Reflection And Coping Behavior As Shaping Value-Based Orientations Of Primary School Students

Abstract

The relevance of the issue of forming personality value-based orientations is determined by both the modern negative trends in the moral development of primary school students, and the existing contradictions in the area of sports. The paper gives the definitions of "reflection" and "coping behavior" in the author's own words. The authors associate the term "reflection" with the ability of the primary school student to predict the consequences of his or herself actions, to be aware of his or her emotional reactions and the reasons that provoke them. The result of the pedagogical experiment was the revealing current relationship between reflexivity and coping behavior, on the one hand, and the formation of personality value-based orientations of primary school students, on the other hand. The positive results of the forming personality value-based orientations are noted not only in the experimental group, but also in the control group. The authors assume that this is associated with the maturation of children and their involvement in the culture of martial arts, which has a wide range of means of educational effects. The study identified three levels of formation of personality value-based orientations of primary school students involved into martial arts sports school: the adaptive, the situational and the activity levels. The authors designate the system of valuable orientations of the coaches, mentoring, and the system of traditions and rituals as the main mechanisms for shaping the personality value-based orientations.

Keywords: Coping behavior, martial arts, primary school student, reflection, value-based orientations of personality

Introduction

The underlying principle of sport is the idea of Olympism, based on an understanding of the meaning of sport not only in winning, but also in the courage and bravery of the athlete in the fight, the stability of moral convictions (Minazova et al., 2019), overcoming their weaknesses and failings. At the same time, in the practical and theoretical aspects of sport, more often than not there is no emphasis on the formation of personality, but a unidirectional focus related to the formation of motor skills and the development of physical qualities (Lubysheva, 2011, 2013). It should be noted that this conception of the meaning of sport is traditional. In 2017, the area of sports was subjected to reform, as a result of which trainers lost the status of educators, turning from coaches-teachers into ordinary coaches implementing only the program and tasks of sports training and leaving the priority issues of education and personality formation far behind.

It resulted in a contradiction. On the one hand, at all levels of competition athletes are required to demonstrate moral behaviour, such as non-doping, fair play, and respect for opponents. On the other hand, a strict focus only on sports achievement does not imply an emphasis on the shaping of strong moral principles. Studying laws, the rules of competition, and completing an anti-doping program only can give a basic understanding of the conduct rules at a cognitive level. For these rules of behaviour to be strictly observed, there must be a deep conviction and an internal need for their fulfillment as an indicator of value-based orientations in the personality structure, the ability to manage one's own behavior and to be aware of the causes and consequences of actions.

The formation of personality value-based orientations in sport activity is advisable, starting from the moment of admitting a child to a sports school. As a rule, children first join a sport association in their primary school age.

Problem Statement

As part of our study, the relevance of the problem of formation of personality value-based orientations of primary school students, apart from the requirements for moral sports behavior, is also determined by some modern trends. Discussing the childhood problems, the researchers point out the violation of interpersonal communication, the blurring of the notions of permissible and impermissible, the absence of a common normative standard, the intensive primitivization of consciousness, the growth of cynicism, the level of cruelty and aggression (Slobodchikov et al., 2018). It reduces the children's energy, their desire to be active. It is important to note that the data obtained by scientists in the studies carried out at the Psychological Institute of the Russian Academy of Education, the Moscow City Psychological and Pedagogical University, the Faculty of Psychology of the Lomonosov Moscow State University, and the Institute of Psychology of the Russian Academy of Sciences show the presence of qualitative mental, psychophysical, and personality shifts in the modern child (Kholodkova, 2014).

The consequences of children's exposure to the Internet, often from infancy, are alarming. The arising particular necessity of the screen stimulation gives failures in perception of the information arriving from the world around, blocking the child's own activity. As a result, there is a lack of interests, lack of concentration, lack of interest in interpersonal communication, hyperactivity, and increased absent-mindedness. The flow of information streaming from the monitor often predetermines a child's orientation to material and hedonistic values.

The desire to win "at any cost" is increasingly noted in sports activities. In the rush for prestige and the title of winner, some sport rules are violated, and situations of psychological pressure against their rivals arise on the part of young athletes (Babakov et al., 2016). Among students of martial arts sport schools, there are more and more cases of demonstrating their strength and skills outside the gym in an attempt to prove their point or get what they want.

It is critical to counteract these trends. The formation of personality value-based orientations is not just the responsibility of the child's family, but is also a subject of activity of secondary schools and organizations of leisure activities, including sports orientation.

Research Questions

The relevance of the problem to shape the personality value-based orientations requires the search for new approaches, pedagogical tools and techniques for its solution. As a part of the study, the authors consider the pedagogical potential of additional sports-oriented education. The subject of the authors' scientific interest is a primary school student. The decision to choose this age group is due to its high degree of sensitivity to the formation of personality value-based orientations and pedagogical feasibility associated with the fact that this is the age when children first come to any sports association.

The authors suppose that there is a direct correlation between the development of reflection and coping behavior in primary school students and the formation of their value-based orientations. In order this hypothesis to be confirmed, it is necessary to define the terms "reflection" and "coping behavior". Then, taking as an example educational activity of a children's and youth martial arts sports school, it is necessary to determine the means of actualization of reflection and training of coping behavior, to verify in practice and to evaluate the effectiveness in the framework of formation of personality value-based orientations of the primary school students.

Purpose of the Study

The aim of the study is to determine the relationship between the training of coping behavior and the development of reflection and the formation of value-based orientations in primary school students.

Research Methods

While conducting the research, the authors reviewed psychological and pedagogical literature, studied and summarized the practice of martial arts in the formation of personality value-based orientations, educational experiments, psychological and pedagogical testing.

The theoretical basis of the study included the scientific works of practitioners in martial arts Golets (2015), Kroshkin (2010); the works of scientists Davydov et al. (1992), Kolmogorova (1999), Slobodchikov and Tsukerman (1996), Kholodkova (2014), which reveal the issues of formation of personality value-based orientations of primary school students' personality; the concept of coping behavior by Granovskaya (2010).

The pedagogical experiment was conducted over a period of three years. At the beginning and at the end of the experiment the psychological and pedagogical diagnostic testing was conducted in the control and experimental groups consisting of 75–100 people in each. The results of the diagnostics enabled the authors to estimate the degree of formation of personality value-based orientations and to determine the levels of formation of value-based orientations of primary school students. In particular, the adaptive, situational and activity levels were distinguished.

For children with an adaptive level, the value knowledge is non-systematic and insufficient. In behavior, values are not objectified; in moral decision-making situations, this child makes a wrong decision.

The situational level is characterized by insufficient knowledge of values and their selective acceptance. The structure of the personality is dominated by the values of significant adults, and the values are selectively objectified in behavior.

The activity level of forming personality value-based orientations is characterized by the profound knowledge of moral values, their emotional acceptance, the recognition of their personal meaning, the need to be guided by moral values in behavior, the independent judgments and the predominance of the internal locus of control (Figure 01).

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At the end of the experiment, both groups were diagnosed with positive results. At the same time, in the experimental group, the level of formation of personality value-based orientations turned out to be higher than in the control group. The authors relate the positive result in the control group to the maturation of the children and their involvement in the culture of martial arts, which itself, has a valuable educational potential (Figure 02).

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Findings

. The formation of personality value-based orientations takes place in stages and implies a certain sequence of actions: learning about a value, its profound awareness, positive assessment, formation of the motivation and need for value appropriation and interiorization of the value in the form of a personality value-based orientation. The most need for the formation of reflection is experienced by children of primary school age. It is in primary school age that a child begins to see the reasons for his or her behavioral deficiencies in his or her character. Researchers Slobodchikov and Tsukerman define this phenomenon as "personalization" (1996), considered as the gradual development of the individual into a person with a developed level of self-identification The development of this phenomenon, such as personalization, is inseparable from the ability of a primary school student to reflect.

Within the framework of the current study, it is considered interpreting a reflection as a quality of consciousness, giving the possibility to comprehend oneself as a person, to foresee the consequences of one's own actions, to identify one's emotional reactions and to realize the reasons that provoke them.

The ability of students of martial arts sports school to be aware of their emotions and, as a result, to control them, is a necessary personal quality. This statement is explained by the specific nature of the sport and the personality characteristics of children who have the predisposition and need to learn martial arts. The children who are attracted to martial arts, as a rule, are prone to impulsive actions, outbursts of aggression, are convinced of their ability to defend their point of view by force, also they can tolerate painful manifestations and during sparring prefer to win at all costs. Outside of trainings, they are often prone to conflicting behavior: they "bully" others, curse, fight, and often take risks. At the same time, at the knowledge level, they have a perfect understanding of the essence of moral values. But in practice, it is difficult enough for them to comply with the requirements of society, at least at the primary school age.

The decision of this problem consists in the area of forming reflection and coping behavior. In psychological and pedagogical sciences, coping behavior is a rather capacious concept which includes various kinds of coping strategies. According to Granovskaya (2010), coping is "a set of conscious strategies of conflict resolution for coping with inner tension and discomfort acquired by a personality in the process of ontogenesis, in connection with the formation of speech, consciousness and self-consciousness" (p. 209). At the same time, the researcher, considering the concept of "coping behavior," emphasizes its inconsistency with the meaning of the word "coping strategies". In genesis, the term "coping behavior" (in Russian 'sovladanye') comes from the Old Russian "lad", "sladit", which means "to cope", "to overcome difficulties", "to subordinate circumstances" and has only positive meaning, without any connotation of the negative. Whereas "coping strategies" in literal translation means "to cope with something", and the ways of solving the problem can be both unconstructive and negative (Granovskaya, 2010).

Based on Granovskaya's conclusions, the authors do not draw any stable parallels between the concepts of "coping behavior" and "coping strategies", understanding by coping behavior The study proposes to consider coping behavior as the existence of positive and constructive ways out of difficult situations; the primary school student's ability to control him or herself, to control his or her emotions; to find positive things in the current situation, whether it is a loss at a competition or a sparring session during training; to understand that physical violence is not the best way to resolve conflicts; that there are always positive ways out of conflict situations, even if on first glance it seems that everything can be resolved by force.

As part of the current research in the experimental group, we used tools that develop the ability to reflect and coping behavior of primary school students. The most popular means of stimulating reflection was a direct question from the coach about what the primary school student did and why, what he/she felt at that moment, what new things he/she learned, what he/she liked most of all, what he/she did not like, etc. Game activities based on the principle of the well-known game "Edible and Inedible" were carried out systematically. The "edible" thing was a positive quality and the "inedible" one was a negative quality. In this way, younger students mastered a moral principle of values. A modification of the game "Edible and Inedible" was the game with the ball "The Other Way Around", which implies that when a child who caught the ball voiced a positive value of personality, he or she would simultaneously name the opposite of the positive value and return the ball back. In a more complicated version, the game "The Other Way Around" was played as an exercise when a child passed the ball, naming a negative quality peculiar only to him or her, while the other children passed the ball to each other in a circle and named his or her positive qualities.

More difficult variants to motivate a reflection and to shape coping behavior were educative situations created by the teacher in which it was not only assumed that the child would simply evaluate the qualities he or she showed, but also it was required to explain his or her point of view. When reproducing an educational situation, the emphasis was placed on the primary school student's need for visual perception. In the process of dialogue, it was recommended not to moralize, but to be sensitive to the students' opinions, encouraging them possible to make a decision, in the most tactful way.

Within the educational experiment, we used such mechanisms specific to the educational system of a sports school to actualize reflection and educate coping behavior as the existing hierarchy where the teacher had the central place; the system of traditions and rituals created and implemented in the educational process; mentoring techniques; the implementation of psychological and pedagogical trainings in the conditions of training sessions; the tasks aimed at creating an ideal image of a combatant-athlete.

We assume that the central place in the set means of educational influences takes the structure of the personality of the coach-teacher. For a primary school student, the coach is a model to emulate. In the student's actions, he or she expects to gain the approval of a significant adult and to perform actions that would meet the ideal image of a combatant-athlete. In turn, these perceptions are formed by the teacher: by broadcasting his or her behavior, beliefs, ideas, through conversations, dialogue, etc. In martial arts, the coach-teacher has a special role with the honorary title ofand he is at the top of the martial arts hierarchy. His authority is tremendous and uncompromising, and his demands must be strictly followed.

As part of the experiment, an appropriate atmosphere was created: some attributes were developed, and a system of traditions and rituals was introduced. We consider a ritual as a basic means of actualization of reflection and formation of coping behavior. The trainings began with a ceremony in front of the Sho-men (sacred place). This meaningful place for students is fitted with the Russian flag and the flag of Japan (the country where karate emerged). Karate begins and ends with a bow (rei). First the Sho-men bow is made, then the Kensei (to the coach), and the last one, Otagani Rei, the bow of mutual courtesy.

There is a certain hierarchy in oriental martial arts. Students take their place in the training room based on their athletic performance and the availability of sportsmanship. Students with high ratings are called sanpai. In addition to their training workload, they performed the duties of a mentor: they monitored behavioral standards, helped teach primary school students, and introduced by personal experience, the traditions, and rules that exist in the association (Melnichenko & Rachkovskaya, 2021).

The procedure of the completion of training acted as a ritual means of shaping reflection and coping behavior. Together with the coach-teacher, the primary school students read the code of conduct in the dojo, which essentially represents the imperatives to the moral values and behavioral norms that all combat-athletes must possess:

"Karate helps us 

• to improve our character; 
• to be honest, faithful, benevolent; 
• to be attentive and diligent; 
• to respect the people around us; 
• not to allow aggression" (Kroshkin, 2010, p. 112). 

Also, as part of a pedagogical experiment, the coach-teacher gave tasks to create an image of a combat-athlete who is generous, strong-willed, moral, successful, strong in body and spirit, in various modifications. Exercises were in the format of individual tasks to perform a story or essay on a given topic, in the format of a conversation aimed at creating a collective image of the ideal combat-athlete.

It must be clear that the range of educational impacts of martial arts is not limited only to these methods. Also, the competitive activities common to the control and experimental groups, the system of martial arts exercises, the training sessions and other means of influence can be included here. It is essential that the formation of a student's personality in a martial arts sports school takes an important place in the hierarchy of achievements in the sports school. Only in this case it would be possible to entirely declare the real mission of high-performance sports - the comprehensive shaping of a person.

Conclusion

The pedagogical experiment revealed that the actualization of reflection and education of coping behavior is a necessary condition for the formation of value-based orientations of the personality of a primary school student in the conditions of a children's and youth sports school of martial arts. Reflection generates an in-depth understanding of self-behavior and allows relating it to moral values, which is an important stage in the formation of personality value-based orientations. Coping behavior implies the presence of positive reactions and a constructive way of responding to negative situations. A primary school student with a developed coping behavior minimizes the chance of stressful situations, his or her actions are socially approved, it is easier for him or her to find friends in the sports group, he or she is respected, supported and accepted in the team. Such students have a positive emotional state and are more influenced by the teacher and the team, and are therefore more susceptible to the formation of personality value-based orientations. The education of coping behavior among the students trained at sports school of martial arts has a special relevance in their personality characteristics: the tendency to aggressive manifestations, conflict, etc.

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