The structure of educational activity is one of the most important issues of modern pedagogy. Several chapters of this article set forth the points of view of the most prominent educators and psychologists who have dealt with this topic.
General characteristics and structure of educational activities
First of all, you need to understand what constitutes the process to which the article is devoted. So, educational activity can be characterized both in a broad sense and in a narrower one. In the first case, under it rises any human activity aimed at acquiring knowledge.
This concept includes not only activities included in the holistic pedagogical process and occurring during the course of an institution, but also independent development of the material necessary for life. That is, in a broad sense, educational activities can be understood as a process that takes place upon receipt of an official education, as well as any independent upbringing and training, which is not necessarily structured or even simply meaningful.
In the narrow sense, this term was the first to be used by Soviet teachers Elkonin and Davydov, the structure of the educational activity of which is of great interest and will be considered later in this article. So, what did two prominent scientists say about this form of human activity?
Elkonin proposed to name educational activities only the process of obtaining knowledge of skills that is typical for children of primary school age. As you know, it is on this stretch of life that mastering new information is the main activity. Before the child enters school, the game takes this place, while adolescents have a predominant position in educational activity in communication with peers. Thus, Elkonin proposed narrowing the scope of definition to the boundaries of the age category when the school is the center of human being.
Interpretation of Davydov
This scientist had a slightly different view on this issue. According to Davydov, the educational activity and its structure can be considered not only within the framework of a certain age category, but also in relation to all periods of a person’s life. This outstanding teacher said that such a term can mean the process of obtaining the necessary learning skills, which proceeds consciously and has a clearly defined structure.
Thus, it can be seen from the above that it was Davydov who first mentioned the activity and competency principles that are currently widely used in education, and their implementation in training is approved by the Federal State Educational Standard. By "awareness", about which he spoke, we need to understand the positive motivation that exists among the student, which puts him at the level of the subject of the educational process.
The participant of the system performs the function of a subordinate with an insufficiently formed mood for obtaining knowledge.
The structure of educational activities of students
In the previous chapters of the article, various definitions of the phenomenon of educational activity were considered. Its scheme can also be represented in at least two ways. Firstly, it is able to take the form of a sequence of processes that occur during its implementation, and secondly, it can be based on actions that are components of a single common complex.
The structure of educational activities in Elkonin and Davydov has the following form:
- Motives - Goals - Learning activities - Self-control - Self-esteem.
In another way, the same chain can be represented in the form of actions performed by the student, that is, it is considered from the point of view of the subject of the process. So, the second type of structure has the following form:
- Search for reasons for learning that can serve as incentives for further action.
- Awareness of the goals of the upcoming work.
- Performing certain training activities and fixing them.
- An analysis of how successfully your own assignment progresses. The second part of this paragraph is the evaluation of your own results.
Next, attention will be paid to each of the above components of the structure of educational activities.
Motivation
Psychology says that for the successful course of an activity, it is necessary that the person who carries out it clearly understands the reason why it should carry out certain actions. Without the formed motivation, the success of the entire education is reduced to almost zero.
If, for example, the student has not figured out for himself why this or that knowledge needs to be obtained and how it can be useful in later life, then he will be in the position of the object of education. That is, his role in this case has a purely subordinate character.
Thus, all the activities of this child will be aimed at passing the exam on the subject or writing a test paper as quickly as possible and with minimal energy consumption, that is, completing the task purely formally. Ideally, his motivation should be formed. Only she is able to provide an understanding of the need for acquired knowledge in his subsequent life and in the professional activity that he will carry out in adulthood.
Motivation, being a component of the general structure of educational activity, in turn, can be divided into the following varieties:
- Based on personal motives.
- Based on external causes.
The first type can include any motives that are relevant directly to the student. Most often, their role is played by a craving for knowledge and a dedication to the process or social reasons, consisting in the desire to meet certain criteria established by society.
One of the strongest motives in the modern world is the possibility of the so-called social elevator, that is, getting a job and, consequently, living conditions of a much higher level as a result of graduation from an educational institution.
Other examples of causes
Often there is the presence in students of the motives of the second group, that is, external. These include any pressure exerted by parents and teachers. As a rule, teachers and family members of a schoolchild resort to such actions with an insufficiently formed internal form of motivation.
Lack of interest in the subject may be the result of careless attitude of teachers to their activities. Of course, external motivation, sometimes gives the desired result - the child begins to study well. However, this type of this component of the structure of educational activity cannot be the only one, but it can only be a part of a complex set of reasons that prompt a person to activity.
The motives belonging to the first group should prevail.
Anticipating the result
In the structure of educational activity, as in any other process, the goal is understood as the result that must be achieved. That is, at this stage it is important to answer the question: for what?
The vast majority of teachers say that for the successful functioning of the entire structure of educational activities, the educational goal should not only be understood by children, but also accepted by them. Otherwise, as already mentioned, the whole process will take place under duress.
As a rule, with such assimilation of the material, only operational and short-term memory works. This means that the knowledge acquired by the child will not be strong and will be completely or partially forgotten if there is no need to confirm it.
Given the real conditions
What is a learning task in the structure of learning activities?
This term is used to denote goals reformulated taking into account the real conditions in which the action is carried out. The task can be either one or several. In the latter case, a goal is expressed in several paragraphs, divided into smaller fragments.
Be that as it may, the tasks should be formulated very clearly and clearly. This is required for the effective and efficient implementation of the entire structure of the educational activity of the student.
Salient features
What is the difference between a learning task and a regular one?
It is assumed that as a result of the decision of the first of them, the transformation of the person who performs the action should be carried out. He is the schoolboy himself.
That is, the solution of such problems is aimed at changing the subject, and not some object from the outside world. That is, the learning process is always aimed at improving the personality. We can say that the entire training program in the institution consists of a complex of successively solved educational tasks.
Usually they are provided to students in the form of specific exercises on the subject.
Goals and objectives in the modern learning process
Leading psychologists and educators say that most often the use of these terms in the singular is a mistake. They justify such a statement by the fact that, as a rule, one goal can be achieved in the course of solving several problems and vice versa. Therefore, describing the general structure and content of educational activities, it is advisable to talk about the presence of a complex system of these components.
It will be important to mention that these components are of two types: nearby and long-range. Ideally, each learning task should be based on two goals of different types. Unfortunately, in practice this is not always the case. In addition, the student’s awareness of both a nearby and a distant goal plays a large role. Only under this condition the whole educational process will not resemble wandering in the dark.
Widespread such training tasks, which include a description of the method of solution. A similar variety of them is less useful for schoolchildren, since the only goal they set for themselves may be to obtain the correct result.
If the task requires finding the optimal solution, then it contributes to the development of logical thinking in children, which is a fact that speaks of a new stage in the development of personality.
Finding the right solution
Learning activities in the structure of learning activities play a significant role. Their development in a generalized form in children is the goal of the educational process. Through the implementation of training activities, tasks are solved, therefore, this component of the educational activity should be given close attention.
In pedagogy, it is customary to divide educational activities into two groups:
- The first of them includes those that can serve to solve problems in all or several subjects. They can be called universal.
- The second variety includes actions used in the framework of a particular academic discipline.
Not enough attention was paid to the development of children's ability to carry out actions of the second group during the existence of the Soviet Union, as well as in the post-perestroika years.
The importance of the first group began to speak on the threshold of the 21st century.
This variety can, for example, include such interdisciplinary actions as: data analysis, systematization of information, and others. The latest version of the law on education states the need to implement a competency-based approach. That is, you need to give children such knowledge and skills that contribute to the development of the desire to continue learning independently throughout life. This refers not only to the courses of any educational institutions, but also certain professional development programs, as well as self-education in order to improve professional activity, other motives are also possible.
Experts say that problems with learning in children arise, as a rule, precisely because of an insufficiently formed ability to carry out actions of the first variety, that is, meta-subject.
Checking the completion of tasks
Self-control is also, to some extent, a fundamental component of the structure of educational activities of students. It is he who most provides the subject - the subjective principle of the relationship between teachers and students.
In the process of conducting self-control, the student analyzes the work done, identifies existing errors, develops ways to correct them, and seeks to improve the result. This entire procedure takes place without the help of a teacher. By the degree of formation of this skill, one can make a forecast of the student’s future successes both in a specific discipline and throughout the general educational course.
Matching the ideal
In the general structure and characteristics of educational activities, the process of self-control can be represented by the following scheme:
- Studying the ideal - Comparing one's own result with it - Identifying inconsistencies.
That is, this action occurs by comparing the original goal with the result achieved at some point in the task.
It remains to say about the last link in the structure of educational activity, which consists in self-esteem.
Summarizing
Self-esteem is of great importance as part of a learning activity. It is based on a critical analysis of the achieved result by comparing it with the goal put forward earlier.
Self-esteem can be expressed both in points and in a detailed judgment regarding how productive the work was and how well the student mastered the teaching material. This process should take place on the basis of the traditional mark set by the teacher.
Self-monitoring and evaluation of their own results do not proceed equally for the attraction of the entire school course. Their content depends on the age group in which the training takes place.
Thus, the structure of the educational activities of elementary schoolchildren cannot be fully realized by them due to the lack of formation of necessary thought processes. Therefore, the teacher must take up part of this work. In the first years of schooling, self-control and self-esteem occur first by repeating the teacher’s judgments about his own answer, and then in the form of attempts to compose his own critical statements of a small volume.
In this case, the teacher should ask all kinds of leading questions regarding the quality of the work done and the degree of assimilation of the material, as well as how well the skills of educational actions are fixed. Here it is worth paying attention not only to the correspondence of the result to the correct answer, but also to how much the skill that was supposed to develop in the course of solving the problem was formed by the student (in his own opinion).
From class to class, the degree of independence of the control and evaluation of their activities should increase.
By the time he graduates from high school, a person should be ready to acquire knowledge with a large share of self-control, as this is required when passing the program of a higher educational institution or a middle-level institution.
These actions, carried out without the help of a teacher, are only the first steps to the necessary independence of the whole process that is to be achieved in the future.
According to recent studies, more than half of those entering higher education institutions are not ready to master the program due to the low level of development of the above processes. However, by the second year such a drawback is observed only in 13% of students.
The psychological structure of the educational process
The term educational activity, which is used mainly in pedagogy, is widely associated with such a phenomenon, considered in psychology as learning. It is this phenomenon, represented by a variety of species, that is the main component of many components of the learning process and.
The essence of the psychological structure of educational activity is the perception of the body and the processing of new information.
Modern psychologists talk about its three types, each of which is present to one degree or another in the educational activities of modern schoolchildren.
- Perceptual learning is the body's reaction to an external stimulus and its memorization.
- Mnemonic learning is muscle memory. For example, this type is widely used in lessons on playing various musical instruments. In this type of activity it is necessary to have stable skills, a solid memory for clichéd movements.
- The third variation of this phenomenon is cognitive learning - that is, one in which most of the process is based on inferences and analysis of the information received that is consciously conducted. The vast majority of subjects studied in high school, suggest the work of this particular variety.
Conclusion
This article was about the structure of educational and cognitive activity. The question was examined from various points of view.
Both definitions of the educational activity itself, the authorship of which belong to different teachers, and two types of its structure were presented. Each of the components of these circuits was disassembled separately. The final chapter gives brief information from psychology on the structure of educational activity.