Psychological and pedagogical characteristic: recommendations for compilation

A psychological and pedagogical characteristic is a document that reflects the specialist’s observations of a particular schoolchild or class. When compiling it, you must follow some rules that will make this paper valuable in content. A correctly and objectively drawn up document will allow you to determine the individual characteristics of the child, as a result of which it will be easier for the teacher to establish relations with the class or individual student, create optimal conditions for the development of the student’s personality. Very often, psychologists and class teachers, whose responsibility is to write this document, make typical mistakes.

For example, it happens that a psychological and pedagogical characteristic contains general information and phrases about a certain quality of a child’s personality , not related to the external manifestations of this trait. The result is a description of an abstract individual, not a specific child.

I must say that this document must necessarily look like a scientific description using psychological terms. For this, it is important to conduct a preliminary qualitative study of all aspects of a child’s personality. It is important to remember that the psyche of the student is in the stage of formation, development, and, therefore, you need to adhere to several principles when examining.

Firstly, the basic rule sounds like “do no harm”. This means that research should be aimed at helping to educate and raise a child. The result obtained should be aimed not only at the actual, but also at the nearest development of the student.

Secondly, and just as importantly, the principle of objectivity must be taken into account. That is, the psychological and pedagogical characteristic should contain not only the student’s own mental development , but also his explanation regarding the age characteristics of the child.

Also, the examination should be based on an individual approach. It should be remembered that the general patterns of development in each individual can manifest themselves in different ways, depending on their personality characteristics.

An example of a student’s characteristic may be as follows. At the beginning of it, general information about the child is indicated: class, age, state of health, appearance. For this, methods such as observation, interviews with specialists, and the study of school documentation are used.

The next item will be the features of family education. It briefly describes the composition of the family, the relationship between its members. To identify this, the psychologist can use projective drawing tests, conversations with parents and the child.

Further, the psychological and pedagogical characteristic contains information about the immediate activities of the student. There may be several subclauses in this part. So, the game, labor, educational activities are separately considered. The next part describes the student as a member of the team, his social status, satisfaction with him.

It is important that the characteristic for the student or student contains information about the orientation of the personality. In this section of the document, such qualities as motives and goals of activity, interests of the child, his dreams and ideals should be considered. To identify this data, methods such as "Unfinished offers", "Flower-seven-color", questionnaires, etc. are used.

The next stage for the psychologist is to identify the level of development of the child’s mental cognitive processes . When choosing diagnostics, you need to pay attention to their validity, as well as the age orientation of the methods. What is suitable for a younger student is not always advisable to use in the study of the personality of a teenager.

The document should end with general conclusions about the level of development of the child and recommendations.