Topic 8. JUNIOR SCHOOL AGE (FROM 6-7 TO 10-11 YEARS)

8.1. Social situation of development

Many psychologists dealt with the problems of primary school age: D.B. Elkonin, V.V. Davydova, L.I. Aidarova, Yu.A. Poluyanov and others. This age attracts the close attention of scientists because it has not yet been fully studied, since it historically stood out quite recently, with the introduction of compulsory and universal incomplete and complete secondary education. The tasks and content of secondary education have not yet been fully defined, so the psychological characteristics of primary school age cannot be considered final and unchanged.

Let us consider the identified and experimentally proven features of the social situation in the development of children of primary school age.

The first and most important moment is the beginning of schooling. The child undergoes a restructuring of all systems of relations with reality. If a preschooler had two spheres of social relations: "child - adult" and "child - children", now there have been changes in the system of relations "child - adult". It was divided into two parts: "child - parent" and "child - teacher".

The "child-teacher" system begins to determine the child's attitude to both parents and children. This was experimentally shown by B.G. Ananiev, L.I. Bozhovich, I.S. Slavina. These relationships become central for the child, because an evaluation system appears: good grades and good behavior, evaluation comes from the teacher. Relationships with peers and parents depend on what grades he will receive. Peers try to be friends with those who study well. If earlier parents asked: "How are you doing?" Now: "What grade did you get?". The child sees that bad grades upset parents, while good grades make them happy.

Relations "child - teacher" are transformed into relations "child - society". The demands of society are embodied in the teacher. "At school, the law is common to all," wrote G.-F. Hegel. A system of certain relations has been built in the school, and the teacher is its bearer.

D.B. Elkonin noted that children are very sensitive to how the teacher treats children. If the child notices that the teacher singles out someone, then respect for him is reduced. At first, children strictly follow the instructions of the teacher, but if he shows loyalty to the rule, then the rule begins to collapse from the inside.

With the beginning of schooling, the child's relationship with the people around him changes. Despite the fact that he continues to live in the same house, walk along the same streets, his life changes dramatically. The freedom of preschool childhood is replaced by relations of dependence and submission to certain rules. Parents begin to control him: they are interested in grades and express their opinion about them, check homework, make up the daily routine. The child begins to feel that the parents began to love him less, because now they are most interested in grades. This places a new responsibility on him: he has to control his situational impulses, to organize his life. As a result, the child begins to experience a feeling of loneliness and alienation from loved ones.

The new social situation tightens the child's living conditions and acts as a stressful one for him. Every child's emotional state changes, mental tension increases, which affects both physical health and behavior.

The nature of the child's adaptation to new conditions of life and the attitude of relatives towards him contribute to the development of a sense of personality. Thus, primary school age is characterized by the fact that the child has a new status: he is a student and a responsible person.

8.2. Educational activity. Other activities

Learning activity is the process of acquiring new knowledge, skills and abilities or changing old ones. The objects of science and culture are special objects with which one must learn to act.

Educational activity is not given to a person from birth, it must be formed. Therefore, the task of elementary school is to teach the child to learn.

In order for the educational activity to be successful, positive motivation is necessary, that is, the child himself really wants to learn. But the motive and the content of educational activity do not correspond to each other, and over time, the motive loses its strength. Therefore, one of the main tasks of the success of educational activities is the formation of cognitive motivation, which is closely related to the content and methods of learning.

The subject of changes in educational activity is the student himself. Educational activity is an activity that turns the child on himself, requires reflection, an assessment of "who I was" and "who I have become." Therefore, the process of self-change becomes a new subject for the student. The main thing in learning activity is that a person looks at himself and appreciates his own changes. Self-assessment is the subject of learning activity.

D.B. Elkonin presented the following structure of learning activities:

1) learning motivation - a system of motives that makes a child learn, gives meaning to educational activities;

2) a learning task, i.e., a system of tasks during which the child masters the most general methods of action;

3) learning actions - those actions with the help of which the learning task is assimilated, i.e. all those actions that the student performs in the lesson (specific for each subject and general);

4) control actions - those actions with the help of which the progress of mastering the learning task is controlled;

5) assessment action - those actions with the help of which the success of mastering the learning task is assessed.

Consider the form in which educational activities are carried out. At the initial stages, this is a joint activity of the teacher and the student. By analogy with the mastering of objective actions at an early age, it turns out that at first everything is in the "hands of the teacher" and he "acts with the hands of the student." Only at school age, activity is carried out with ideal objects (numbers, sounds), and the teacher's "hands" are his intellect. Educational activity can be compared with the subject, only in the educational activity the subject is theoretical and ideal, which leads to problems in joint activities during the educational process. But in the learning process, the child interacts not only with the teacher, but also with each other, which also affects the development of educational activities.

G.A. Zuckerman explored the role of cooperation with peers in the mental development of younger students. The material for the study was the experimental teaching of the Russian language to first-graders. The experimental and control classes were compared. In the experimental class, the teacher worked with a group of students working together, his main task was to organize business communication between students about the material being studied. In the control class, the teaching was traditional, in which the influence of the teacher was addressed separately to each student. At the end of the study, the results in the experimental class were better than in the control class. It follows that children learn the educational material better in joint work with their peers.

G.A. Zuckerman put forward the idea that peer collaboration is qualitatively different from adult collaboration. In the relationship of a child with an adult, the latter sets goals, controls and evaluates the actions of the child. It has been noticed that children can make mistakes in already formed actions and easily find them, but only with the help of adults. According to G.A. Zuckerman, this happens because the teacher transmits only the operational composition of the action, but remains the holder of its meanings and goals.

When working together with peers, equal communication enriches the child with the experience of control and evaluation actions and statements. Analyzing the interaction of children in the experimental class, G.A. Zuckerman identified two characteristics of learning activity.

1. Independence from an adult. The role of an adult is to organize the work and "start" it, and then the children work independently. They turn to the teacher very rarely, but interact with their peers. This ensures that the partner's position, his point of view is taken into account, promotes decentration, which leads to the development of reflection.

2. Focus not so much on the result, but on the way of one's own and the partner's actions. The work was structured in the form of a “pedagogical council situation”: the children played the role of teachers of different classes and discussed what rules should be given assignments to this or that class. During the discussion, a high motivational level of students was noted.

A developed form of learning activity is a form in which the subject sets himself the task of his own change. This is precisely the purpose of education - to change the student.

Educational activity is connected with other activities of younger students - play and labor. Let's consider what effect it has on gaming activity. At primary school age, the relevance of the game remains, but changes occur in the nature of play activity (Table 7). The importance of games with the achievement of a certain result (sports, intellectual games) is increasing. At this age, the game is hidden, i.e., there is a transition from games in terms of external actions to games in terms of imagination (dramatization game). In addition, the game begins to obey educational activities.

Nevertheless, for a younger student, the game is very important, because it allows you to make the meaning of things more obvious. With the help of the game, the child brings the meaning of these things closer to himself. At primary school age, the game continues to have, although auxiliary, but still essential. It allows the child to master the high social motives of behavior.

Table 7

Stages of play activity in primary school age

Educational activity is also associated with labor. In connection with the restructuring of the school, the question of the connection between educational activity and labor becomes especially important. The participation of children in labor activity has a significant impact on the process of learning. One of the main difficulties in mastering knowledge at school is isolation from life. The child acquires knowledge, knows the formulations and can illustrate them with an example, but this knowledge is not applied in practice. Therefore, when a child is faced with a life task, he is forced to resort to worldly ideas. This happens because the school does not organize activities aimed at applying the acquired knowledge in practice. Perhaps the introduction of pre-profile education at school will mitigate these problems a little.

But the task of the school is not only to give the child a certain amount of knowledge - you need to educate him in a moral sense. The school is faced with the task of forming the moral qualities of the child in the course of educational activities. It is not possible to fully ensure the solution of this problem, since there are no favorable conditions for this. And in labor, the social result of activity appears in a real, objective, material form; in labor activity, the need for joint efforts of the team in achieving a certain result is more tangible. That is why labor is of particular importance for the formation of the moral qualities of the individual.

8.3. Neoplasms of primary school age

The neoplasms of primary school age include memory, perception, will, and thinking.

Memory. At this age, great changes occur in the child’s cognitive sphere. Memory acquires a pronounced cognitive character. Mechanical memory develops well, while indirect and logical memory lags slightly behind in its development. This is due to the fact that these types of memory are not in demand in educational, work, and play activities and the child lacks mechanical memory. There is an intensive formation of memorization techniques: from the most primitive (repetition, careful long-term examination of the material) to grouping and understanding the connections of different parts of the material.

Perception. There is a transition from involuntary perception to targeted voluntary observation of an object or object. At the beginning of this period, perception is not yet differentiated, so the child sometimes confuses letters and numbers with similar spellings.

If at the initial stage of education, the child's analyzing perception prevails, then by the end of primary school age, a synthesizing perception develops. He can establish connections between the elements of the perceived. This is clearly seen in the following example. When children were asked to tell what was drawn in the picture, children from 2 to 5 years old listed the objects depicted in it, from 6 to 9 years old - described the picture, and a child over 9 years old gave his interpretation of what he saw.

Will. Educational activity contributes to the development of will, since learning always requires internal discipline. The child begins to develop the ability to self-organize, he masters planning techniques, self-control and self-esteem increase. The ability to focus on uninteresting things is formed.

Significant changes at this age occur in the area thinking. The cognitive activity of a child of primary school age is very high. This is expressed in the fact that he asks a lot of questions and is interested in everything: how deep is the ocean, how do animals breathe there, etc.

The child seeks knowledge. He learns to operate with them, imagine situations and, if necessary, tries to find a way out of a particular situation. The child can already imagine the situation and act in it in his imagination. Such thinking is called visual-figurative. This is the main type of thinking at this age. A child can also think logically, but since learning in the lower grades is successful only on the basis of the principle of visibility, this kind of thinking is still necessary.

At the beginning of primary school age, thinking is distinguished by egocentrism - a special mental position due to the lack of knowledge necessary to correctly identify certain problematic points.

The learning process in the lower grades is aimed at the active development of verbal and logical thinking. The first two years in the learning process are dominated by visual samples of educational material, but gradually their use is reduced. Thus, visual-figurative thinking is replaced by verbal-logical thinking.

Already at the end of primary school age (and later), individual differences between children appear: some are "theorists" or "thinkers" who easily solve problems verbally; others are "practitioners", they need reliance on visibility and practical actions; the "artists" have a well-developed figurative thinking. In many children, these types of thinking are developed in the same way.

At primary school age, theoretical thinking begins to develop, leading to the restructuring of all mental processes, and, as D.B. Elkonin: "Memory becomes thinking, and perception becomes thinking." An important condition for the development of theoretical thinking is the formation of scientific concepts and their application in practice. This can be illustrated by the following example. Children of preschool and school age were asked the question: "What is a fetus?" Preschoolers said that this is what they eat and what grows, and schoolchildren answered that the fruit is the part of the plant that contains the seed.

Theoretical thinking allows solving problems based on internal features, essential properties and relationships. The development of theoretical thinking depends on the type of education, that is, on how and what the child is taught.

V.V. Davydov in the book "Types of generalization in teaching" (M., 1972) gave a comparative description of empirical and theoretical thinking. He showed that the development of theoretical thinking requires a new logic of the content of educational processes, since theoretical generalization does not develop in the depths of the empirical (Table 8)

Table 8.

Comparative characteristics of empirical and theoretical thinking

If we use the structural units of theoretical generalization in the learning process, then theoretical thinking will actively develop and be fully formed by the end of primary school age.

In the process of schooling, the assimilation and generalization of knowledge and skills take place, intellectual operations are formed. Thus, at primary school age there is an active intellectual development.

By the end of primary school age, elements of labor, artistic, socially useful activities are formed and prerequisites are created for the development of a sense of adulthood.

8.4. Crisis of seven years

Personal development and the emergence of self-awareness in preschool age become the causes of the crisis of seven years. The main features of this crisis are:

1) loss of immediacy. At the moment the desire arises and the action is carried out, an experience arises, the meaning of which is what meaning this action will have for the child;

2) mannerisms. Secrets appear in the child, he begins to hide something from adults, build himself smart, strict, etc .;

3) a symptom of "bitter candy". When a child feels bad, he tries not to show it.

The appearance of these signs leads to difficulties in communicating with adults, the child closes, becomes uncontrollable.

At the heart of these problems are experiences, the emergence of the inner life of the child is associated with their appearance. The formation of an inner life, a life of experiences, is a very important moment, since now the orientation of behavior will be refracted through the child's personal experiences. The inner life is not directly superimposed on the outer, but influences it.

The crisis of seven years entails a transition to a new social situation that requires a new content of relationships. The child needs to enter into relationships with people who are new to him, obligatory, socially necessary and socially useful activities. The former social relations (kindergarten, etc.) have already exhausted themselves, so he tends to go to school as soon as possible and enter into new social relations. But, despite the desire to go to school, not all children are ready for learning. This was shown by observations of the first days of the child's stay within the walls of this institution.

D.B. Elkonin, who worked for several years at school, noticed that when first-graders were asked to draw four circles in the first lessons and color three of them yellow and one blue, they painted them in different colors and explained this by saying that it was so beautiful. This fact suggests that the rules have not yet become the rules of behavior for the child.

Another example: in the first lessons, first-graders are not given homework, but they ask: "What about the lessons?" This suggests that receiving homework puts them in a certain relationship with the outside world, and since children at this age seek adult relationships, this question arises.

During the break, first-graders try to approach the teacher, touch him or hug him. These are the remnants of former relationships, former forms of communication characteristic of preschool age.

The symptom of loss of spontaneity delimits preschool childhood and primary school age. According to L.S. Vygotsky, a new moment arises between the desire to do something and the activity itself: orientation in what the implementation of this or that activity will bring to the child. In other words, the child thinks about the meaning of the activity, about getting satisfaction or dissatisfaction from what place he will take in relations with adults, i.e., an emotional-semantic orientation of the basis of the act arises. D.B. Elkonin said that there and then, where and when an orientation toward the meaning of an act appears, there and then the child passes into a new age.

The course of the crisis will depend on when the child goes to school, how ready he is for learning. If the child comes to school late (7,3-8 years), then he will have to go through the following phases.

1. Subcritical phase. The game is no longer interested in the child as before, it fades into the background. He tries to make changes in the game, there is a desire for a productive, meaningful, adult-appreciated activity. The child begins to have a subjective desire to become an adult. critical phase. Since the child is subjectively and objectively ready to study at school, and the formal transition is late, he becomes dissatisfied with his position, he begins to experience emotional and personal discomfort, negative symptoms appear in his behavior, directed primarily at parents.

2. Postcritical phase. When a child comes to school, his emotional state stabilizes and inner comfort is restored.

Children who come to school early (6-6,3 years) have the following phases.

1. The child at this stage is more concerned not with learning, but with the game, while it remains his leading activity. Therefore, he can only have subjective prerequisites for teaching at school, while the objective ones have not yet been formed.

2. Since the child has not yet formed the prerequisites for the transition from play to learning activities, he continues to play both in the classroom and at home, which leads to problems in learning and behavior. The child experiences dissatisfaction with his social position, experiences emotional and personal discomfort. Negative symptoms that appear in behavior are directed against parents and teachers.

3. The child has to simultaneously, on equal terms, master the curriculum and the desired gaming activity. If he manages to do this, then emotional and personal comfort is restored and negative symptoms are smoothed out. Otherwise, the negative processes characteristic of the second phase will intensify.

Lagging behind in learning in children who come to school early can be observed not only in the first grade, but also in subsequent grades and lead to a general failure of the child at school.

8.5. Problems of transition from primary school age to adolescence

Any transition period brings forward specific problems that require special attention. This includes the transition of students from elementary school (9-11 years old) to the secondary level. The changed conditions of teaching place higher demands on intellectual and personal development.

However, this level of development of students is not the same. For some, it corresponds to the conditions for the success of their further education, for others it reaches a barely acceptable limit. Therefore, this transitional period may be accompanied by various kinds of difficulties.

So what happens to children, what characterizes the peculiarities of the mental and personal development of schoolchildren at the junction of these ages? Let's consider these features, using the data of domestic psychology, based on the works of L.I. Bozhovich, V.V. Davydova, T.V. Dragunova, I.V. Dubrovina, A.V. Zakharova, A.K. Markova, D.I. Feldstein, D.B. Elkonina and others.

1. Thinking becomes theoretical (thinking in concepts), which leads to a restructuring of all other mental processes. It is the restructuring of the entire cognitive sphere in connection with the development of theoretical thinking that constitutes the main content of mental development by the end of primary school age.

2. The development of theoretical thinking contributes to the emergence of reflection in students (introspection, reflection, self-observation). It is a neoplasm of a given age, changing the cognitive activity of students, the nature of their relationship to others and to themselves.

3 Neoplasms of this age are also arbitrariness and the ability to self-regulate. Arbitrariness is characterized by the fact that in children the development of arbitrary memory, attention, thinking is completed, the organization of activity becomes arbitrary. The ability for self-regulation lies in the psychological readiness of the child to master the skills of self-regulation and apply them in practice, stabilizing their emotional state.

Reflection, self-regulation, arbitrariness pass at this time only the initial stage of formation. In the future, they are fixed and become more complicated, extending not only to situations related to educational activities, but also to other areas of the child's life. However, the transition from self-regulation, voluntary behavior, which manifests itself mainly in educational activities, to situations where the solution of moral problems is required, to moral self-regulation of behavior by the child himself occurs precisely at this stage.

The attitude of schoolchildren to the learning process is changing. Despite the fact that study remains their main activity, it loses its leading role in the mental development of students. Educational activity continues to be socially evaluated, still affects the content and degree of development of the intellectual, motivational spheres of the personality of students, but its role and place in the overall development of children are changing significantly. This is characterized by a decrease in academic performance, a weakening of the motivation for learning, and the coming to the fore of communication with peers.

If primary school age is a period of initial acquaintance with educational activity and mastery of its structural components, then by the beginning of adolescence, students should master independent forms of work; this is the time of development of intellectual activity, cognitive activity, educational and cognitive motivation. Teaching can now be carried out independently, purposefully. But such a way of developing cognitive activity is possible only when interest in learning becomes a sense-forming motive (learning moves from the area of ​​"meanings" to the area of ​​"personal meanings"), in other words, it is important that the child was interested in the lessons and wanted to learn.

The turn of the 4th-5th grades, according to many teachers and psychologists, is characterized by a significant decrease in students' interest in learning, in the learning process itself. All this forms a negative attitude towards the school as a whole and to the obligation to attend it, unwillingness to do homework; conflicts with teachers begin, the rules of behavior at school are violated.

The reasons for the negative manifestations of children's dissatisfaction with learning, firstly, can be associated with the peculiarities of the work of teachers. Thus, teachers of third-graders often continue to teach their pupils, guided by the same principles as when working in grades 1-2, not contributing to the development of activity and initiative of schoolchildren, their creative understanding of the knowledge communicated, and the development of creativity. Secondly, these are the reasons caused by the peculiarities of the development of children at a given age.

As mentioned above, a neoplasm of this transitional age is reflection, which changes the view of children on the world around them, makes them develop their own views, their own opinions, ideas about the value and significance of teaching. Awareness of one's personal relationship to the world and other people is just beginning and therefore affects the sphere of activity more familiar to children - educational. A personal relationship to learning is formed. As a result, a "motivational vacuum" may arise, when the former ideas of many children are no longer satisfied, and the new ones are not yet realized, have not taken shape, have not arisen. Therefore, many fifth graders to the question: "Do you like to study?" answer: "I don't know."

During this transitional period, relationships with adults and with peers change. There are claims of children to a certain relationship in the system of business and personal relationships in the team, a fairly stable status of the student in this system is formed. The child seeks to find his place in the group, therefore, the emotional state of the child is influenced by how relations with comrades develop, and not only academic success and relationships with adults - teachers and parents.

The norms that regulate the relations of schoolchildren to each other are also changing: "spontaneous children's norms" associated with the qualities of "real camaraderie" come to the fore. There is an unspoken division: "a good student" and "a good friend." A good student may not always be a good comrade, and a good comrade may not always be a good student. And this is understandable, because the content of the norms, moral qualities that characterize a good student and a good friend cannot and should not completely coincide, since they reflect different spheres of schoolchildren's life.

The nature of schoolchildren's self-esteem is changing significantly. If earlier the student's attitude towards himself was formed by the teacher on the basis of the grades received, now it is not the educational characteristics that are taken into account, but the qualities manifested in communication. The number of negative self-assessments sharply increases. Dissatisfaction with oneself in children of this age extends not only to a relatively new sphere of their life activity - communication with peers, but also to the educational one. Therefore, children have a need for a general positive assessment of their personality by other people, primarily adults, as well as a need and need for a general positive assessment of themselves as a whole, regardless of specific results.

A person throughout his life needs unconditional acceptance and love, this is vital for everyone in order to become successful, confident, harmoniously developed, but this need is more developed in children. At primary school age, it becomes the basis for the favorable personal development of schoolchildren in the future.

A change in the social situation, development and change in the content of the student's internal position underlie the motivational crisis. This crisis is still poorly expressed in behavior, in external manifestations. The experiences of schoolchildren associated with such changes are by no means always realized by them, often they cannot even formulate their difficulties, problems, questions. As a result, psychological insecurity arises before a new stage of development.

Dissatisfaction with oneself, relationships with others, critical assessment of learning outcomes can lead to the development of a need for self-education, and can become an obstacle to the full formation of a personality. The path along which the formation of the student's personality will go depends largely on how successfully this stage of growing up will proceed.

Authors: Marina Khilko, Maria Tkacheva

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