The concept of "learning activity". Psychology of educational activity

Learning activities- one of the main (along with work and play) types of human activity, specifically aimed at mastering the methods of objective and cognitive actions, generalized theoretical knowledge. Assimilation (learning) is an essential characteristic of U. D., nevertheless, these are different phenomena: assimilation is a process that takes place in any activity, U. D. is a type of activity, a special form of social activity of the individual.

W. d. performs a dual social function. Being a form of activity of the individual, it is a condition and means of his mental development, providing him with the assimilation of theoretical knowledge and thereby the development of those specific abilities that are crystallized in this knowledge. At a certain stage of mental development (at the early school age) U. d. plays a leading role in the formation of personality. As a form of socially normalized cooperation between a child and adults, educational activity is one of the main means of including the younger generations in the system of social relations, in openly collective activity, during which the values ​​and norms underlying any collective activity are assimilated.

Like the game, W. activity is a derivative type of activity that has historically separated from labor. Its selection is due to the emergence of theoretical knowledge, the content of which is only partially manifested in individual practical actions and, therefore, cannot be fully assimilated in the process of mastering these actions. The development of human knowledge (from the empirical level to the theoretical one) necessarily causes the development, restructuring of economic activity. The real scale of this restructuring is determined by the socioeconomic conditions of society, its need to equip the rising generations with knowledge of the theoretical and empirical level. In the most developed forms, U. D. appears for the first time in the era of the scientific and technological revolution.

The essence of teaching methods lies in solving educational problems, the main difference of which is that their goal and result is to change the acting subject itself, which consists in mastering certain modes of action, and not in changing the objects with which the subject acts. The solution of a separate educational task determines the integral act of the educational activity, that is, its simplest "unit", within which the structure of this type of activity as a whole is manifested. The implementation of such an act involves the actualization of the specific motive of U. d. - the definition of the final educational goal - the preliminary determination of the system of intermediate goals and ways to achieve them - the implementation of the system of actual educational actions - the implementation of control actions - the evaluation of the results of U. d.

Like any other human activity, U. D. is polymotivated. A special place in the system of motives of U. D. belongs to cognitive interest, which is directly related to its content and represents a specific, internal motive of U. D., without which the assimilation of knowledge from the ultimate goal ("motive-goal") can turn into a condition for achieving others. goals, i.e., the activity of the subject does not acquire an educational character (or loses it). The possibilities and conditions for the actualization of cognitive interest in cognitive activity are determined by its focus (on the results or methods of cognition) and the level of development (whether it is situational or stable, personal).

On the basis of the actualized motive of U. d., its final and intermediate goals are determined. Although goal-setting in U.D. most often appears as the “acceptance” by the subject of goals set from outside, it is not a one-time act, but a process of understanding the objective content of the goals set, their correlation with actual motives, “additional definition”. The complexity of this process is evidenced by the well-known facts of "redefining" educational goals. Simultaneously with the definition of goals, a preliminary analysis of the conditions and ways to achieve them is carried out, as a result of which a scheme of the act is formed that guides the subject in the process of its implementation. The implementation of the goals of educational learning is ensured by a system of educational activities, the composition and structure of which can vary significantly depending on the object of assimilation (theoretical or empirical knowledge), the method of its presentation, the required level of assimilation, etc.

The described structure is characteristic of the developed forms of U. d., which are the result of its formation in the conditions of school education. The process of U.'s formation has not been studied enough. On the basis of experimental data, three main stages can be distinguished in it. The first of them is characterized by the development of individual educational actions; on this basis, a situational interest arises in the methods of action and mechanisms for "accepting" private educational goals are formed; control and evaluation. At the second stage, learning actions are combined into integral acts of activity subordinated to the achievement of a more distant ultimate goal; as such acts are formed, cognitive interest acquires a stable character, starting to perform the function of a meaning-forming motive of U. d. the acceptance of the final goal set from the outside, but also its independent concretization - on this basis, the actions of control and evaluation are intensively formed. The third stage is characterized by the unification of individual acts of educational activity into integral systems; cognitive interest is characterized by generalization, stability and selectivity, beginning to increasingly fulfill the function of an incentive motive for activity; in the system of educational actions, one of the central places is occupied by actions with various sources of educational information ( textbook, reference book, map, etc.). The chronological framework of these stages is relative and is determined primarily by the conditions of learning. Under unfavorable conditions, the development of U. d. can stop at the first stage; under optimal conditions, as experimental data show, already at the 6-7th year of study, U. d. enters the highest stage of its formation.

V.V. Davydov

Definitions, meanings of the word in other dictionaries:

Psychological Dictionary

The leading activity is of primary school age, within the framework of which there is a controlled appropriation of the foundations of social experience, primarily in the form of basic intellectual operations - and theoretical concepts -.

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The concept of "learning activity". Psychology of educational activity

Introduction

1. Psychology of educational activity (psychology of learning)

2. Personality and learning process

3. Self-education and self-learning

Conclusion

Bibliography

Introduction

The concept of "learning activity" is rather ambiguous. In the broad sense of the word, it is sometimes incorrectly considered as a synonym for learning, teaching and even learning. In a narrow sense, according to D.B. Elkonin, is the leading type of activity in primary school age. In the works of D.B. Elkonina, V.V. Davydova, A.K. Markova, the concept of “learning activity” is filled with the actual activity content and meaning, correlating with a special “responsible attitude”, according to S.L. Rubinstein, the subject to the subject of learning throughout its entire length.

It should be noted that in this interpretation, “learning activity” is understood more broadly than the leading type (kind) of activity, since it applies to all ages, in particular to students. Educational activity in this sense is the activity of the subject in mastering generalized methods of educational actions and self-development in the process of solving educational problems specially set by the teacher, on the basis of external control and evaluation, turning into self-control and self-esteem. According to D.B. Elkonin, “learning activity is an activity that has as its content the mastery of generalized methods of action in the field of scientific concepts, ... such activity should be stimulated by adequate motives. They may be motives for acquiring generalized methods of action, or, more simply, motives for one's own growth, one's own improvement. If it is possible to form such motives among students, then this will support, filling with new content, those general motives, activities that are associated with the position of the student, with the implementation of socially significant and socially valued activities.

Learning activity can accordingly be considered as a specific type of activity. It is aimed at the student himself as its subject - improvement, development, formation of him as a person due to the conscious, purposeful appropriation of sociocultural experience in various types and forms of socially useful, cognitive, theoretical and practical activities. The activity of the student is aimed at mastering deep systemic knowledge, working out generalized methods of action and their adequate and creative application in various situations.

1. Psychology of educational activity(psychology of learning)

The term "knowledge" has several meanings. In a universal, philosophical sense, it means the reflection of objective reality by mankind in the form of facts, ideas, concepts and laws of science (that is, it is the collective experience of mankind, the result of people's knowledge of objective reality). From the point of view of the psychology of learning, knowledge is acquired in individual experience or learned from previous generations of ideas and concepts about objective or subjective reality.

The assimilation of knowledge includes the perception of educational material, its comprehension, memorization and practical application.

Education of scientific concepts. Scientific concepts are presented in the subjective reality of a person in the form of ideas and concepts. The concept is one of the logical forms of thinking, the highest level of generalization, characteristic of verbal-logical thinking. A concept is a form of knowledge through which the universal, individual and particular of a certain class of objects or phenomena of reality are simultaneously displayed. Depending on the degree of generalization and properties reflected in the concept of objects and phenomena, concepts are concrete and abstract. There is a difference between worldly and scientific concepts. The most abstract scientific concepts are called categories.

V.V. Davydov, one of the creators of the "developing model" of learning, proposed the following scheme for the formation of concepts: perception, representation, concept.

The success of the transition from the reflection of real objects or descriptions of the teacher to the concept depends on the formation of the student's ability to highlight the essential, that is, generalization not according to the so-called "formal generality" (assigning objects to one class only by external signs).

Through scientific concepts, the assimilation of socio-historical experience occurs, while with the help of images, historical experience is correlated with subjective experience. The assimilation of a scientific concept is possible when abstracted from everything that is logically insignificant from the point of view of universal (generic) experience. The image cannot be torn off from the sensual basis on which it arises. The creation of an image is always based on individual (subjective) experience.

A change in any sign included in the content of a concept often leads to a distortion of this concept, to incorrect assimilation. When forming concepts, it is necessary to distract, “break away” from everything insignificant in his personal experience, “obscuring” the essence of the assimilated concept. However, any knowledge is an alloy of concept and image.

The use of figurative thinking for the assimilation of knowledge. Operating with sign-symbolic images

The use of figurative thinking in education gives good results. However, figurative thinking, like all other types of thinking, has its limitations in application. It cannot be perceived as a way to get rid of the need to deal with abstractions, concepts that are significantly remote from real life and subjective human experience. We have to remember that this image is burdened with various and very important subject details for a person. Therefore, any requirement to modify it, transform it, that is, to operate it, causes great difficulties for an untrained student.

At a university, a student more often has to work with sign-symbolic images that occupy an intermediate position between “artistic” images and concepts. The criteria for successful mastery of the skills to operate with sign-symbolic images can be:

The breadth of operation is the freedom with which the student operates with an image created on various visual materials, i.e. easily and quickly passes from one visual image to another, recodes its image;

Generalization - the degree of abstraction from individual specific properties of a conditionally symbolic record or graph: how general do the relationships fixed in them seem to a person;

The completeness of the image is the representation in the resulting image of the maximum number of characteristics of a conditionally symbolic record or graph: structure, spatial dimension of components, level of abstraction, etc.;

The dynamism of the image - this characteristic is manifested in the possibility of transition from a conditionally symbolic image to a graphic one, from one form of a conditionally symbolic image to another. Dynamism largely depends on the generalization of the image.

2. Personality and learning process

Educational knowledge is assimilated when it is humanized, associated with a person, becomes his own knowledge.

Teaching motivation

There are three groups of students' motives: 1) the need to know; 2) the need to acquire highly professional knowledge and skills; 3) the need to obtain a diploma of higher education.

There is a certain dependence of the dominance of a particular need on the extraversion-introversion of the individual. People of the introverted type are characterized by a high level of cognitive need and the need to obtain a diploma, so they are more diligent and attentive. Students of the extroverted type do not have such a high level of cognitive need, which entails a small dynamics in the development of knowledge in general. Learning activities are mostly passive and situational, so they need external stimulation.

Starting from the first grades, we are presented with new material in the form of a story, it is depicted on the blackboard, we read about it in a book, and recently we can show a film or send it to one or another computer site.

However, with this method of learning, those students do not overstrain, whose innate leading channels for transmitting information are visual and auditory. They do not get tired with a book or at a computer, do not overwork during many hours of lectures. But kinesthetics have a harder time. The inability to use the usual channel for processing information causes the student to either reject the material being studied, dissatisfaction with the teacher, or dissatisfaction with their own cognitive abilities. But within certain limits, a person can develop all sensory channels, and the richer his sensory organization, the easier it is for him to cope with the information received and, which is no less important for communication, learns to transfer his knowledge to people with other leading channels for receiving information.

Thinking and Learning

Hegel once said that the world can be known reason and intellect. With the help of reason, we dismember, register and describe sensory experience. Reason, as the highest level of knowledge, allows you to reveal the essence of objects, internal laws and their development. The success of the assimilation of knowledge, therefore, depends on the development of the theoretical thinking of the student. student thinking self study

Mastering the operations of thinking also increases the chance of academic success. With the help of abstraction, the selection of some features in the subject under study and the distraction from others, which are currently insignificant, are ensured. If the student has sufficient knowledge of this information, he can easily cope with the "squeezing" of information for memorization. Comparison will make it easy to establish the similarity or difference between different aspects of the material being studied, as well as avoid duplication, establish semantic connections between this material and the student already known, which will also contribute to both understanding and memorizing the material. The ability to generalize, which consists in combining objects according to their essential feature, allows you not to rewrite individual paragraphs from different sources, not to mechanically memorize a conglomerate of different points of view, but to present your knowledge in the form of a coherent logical system with the most common basis.

Students with an analytical type of thinking and perception highlight all the details and details in the material being studied, but often cannot understand the main meaning. Their written work is very voluminous and detailed.

Students with a synthetic type of thinking and perception quickly “grasp” the essence of what they are studying, but do not pay enough attention to details and are more prone to generalizations, as a result of which they are not able to make an accurate retelling. However, they easily achieve success in self-preparation of annotations, summaries of texts.

Knowing the peculiarities of their work with educational material, students should pay special attention to the quality of performing those types of tasks that do not coincide with their style of thinking.

The student's thesaurus plays an important role in the success of the educational process. According to modern psychological views, the main measure of the degree of difficulty in mastering educational material is the increase in semantic (semantic) information, which is based precisely on the use of the thesaurus. If the student's thesaurus is small, then he needs more time to assimilate new information. The less information he has and the connections of the objects under study, the more difficult it is for him to distinguish from the newly studied object its properties, especially those hidden from direct perception.

Reading plays an important role in successful learning. An adult reads fast enough, but speed as such is no guarantee of success. It is necessary to develop the ability to use different reading speeds, taking into account the goals, as well as the ability to highlight the essential when reading.

Development of the emotional-volitional sphere. Knowledge control and personal anxiety (exams and anxiety)

The influence of emotions and will on the success of educational activities does not require special argumentation. It has long been known that a delay in the development of the emotional-volitional sphere leads to the disintegration of mental activity. The latter manifests itself in insufficient flexibility of thinking, a tendency to mental stereotypes, as well as a tendency to patterned actions, including in learning.

By senior years, the number of people with high personal anxiety increases. These students are not able to quickly switch to a new activity when conditions change. They need more time to prepare for the answer on the exam, they are lost in the questions "on the forehead", they are not ready for an immediate answer. Therefore, testing becomes a serious test for them, especially with the use of a computer, in a hard time mode. However, there are situations where high anxiety works well. Medler and Sarazon (1952) showed that high anxiety does not interfere if actions are automated; there is no connection between the quality of the completed assignment and self-assessment; previous task completed successfully; and also in the case when teachers, others and the person himself do not draw a parallel between success in a particular task and the abilities of a person.

3. Self-education and self-learning

The concept of self-education and self-learning.

One of the founders of the theory of "universal quality" Edward Deming wrote back in 1986: "It is necessary to support the education and self-improvement of everyone. What the organization needs is not just good people, but people who improve themselves in education.”

Self-education is a system of internal self-organization for mastering the experience of generations, aimed at one's own development. Self-education is a powerful factor that replenishes and enriches education organized by society.

Modern pedagogy considers the formation of skills and abilities of self-education to be the highest stage of education and one of the necessary conditions for the implementation of lifelong education.

Self-learning is analogous to learning. Self-learning is the process of direct acquisition by a person of the experience of generations through his own aspirations and his own chosen means. Here the inner world of a person plays a huge role: not only consciousness, but also an unconscious factor, intuition, as well as the ability to learn not only from a teacher, but with the help of books, from other people, from nature. Self-learning is based on the need for knowledge.

For the development of mental independence, as the basis of self-learning, a person needs to gain experience in the implementation of the functions of a teacher in relation to himself: learn to analyze, plan, regulate and evaluate his own learning activities. Fundamental are the analysis and evaluation of the results of educational activities. The means are introspection and self-assessment. The latter allows not only to determine the success of their actions, but also to determine where to direct the main efforts in the future. Consequently, the assessment is not only a control, but also an incentive for action, in contrast to the mark, which is often a formal expression of the assessment and its designation, the assessment is a necessary content element in the structure of educational activity. Therefore, the ability to evaluate oneself is a strong factor in activating independent learning activities.

Computers and self-study

Among the positive aspects of the use of information technology in education, most scientists note the possibility of self-study with open access to extensive information resources and the presence of feedback. The use of the Internet contributes to the change of the authoritarian style of learning to democratic, when the student gets acquainted with different points of view on the problem, he formulates his own opinion. It is easier for the student to form the skills of independent, concentrated activity. He can work at his own pace.

However, the inclusion of the Internet in the educational process has a number of problems. First of all, this is the problem of the information itself that is on the network: it can be incorrect, distorted, it can be aimed at achieving goals that are not educational at all, but, for example, economic, political, etc. The second problem, as when working with paper media, related to the availability of appropriate preparedness to work with such information. Students interpret it depending on knowledge, age, life experience, cultural environment, mentality, etc. The adequacy of information perception will depend on whether the student is trained or not:

analytical work with information;

Does he have critical thinking?

whether he has sufficient knowledge to assess the reliability of the information;

can correlate new information and existing knowledge;

will be able to properly organize the information process.

The third problem is that a computer can only to a certain extent simulate interpersonal communication between a teacher and a student, the essence of which is the relationship of cooperation and support, the non-verbal components of human communication. So, when studying the phenomenon of the need to “communicate” with a computer, the following features of such communication were discovered: the user’s need for an anthropomorphic interface and emotionally colored vocabulary was revealed; the phenomenon of computer personification was discovered, as well as various forms of computer anxiety. As an explanation, a hypothesis is put forward about the manifestation of the subject's tendency to unconsciously like himself to a computer, a comparison of his own intellectual abilities and the capabilities of a computer system.

In general, the success of working with a computer during self-education depends, first of all, on the propensity to learn. People who strive to acquire new knowledge and skills throughout their life path are more successful in adapting to our rapidly changing world. They also feel more confident in the development of computer technology, experience less computer anxiety. With an in-depth approach to learning, students quickly begin to enjoy working with a computer, their level of computer anxiety is low. Being prone to deep learning, they actively use many computer applications.

Conclusion

Educational activity is the leading activity at school age. Under the leading activity is understood such activity, during which the formation of the main mental processes and personality traits occurs, neoplasms appear that correspond to age (arbitrariness, reflection, self-control, internal plan of action). Educational activities are carried out throughout the child's education in school. Educational activity is especially intensively formed during the period of primary school age.

Educational activity is, first of all, an individual activity. It is complex in its structure and requires special formation. Like work, educational activity is characterized by goals and objectives, motives. Like an adult doing work, the student must know what to do, why, how, see his mistakes, control and evaluate himself. A child entering school does not do any of this on his own; he does not have teaching skills. In the process of learning activities, the student not only masters knowledge, skills and abilities, but also learns to set educational tasks (goals), find ways to assimilate and apply knowledge, control and evaluate their actions.

Bibliography

1. Davydov V.V. Problems of developing education. M., 1986.

2. Shadrikov V.D. Psychology of activity and human abilities. M., 1996.

3. Godfroy J. What is psychology: In 2 vols. M., 1996.

4. Druzhinin V.N. Experimental psychology. M., 1997.

5. Ivashchenko F.I. Tasks in general, developmental and pedagogical psychology. Mn., 1999.

6. Kunitsyna V.N. Interpersonal communication. M., 2001. (Series "Textbook of the new century").

7. The course of general, developmental and pedagogical psychology / Ed. N.V. Gamezo. M., 1982.

8. Yakunin V.A. Psychology of educational activity of students. M., 1994.

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The concept of "learning activity" is rather ambiguous. In the broad sense of the word, it is sometimes incorrectly considered as a synonym for learning, teaching and even learning. In a narrow sense, according to D.B. Elkonin, is the leading type of activity in primary school age. In the works of D.B. Elkonina, V.V. Davydova, A.K. Markova, the concept of “learning activity” is filled with the actual activity content and meaning, correlating with a special “responsible attitude”, according to S.L. Rubinstein, the subject to the subject of learning throughout its entire length.

It should be noted that in this interpretation, “learning activity” is understood more broadly than the leading type (kind) of activity, since it applies to all ages, in particular to students. Educational activity in this sense is the activity of the subject in mastering generalized methods of educational actions and self-development in the process of solving educational problems specially set by the teacher, on the basis of external control and evaluation, turning into self-control and self-esteem. According to D.B. Elkonin, “learning activity is an activity that has as its content the mastery of generalized methods of action in the field of scientific concepts, ... such activity should be stimulated by adequate motives. They can be ... motives for acquiring generalized methods of action, or, more simply, motives for one's own growth, one's own improvement. If it is possible to form such motives among students, then by this they are supported, filled with new content, those general motives of activity that are associated with the position of the student, with the implementation of socially significant and socially valued activities..

Learning activity can accordingly be considered as a specific type of activity. It is aimed at the student himself as its subject - improvement, development, formation of him as a person due to the conscious, purposeful appropriation of sociocultural experience in various types and forms of socially useful, cognitive, theoretical and practical activities. The activity of the student is aimed at mastering deep systemic knowledge, working out generalized methods of action and their adequate and creative application in various situations.

The main characteristics of educational activities

There are three main characteristics of educational activity that distinguish it from other forms of learning: 1) it is specifically aimed at mastering educational material and solving learning problems; 2) general methods of action and scientific concepts are mastered in it (in comparison with everyday ones learned before school); 3) general methods of action precede the solution of problems (I.I. Ilyasov) (compare with learning by trial and error, when there is no preliminary general method, program of action, when learning is not activity). Let us add two more essential characteristics of educational activity to these three. Firstly, in response to a cognitive, insatiable need, 4) educational activity leads to changes in the subject himself, which, according to D.B. Elkonin, is its main characteristic. Secondly, the Czech theorist of the process and structure of learning I. Lingart considers another feature of learning activity as an active form of learning, namely 5) changes in the mental properties and behavior of the student "depending on the results of their own actions." Thus, we can talk about five characteristics of learning activity in comparison with learning.

Based on the definition of educational activity as an activity for mastering generalized methods of action, self-development of the student through the solution of educational tasks specially set by the teacher through educational actions, let us consider its actual activity characteristics. First of all, we emphasize that, following D.B. Elkonin, its social character: according to content, since it is aimed at assimilating all the riches of culture and science accumulated by mankind; in meaning because it is socially significant and socially valued; in shape, since it corresponds to socially developed standards of education and takes place in special public institutions, for example, in schools, gymnasiums, colleges, and institutes. Like any other, learning activity is characterized by subjectivity, activity, objectivity, purposefulness, awareness has a certain structure and content.

Teaching is a conscious activity organized by the subject himself, aimed at the active assimilation of a system of knowledge, skills and abilities.

Domestic psychologists focused on various aspects of teaching. L. S. Vygotsky, A. N. Leontiev, S. L. Rubinstein considered learning as a process of acquiring knowledge, skills, at a time when development was understood as the formation of new qualities and abilities. P. Ya. Galperin defines learning as the assimilation of knowledge on the basis of actions performed by the subject. D. B. Elkonin and V. V. Davydov refer learning to a specific type of learning activity.

Thus, teaching can be considered on the basis of an analysis of the content and structure of educational activity.

In a broad sense, educational activity is aimed at mastering the sociocultural experience accumulated by mankind. Educational activity is social in its essence (it is significant for the development of society, it is evaluated by it, organized in specially created social institutions (preschool institutions, schools, universities, etc.)). It has all the features that are characteristic of any human activity (activity, objectivity, awareness, purposefulness, subjectivity, dynamism, etc.).

Educational activity is an activity aimed at acquiring new knowledge, skills, abilities by an individual or changing them in the process of specially organized and purposeful training, and thereby causing changes in the individual himself.

Educational activity is characterized by the following psychological characteristics (given by: Winter, I. A. Pedagogical psychology):

1. It is specifically aimed at mastering educational material and solving educational problems.

2. General methods of action and scientific concepts are mastered in it (in comparison with worldly, assimilated before school).

3. General methods of action precede the solution of problems.

4. Educational activity leads to changes in the subject itself (according to the definition of D. B. Elkonin, this is the main characteristic of activity).

5. There are changes in the mental properties and behavior of the student, depending on the results of their own actions (I. Lingart).

There are five components in the structure of educational activity:

1) motivation. Educational activity is polymotivated. It is motivated and directed by various motives. EDUCATIONAL AND COGNITIVE motives (according to Elkonin) - interest in the content side of educational activity, in what is being studied, in the process of activity.

2) learning task. A system of tasks in which the child masters the most common methods of action. Children, solving many specific problems, themselves discover ways to solve them. Developmental learning involves the joint discovery by children and the teacher of a common way of solving problems.


3) learning activities. They are part of the mode of action of operations and training tasks. It is considered the main link in the structure of educational activities. Each training operation must be worked out. Often, according to the Halperin system. The student, having received a complete orientation in the composition of operations, performs operations in a material form under the control of the teacher, having learned to do this without errors, solves the problem in his mind.

4) control. First, the teacher controls the learning activity, then the students control themselves. Without self-control, it is impossible to fully develop educational activities, so this is the most important pedagogical task. The child needs operational control over the process of learning activities.

5) assessment. The child must learn to adequately evaluate his work with a general assessment - how correctly the task was completed, and an assessment of his actions - how much the method of solving was mastered, what was not worked out

The criteria for assessing the formation of educational activity among students, respectively, are:

1. compliance with age-psychological regulatory requirements;

2. compliance of action properties with predetermined requirements.

3. formation of educational activity among students, reflecting the level of development of metasubject actions that perform the function of managing the cognitive activity of students.

The model for assessing the level of formation of educational activity includes an assessment of the formation of all its components: motives, goal-setting features, learning activities, control and evaluation.

Levels of formation of educational actions:

1) the absence of learning actions as integral "units" of activity (the student performs only individual operations, can only copy the actions of the teacher, does not plan and does not control his actions, replaces the learning task with the task of literally memorizing and reproducing);

2) performance of learning activities in cooperation with the teacher (clarifications are required to establish the connection between individual operations and the conditions of the task, can perform actions according to a constant, already learned algorithm);

3) inadequate transfer of learning actions to new types of tasks (if the conditions of the task change, he cannot independently make adjustments to the actions);

4) adequate transfer of educational activities (self-discovery by the student of a discrepancy between the conditions of the tasks and the available methods for solving it and the correct change in the method in cooperation with the teacher);

5) independent construction of learning goals (independent construction of new learning activities based on a detailed, thorough analysis of the conditions of the task and previously learned methods of action);

6) generalization of educational actions based on the identification of general principles for constructing new methods of action and the derivation of a new method for each specific task.

The described model for assessing the formation of educational activity, in a number of significant aspects, is supplemented by the diagnostic system of A.K. Markova (1990), which includes 4 main areas of assessment:

1. The state of the learning task and the indicative framework:

Students' understanding of the task set by the teacher, the meaning of the activity and the active acceptance of the learning task;

Self-setting of schoolchildren's educational tasks;

Independent choice of action guidelines and construction of an orientation base in the new educational material.

2. Status of learning activities:

What educational actions the student performs (measurement, modeling, comparison, etc.);

In what form does he fulfill them (material / materialized; loud-speech, mental); deployed (in full scope of operations) or collapsed; independently or after promptings from adults;

Does the student distinguish between the method and the result of actions;

Does the student have several methods to achieve the same result?

3. The state of self-control and self-assessment:

Does the student know how to check himself after finishing work (final self-control);

Can he check himself in the middle and in the process of work (step-by-step self-control);

Is he able to plan work before it starts (planning self-control);

Is the student's self-assessment adequate?

Does the student have access to differentiated self-assessment of individual parts of his work, or can he evaluate his work only in general terms?

4. What is the result of educational activities:

Objective (the correctness of the decision, the number of actions to the result, the temporal characteristics of the action, the ability to solve problems of varying difficulty);

Subjective (significance, the meaning of learning activities for the student himself, subjective satisfaction, psychological cost - the expenditure of time and effort, the contribution of personal efforts).

Describing the concept of "learning activity", most authors usually complain about its often overly broad interpretation. In everyday speech, and often in special psychological and pedagogical publications, educational activity is interpreted very broadly and is regarded as a synonym for learning, learning, and even learning. In addition, the term "educational activity" is used to designate the main normative activity in educational institutions. From the point of view of the activity approach, this is not true. Educational activity, from the standpoint of the activity approach, is considered as "a special form of personality activity aimed at assimilating (assigning) the social experience of knowing and transforming the world, which includes mastering cultural methods of external, objective and mental actions" (V. V. Davydov).

It is usually emphasized that educational activity should not be identified with the processes of learning and assimilation included in different types of activity (game, communication, sports, labor, etc.). According to V. V. Davydov, learning activity involves the assimilation of theoretical knowledge through discussions carried out by students with the help of teachers. Educational activities, according to V.V. Davydov, are implemented in those educational institutions (schools, institutes, universities) that are able to give their graduates a fairly complete education and are aimed at developing their abilities to navigate in various areas of social consciousness " At the same time, the author notes that educational activities are still poorly represented in many Russian educational institutions.

D. B. Elkonin writes that "learning activity is an activity that has as its content the mastery of generalized methods of action in the field of scientific concepts." Such activity, in his opinion, should be prompted by adequate motives. They may be motives for acquiring generalized methods of action or, more simply, motives for one's own growth, one's own improvement. If it is possible to form such motives among students, D. B. Elkonin argues, “then this will support, filling with new content, those general motives of activity that are associated with the position of the student, with the existence of a socially significant and socially valued activity.”

Learning activity, therefore, can be considered as a specific type of activity. It is focused on the student as a subject. As a result of educational activity, there is improvement, development, formation of him as a person due to the conscious, purposeful appropriation of sociocultural experience in various types and forms of socially useful, cognitive, theoretical and practical activities (I. A. Zimnyaya).

The main characteristics of educational activities

I. I. Ilyasov singled out three characteristics that distinguish educational activity from other forms of learning:

  • 1. It is specifically aimed at mastering educational material and solving educational problems.
  • 2. General methods of action and scientific concepts are mastered in it (in comparison with worldly, assimilated before school).
  • 3. General methods of action precede the solution of problems.

For comparison, the latter can be compared with teaching by the "trial and error" method, when there is no preliminary general method, there is no program of action, then teaching is not an activity.

To these three characteristics, I. A. Zimnyaya proposes to add two more:

  • 1. Learning activity leads to changes in the subject itself.
  • 2. Changing the mental properties and behavior of the student "depending on the results of their own actions" (I. Lingart).

Evaluating these five characteristics of learning activity, I. A. Zimnyaya quite rightly proposes to consider the fourth - the main one.

Describing educational activity, most authors emphasize its social nature. It is most significantly determined by cultural traditions and social and semantic orientations of society. A significant part of educational activity takes place in the mode of interaction with others, but D. B. Elkonin emphasized that often, being collective in form, educational activity is always individual in result.

Like any other type of activity, learning activity can be described from different points of view, such as: subjectivity, activity, objectivity, purposefulness, awareness, as well as from the point of view of its structure and content. Educational activity, according to the developers of this theory, has the following general structure: need - task - motives - actions - operations (V. V. Davydov, D. B. Elkonin, etc.).

The subject of educational activity, from the point of view of psychology, is what it is aimed at. In this regard, the following stand out: the assimilation of knowledge, the mastery of generalized methods of action, the development of techniques and methods of action, their algorithms and programs, in the process of which the development of the "subject of activity" - the student takes place. At the same time, D. B. Elkonin emphasized the fundamental position that learning activity should not be identified with assimilation. Despite the fact that it (assimilation) is its main content and is itself determined by the structure and level of its development. The main feature of the subject of educational activity is that it is aimed at changing the subject himself, these changes (in the intellectual and personal plans) are mediated by the nature of assimilation.

Inclusion in educational activity involves the use of its special means and methods. Experts in the field of the activity approach to learning distinguish three groups of them:

  • 1. The means underlying the cognitive and research functions of educational activity, intellectual actions (analysis, synthesis, generalization, classification, etc.).
  • 2. Symbolic, linguistic, verbal means, in the form of which knowledge is assimilated, individual experience is reflected and reproduced.
  • 3. Background knowledge, through the inclusion of new knowledge in which the individual experience is structured, the student's thesaurus (I. A. Zimnyaya, S. L. Rubinshtein, etc.).

Ways of learning activity can be different and are usually classified according to a variety of reasons. For example: reproductive, problem-search, research and cognitive (V. V. Davydov, V. V. Rubtsov, etc.). This issue is especially intensively developed in pedagogy, where many classifications of methods, ways, and methods of teaching have been created.

The problem of the product of educational activity deserves special attention. The product of educational activity should be considered personal mental neoplasms formed and developed under the influence of educational activity. When concretizing this provision, the following components are noted:

  • 1. Structured and updated knowledge underlying the ability to solve problems in various fields of science and practice.
  • 2. Internal new formations of the psyche and activity in the motivational, value, semantic planes (I. A. Zimnyaya and others).

The life position of a person, the success of any of his activities, his socialization largely depend on the structure, consistency, degrees of strength and depth of the experience gained in educational activities.

External structure of learning activity

Educational activity is traditionally regarded as predominantly intellectual activity. In an intellectual act, the following stages are traditionally distinguished: motive, plan (intention, program of action), execution and control (Y. Galanter, J. Miller, A. N. Leontiev, K. Pribram, etc.). The presented phasing can be considered as a structural scheme, however, it is impossible not to notice that learning activity is not identical to a simple intellectual act. Its external structure looks somewhat different.

Describing the composition of the external structure of educational activity, I. A. Zimnyaya identifies the following components:

  • - motivation;
  • - learning tasks in certain situations in various forms of tasks;
  • - learning activities;
  • - control turning into self-control;
  • - Appraisal that turns into self-assessment.

During the period of active development of the activity approach in psychology, educational activity was considered primarily the lot of children and youth and was evaluated as the main form of their inclusion in social life. In modern concepts, the time stage of the existence of educational activity in the life of an individual has expanded significantly, covering all ages. The civilizational functions of educational activity have now changed qualitatively. In order to survive in today's dynamic world, a person is forced to continuously learn, from a large number of "good wishes" this position has moved into the category of basic, vital needs. Educational activity occupies an increasing place in a number of human activities, and this phenomenon should be considered as a stable trend.