B.B. Zhakhina doctor of pedagogy sciences, professor of Kokshetau State University named after Sh.Ualikhanov, Kokshetau, Kazakhstan, bzhaxina@mail.ru
DEVELOPMENTAL LEARNING AS A METHODOLOGICAL BASIS OF FORMING FUNCTIONAL LITERACY
The present article is devoted to the investigation of forming functional literacy of the Kazakh language in the context of updated education. The significance of the learning principles are identified in teaching to acquire the norms of the Kazakh language and use communicative skills as a form of functional literacy. Furthermore, above mentioned learning principles proved its effectiveness in formation of functional literate person who has general and specific competences necessary for communication and social interaction.
Key words: updated content of education, functional literacy, communicative activity,
functionally literate person
Changes in the social and political life of Kazakhstan also contribute to the education system. Researchers believe that learning process is not aimed at engaging a person in social creativity, reading activity, and forming self-study skills that eventually lead to functional illiteracy in all walks of life.
In this regard the President noted in his annual Address that education should not be limited to teaching, but rather to adapt to the process of social adaptation [1].
A national functional literacy plan was developed to demonstrate the way to solve this socially significant problem [2].
It aims at adapting students to specific activities through the development of specific literacy. This environment may be the basis for a radical change in the paradigm of secondary education. This means a transition from a traditional school model to a rational model, and then to a phenomenal model. The national plan also provides the way to build functional literacy.
According to the first condition of the National Plan, it was necessary to change the method of teaching. In this regard, updated content has been developed to enhance the functional literacy of people.
Functional literacy is an ability to apply gained knowledge through all taught subjects at school so that people can actively participate in social, cultural, political and economic activities that meet modern requirements. The main qualitative guidelines here are activity, creative thinking, the ability to make decisions, choose the right profession and lifelong learning skills.
Consequently, functional literacy can be gained through developmental learning.
The main factor in the development of students’ cognitive interest is the lack of knowledge and skills, as well as the inability to adjust the educational process, which allows them to develop mental functions of a student. Creativity develops only due to student’s thinking and practical implementation. The lessons designed to teach to think are called developing lessons.
During developmental learning it is essential to give students a chance to master their mental skills. A distinctive feature of developmental learning is special relationship between a teacher and a student. In such lessons a teacher is not just an instructor, observer or appraiser, but a facilitator of all cognitive acts in all teams in the classroom. Only such learning contributes to the creative development of human intelligence.
Through learning the system aims at fostering sense of freedom, developing personal skills, the ability to seek information independently, the ability to make decisions and life-learning skills. Then the main task of developmental learning is not to limit students’ resources by providing them with specific knowledge and set of skills gained at the process of learning school subjects. As practice has shown, the traditional system of education that is being practiced in the modern school, which educates people who stick to their dogmatic thinking, who unwilling to do more than to follow instructions and orders, cannot be a functionally competent person.
Developmental learning has brought many changes into traditional learning.
The concept of developmental learning was first introduced and suggested by academician L.V. Zankov. Although, initially this system was supported by educators, but later due to some reasons it didn’t get further development and enhancement, and in 1990s it was restarted again.
Research carried out on the issues of developmental learning has brought a lot of changes in traditional learning.
D.B. Elkonin and V.V. Davydov created the system of developmental learning where the aim achievement directly depends on students’ activity.
The theory of L.S. Vygotsky was forwarded by Dr. Elkonin and his creative team. In this research a child was considered as a self-modifying subject. The group of authors has also developed curricula, textbooks, and methodological manuals following their systems, so teachers started to put into practice the techniques of developmental learning [4,64-68].
In this regard, the methods of this system target to organize, support and maintain learning activity of students. Comparison of traditional education with this system is the basis for the following conclusion: the core of traditional methods of the lesson contains such indivisible terms as illustration of an example, interpretation, monitoring, and evaluation.
First a teacher explains in detail the content of the lesson, and then it is followed by exercises. Later to identify the level of knowledge acquired by students the teacher starts examining and evaluating. Certainly, the work can be done in different ways. The advantages of traditional learning should not be denied as well.
The main focus of developmental learning is maintaining self-directed study and research skills of a person. The content of updated education consists of the following parts:
1. Specific learning objectives
2. Cooperating in finding the ways and solutions
3. Confirmation of the validity of the decision.
D.B. Elkonin and V.V. Davydov defined these three components as the main components in the system of developmental learning. There are no ready-made samples when a student sets learning goals. Comprehending learning objectives is achieved by discussions and accumulation. The teacher’s role in developmental learning is to become an organizer and facilitator in the classroom.
In traditional learning the teacher fulfills a role of an instructor while introducing new material. This means that students become participants in the previously planned lesson activities. Traditionally, the roles of participants in the educational process are defined as «managers and performers.»
The main aim of their activity is to make students goal-oriented, and the performers are instructed to follow a teacher. Solving the problem in this way contradicts the goals of the education system.
The system of developmental learning designed by L.V. Zankov has differences in comparison to the traditional system of learning, and these differences are reflected in learning objectives, didactic principles, methods of teaching, organization of the teaching process, new teacher productivity indicators and teacher-student relationships.
L.V. Zankov aims to develop the overall development of the child. General development includes developing awareness, intelligence, will, emotions, thinking, and practical skills.
The great Kazakh writer Abai was the first to express such a viewpoint. In his seventeenth wise word he wrote that mind and consciousness are formed with labor. This fact proves that this issue was raised in our national psychology and philosophy in past centuries.
Moreover, the scientist L.V. Zankov apart from traditional learning points out the following didactic principles:
1. Principle of higher complexity-based learning.
This principle completely contradicts the principles in traditional pedagogy. Well-known principles in traditional learning such as incremental increase in difficulty and explaining from real to abstract things are considered to be outdated, so this principle claims that it is important to teach students first abstract and then simple notions.
L.V. Zankov emphasizes the fact that the content of traditional pedagogy lies in the fact that the content is easily accessible according to the age peculiarities of a child, and this proves that this definition is incorrect. When taking into account the child’s age peculiarities in the learning process, it is also necessary to bear in mind that while developmental learning students enhance their abilities that will lead to thinking from abstract to simple.
2. Principle of leading role of theoretical knowledge.
This principle aims to teach students to master skills of making conclusions through observations, research and using laws of life.
The pedagogical and psychological research, conducted since the early 1970s, proved that primary school students using empirical thinking can be shifted by theoretical thinking. It was found that student’s intellect is better developed through teaching not only the external properties of substances and phenomena, but also their internal relations and laws [5, 64-68].
In fact, there is no new method in the system of learning of L.V. Zankov. Formal methods are used to adapt to the new situation.
The questions in developmental learning system are designed to develop problem solving and reasoning. The student learns to respond to such questions reflecting his personal point of view. The usage of visual aids and other methods are complicated according to new goals. Developmental learning focuses on analyzing new teaching materials, as analyzing means collective search, and while searching for information the level of students’ intelligence is determined.
In this regard, in recent years much attention has been paid to the developmental learning. It begins with a comment by L.S. Vygotsky «Learning is accompanied by development.»
There are two systems associated with the developmental learning in the education system. They are the system of L. V. Zankov and the system of D. V. Elkonin and V. V. Davydov.
V.V. Davydov proposes to consider the principle of developmental learning as an integral system [6]. Its structure consists of learning activity, learning objectives, tasks and teaching methods. Learning activities refer to learning processes (concept comprehension), mastering learning skills, monitoring, the rate of material acquisition, and perceptive activities refer to skills and abilities.
The system of developmental learning designed by the scientist L.V. Zankov can be called a system of accelerated, dynamic, all-round development of personality [5].
Cognitive interest is the main focus of learning activities in the system of developmental learning designed by L.V. Zankov. The idea of consistency requires the coordination of methodological approaches.
I.S. Yakimanskaya welcomes the idea of involving the students in various activities in the developmental learning. She offers to use various didactic games and teaching methods designed for enhancing discussion skills and thinking, imagination, memory and speaking skills. [7,15].
According to the scientist, the lessons remains to be the key element in the process of education in developmental learning, but according to the system of
L. V. Zankov its function and form of organization changes significantly.
Its permanent qualities are as follows:
The purpose of the lesson is not only to acquire the new material, knowledge, skills, but also mastering other personal qualities. For example,
• classroom activities are based on student self-thinking
• teacher-student collaboration
• The teacher’s task is to create a problem situation; various forms and methods of organizing learning activities that reveal students’ personal qualities are used
• The lesson plan is developed and discussed with students
• creating special conditions and environment for increasing students’ interest in work
• Students are encouraged to learn to use different approaches to avoid mistakes in order to avoid misunderstandings
• didactic materials used at the lesson will be used to help the student to choose the most significant form of learning content
• the final result along with the students’ overall activity is evaluated
• To support students’ desire to find a unique way to complete assignments, to compare it with the methods of other students and to help to select the most effective way of learning.
The features of the lesson are as follows:
❖ pay attention to the specification of language tasks that make students think, reason, and plan
❖ to create condition for the creative thinking, problem solving independently while doing tasks at the lessons
❖ teacher prepare the tasks that require students’ self-thinking and analyzing skills that will enable them to do their home tasks without teacher’s aid
❖ To create pedagogical situations, increase students’ activity, foster independence and assist in discovering natural talents.
The general goal of the lesson of the Kazakh language and organizational resources of the learning system are defined by the topic, content and personal aim. By focusing on the students’ potential abilities, the teacher must be aware of the effective methods used in previous teaching, the psychological characteristics of the process, and be aware of how well the student understands his/her actions.
L.V. Zankov suggests the following indications for the overall development of a child:
✓ Observation is the basis for the development of many important mental functions ✓ mental abilities, to analyze, generalize, abstract, generalize ✓ practical activity, the ability to create material objects [5, 49-58] .
The scientist Lordkipanidze demonstrates the principles that are based on his own system, such as higher complexity-based learning, the leading role of theoretical knowledge, the rapid development of learning material, and conscious student learning in the learning process [8,22].
Researcher view reflects the idea that the teacher needs systematic, focused work for the overall development of the individual student and all students in the class, including lowperformance students.
The main purpose of this system is to educate the child developing his or her sense of freedom, decision-making and self-study skills. Taking into account the individuality of students a teacher must be able to vary approaches of work while fostering personal values. The most relevant and distinctive principle of developmental learning is the principle of higher complexity-based learning.
According to this principle when studying the unit “Lexicology” in the Kazakh language, the subject matter of the chapter and its difference from other linguistic chapters, the content of systematic linguistic topics, theory must be given to determine how students understand, analyze and synthesize materials. Traditional pedagogy has the principles such as learning from simple to complex and learning from real to abstract notions. The authors of a developmental learning on the contrary, support the idea of leading a person’s thinking from the simple to the abstract notions.
To achieve the goals of these principles, solving complex tasks in teaching the Kazakh language is also very effective.
According to this principle of a developmental learning, students should be able to apply their theoretical knowledge, separate words, phraseological units, proverbs in different topics, and other types of work. One of the basic principles of developing functional literacy in the Kazakh language is problem-based learning. Mikhmutov states “The organization of the educational process is based on a problem-based learning, and the solving learning problems systematically is a distinctive feature of this kind of learning” [9, 265].
Since the developmental learning is focused on the all-round development of the individual, enhancing the cognitive abilities and intellectual development of personality, and problem-based learning deals with solving these problems systematically, that proves that development learning and problem-based learning has common aims. Developmental learning contributes to the quality of education providing students with extensive information. For example, when studying the lexicology of the Kazakh language, it is crucial to enhance and develop intelligence of an individual by delivering and mastering theoretical knowledge with the deep content of the topic. Using different lexical topics in developmental learning students get the opportunity to uncover their intellectual abilities, to expand his world view, to use the most effective theoretical knowledge in practice.
At the lessons students’ logical thinking cannot be developed separately. All other components are involved, and all the procedure is focused on the aim of the lesson which makes systematic and meaningful lessons.
Moreover, functional literacy can be achieved through interactive methods.
Developmental learning include the following interactive methods:
1) Brainstorming aims at making students get acquainted with the basic idea of a particular subject on the basis of the heuristic method, and to express his opinion.
Students are required to be active participants, to make a brief summary using critical thinking;
2) Discussion aims at making research on a particular topic and holding discussion and finding a solution.
In order to participate in the discussions students are required to be able to collect materials, to give full answers to the questions and draw conclusions.
3) Group work aims at conducting a group research on a specific language topic and receive in-depth knowledge using cooperation technique with immense involvement in each student.
The students are required to be able to divide into teams voluntarily and take part in summarizing, analyzing and concluding the definitions and rules within certain time, where each student understands his aim and function.
4) Exercising method aims at forming and developing the student’s understanding and knowledge of a linguistic subject.
The students are required to be able to make presentations based on theoretical knowledge based on the results of a particular idea and a particular language topic within a certain period of time.
The importance of the forming functional literacy based at the lessons of lexicology in the Kazakh language within developmental learning is as follows: 1. Disclosure of the inner secrets of the language and the recognition that this is a “living” phenomenon that will enable student to study on their own.
2. Teaching language skills through developmental learning is not only focused on teaching to express ideas, but it also covers the issues of teaching how to use expressive means, how to interpret the author’s intension, to master the ability of using stylistic devices, improve the language culture and develop business prospects. It also deals with enriching students’ intellect by revealing the spiritual abilities of an individual, forming morality and a healthy lifestyle habits, and creating conditions for further development.
4. Development of aesthetic education and unlock creativity.
The aim of developmental learning is teaching the particular subject, language material, by delivering in-depth theoretical and practical knowledge, developing reading, speaking and writing skills and developing intelligence taking into account the development of students’ individual potential and using differentiated approach and individual work.
REFERENCES
1 President of the Republic of Kazakhstan — President of the Republic of Kazakhstan Address of the President of Kazakhstan to the people of Kazakhstan “Socio-economic modernization is the main vector of development of Kazakhstan” (January 27, 2012). — Astana, 2012.
2 The National Action Plan for the Development of Functional Literacy of Schoolchildren for 2012-2016 / Approved by Decree No. 832 of 06.06.
3 Elkonin D.B. Selected pedagogical works. — Moscow: Pedagogy, 1989. — 560 p.
4 Vygotsky L.S. Selected psychological studies. — M., 1956. — 264 h. 5. Zankov L. V.
Principles of an experimental didactic system. Selected pedagogical works. — Moscow, 1990.
5 Zankov L.V. Principles of an experimental didactic system. Selected pedagogical works. — Moscow, 1990.
6 Davydov V.V. The theory of developmental learning. — Moscow: Pedagogy, 1986. — 240 p.
7 Lordkipanidze D.O. Principles, organization and teaching methods. –Moscow: Uchpedgiz, 1957. — 169 p.
8 Makhmutov M.I. Problem-based learning. The main issues of the theory. –Moscow: Pedagogy, 1975. — 157 p.
Б.Б. Жахина
Дамыта оқыту – функционалдық сауаттылықты қалыптастырудың әдіснамалық
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Ш.Уәлиханов атындағы Көкшетау мемлекеттік университеті
Көкшетау қ., Қазақстан
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Б.Б.Жахина
Развивающее обучение – методологическая основа в формировании функциональной грамотности
Кокшетауский государственный университета им. Ш. Уалиханова
Кокшетау, Казахстан
В статье рассматривается проблема формирования функциональной граммотности по казахскому языку учащегося в рамках обновленного содержания образования. Определена значимость технологии развивающего обучения личности умению граммотного применения теории казахского языка в виде коммуникативных действий. Показана превалирующая роль теории в данной системе образования, эффективность применения данных принципов обучения при формировании социально адаптированной, функционально грамотной личности, владеющей общими и предметными компетенциям.