Lecture
Social activity, morality, and the realization of the personality's abilities are the main tasks of education, and the success of accomplishing them largely depends on the direction and pace of reforms in school life. One of the problems facing educators is the psychological-pedagogical dualism in relation to the developing personality — teaching and upbringing are not always based on knowledge about the psychology of the child's development and the formation of his personality.
Every schoolchild possesses features of cognitive activity, emotional life, will, and character that are inherent in him alone; each requires an individual approach, which the teacher, for various reasons, is not always able to carry out.
Recently, the structural approach has become traditional in the work of child psychologists; within its framework, personal and interpersonal relationships, and so on, are considered.
Since the psychologist's activity is directed to a greater extent at solving the concrete problems with which students, their parents, or teachers turn to him, the main goal of the psychological service as a whole can be considered to be the promotion of mental health, educational interests, and the disclosure of the individuality of the socializing personality, as well as the correction of various kinds of difficulties in its development. The systematic character of the psychologist's work is ensured in the following way. First, the psychologist regards the student's personality as a complex system having a diverse orientation of its manifestations (from the individual's own inner activity to participation in various groups exerting a certain influence on him). Second, the methodological toolkit used by the workers of the psychological service is also subordinated to the logic of the systems approach and is aimed at identifying all the aspects and qualities of the student in order to help his development.
In the most general form, diagnostic, consultative, and corrective work with students must be conducted at five most important levels.
The psychophysiological level shows the formation of the components that make up the internal physiological and psychophysiological basis of all the systems of the developing subject.
The individual-psychological level determines the development of the subject's basic psychological systems (cognitive, emotional, etc.).
The personal level expresses the specific features of the subject himself as an integral system, his distinction from analogous subjects at the given stage of development.
The microgroup level shows the features of the interaction of the developing subject as an integral system with other subjects and their associations.
The social level determines the forms of interaction of the subject with broader social associations and with society as a whole.
In addition, the work system of the psychological service must include various kinds of work with the personnel of educational institutions (joint comprehensive studies, consultations, seminars, etc.), aimed not only at increasing the psychological competence of educators but also at overcoming the school's detachment from real life. The necessity of this form of work is also driven by the goal of avoiding the transformation of the psychological service into an «emergency service» or an «order desk» carrying out only assigned tasks, so that the psychologist can command the psychological situation in the school, can himself determine the prospects for its development, and the strategy and tactics of interaction with various groups of students and individuals.
Fundamental knowledge, like the knowledge obtained within the system of other sciences, is used by pedagogy to solve the tasks of teaching and upbringing. Experimental psychology provides the necessary guideposts in the modern ways of organizing experimental research and in the systems of methods gravitating toward the experimental.
One of the principal methods of psychology is the experiment, which relies on the precise accounting of the manipulated independent variables influencing the dependent variable. And the personality and various groups of people are a ready-made experimental testing ground for psychologists.
Psychology is ahead of pedagogy, blazing new trails for it, providing a broad search for the new in the matter of teaching and upbringing.
Konstantin Dmitrievich Ushinsky already emphasized that, in its significance for pedagogy, psychology occupies the first place among all the sciences, since, in order to teach and bring up, one must know the psyche of those being brought up and taught. No problem of pedagogy can be solved without relying on psychological knowledge.
The modern holistic approach, which makes it possible to carry out more effectively the process of teaching various disciplines in school and the upbringing of students, reinforces the role of psychology as a science in the preparation of a new generation of pedagogical cadres.
Thus, experimental psychology and educational practice are closely connected with each other.
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