8.3. Teaching as a means of education

Teaching as a student's activity, as a result of which he learns knowledge, forms skills and abilities, is one of the leading educational tools, ensuring the targeted formation of the student’s attitude to objects and phenomena of the world around him. In the course of training, the content of the material being studied, the forms and methods of study, the personality of the teacher, his attitude towards students, the subject and the world, as well as the situation in the classroom and the school, have an upbringing influence on the students.

Note that the doctrine is not always an educational tool to influence the emerging personality of the student. In educational practice, there are cases when a child learns (and gets good grades) out of a sense of duty or even fear of being punished for not fulfilling assignments. For a teaching to have an educational influence, it must be properly organized.

The effectiveness of the educational impact of learning is greatly enhanced when the so-called joint productive activities of schoolchildren are practiced in class . The basis of this activity is learning interaction, during which children: a) ascertain the conditions for the joint fulfillment of the task; b) organize its mutual discussion; c) record the course of joint work; d) discuss the results obtained; e) evaluate the success of each; e) approve self-evaluations of group members; e) jointly decide how they will report on the assignment; g) check and evaluate the results of the joint work.

The joint activity of schoolchildren becomes productive if it is carried out with the inclusion of each student in solving problems at the beginning of the process of mastering a new subject content, as well as with his active cooperation with the teacher and other students.

The personal-developmental possibilities of joint learning activities of schoolchildren increase under the following conditions: 1) it must be embodied in a relationship of responsible dependence; 2) it should be socially valuable, meaningful and interesting for children; 3) the social role of the child in the process of joint activity and functioning should change (for example, the role of the elder should be changed to the role of the subordinate and vice versa); 4) joint activities should be emotionally saturated with collective experiences, compassion for the failures of other children and the “rejoicing” of their success.

As a result of organizing joint productive activities in a lesson, both the amount of digestible material and the depth of its understanding increase, less time is spent on the formation of concepts and skills than in front-end training. Some disciplinary difficulties are reduced (the number of students not working in class, not doing homework) is decreasing. Children enjoy the process of learning more, they feel more comfortable in school. School anxiety decreases, cognitive activity and creative independence of students develop. The cohesion of the class increases, the relationship between children becomes warmer, more humane, the students begin to better understand each other and themselves. The self-criticism of children is growing, because, gaining experience of working with peers, they more accurately assess their capabilities and control themselves better. Children who helped their fellow students in the teaching begin to treat teacher's work with great respect. They acquire the skills necessary for life in society (responsibility, tact, ability to build their behavior, taking into account the position of other people, collectivistic motives of behavior). The teacher also gets the opportunity to actually carry out a differentiated and individual approach to students (take into account their abilities, pace of work, mutual inclinations when dividing a class into groups, give groups tasks differentiated by difficulty, pay more attention to the “weak”). The educational work of the teacher becomes a prerequisite for group learning, as the groups in their formation pass through the stage of conflict relations.