The structure of educational activity is one of the most important issues of modern pedagogy. Several chapters of this article present the views of the most prominent educators and psychologists who have de alt with this topic.
General characteristics and structure of learning activities
First of all, you need to understand what is the process to which the article is devoted. Thus, learning activity can be characterized both in a broad sense and in a narrower one. In the first case, any human activity aimed at acquiring knowledge rises under it.
This concept includes not only the activities included in the integral pedagogical process and taking place during the course of any institution, but also the independent development of the material necessary for life. That is, in a broad sense, learning activity can be understood as a process that occurs when receiving official education, as well as any independent upbringing and learning, not necessarily structured or even justmeaningful character.
In the narrow sense, this term was first used by Soviet teachers Elkonin and Davydov, whose structure of educational activity is of great interest and will be discussed later in this article. So, what did two eminent scientists say about this kind of human activity?
Elkonin proposed to call educational activity only the process of obtaining knowledge of skills and abilities that is typical for children of primary school age. As you know, it is on this segment of the life path that mastering new information is the main type of activity. Before the child enters school, this place is occupied by the game, and for adolescents, the dominant position is educational activity, giving way to communication with peers. Thus, Elkonin suggested narrowing the scope of the definition to the boundaries of the age category when the school is the center of a person's being.
Davydov's interpretation
This scientist had a slightly different view on this issue. According to Davydov, educational activity and its structure can be considered not only within 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 be used to denote the process of obtaining the necessary learning skills, which proceeds consciously and has a clearly defined structure.
Thus, from the above it is clear that it was Davydov who first mentioned the activity andcompetence-based principles, which are currently widely used in education, and their implementation in education is approved by the Federal State Educational Standard. Under the "consciousness", which he spoke of, one must understand the positive motivation that exists in the student, which puts him at the level of the subject of the educational process.
The function of a subordinate participant of the system performs with an insufficiently formed attitude to gain knowledge.
Structure of learning activities of students
In the previous chapters of the article, various definitions of the phenomenon of learning activity were considered. Its scheme can also be represented in at least two ways. Firstly, it can take the form of a sequence of processes occurring throughout its implementation, and, secondly, it can be based on actions that are components of a single common complex.
The structure of educational activities according to Elkonin and Davydov is as follows:
Motives - Goals - Learning activities - Self-control - Self-assessment
In another way, the same chain can be presented 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 kind of structure has the following form:
- Search for reasons to learn that can serve as incentives for further action.
- Awareness of the goals of the upcoming work.
- Performing certain learning activities and reinforcing them.
- Analysis of how successfully one's own tasks are being completed. second partthis item is to evaluate 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 flow of this or that activity, it is necessary that the person carrying out it clearly understands the reason why he must perform certain actions. Without formed motivation, the success of the whole education is reduced to almost zero.
If, for example, a schoolboy has not understood for himself why one or another knowledge is needed and how it can be useful in later life, then he will be in the position of an object of education. That is, his role in this case is purely subordinate.
Thus, all the activities of this child will be aimed at passing an exam in a subject or writing a test as quickly as possible and with minimal energy expenditure, that is, completing the task purely formally. Ideally, he should be motivated. Only she is able to provide an understanding of the need for the acquired knowledge in his subsequent life and in the professional activity that he will carry out in adulthood.
Motivation, being a component of the overall structure of learning activities, in turn, can be divided into the following varieties:
- Based on personal motivations.
- Based on external causes.
The first type can include any motives that havemeaning directly to the learner. Most often, their role is played by the craving for knowledge and passion for the process or social reasons, which consist 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 lift, that is, getting a job as a result of graduating from an educational institution, and, accordingly, living conditions of a much higher level.
Other examples of causes
It is not uncommon for students to have motives of the second group, that is, external ones. These include any pressure exerted by parents and teachers. As a rule, teachers and schoolchildren's family members resort to such actions when their internal form of motivation is not sufficiently formed.
Lack of interest in the subject may be the result of careless attitude to their activities of teachers. 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 can be only part of a complex set of reasons that motivate a person to activity.
Motives related to the first group should prevail.
Predicting the result
In the structure of learning activities, 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: forwhat?
The vast majority of teachers say that for the successful functioning of the entire structure of educational activities, the educational goal must not only be understood by children, but also accepted by them. Otherwise, as already mentioned, the whole process will be forced.
As a rule, with such assimilation of material, only short-term and short-term memory work. 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 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, the 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 student's educational activities.
Significant 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. It is the student himself.
That is, the solution of such problems is aimed at changing the subject, and not any object from the surrounding world. That is, the learning process is always aimed at improving the individual. We can say that the entire curriculum ininstitution consists of a set of sequentially solved educational tasks.
Usually they are provided to students in the form of specific exercises in 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, when 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 far direction. Ideally, each learning task should be based on two different types of goals. Unfortunately, this is not always done in practice. In addition, an important role is played by students' awareness of both nearby and distant goals. Only under this condition, the entire educational process will not resemble wandering in the dark.
Such educational tasks that include a description of the solution method are widespread. This kind of them is less useful for students, since the only goal they set for themselves may be to get the right result.
If the task requires finding the best way to solve it, then it contributes to the development of logical thinking in children, which is a fact that speaks of a new stage in personality development.
Searchingright decision
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 learning activities, problems are solved, so this component of learning activities should be given close attention.
In pedagogy, it is customary to divide learning 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 within a particular academic discipline.
Insufficient attention was paid to the development of children's ability to perform 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 be discussed on the threshold of the 21st century.
This variety can, for example, include such interdisciplinary actions as: data analysis, information systematization, and others. The latest edition of the law on education refers to the need to implement a competency-based approach. That is, it is necessary to give children such knowledge and skills that contribute to the development of the desire to continue learning independently throughout their lives. This refers not only to the passage of courses of any educational institutions, but also certain programs for advanced training, as well as self-education in order to improve professional activities, other motives are possible.
Experts sayproblems with learning in children arise, as a rule, precisely because of the insufficiently formed ability to carry out actions of the first type, that is, metasubject.
Checking assignments
Self-control is also to some extent a fundamental component of the structure of students' learning activities. It is he who provides the subject to the greatest extent - the subjective principle of the relationship between teachers and students.
In the process of self-control, the student analyzes the work done, identifies existing errors, develops ways to correct them, and achieves an improvement in the result. All this procedure takes place without the help of a teacher. According to the degree of formation of this skill, it is possible to predict the future success of the student both in a particular discipline and in the entire general education course.
Matching with 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 your own result with it - Revealing discrepancies
That is, this action occurs by comparing the initial goal with the result achieved at some point in the task.
It remains to say about the last link in the structure of learning activities, which is self-assessment.
Summing up
Self-assessment is of great importance as part of learning activities. It is based on a critical analysis of the result achieved by comparison with the previously set goal.
Self-assessment can be expressed both in points and in a detailed judgment about how productive the work was and how well the student mastered the educational material. This process should take place on the basis of the traditional, teacher grade.
Independent control and evaluation of one's own results are not the same 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 activity of younger students cannot be fully realized by them due to the unformedness of the necessary thought processes. Therefore, the teacher must take on part of this work. In the first years of schooling, self-control and self-esteem occur first by repeating after the teacher his judgments about his own answer, and then in the form of attempts to make up his own short critical statements.
At the same time, the teacher should ask all sorts 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 obtained to the correct answer, but also to the extent to which the skill that should have been developed in the course of solving the problem is formed in the student (in his own opinion).
From class to class, the degree of independence in monitoring and evaluating one's activities should increase.
By the time of graduating from high school, a person should be ready to acquire knowledge with a large shareself-monitoring, as it is required when completing a program of higher education or a secondary institution.
Carried out without the help of a teacher, these actions are only the first steps towards the necessary independence of the entire process, which will be achieved in the future.
According to recent studies, more than half of applicants to 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, only 13% of students have such a deficiency.
Psychological structure of the educational process
The term learning 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 constituent element of many components of the learning process and.
The essence of the psychological structure of learning activity is the body's perception and processing of new information.
Modern psychologists talk about three types of it, each of which is present in varying degrees in the educational activities of modern schoolchildren.
- Perceptual learning is the body's response to an external stimulus and its memorization.
- Mnemonic learning is muscle memory. For example, this type is widely used in the lessons of playing various musical instruments. In this type of activity, stable skills are needed, a solid memory for clichéd movements.
- The third kind of this phenomenon iscognitive learning - that is, one in which most of the process is based on inference and analysis of the information received, passing consciously. The vast majority of subjects studied in high school involve this kind of work.
Conclusion
This article described the structure of educational and cognitive activity. The issue was considered from various points of view.
Both definitions of the educational activity itself, the authorship of which belongs to different teachers, and two types of its structure were presented. Each of the components of these circuits was analyzed separately. The last chapter gives brief information from psychology about the structure of educational activity.
