11. ACTIVITY APPROACH TO FORMATION OF PERSONALITY. FORMATION OF SELF-ASSESSMENT

Human actions, his activity is significantly different from the actions of the animal.

The main distinguishing feature of the human psyche is the presence of consciousness , and the conscious reflection is such a reflection of objective reality, in which its objective stable properties are distinguished, regardless of the subject's attitude to it.

Any joint labor of people implies a division of labor, the performance by each person of an individual set of operations. Some of them mean by result a kind of good that is biologically beneficial to humans. Some do the work, the purpose of which is to bring some object to the intermediate stage for its further processing. In any case, each person, as a separate subject of a group, is aware of his activity as a certain component of the whole process, at the same time assuming a certain completeness of his own, individual goal, which is achieved by performing a certain type of activity.

Activity is the active interaction of a person with the environment in which he achieves a consciously set goal, which arose as a result of the appearance of a definite need, motive.

One of the first types of activity arising in the process of human development is communication . It corrects and directs the verbal interaction of people, contributes to the formation of the child’s personality, and allows them to become aware of themselves as individuals. Playing, teaching and working are also activities that contribute to personal development, the goals of which are also the acquisition of certain benefits, in the case of teaching - information, labor - material and spiritual benefits, and in the case of playing - this is a certain state of interest and enthusiasm.

In the understanding of A.N. Leontiev, activity is not the administration of some purely internal - mental or physiological - mechanism, but is a process organized by environmental objects. These objects do not constitute a source of purely external physical or cultural effects on the body. As DI Feldstein points out, the subject is only that aspect of a certain factor of the external world, which can be included in the structure of activity at a certain stage.

Subject activity is neither a manifestation of the initially internal genetic properties of the organism, nor the effect of external environmental influences. In the course of activity, which includes the subject's pole and the object's pole, processes of “objectification” occur, the subject embodies his intentions, i.e. ultimately, his psychological qualities in the subject, and “distribution” , that is, the subject assigns quality of the object of activity. It is activity that ensures the adequacy of mental reflection of activity.

Being always associated with a specific need of an object, activity is distinguished by plasticity and similarity, closely associating with the “groping” of the needs of its subject, which leads to its objectification, the formation of a specific motive of activity. The external objective and internal activity is distinguished by the generality of the structure and the functional connection, which is expressed in mutual transitions and interconversions. Therefore, when studying the external activity, psychology has the opportunity to penetrate into the internal human activity that is being formed in the process of internalizing the external activity. Under the internalization of L. S. Vygotsky, like the French scientists, understood primarily socialization, the formation of the social structures of the cognitive processes of the child as a whole.

According to D.I. Feldshtein, the peculiarity of activity lies in the fact that the results of its constituent actions under certain conditions turn out to be more significant than their motives. The general mechanism for changing types of activity can be illustrated by an example of children's play activities. In the game of a preschooler child, game actions are improved, as well as a number of mental functions, the level of development of perception, memory, will, etc., for example. For some games, children need to be specially acquainted with the properties and characteristics of people’s relationships, nature phenomena, etc. . p. Initially, this acquaintance appears only as a specific goal of the action, motivated by the game

by the situation. But gradually in older preschoolers, the value of the results of such cognitive activity, as it were, outgrows the game motifs that cause this action, and the child begins to be interested in information about the environment on its own, outside the game situation. There was a shift of motive to the goal, and thus the action of “acquaintance” acquired a different character. Thus, the active position of activity consists in the formation of new motives, their purposeful restructuring. The goal, even the closest one, takes a person out of the immediate present, builds a project of the future, that is, what still needs to be done to meet the demand delayed in time. This provision applies to the actions of an adult, and to the actions of the child, with the only difference that the child in the process of mental development gradually moves from simple and close goals to goals more distant and promising.

Unlike motives that are far from being always realized, being expressed indirectly, existing in the form of striving for a goal, experiences, desires, the goal of activity act as an obligatory conscious component and bear a particularly active load. Each deployed activity involves the achievement of a number of specific goals that stand out from the overall goal. When the role of such a common goal is fulfilled by a conscious motive, it becomes a goal motive. In motives objectified these or those human needs. Personality development involves the formation of a hierarchical motivational-need structure, dominated by higher spiritual needs. DI Feldstein emphasizes that the process of development of activity, its expansion and complication takes place most intensively in a growing person, determining his becoming as a person. Moreover, this is not a simple movement, carried out in the form of a transition from one sum of particular types of activities to another with their accumulation and interpenetration, but a regular development, the process of which ensures the child’s mastery of both actions, operations, motives, goals, social norms, leading to mastering the world of things and at the same time working out an appropriate position in the world of people, representing the condition of personal development, the way to realize the social form of movement

Each period in the development of a child is characterized by its own type of subjectivity inherent only in it. Thus, in infancy, subjectivity appears in the form of a “prama,” that is, a certain undifferentiated feeling of one’s community with an adult, a vague opposition of this community to the rest of the world, as L. S. Vygotsky points out.

E. Z. Basina asserts that at an early age the child’s individual activity develops, he becomes a relatively independent subject. But awareness of oneself as a subject of activity arises later - only by the end of an early age, in a period of crisis 3 years. Throughout the preschool years, this awareness remains very little differentiated. As V. S. Mukhina points out, the child is aware of himself only in the most general, non-individualized categories: “I am a good boy (good girl)”. In the type of subjectivity of the child changes occur during the crisis period of 7 years. L. S. Vygotsky assumed that it was at this age that self-esteem began to take shape — a generalized (that is, stable, extra-operative) and at the same time differentiated attitude of the child towards himself. Self-esteem mediates the child's attitude to himself, integrates the experience of his activities, communication with other people. This is the most important personal instance that allows you to control your own activities from the point of view of regulatory criteria, to build your holistic behavior in accordance with social norms.

R. Burns , analyzing a large number of studies, notes that on the verge of preschool and primary school age there is a qualitative leap in the development of the “I” concept. However, the expansive interpretation of this concept deprives the conclusions of specificity, does not allow sufficiently meaningful characterization of the changes taking place.

As Z. Basin states, the problems associated with self-esteem and the image of “I” are traditionally considered in the domestic psychology in the context of studying self-consciousness ( L.S. Vygotsky, S.L. Rubinstein, V.V. Stolin, I.I. Chesnokov ).

The following understanding of these problems dominates: they are of education of a cognitive nature and an ascertaining nature, i.e., they capture the child’s ideas about his current qualities and capabilities ( E. I. Savonko, M. I. Lisin, A. I. Silvestru ). In special experimental studies, predominantly the self-esteem of children in specific activities is studied. Analysis of the research results shows that by the age of 7, the children's self-esteem begins to become adequate or is already becoming such (I. I. Chesnokova, E. I. Savonko).

The data characterizing the formation of the child's cognitive ideas about himself, the measure of the success of self-knowledge and the adequacy of self-esteem in activities are studied in the context of the development of the cognitive sphere of the psyche. However, the child’s self-image is not limited to purely cognitive aspects, all the more so since true self-knowledge is hardly inherent in children’s age. E. Z. Basina argues that there are fundamental differences between the ability to more or less adequately assess yourself in a particular activity when provoking external self-esteem (in the experiment) and the propensity to think about yourself independently, spontaneously, and not in the sphere of specific occupations, but in general. It is this holistic view of oneself that most closely approximates the concept of an “important personal instance,” because it mediates the subject’s relationship with himself. It is quite obvious that the assessment of oneself does not exist in isolation from the concept of the qualities being assessed themselves. Therefore, self-esteem should be considered in the aspect of a general idea of ​​yourself. According to the data available in science, the content of the subject's ideas about what he is, does not include the value-neutral qualities that are devoid of personal meaning for the subject. These qualities are endowed with a subject of high positive or negative value.

According to E. Z. Basina, the distinction between the general self-image of the “I” image and its aspects: meaningful (“I” -concept) and evaluative (self-esteem) is also quite legitimate. The developed image of the “I” must be preceded by the child’s awareness of his individuality, of himself as an individual: the idea of ​​physical separateness, isolation from the world, subjectivity, of oneself as a subject of activity and mental experiences. A higher level of awareness of oneself as an individual (individuality) must correspond to the idea of ​​what this individual is (what is the individuality). The image of the “I” in this sense can be considered as an answer to the question: “What is I like as an individual being, an individual subject?”

Affective understanding of oneself, emotional self-perception, and well-being arise during ontogenesis before a meaningful understanding of oneself, one’s own individual qualities, and is more related to self-esteem than to the “I” -concept.

At the same time, it seems legitimate to assume that affective self-perception does not merge with self-esteem, it is not identified with it, because experimentation and phenomenology provide very extensive data on their qualitative discrepancy. There are fundamental differences in the genesis of these two mental formations. Affective self-perception is hardly initially related to the attitude towards oneself as an object of reflection. Rather, it represents the child’s assimilation of the attitude of people around him to him, their treatment of him. It can be assumed that the period of transition from preschool to primary school is characterized not by the appearance of an affective attitude towards oneself (it develops earlier, during the very preschool age), but by the formation of generalized informative and evaluative ideas related to the maturation of the cognitive prerequisites of reflective self-reflection.

If we consider the child’s views about himself only as stating the present level and the nature of his individual capabilities, it is natural to assume that they are made up mainly of the child’s judgments about his skills, knowledge, etc. However, the child’s views of himself as an individual can be worn and anticipating character, as well as adolescent ideas about their personal characteristics. The development of the human psyche is accomplished through the process of interiorization, the “appropriation” by the child of social relations by nature. The system of relations of the child with adults is built, first of all, on their expectations, anticipating the formation of his individual mental qualities. Therefore, it can be assumed that the early image of the "I" is characterized mainly by anticipatory ideas about itself. Apparently, they play a very important role in the mental development of a child: they are projecting the value orientations of children concerning the qualities of a human individuality and personality, which have a significant formative effect on the personality of a child. (According to E. Z. Basina.)