A CONCEPT OF EDUCATIONAL
ACTIVITY FOR SCHOOLCHILDREN
V. V. Davydov and A. K. Markova
About two years ago,
on a cool Southern California day, Vasili Davydov addressed a group of social
scientists at the University of California, San Diego. He began his talk with a
paradox. He had come, he said, to tell us about educational activity. He
promised to exhibit principles that promote educational activity, and applied
programs deriving from those principles. Then he laughed. “But you’ll never see
educational activity in the school,” he said, and laughed again.
Problems of
translation between Russian and English can be severe, but in this case there
wasn’t as much room for erroneous interpretation as usual, because I was acting
as Dr. Davydov’s translator. He said what he meant, and he meant what he said.
It is very difficult to find real educational activity in a school setting, at
least the normal school settings that occupy millions of Russian and American
children daily. Although we might seek to interpret this kind of comment as a
slur on teachers or educational psychologists, it was nothing of the sort. It
was a simple postulate of a central theorem within Dr. Davydov’s theory: for
human action to be endowed with the properties of activity, it is essential that
the subjects formulates and accept the goals toward which his actions are
directed. Translated roughly in Deweyian terms, this means that discovery of
the goals is essential to true activity. Translated more roughly back into
dialectical materialist philosophy, it means that freedom is the recognition of
necessity.
A concomitant of the
bureaucratization of educational activity is that units low in the hierarchy of
control are routinely governed by goals not of their own choosing. These
prepared goals reflect the multiple ways that education fits into society, and
are not governed purely by the logic of discovery. As every child learns, some
of these prepared goals are very difficult to accept; they require a lot of
self-control. Recognizing these limits, Davydov and his colleagues have at
least worked out systematic ways of getting as much real educational activity
into a working curriculum as possible (see, for example, A. K. Markova’s book The
teaching and mastery of language , published by M. E. harpe, Inc.,
in 1979).
The article that
follows summarizes in brief form the overall state of the enterprise at the
present time.
Michael Cole, Editor
1. Practical
Relevance of Study of Educational Activity for Schoolchildren
Soviet pedagogical psychology focuses
on theoretical problems concerned with practical problems of public education
and the social demands of developed socialist society as formulated in party
resolutions and government documents pertaining to the school. The 25th
Congress of the CPSU noted that the task of the school consists not only of
conveying a sum of information but also of teaching pupils how to acquire
knowledge independently. The resolutions of the 26th Congress of the CPSU
emphasized that pedagogical science needs to develop qualitative criteria of
the effectiveness of the educational process and thereby get away from
formalism in evaluating the work of teachers and pupils. Soviet educators and
psychologists have been expending considerable effort in implementing these resolutions.
First, pedagogical
psychologists study the nature of school children’s knowledge. The qualitative
criteria of the effectiveness of the educational process at this level of
analysis might include the scientific soundness, the systemic nature, the
degree of generalization, the firmness of knowledge, etc. Although such studies
are useful, they are not a sufficient basis for understanding the qualitative
characteristics of educational activity.
A great deal of
fundamentally new work has been carried out to systematize the training of
study skills and habits pupils must acquire in school. The qualitative criteria
of schoolwork include the extent to which general skills can be applied to new
subjects, the level of awareness, flexibility, and the ability to switch from
one subject to another. While valuing this work highly, we need to point out
those abilities and skills are themselves only one set of contributors to the
overall educational activity of schoolchildren. In addition to, abilities and
skills (and the techniques, actions, and operations with study material that
underpin them), schoolwork requires the child to accept school tasks, to
exercise various forms of self-control, self-evaluation, etc. A qualitative
evaluation of schooling’s effectiveness requires us to examine educational
activity as a whole. Then the indices of effectiveness will include not only
the schoolchild’s actions with the to-be-learned material but also his methods
of control, evaluation, and self-regulation when dealing with the materials.
A number of studies
are developing indices of the formation of various aspects of a holistic system
of educational activity, but characterization of the qualitative effectiveness
of the work of young schoolchildren and students cannot be reduced to any one
aspect. It is very important to take into account changes not only in the
intellectual sphere but in the moral and personal development of schoolchildren
as well. In other words, not just the pupil’s knowledge, not just the acts and
techniques by which this knowledge is obtained (and, accordingly, not just the
abilities and skills a schoolchild has acquired previously) are necessary but
also, above all, evaluation of the changes in the schoolchild as a whole
personality. At this level of investigation the qualitative characteristics of
the learning process may consist of an analysis of the genuine motives
underpinning a child’s study behavior, the meaning that learning has for the
school child, the child’s level of academic achievement, his relations with
other people as they are established in the course of schoolwork, and the
features of an active, harmoniously developed personality of a young person in
communist society as all these things are formed in the course of the learning
process.
The successful
realization of universal education in our country requires that educational
psychologists develop such integrated indices. Using the concept of educational
activity, we have made an attempt to map out one possible approach to this
important problem.
Before going on to the main argument, let us make a number
of comments. The very notion “concept of educational activity” is itself
contingent; this concept designates the theoretical approach of a group of
investigations that have been conducted for more than twenty years as part of
an extensive experiment in educational psychology aimed at restructuring school
curricula. What is more, the present article was written for a handbook on Educational
psychology , which will include books entitled The psychology of
learning and The psychology of education. Therefore, this article
does not pose the specific problem of historically evolved relations between
the concept of educational activity and
other theories of learning and education in Soviet psychology; special sections
will be devoted to them in the book.
As follows from the
title of the article, the series of investigations in question dealt with
special features of learning among schoolchildren. There is reason to suppose
that some general premises of this theory of learning may be applicable not
only to elementary school learning but also to other levels in the system of
public education (for example, learning in kindergarten, in secondary
specialized educational institutions, in higher education); however, we do not
think it possible to make any more definite judgments on this question, since
to do so would require special and careful analysis.
2. Theoretical
Sources and Stages in the Development of the Concept
The concept of educational activity is
one approach to the process of learning in Soviet Psychology that adopts the
Marxist position that the child’s mental development is socially and
historically determined (L. S. Vygotsky). This concept has been formed on the
basis of one of the fundamental dialectical materialist principles of Soviet
psychology, the principle of the unity of the mind and activity (S. L.
Rubinshtein and A. N. Leont’ev) within the context of the psychological theory
of activity (A. N. Leont’ev) and in close relation to the theory of
stage-by-stage development of intellectual actions and types of learning (P.
Ya. Gal’perin and N. F. Talyzina, and others).
Let us comment on
certain aspects of the premises states above. The term activity is used
in Soviet psychology in several different senses. In the broad sense it is used
in connection with the principle of the unity of the mind and activity.
This principle is a
general methodological foundation for all Soviet psychologists, and by
following this path our science has overcome functionalism, associationism,
behaviorism, etc. In the same broad sense, all Soviet theories of learning have
in common study of “the internal link” of the learning process, not as an
aggregate of individual mental functions, but as the schoolchild’s active
engagement as a subject and a personality (this pinpoints a fundamental
distinction between the view of Soviet psychologists and that of contemporary
neobehaviorist theories, of cognitive psychology, etc.). With the
methodological principle of the unity of the mind and activity as a basis,
Soviet psychologists have been developing their own activity approach, a
specific feature of which is the position that the internal activity of the
subject may be described as possessing a definite structure. (Thus, A. N.
Leont’ev distinguished two sets of structural characteristics:
activity—action—operation, and motive—goal—constraint [12].) This approach, in
our opinion, characterizes the concept of the term activity in its
narrowest and most specific sense. Another point common to Soviet theories of
education developed within the activity approach is a focus on directing the
learning process by reworking the structural links and a commitment to
investigating the learning process during the actual course of its formation.
The uniqueness of the concept of educational activity, as we shall attempt to
show below, consists in its endeavor to approximate an analysis of the
transformation of activity into its “subjective product,” in an analysis of
newly formed, qualitatively distinct changes in the child’s intellectual and
moral development.
Developed on the
basis of the general methodological principle of the unity of the mind and
activity within the activity approach, this concept is not in opposition to
other Soviet theories of learning, but rather has been developed in a process
of reciprocal enrichment with them. The development of Soviet educational
psychology requires both an elucidation of the theoretical uniqueness of each
Soviet theory of learning and intensive work to effect a synthesis of all the
achievements of Soviet psychology so that they may be used as promptly as
possible in the practice of public education.
Let us present a
series of the principal stages, the hypotheses and facts, determining the
approach to learning in the concept of educational activity.
1. An analysis of
the shortcomings of the system of primary education existing at the time we
started this work (the end of the 1950s) led to the hypothesis that there were
large reserves of cognitive possibilities present in young schoolchildren. A
test of this hypothesis required some experimental work that had never been
done before in educational and developmental psychology, namely, the drawing up
of a series of experimental syllabuses ‘for primary school on the basis of the
new psychological principles. The construction of these syllabuses in a number
of subjects (mathematics, native language, work) and their experimental testing
yielded some fundamentally new facts concerning not only the great cognitive
potential of primary-school children but also the developmentally distinctive
characteristics of theoretical thinking among young school children. An
important result of this work was the creation of principles for the
organization of experimental schools (in the 1960s).
2. The experimental
findings led to a new hypothesis concerning the need to organize special
activity for pupils in which a principal role would be played not only by the
response of the schoolchildren to prepared educational material but also by the
pupils’ acceptance and independent discovery of educational problems. All these
aspects must be studied if we are to understand the internal changes that occur
in a child as he learns
(D. B. E1’konin,
1961). The development of theoretical ideas about educational activity and
their experimental verification made it possible to obtain new data on the
influence of the development of particular aspects of such activity on the
mental development of schoolchildren.
3. These data enabled
us to formulate new hypotheses with regard to the influence of guided
restructuring of educational activity not only on intellectual but also on
moral development (voluntariness, motivation, etc.). Whereas a number of
earlier studies of learning had concentrated on an analysis of learning acts,
i.e., the transition, which Leont’ev called the “subject-to-process of
activity” transition, it now became possible for us to deal specifically with
the transition “activity-to-its subjective product,” thereby beginning
experimental study of “the transformation of activity into its subjective form”
[12]. In testing these hypotheses new data were obtained about the
characteristics of theoretical thinking (and of reflection, voluntariness, and
the internal plan of action that characterizes them), about changes in the
nature of individual differences in pupils, and about the increase in the
qualitative complexity of the motivational sphere of learning as educational
activity develops and is refined (the 1970s).
4. These data gave
rise to new hypotheses concerning the lack of a direct link between the
experience of object-oriented activity and the mental development of the child.
We presume that the concept of activity alone does not ensure the psychologist
against reductionism [27]. In any investigation it is necessary to take into
account the fact that a person need not become submerged in activity. With
regard to learning, this means that mental development cannot be derived
directly from the logic of the development of educational activity. In the
course of development of educational activity, it is necessary to ascertain and
create conditions that will enable activity to acquire personal meaning, to
become a source of the person’s self-development and comprehensive development
of his personality, and a condition for his entry into social practice.
Studies have also
shown, however, that outside of the environment of a defined activity, it is
difficult to evaluate, much less to transform, the nature of a child’s mental
development: in the process of activity with objects, the child becomes the
subject of his own behavior and assumes an active orientation toward the real
world around him, toward himself and other people. Through activity it is
possible to go on to control of the process of mental development of the child,
and this, essentially, is now the chief task of developmental and educational
psychology. Hence, the goal of the current work using this approach is to
explore exhaustively all means of influencing the development of the
personality through activity and thus to obtain new experimental data. It is
also necessary to provide an empirical foundation for the view that it is not
“fossilized” activity, but only continuously developing and self-renewing
activity, that is the source of the child’s internal mental development.
3. The Conceptual
Apparatus. The Unit of Analysis
The concept of
educational activity employs a number of ideas that are common to all Soviet
developmental and educational psychology. But the content of some of these has
been made more precise and partially modified in light of the new empirical and
theoretical studies related to the development of this concept.
Let us examine the relationships among the concepts
“assimilation,” “development,” instruction,” etc. Assimilation is the
process of reproduction by the individual of historically formed methods of
transforming objects in the environment around him, reproduction of relations
to reality, and processes of transformation of these socially developed
standards into forms of individual “subjectivity.” Development takes
place through assimilation (appropriation) by the individual of sociohistorical
experience. We cannot agree with theories that juxtapose assimilation and
development if development is understood as an immanent process independent of assimilation or if assimilation
is regarded as an independent process-taking place “alongside” or even “in
place of” development. Assimilation does not always lead to development. In
some cases assimilation can lead to a child’s mastery of knowledge, skills, and
abilities, whereas in other cases it can lead to a mastery of methods and
universal forms of mental activity. In the latter case we can say that
substantial changes have taken place in mental development. Hence,
psychologists correctly distinguish the effect of assimilation of particular
concepts and abilities from the effect of development; the occurrence of
changes in mental development is, in turn, a prerequisite for the assimilation
of new knowledge and abilities of more complex content.
In noting the
influence of assimilation on development, we cannot ignore a certain logic in
development itself, related, for example, to the psycho physiological
characteristics of the child. These characteristics, however, are mediated,
from the child’s first day of life, by his social surroundings; and it is in
this already mediated form that any influence is exerted on mental development.
Hence, the true role of psychophysiological characteristics in the mental
development of the child may, in our view, be ascertained only in the course of
education, which “intensifies” the psychophysiological characteristics
(plasticity, dynamicity) that promote development and “mitigate” properties
that would hinder the all-round development of the child.
This approach
corresponds to the humanistic principles of Soviet pedagogical science, which
are based on the possibility of giving all young citizens of our country a
universal, mandatory, secondary education.
Instruction* is a system of organization and methods for
conveying to the individual socially formed experience (in schooling it is
customary to distinguish teaching, i.e., what the teacher does, from learning,
which is what the pupil does). Instruction that anticipates and keeps a focus
on the next stage of development is effective instruction (L. S. Vygotsky).
Qualitative changes in a child’s development that take place during the course
of instruction at the different age periods Vygotsky termed new developmental
formations. Thus, whereas assimilation is the reproduction by the child of
socially developed experience and formal instruction is the form of
organization of this assimilation that is used in specific historical
conditions, in a particular society, development is characterized primarily by
qualitative changes in the level and form of the abilities, types of activity,
etc., appropriated by the individual.
The concepts of assimilation
and activity must also be made more specific. Assimilation (appropriation)
is not the passive adaptation of the individual to the conditions of social
life that have formed around him, nor is it a simple accretion of social
experience; it is the result of the individual’s engaged activity as he learns
to master socially evolved methods of coping with the world of objects and
transforming that world, which gradually becomes the medium of the individual’s
own activity. Species-specific human activity is crystallized in
sociohistorical experience (in the objects of human culture and in the various
domains of knowledge and science).
*The
Russian term is obuchenie , which can be translated as
“training,” “instruction,” or
“education.” — Ed.
For the assimilation
of that world, the special activity engaged in by the schoolchild is necessary,
an activity that is appropriate to, but not identical with, this
species-specific activity; a discrepancy between the socially evolved
experience of species-specific activity and the activity of the schoolchild is
manifested, for example, in differences between a science and an educational
subject. Under conditions of school instruction, the child’s active engagement
in assimilating socially evolved experience is realized in educational
activity. Though assimilation and educational activity are connected, their
contents are not identical. Socially evolved experience (knowledge, abilities)
may be assimilated not only in learning but in other forms of activity as well
(play, work, communication, etc.); but it is only in formal learning, apparently,
that the specific goal of assimilation is posed; in other types of activity
assimilation is a by-product.
Assimilation and
communication may also be
correlated with respect to their roles in instruction. Since assimilation is
the child’s mastery of socially elaborated experience, it always initially
takes place in the course of cooperation with another human being, in joint
activity, and in communicative contact between people. In this communication
some means of assimilating reality or a specific relation to reality is
conveyed to the child. In this sense we can say that assimilation always passes
through a stage of joint activity with another human being. Joint activity and
communication during the course of formal learning may vary in nature, from contacts
with a specific human being to “communication with mankind” through experience
fixed in the tools of labor, in works of science and art, in study subjects,
etc.
Let us briefly
discuss the content and the structure of educational activity from the theoretical
approach under examination here. At the beginning of the ‘60s, D. B. El’konin
formulated the following approach to educational activity. “The basic unit
(cell) of educational activity is the educational task.... An educational task
differs fundamentally from other types of problems in that its goal and its
result consist of a change in the acting subject himself, not in a change in
the objects on which the subject acts.” But he also stresses that, “No change
in the subject is possible independently of actions with objects carried out by
the subject himself” [26. Pp. 12— 13]. “The result of educational activity
during the course of which the assimilation of scientific concepts occurs is
primarily a change in the pupil himself, his development. In general terms one
can say
that this change is
the acquisition by the child of new abilities, i.e., new methods of action with
scientific concepts... [25. P.45].
Thus, the principal content
of educational activity is the assimilation of generalized methods of
action in the domain of scientific concepts and the qualitative changes taking
place, on this basis, in the child’s mental development. The introduction of a
new unit of analysis (the educational task) has helped to specify the
distinguishing features of the ap
proach to learning
derived from the concept under investigation: learning is not only the
acquisition of a mastery of knowledge, nor is it even those actions or
transformations the pupil carries out in the course of acquiring knowledge: it
is primarily a process of change, reorganization, and enrichment of the child
himself. The assumption of this model of educational activity, based on the
educational task, opens the way to an analysis of the subject’s active
engagement in the process of learning and enables us to take a definite step
forward along the way toward overcoming intellectualism in our concept of the
process of education.
The structure of
educational activity has been subjected to detailed investigation,
extending over several years. Educational activity has the following
components.
1.The child’s
understanding of educational tasks. The educational task is closely
related to an interesting (theoretical) generalization; it brings the
schoolchild to mastery of generalized relations in the domain of knowledge
being studied and to mastery of new methods of action. The schoolchild’s
acceptance of an educational task “for its own sake” and his independent
discovery of that task are closely related to the motivation for learning and
to the transformation of the child into the subject of activity.
2. The schoolchild’s
performance of education acts . If education is correctly organized, the
educational acts of the school child are designed to give him access to
universal relations, dominant principles, and key ideas in a particular area of
knowledge and help him to model these relations, to master methods of moving
from universal relations to their concretization, and vice versa, methods for
moving from a model to an object, and vice versa, etc.
3. The pupil’s own
performance of acts of control and evaluation. All these aspects of
learning initially take place in joint activity with a teacher or a peer. In
the literature it has rightly been pointed out that, although each of these
components of educational activity has, in some way or another, been
investigated earlier by psychologists, the question of the structure of
educational activity and the interaction of its various aspects has nonetheless
not been studied specifically, despite its fundamental importance.
In the approach
proposed here, education is always investigated in terms of a unity of these
components, as integral educational activity. This concept can be
usefully distinguished from the widespread use of the term educational
activity , which is used to refer to any educational work by the
schoolchild, any process of knowledge acquisition, etc. The schoolchild’s
educational activity as a unity and interaction among all its components must
be present in the educational process. If, for example, one omits educational
tasks and educational acts, this may distort educational activity, interest in
maintaining the activity may become dulled, as a consequence of which the
assimilation of knowledge may be transformed into operations based on common-sense
notions in the service of utilitarian skills.
The cultivation
of educational activity entails control by an adult (teacher, experimental
psychologist, parent) of the process through which the educational activity of
the schoolchild develops. A thorough, controlled process of education always
presupposes that each component of educational activity has been developed in
the child, that they are interrelated, and that there is a gradual transmission
of the individual components of this activity from the teacher to the pupil
himself, for his independent action without the aid of teachers.
The development
of educational activity involves the perfection of each of its components,
their interrelations and their reciprocal dynamics; perfection of the motivational
and operational aspects of education; transformation of the pupil into the
subject of the educational activity he performs; and the pupil’s acquisition of
mastery over the forms of joint learning activity. All these things are also
related to the developing and socializing effect of educational activity.
Hence, the levels of maturity of educational activity as a whole and of its
individual components are important qualitative characteristics determining the
effectiveness of the work of teacher and pupil.
4. Method of Investigation
Our concept of
educational activity uses the formative experiment as its basic method (this is
a version of a natural experiment); such an experiment is most appropriate for
the object of study in developmental and educational psychology, namely, the
developing mind of the child.
This method is one
of the embodiments of that general causal genetic (or genetic-modeling) method
of studying the development of the child’s mind whose foundations were laid in
works by Vygotsky and then thoroughly developed in the works of A. N.
Leont’ev, A. R.
Luria, P. Ya. Gal’perin, A. P. Zaporozhets, D. B. El’konin,and their
colleagues. The essence of this method is study of processes of transformation
creating new forms of the mind, study of the conditions of occurrence of
specific mental phenomena, and experimental reproduction of the conditions
necessary for all of this to occur. In such an investigation the process of
development is predicted and modeled.
In investigations
based on the concept of educational activity, this method requires designing
and redesigning experimental school syllabuses and many years of teaching whole
classes on the basis of these syllabuses. Experimental teaching is construed
not as adaptation to the existing, already constituted level of the children,
but as the use of means that actively create new levels of abilities necessary
for thorough assimilation of new material. Thus, the developmental-modeling
research method is also a method for experimental developmental teaching. This
variety of the formative experiment has a number of advantages over others.
First,
experimentation takes place not with individual educational topics, but with
whole subject matters; this makes it possible to determine in a more differentiated
manner the role of the various factors in developmental teaching, the different
concepts and their sequences in a course, the different aspects of educational
activity that are part of a syllabus, etc. Using this approach, we examine the
conditions for the emergence of new psychological formations more carefully.
Second, teaching the
same groups of children for a number of years makes it possible to omit study
of the individual psychological characteristics of the pupil; to turn to
examination of the integral characteristics of the mental development of the
child, the trends in his development, and the movements from one new structure
of behavior to another; and to follow the dynamics of the child’s relations
with those around him. This enriches the long-term formative experiment with
the advantages of a longitudinal study and makes it possible to follow the
various aspects and stages in the emergence of the various psychological
phenomena under study more carefully.
The requirements for
organizing a long-term formative experiment have had the constant attention of
advocates of the developmental modeling method [7, 17, 24]. It should be
pointed out that as a part of the development of the concept of educational
activity, a network of special experimental institutions has been created. The
establishment of this network has been a very laborious scientific and
practical task. As the investigations have proceeded, the statuses of
experimental psychologists in the school and of the teachers of experimental
classes have been defined; new demands have been placed on psychologists to
find ways to conduct and shape experimental work.
Such research
requires a comprehensive strategy, bringing together representatives of many
sciences (psychologists, logicians, educators, physiologists, etc.).
5. Major Results
of the Research
Among the
theoretical results have been the definition of the object of analysis in this
approach and better specification of the concept of educational activity as a
theory of education. [This theory] consists of the following: first, an
insistence on an activity approach to the process of education; second, an
examination of educational activity in terms of a unity of all its components
(educational task, educational acts, acts of control
and evaluation);
third, special attention to new formations of educational activity — in
intellectual development (theoretical thinking), in moral development
(motivation); fourth, an endeavor to bridge the activity aspect and the
personal aspect of child development.
Some work has been
done on the categorical apparatus in this context: the content of working terms
and concepts of educational and developmental psychology has been made more
precise (e.g.,assimilation, development, instruction, etc.); a new content has
been developed for a number of concepts (theoretical thinking, reflection,
educational task), and other concepts have been cast in a new light
(voluntariness, motivation, individual differences, etc.).
A new form of the
experimental developmental method has been devised and tested; specifically,
school syllabuses have been compiled, and a prolonged teaching experiment over
several years has been carried out on the basis of these syllabuses.
An important result
of the research has been a vast amount of new empirical data. Many of the
findings are fundamentally new, and have not been described previously in the
literature — for example, findings indicating that it
should be possible to: cultivate theoretical thinking at primary-school age;
cultivate developed educational activity in primary-school children, i.e., “the
ability to study”; reorganize the internal plan of action in younger
schoolchildren and the cognitive interest and motivation for education in
primary-school children and adolescents; etc. These data are still in the
process of being generalized. (1) In the first stages of the research it was
understood that activity, particularly educational activity, was not a goal in
itself, but primarily a necessary condition for the intellectual and moral
development of the child, of his intellectual and motivational attributes.
Theoretical
thinking has been subjected
to special theoretical and empirical analysis. For instance, it has been shown
that empirical generalization is based on observation and comparison of the
external properties of objects (traditional appearance), and that theoretical
generalization is based on an objective transforming act and an analysis
establishing the essential relationships of the whole object and its genetically
(developmentally) original (universal) form. Accordingly, empirical thinking is
related to that level of the introduction of knowledge at which children
develop only particular, discrete techniques for solving concrete, practical
problems, when the intellectual foundation of such techniques is made up of the
sum total of concrete and particular knowledge. Theoretical thinking, on the
other hand, occurs when, from the very first encounter with some subject matter
or another, or some large part of it, children are shown the necessity for
constructing and assimilating a generalized method of orientation in the
particular area, i.e., a generalized method for dealing with quite broad
classes of problems, and when many particular and practical skills and
abilities are developed on a generalized theoretical foundation. Through these
processes schoolchildren gradually become accustomed, when they encounter a
discrete problem, to look first for a general principle for coping with
analogous problems, then turn to different sources of knowledge to clarify this
principle and immerse themselves in self-education, etc.
Educational activity
is, in fact, directed toward the cultivation of this kind of theoretical
thinking in pupils. In the course of our research we have distinguished the
basic components of theoretical thinking: reflection, analysis, and an internal
plan of action. We have observed that in experimental classes where educational
activity is systematically cultivated the number of children acquiring a
mastery of all
the components of
theoretical thinking increases more quickly; moreover, we have found
significant correlations among the pupils’ reflection, correct solution of
problems involving analysis, and an internal plan of action.
An experimental
study was made of the role of each of the components of educational activity:
the educational task, the educational act, and acts involved in control and
evaluation.
We found that for
the control of educational activity it is not so much necessary to refine these
components themselves, as it is to cultivate the transitions from one to
another. We examined differences in educational and investigatory activity in
the strict sense. Educational activity is an educational model of
investigation, a quasi-investigation in which pupils reproduce real investigatory and search acts in only a compressed form.
Distinctive
developmental and individual characteristics of educational activity have been analyzed
. At present, experimental studies are being carried out to determine develop-
mental
characteristics for the younger elementary-school age; a theoretical set of
developmental characteristics has been outlined for older elementary-school
children. The primary school introduces children to educational activity and
begins their mastering of all its components; educational activity is dominant.
At secondary-school
age, the child acquires mastery of the general structure of educational
activity; his behavior becomes voluntary, and the child becomes conscious of
the special characteristics of his own learning efforts and employs educational
activity as a means of organizing social interaction with other schoolchildren.
The senior-school age is characterized by utilization of educational activity
as a means of vocational guidance and vocational training and by the mastery of
methods of independent educational activity, self-education, and a transition
from the assimilation of socially elaborated experience of educational activity
fixed in textbooks to its enrichment, i.e, to creative, investigatory,
cognitive activity.
The logic of the
analysis of changes in the child himself during the course of educational
activity has brought investigators face to face with the problem of individual
differences . It has been found that under conditions of controlled
learning, individual differences are not evened out but, on the contrary,
become more pronounced. This discovery has raised the question of the
possibility of purposefully shaping the characteristics of educational activity
in the schoolchild, not just taking them into account as preconditions for
formal education. Individual differences may be understood and described
according to this logic primarily as a correlation of different levels of
formation of the components of educational activity: in some pupils, the
acceptance and posing of educational tasks are further along in development,
whereas in others the modes of action with study material and the techniques of
self-checking and self-evaluation are most advanced.
Different levels of
individual characteristics in educational activity have also been roughly
outlined. The first level is marked by the pupil’s predominant use of specific
means and methods of educational activity and their combination in carrying out
assignments. The next level is marked by ways of performing educational
activity that are invariably manifested in a variety of assignments (at this
level we can speak of an individual style of educational activity). The highest
level of formation of individual characteristics of educational activity is the
development of the pupil into the subject of this activity.
1. The pupil (with
the teacher’s assistance) distinguishes different aspects, means, and methods
of educational activity and correlates them with goals and conditions.
2. On the basis of
these standards, the schoolchild evaluates and reorganizes his experience of
reality, works out a system of his own values (the sense of his own educational
activity), and, against this background, actively undertakes further
assimilation, selection, and utilization of socially elaborated standards. At
this level we can say that the pupil consciously and deliberately constructs
his own individuality.
3. The pupil,
adolescent, is at this stage able to exercise a transforming action on socially
elaborated experience of reality and to create new means and methods for
carrying out that activity. This is a transition from educational activity to
creative activity and the development of creative individuality. In connection
with an analysis of the position of the pupil in educational activity, the
sense of this activity for the child in our approach marks the beginning of a
series of studies of the motivation to learn [15].
One also sees the
beginnings of new attitudes toward different aspects of activity; these
attitudes emerge during the course of educational activity and include an
attitude toward the object under study, toward oneself, and toward others.
These new types of relations are new structures of educational activity; at the
same time, they characterize the transformation of “activity into its
subjective product,” which is closely related to the development of the pupil
as a subject of activity . In as much as they characterize the aggregate
or hierarchy of a child’s relations with the surrounding world, these new
structures of educational activity enable the investigator to take the first
steps along the way toward study of the personality of the schoolchild.
6. The Concept of
Educational Activity and the Interrelationship of Developmental
and Educational
Psychology
Our approach evolved in developmental
psychology as we tried to ascertain the reserves of intellectual development
among young schoolchildren, after which it was further elaborated in the context
of educational psychology. In connection with an analysis of the concept of
educational activity, let us give our view of the interrelationship of
developmental and educational psychology; this is but one of the possible
points of view on the correlation between these two sciences. Most recently,
developmental psychology has been acquiring increasingly more importance as a
foundation for the evolution of educational psychology. So long as the main
effort of formal education is to teach a set of facts, this process can be
studied without taking into account the general laws of child development. But
resolution of the task of “teaching the schoolchild to teach himself” also
poses questions that cannot be resolved without examining the sources of
children’s mental development.
Developmental
psychology is the theory of development of the mind in ontogeny; it studies the
laws of transition from one stage to another on the basis of a succession of
types of principal activity, changes in the social situation of development,
the nature of the interaction of the person with other people, etc. Age is
characterized not by a correlation among different mental functions, but by
those specific tasks of assimilating the various aspects of reality that are
perceived and resolved by a person and by those new developmental formations,
those qualitatively new characteristics of activity, consciousness, and the
personality, that emerge at a particular stage of development.
The following are
some principles of developmental psychology: Each age period is studied not in
isolation, but from the standpoint of the general changes in development,
taking into account the preceding and the next age. The characteristics of an
age (the chronological limits and the content) are not static, but are
determined by sociohistorical actors and the social demands of society. Each
age has reserves of development that can be mobilized during the course of a
uniquely organized activity of the child with regard to the reality around him
and to particular activities. The transition from one age to another and the
psychologically new structures in the latter are determined by changes in
principal activity, the social situation of development, the types of
interaction of the person with the environment, etc.
Educational
psychology is a theory that sheds light on the conditions that best ensure
all-round development of a harmonious personality and mobilize the reserves of
development at different age periods of a person’s life. Educational psychology
reveals arid creates conditions conducive to control of the process of formal
schooling and education. Let us demonstrate some of the principles of
educational psychology, using by way of example one of its branches, the
psychology of learning. Learning is built up on the basis of data from
developmental psychology on the reserves of the different age periods and is
oriented toward “the tomorrow of development.” Learning is organized so that
the individual characteristics of the pupil are taken into account — not
on the basis of adaptation to them, but as the projection of new types of
activity and new levels of development. Education cannot be reduced to the
transmission of knowledge and the cultivation of acts and operations; rather,
it involves mainly the formation of the pupil’s personality and the development
of those qualities that determine his behavior (values, motives, goals, etc.).
The developmental and educational effect is not achieved through just any
activity, but only through formative educational activity.
7. The Concept of Educational
Activity and School Practice
Studies of educational activity have
aimed to implement the solutions of the 25th and 26th Congresses of the CPSU
and of party and government documents about the school, to determine the
conditions for developing the techniques of independent acquisition of
knowledge in schoolchildren and cultivating in them an interest in learning,
and to develop qualitative criteria of the effectiveness of the educational
process.
The results of these
studies have had a definitely stimulating influence on school practice. The
following indications of this Influence may be cited:
1. Empirical
confirmation of the considerable cognitive reserves in primary-school pupils
(together with the empirical data of L. V. Zankov) has been one of the
foundations of the revision and enhancement of the theoretical complexity of
syllabuses for the primary school.
2. Development of
the bases of the psychology of educational activity and of the psychological
requirements for a school subject has enabled us to create original new courses
in certain subjects for the primary and secondary school (in mathematics, the
Russian language, literature, biology, physics, representational art, music).
During the course of many years of experimental testing of these courses, data
have been accumulated that indicate the possibilities of more qualitative
assimilation by schoolchildren of the learning material offered to them and of
saving considerable time by presenting the material in a way different from
that normally utilized in the syllabuses.
3. Empirical study
of the various components of educational activity (accepting the educational
task, educational acts, the checking and evaluation of learning) has enabled us
to define criteria and indices for the levels of their formation in school
children. They may be used by an educator or a teacher in devising methods for
independent work and developing techniques for independent educational activity
and self-education by school children [16]. After further systematization, they
may also be used for diagnosis of specific aspects of educational activity and
for preparing methodological approaches for a teacher and aids for a school
psychologist.
4. Preliminary
studies of the accessibility of educational materials for schoolchildren have
provided grounds for assuming that thorough cultivation of educational activity
is a possible way of overcoming pressure on pupils and of increasing the
subjective accessibility of the material in school syllabuses. Some specific
recommendations to the school in this area have been outlined.
5. The generalized
characteristics of the degree of formation of educational activity among
schoolchildren and the new psychological structures of that activity can be
regarded as qualitative indices of an integral index of the effectiveness of
educational practice [14] and be used in preparing teaching aids for leading
figures and inspectors in the school. On the whole, during the course of
studies of educational activity, qualitative indices of the effectiveness of
the work of teacher and pupils have been used:
(1) Levels of performance by schoolchildren of
the individual components of educational activity (the educational task:
an understanding of the assignment of the teacher, accepting it “for oneself,”
independent posing of an educational problem, posing of a system of problems; educational
acts : ways to distinguish general relationships in learning materials and
concretizing them, writing these relationships in the form of various graphs
and familiar models; checking and evaluation : types of self-checking on
the part of schoolchildren — predictive, before work begins, step by step,
as the work is in progress, and final — after completion of the
work; types of self-evaluation — appropriate and inappropriate, overall and
differentiated, predictive, final, etc.). Along with the expanded nature of
each component of educational activity, we can also specify the independence of
the pupil’s effort to carry it out, the ability of the schoolchild to move from
one component to another. All of the above characteristics of the components of
educational activity can be followed in their developmental dynamics from the
first to the tenth grades.
(2) Levels in the formation of an active attitude
toward schoolwork, maturity of the schoolchild as a subject of the types of
activity he must perform, the subject of interaction with other persons during
the course of joint work, the subject of his own motivational sphere, etc.
(3) Levels in the formation of different aspects
of motivation — qualitative characteristics of motives,
goals, and emotions of schoolchildren, characteristics of the sense and
significance of educational activity for schoolchildren, etc. The indices of
the degree of formation of educational activity and of personal characteristics
of pupils during the course of carrying out that activity constitute the basis
of our criteria for the thoroughness of learning by schoolchildren.
The results of
studies of the development of educational activity and its developmental
characteristics have been presented to the public-school teacher in a number of
brochures
in the series
“Znanie,” in a number of methodological recommendations for institutions for
the advanced training of teachers, and elsewhere.
8.
Some Perspectives for Further Study of Educational Activity
1) Within the limits
of a journal article, it is not possible to list all the publications in this
area devoted to the emergence of learning activity and its separate elements
based on material relating to various school subjects and ages. Here we cite
works devoted to general issues of educational activity and collections with
large bibliographies: [4], [6], [18], [19].
1. [ Proceedings of the 25th
Congress of the CPSU] . Moscow, 1976. 256 pp.
2. [ Proceedings
of the 26th Congress of the CPSU] . Moscow, 1981. 233 pp.
3. Vygotsky, L. S.
[On the problem of stages in mental development in childhood]. Vop. Psikhol.
, 1971, No. 4, pp. 14—23.
4. El’konin, D. B.,
& Davydov, V. V. (Eds.) [Age-related possibilities for learning (primary
school)] . Moscow, 1966. 442 pp.
5. Gal’perin, P.
Ya.,& Talyzina,N. F. [The current state of the theory of the stage
development of intellectual acts]. Vestn. MGU, 1979, No. 4, pp. 54—63.
6. Davydov, V. V. [
Types of generalization in learning]. Moscow, 1972. 423 pp.
7. Davydov, V. V.
[The category of activity and mental reflection in Leont’ev’s theory]. Vestn.
MGU, 1979, No. 4, pp.25—
8. Davydov, V. V. [Fundamental problems
of developmental and educational psychology at the present stage of development
of education]. Vop. Psikhol. , 1976, No. 4, pp. 3—15.
9. Davydov, V. V.
[Mental development in primary-school age]. In A. V. Petrovsky (Ed.), [
Developmental and educational psychology] . Moscow, 1973. Pp. 66—97.
10. Davydov, V. V.,
& Markova, A. K. [Development of thought in school age]. In L. K.
Antsyferova (Ed.), [Principles of development in psychology] . Moscow,
1978. Pp. 295—3 16.
11. Davydov, V. V.,
El’konin, D. B., & Markova, A. K. [Fundamental questions in contemporary
psychology of primary-school-age children]. In V. V. Davydov, (Ed.), [
Problems of general, developmental, and educational psychology] .
Moscow, 1978. Pp. 180—206.
12. Leont’ev, A. N.
[ Activity. Consciousness. Personality]. Moscow, 1975. 304 pp.
13. Leont’ev, A. N.
[ Problems of mental development] . Moscow, 1972. 575 pp.
14. Markova, A. K.
[Psychological criteria of the effectiveness of the learning process]. Vop.
Psikhol. , 1977, No. 4, pp.40—51.
15. Markova, A. K.
[Ways to study motivation for educational activity in schoolchildren]. Vop.
Psikhol. , 1980, No. 5, pp. 47—59.
16. Markova, A. K.
[Sell-education of schoolchildren]. Vop.Psikhol. , 1980, No. 3, pp.
149—54.
17. Davydov, V. V.,
& Markova, A. K. (Eds.) [ The psychology of learning and
education (problems in the organization of a formative experiment)]
. Moscow, 1978. 42 pp.
18. Davydov, V. V.
(Ed.) [ Psychological possibilities of young schoolchildren’s
learning mathematics] . Moscow, 1969. 288 pp.
19. Davydov, V. V.
(Ed.) [ Psychological problems of educational activity in the schoolchild]
. Moscow, 1977. 310 pp.
20. Repkin, V. V.
[The concept of educational activity]. Vesth. Kharkov. Univ. , 1976, No.
132, Issue 9, pp. 6—10.
21. Repkin, V. V.
[The structure of educational activity]. Ibid. Pp. 10—16.
22. Repkin, V. V.
[The development of educational activity as a psychological problem]. Vestn.
Kharkov. Univ. , 1977, No. 155, pp. 32—38.
23. El’konin, D. B.
[The problem of stages of mental development in childhood]. Vop. Psikhol.
, 1971, No. 4, pp. 6—20.
24. El’konin, D. B.
[Psychological study in an experimental class]. Vop. Psikhol. , 1960,
No. 5, pp. 29—40.
25. El’konin, D. B.
[ The psychology of learning in the young schoolchild] . Moscow,
1974. 64 pp.
26. El’konin, D. B.
[Psychological questions on the development of educational activity in young
schoolchildren]. In D. S. Kostyuk & P. H. Chumata (Eds.), [ Problems in
the psychology of learning and education] . Kiev, 1961. Pp. 12—13.
27. Yudin, E. G.
[Activity as an explanatory principle and as an object of scientific study]. Vop.
Filosof. , 1976, No. 5, pp. 55—78.