not become someone else’s student, but adheres to his own position, his own “I”. It should be noted that the educational dialogue also intensifies the process of educational synergy fostering the teacher-student co-creation.

The fifth-year students were included in the educational dialogue as part of the Eco-University of the Class Leader project based on the person-oriented approach at Chechen State Pedagogical University. The purpose of the project was to create additional competencies necessary for novice teachers to work with students as class leaders. The form of conducting practical classes in the format of live communication seems quite interesting. Throughout the project, the students were trained at the Terra-Nova school in Mesker-yurt village of the Chechen Republic. In an era of global turbulence it is the ecosystem view that assumes the ability to see the significance of each part in a planetary orchestra. It was important for us to identify the communicative potential of our five-year students. It should be noted that there was no special selection of students to the Eco-University group, they were enrolled only at the request of the students themselves. As a result of the project the students mastered a three-level model of competencies: my, local and world. Each level had objectives and expected outcomes and differed from the previous one. But, as a result, our students came to understand the importance of interaction in the “win-win-win” format, when collaboration is useful to me, you, and the world around. Ideally, the model of a class teacher with new thinking and worldview, identifying himself as a maker, the creator of a developing space, possessing meta-skills that allow assessing the level of values is embedded into the human-centered approach.

Conclusion

On the basis of the above, we have made the following conclusions:

- despite the advantages of the dialogic model of education as one of the methods of a person-oriented approach in education, we do not assert the exclusivity of this format as the panacea from all the overdue problems of modern university education;

- the process of using the dialogic model in the educational space should take into account the interests of all subjects of the educational process, as well as the socio-cultural context;

- the introduction of the “educational dialogue” in school education is complicated by a number of circumstances related to the mastery of educational material as a priority objective and the increased emphasis on testing, which does not allow measuring such indicators as the independence of thought, creativity, etc.

- positioning the teacher as a mentor, an organizer ensuring the discipline, and not as a source of meaningful educational communication between students.

Thus, the central problem of the modern educational system is the search for effective ways to involve educational subjects in the creative process of self-realization, intellectual self-development and self-disclosure, and the realization of the personal potential of each student.

References

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• Gizhov, V. A., & Kapichnikov, A. I. (2016). Traditions and innovations among Russian students. Topical problems of education in the educational process of the university: Proceedings of the All-Russian scientific and practical conference (pp. 31-37). Saratov State Agrarian University.

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  Crossref

• Vella, R. (2018). Curating as a dialogue-based strategy in art education. International Journal of education Through Art, 14(3), 293-303.

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