1.10. DEVELOPMENT OF PERSONALITY AS A PEDAGOGICAL PROBLEM

In psychology and pedagogy, there are three approaches to the problem of personal development.

In the biological approach, a person is considered as a natural being, which acts in accordance with natural needs, impulses, instincts. If they are in conflict with the norms of society, then he is forced to hide or replace them.

In the sociological approach, the leading role in human development is assigned to the social environment, especially the closest human environment. Within the framework of this approach, personality development is predetermined by the environment in which a person lived his early years.

In the biosocial approach, mental processes (sensation, memory, thinking, etc.) are considered as phenomena having a biological nature, and the orientation, interests, and abilities of an individual are formed as social phenomena.

Modern pedagogical science, based on the provisions of domestic psychologists (L. Vygotsky and others), considers the person as a whole, in which the biological is closely related to the social. Personality development is a complex, controversial process of turning quantitative changes into qualitative ones. The driving forces of personal development are the contradictions, which include:

• the contradiction between the new needs of the individual and the possibilities of their satisfaction;

• contradictions between the requirements of society to the person and the current level of its development;

• contradictions between the increased physical and spiritual capabilities of the child and the old forms of relationships and activities.

These contradictions are characteristic of all stages of personality development, but at each of them they have their own specifics and their resolution determines the transition to a new level of personality development. In the pedagogical process, the indicated general contradictions are concretized and take on a brighter form.

Personality development occurs in society, in the process of human interaction with the outside world and the assimilation of its norms and rules. This process is called socialization. Socialization is a continuous process that continues throughout life and has its own characteristics in the pre-labor, labor and post-labor stages.

Education, in contrast to socialization, is a process focused and consciously controlled by society in the face of teachers. Therefore, upbringing organizes spontaneous influences on a person and creates conditions for accelerating the processes of socialization in order to develop a personality. So, education can weaken the negative consequences of socialization, give it a humanistic orientation.

Socialization of the individual occurs in the process of various situations that require a specific human behavior and activity. These circumstances in the aggregate act as factors (conditions) of socialization. A.V. Mudrik identified three groups of factors of socialization :

• macro factors affecting the socialization of all inhabitants of the planet or very large groups of people (space, planet, country, state, climatic conditions of life);  

• mesofactors, determining the conditions of socialization of large groups of people, allocated on a national basis; according to the place and type of settlement in which they live (village, city), etc .;

• microfactors that have a direct impact on specific people. These include family, peer group, school, professional teams, etc.

The effect of various factors of socialization is ambiguous throughout a person’s life. So, in the early and pre-school age, the most significant is the influence of the family, in the adolescent - the peer group, in the mature - the workforce. The factors of socialization are also factors of personality formation, making up a group of environmental factors.

However, the formation of personality is influenced by such a factor as a consequence. The makings of a person, which determine his natural disposition to a particular type of activity, are inherited.

Most Russian scientists do not deny the influence of biological and environmental factors on the formation of personality, but they recognize activity and activity as the leading factor . This allows you to talk about the self-development of man and the possibilities of his self-education. Self- education is a systematic and conscious human activity aimed at self-development and the formation of a basic personality culture [Slastenin]. It occurs at a certain stage of personal development (more often in adolescence), characterizes a person as a subject of upbringing, capable of independently choosing the goal of his upbringing and the means of achieving it. From this point on, the person himself becomes responsible for his development.