Lecture
Primary-school age (7–11/12 years) is defined by an important
event – entering school. The child automatically takes up a
completely new place in the system of relations among people: it acquires
permanent duties connected with learning activity.
On entering primary-school age, the child acquires the
internal position of a pupil and learning motivation. Learning
activity becomes the leading activity for it. Over the course of this period the
child develops theoretical thinking.
Primary-school age is a special stage in the child's development,
characterized by an expansion of the circle of communication, the acquisition of the
ability to use speech to regulate one's own behavior,
an increase in the volume of memory or the effectiveness of its use, and an increase in the
volume of knowledge drawn upon to solve various tasks.
Obukhova L.F. names the following as the main psychological new formations
of primary-school age:
1. Voluntariness and awareness of all mental processes and their
intellectualization, their internal mediation, which occurs
owing to the assimilation of systems of scientific concepts.
2. Awareness of one's own changes as a result of the development
of learning activity.
With the child's entry into school, a restructuring of the entire system
of the child's relations with reality takes place. Obligations are placed on it not
only to attend school every day, but also to submit to the requirements of learning
activity. The freedom of preschool childhood gives way to relations of
dependency and subordination to new rules of life.
This social situation of development requires a special kind of activity. This
activity is called learning activity. One of its paradoxes, in
the words of D. B. Elkonin, consists in the following: while being social
in its meaning, content and form, it is at the same time carried out
in a strictly individual manner, and its products are products of individual
assimilation.
In the process of learning activity the child masters knowledge and skills
developed by humanity. But the child does not change them. The subject of
change in learning activity is the subject itself. Of course, the subject
changes in any other activity as well, but nowhere else does it become a
special subject of change. It is precisely the subject of learning activity
who sets itself the task of changing by means of its
unfolded performance.
The second feature of this activity is the child's acquisition of the ability
to subordinate its work in various pursuits to the mass of rules obligatory for
everyone, as a developed system. Subordination to rules forms in
the child the ability to regulate its own behavior and thereby higher
forms of voluntary control over it.
Learning activity has the following structure:
learning tasks,
learning actions,
the action of control (and self-control),
the action of evaluation (and self-evaluation).
Learning activity requires the development of higher mental processes
– the voluntariness of attention, memory, imagination.
The attention, memory and imagination of the schoolchild already acquire
independence – the child learns to command special actions
that make it possible to concentrate on learning activity,
retain in memory what has been heard or seen, and imagine something
going beyond what has been perceived before. Whereas in preschool age
play activity itself contributed to quantitative changes in
the development of voluntariness, in primary-school age learning
activity requires the child to appropriate special actions
thanks to which attention, memory and imagination acquire a
pronounced voluntary, deliberate character. However
the voluntariness of cognitive processes in children aged 6–7 to 10–11 arises
at the peak of volitional effort, when the child specially organizes itself under
the pressure of circumstances or on its own initiative. Under ordinary
circumstances it is still very hard for it to organize its mental
processes at the level of the highest achievements of the human psyche.
Theoretical thinking allows the pupil to solve problems by
orienting not toward external, visible features and connections of objects, but toward
internal, essential properties and relations. As a result of the development of
theoretical thinking, reflection also improves – children's awareness
of their own actions, or more precisely, of the results and methods of their analysis
of the conditions of a task. The child gains new knowledge, abilities, skills – creating
a base for its subsequent learning. But the significance of learning activity
is not exhausted by this: the development of the primary-school child's personality
depends directly on its effectiveness.
Development of thinking operations in primary-school age
The development of analysis proceeds from practically effective to sensory and
further to mental. In younger schoolchildren the predominant
type is practically effective and sensory analysis.
The development of analysis also passes through a series of stages: from partial to
comprehensive and systemic. The predominant type of analysis in the younger
schoolchild is partial and comprehensive. However, often pupils
analyze only individual parts or properties of an object. As a result,
the material being assimilated turns out to be partial, one-sided.
With comprehensive analysis the assimilation of the learning material is more complete,
since pupils examine more or less all the parts or properties
of the object being studied, but they do not yet establish the interconnections between them, i.e.
they simply list, in a certain sequence, the distinguished
parts or properties of objects, for example, they speak of many events
in a story without any interconnection between them.
At the next stage in the development of analysis, younger schoolchildren carry out
a systemic analysis of the objects and phenomena being studied. They arrange the parts and
properties of objects in a definite system, find the main parts and
properties, and establish their interconnection and interdependence.
The development of analysis proceeds together with the development of synthesis: from
simple, summative, to broader and more complex. As a result,
the parts of the whole are joined together, forming a simple sum of features
(summative synthesis). For example, the enumeration of known birds, animals,
plants, and so on. Genuine synthesis yields a qualitatively new result, new
knowledge of reality.
Analysis and synthesis are closely interconnected. They occur in unity.
Thus, some words are understood only in context, i.e. on the basis of
synthesis. But the understanding of individual words, i.e. analysis, leads to a more
complete and deeper understanding of a phrase, i.e. to a new synthesis. The deeper
the analysis, the fuller the synthesis. In turn, synthesis influences
the quality of analysis.
The development of abstraction in pupils is manifested in the formation of
the ability to single out general and essential features, connections and relations,
as well as to distinguish non-essential features and connections of these objects or
phenomena and abstract away from them. One of the features of abstraction in
younger pupils is that children more easily abstract the properties
of objects and phenomena than the connections and relations that exist
between them. Knowing these features, the teacher should draw pupils'
attention to hidden but essential features, their connections and relations.
It is important to distinguish between isolating and dissecting abstraction.
Isolating abstraction consists in the complete separation of one element
from the rest. The result of isolating abstraction is, for example,
the definition of a concept, when a pupil formulates the general, essential
features of a given range of objects without taking the rest into account.
Dissecting abstraction is the conscious separation of the essential and
the non-essential and their opposition on the basis of generalized knowledge.
Younger schoolchildren more often use isolating abstraction. They
single out essential features and discard non-essential ones. For
a thorough assimilation of knowledge it is necessary to set the essential and
non-essential features against one another, i.e. one must use dissecting
abstraction.
Three levels of the development of generalization in children have been established: sensory,
practically effective; figurative-conceptual; conceptual-figurative,
scientific.
Sensory generalization occurs during direct
contact with objects and phenomena, in the process of perceiving them and
practical activity with them. This generalization is the primary one in the
preschooler and at first also predominates in the younger schoolchild. In the process of
sensory generalization both essential and non-essential properties, connections
and relations of objects and phenomena may be combined. As a
result a sum of elementary knowledge arises in the form of general
representations.
Figurative-conceptual generalization is a generalization of both essential
features of objects and non-essential features in the form of visual
images. In this generalization conceptual knowledge and
individual images of objects stand side by side.
Conceptual-figurative, scientific generalization is a generalization of similar
essential features of objects and phenomena, of their essential connections and
relations. The result of such generalization is scientific concepts,
laws, and rules.
The development of generalization in pupils proceeds from broad
to increasingly differentiated.
Personality development, which began in preschool childhood in connection
with the subordination of motives and the formation of self-awareness, continues into
primary-school age. The child retains many childlike qualities, but
already begins to lose childlike spontaneity in behavior, and a
different logic of thinking appears in it.
The younger schoolchild finds itself in new social conditions: it is
included in socially significant activity, the results of which are evaluated highly
or poorly by the adults close to it. The development of its personality in this period
depends directly on school performance and the evaluation of the child as a good or a poor pupil.
At school it acquires not
only new knowledge and skills, but also a definite social status. The child's
interests, values and entire way of life change.
School performance is an important criterion for evaluating the child as a
person on the part of adults and peers. Successful learning, awareness
of one's abilities and skill in carrying out various tasks well,
leads to the formation of a sense of competence – a new aspect of
self-awareness, which, alongside theoretical reflective thinking,
can be regarded as the central personal new formation of primary-school
age.
If a sense of competence in learning activity does not form, the
child's self-evaluation decreases and a sense of inferiority arises; compensatory
self-evaluation and motivation may develop.
Development of the motivational sphere of the younger schoolchild's personality
At the beginning of school life, having the internal position of a pupil,
the child wants to learn. And to learn well, excellently. Among the
various social motives for learning the main place is occupied by the motive
of obtaining high grades. Other broad social motives for learning –
duty, responsibility, the necessity of obtaining an education, and so on – are
also recognized by pupils. But they remain only «known» (in the terms
of A. N. Leontiev) motives. The grade is a really operative motive.
Value orientations are formed. The value orientations
of successful pupils are directed toward interest in the subject. In
unsuccessful pupils – toward the external attributes of study.
More often interests have a pronounced external character. Most
younger schoolchildren possess cognitive interests that are not of a very
high level. But children who do well are attracted to various, including
complex, school subjects. An important aspect of cognitive
motivation is learning-cognitive motives, motives of
self-improvement. More often interests have a pronounced external
character (attracted by novelty, game elements, and the like).
Achievement motivation in the early grades often becomes
dominant. Children with high performance have a clearly expressed motivation
for achieving success.
In achievement motivation a second tendency is also clearly manifested –
motivation to avoid failure. By the end of primary-school age
compensatory motivation arises in underachieving pupils. These are
motives secondary to learning activity that allow the child to
assert itself in another area: in sports, music, drawing,
caring for younger children, and so on.
Development of the younger schoolchild's self-awareness
The child's self-awareness develops intensively, and its structure
strengthens, filling up with new value orientations.
School evaluation directly influences the formation of self-evaluation.
Evaluation of performance is, in essence, an evaluation of the personality as a whole and
determines the child's social status. Children with lowered and low
self-evaluation often develop a sense of their own inferiority.
On the whole, in children of primary-school age self-evaluation:
• becomes on the whole more adequate;
• more differentiated;
• judgments about oneself – more well-founded.
Full-fledged personality development presupposes the formation of a sense of
competence, which E. Erikson considers the central
new formation of this age.
By the end of primary-school age reflection improves –
creating new possibilities for the formation of self-evaluation and personal
qualities.
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