1. Requirements for children entering school and the problem of readiness for schooling. The transition to schooling radically changes the child's entire lifestyle. During this period, his life includes learning, mandatory, responsible activity that requires systematic, organized work; In addition, this activity confronts the child with the task of consistent, deliberate assimilation of knowledge, generalized and systematized in the fundamentals of science, which presupposes a completely different structure of his cognitive activity than in preschool childhood. Entering school also marks a new position of the child in society, in the state, which is expressed in a change in his specific relationships with the people around him. The main thing in this change is a completely new system of requirements placed on the child and associated with his new responsibilities, which are important not only for himself and his family, but also for society. They begin to view him as a person who has entered the first step of the ladder leading to civic maturity.

According to the changed situation of the child and the emergence of a new leading activity for him - learning - the entire daily course of his life is restructured: the carefree pastime of a preschooler is replaced by a life full of worries and responsibility - he must go to school, study those subjects that are determined by the school curriculum, do in the lesson what the teacher requires; he must strictly follow the school regime, obey the school rules of behavior, and achieve a good assimilation of the knowledge and skills required by the program.

The quality of a student’s academic work, as well as all of his behavior, is assessed by the school, and this assessment affects the attitude of those around him: teachers, parents, and friends. A child who is careless about his academic duties and does not want to learn is treated with condemnation by those around him - he is reproached, punished, which brings tension into his life, creates an atmosphere of trouble and causes him unpleasant and sometimes very difficult emotional experiences.

Thus, a child, having become a schoolchild, occupies a new place in society compared to a preschooler. He receives the responsibilities that society imposes on him and bears a serious responsibility to the school and parents for his educational activities.

Along with new responsibilities, the student also receives new rights. He can claim that adults will take his educational work seriously; he has the right to his workplace, for the time necessary for his studies, for silence; he has the right to rest and leisure. Having received a good grade for his work, he has the right to approval from others, he can demand from them respect for himself and his activities.

To summarize our brief description of the changes that occur in the life of a child entering school, we can say: the transition from preschool to school childhood is characterized by a decisive change in the child’s place in the system of social relations available to him and his entire way of life. It should be emphasized that the position of the schoolchild due to universal compulsory education and the fact that ideological meaning, which is attached to work in our society, including educational work, creates a special moral orientation of the child’s personality. For him, learning is not just an activity of acquiring knowledge and not only a way to prepare oneself for the future - it is recognized and experienced by the child as his own work duty, as his participation in everyday life. working life surrounding people.

All these conditions lead to the fact that the school becomes the center of children's lives, filled with their own interests, relationships and experiences. Moreover, this inner mental life of a child who has become a schoolchild receives a completely different content and a different character than in preschool age: it is, first of all, connected with his teaching and academic affairs. Therefore, how a little schoolchild will cope with his school responsibilities, the presence of success or failure in his educational affairs, has an acute affective connotation for him. The loss of the corresponding position at school or the inability to rise to its height causes him to experience the loss of the main core of his life, that social ground, standing on which he feels like a member of a single social whole. Consequently, issues of schooling are not only issues of education and intellectual development of the child, but also issues of the formation of his personality, issues of upbringing.

We have briefly described the changes that occur in a child’s life - in his position, activities, in his relationships with people around him - as a result of entering school. We also pointed out the changes that occur in connection with this in the child’s internal position. However, in order for a child to develop an internal position as a schoolchild, a certain degree of readiness is necessary with which he comes to school. Moreover, when speaking about readiness, we mean not only the appropriate level of development of his cognitive activity, but also the level of development of his motivational sphere and thereby his attitude to reality.

2. The child’s readiness for school education in the field of cognitive activity. Psychology long time saw the main criterion of a child’s readiness for school education only in his level mental development, more precisely, in the stock of knowledge and ideas with which the child comes to school. It was the breadth of the “circle of ideas”, the “volume of mental inventory” of the child that was considered a guarantee of the possibility of his learning at school and the key to his success in acquiring knowledge. This view gave rise to late XIX and the beginning of the 20th century, numerous studies aimed at studying the “range of ideas” of children entering school and establishing the requirements that should be presented to the child in this regard.

However, psychological and pedagogical research, as well as the practice of schooling, have shown that there is no direct correspondence between the stock of ideas and the general level of mental development of the child, which ensures his intellectual readiness for schooling.

L. S. Vygotsky was one of the first in the Soviet Union to clearly formulate the idea that readiness for schooling in terms of a child’s intellectual development lies not so much in the quantitative stock of ideas, but in the level of development of intellectual processes, i.e., in the qualitative features of children’s thinking. From this point of view, to be ready for school education means to achieve a certain level of development of thought processes: the child must be able to identify what is essential in the phenomena of the surrounding reality, be able to compare them, see similar and different; he must learn to reason, find the causes of phenomena, and draw conclusions. A child who is not able to follow the teacher’s reasoning and follow him to the simplest conclusions is not yet ready for school. According to L. S. Vygotsky, to be ready for school education means, first of all, to have the ability to generalize and differentiate objects and phenomena of the surrounding world in appropriate categories. After all, mastering any academic subject presupposes that the child has the ability to isolate and make the object of his consciousness those phenomena of reality, the knowledge of which he must acquire. And this necessarily requires a certain level of generalization.

Children of preschool age often do not yet have this level of thinking development. For example, they do not know how to distinguish physical nature from what is made by man, social from natural. As an illustration of this thought, L. S. Vygotsky cites a statement from a 6-year-old girl, which he considers a characteristic expression of a preschool way of thinking: “Now I finally figured out,” she said, “how the rivers originated. It turns out that people chose a place near the bridge, dug a hole and filled it with water.”

The idea that for successful learning a child must be able to identify the subject of his knowledge is especially convincing when mastering his native language. L. S. Vygotsky drew attention to the fact that language as a certain objective system of word-signs and rules for their use does not exist for the consciousness of a preschooler. When mastering language practically, children of early and preschool age focus their attention primarily on the content that they want to designate or express using words, but not on language, which is a means of expressing the desired content; They don’t even notice this remedy. L. S. Vygotsky said that for a small child a word is like a transparent glass, behind which the object denoted by the word directly and directly shines through. In our own research, we were able to establish that a huge difficulty in teaching grammar, syntax and spelling at school lies precisely in this lack of awareness of the subject being learned. For example, in our study of primary school students’ mastery of the rules for spelling unstressed root vowels, it was found that children of this age do not want to recognize words such as “watchman” and “storogka” as “related”, since the former denotes a person, and the second - a booth, or words such as “table”, “carpenter”, “dining room”, also denoting various specific objects, etc. In this study it turned out that the formation of a word as a linguistic category for the child’s consciousness in conditions when The teacher does not set himself the special task of leading this process; it happens only gradually, going through a long and complex path of development.

In our other study on the acquisition of parts of speech, we encountered a similar difficulty when children acquired verbal nouns (“walking,” “running,” “fighting,” etc.), as well as verbs in which children do not directly perceive actions. Children often classified verbal nouns as verbs, taking into account, first of all, the meaning of the word, and not its grammatical form; At the same time, they refused to recognize some “inactive” verbs (“sleep”, “stand”, “be silent”) as verbs (for example, one of the students, classifying words into categories of parts of speech, did not classify the word “to be lazy” as a verb, since “to be lazy,” he said, “means to do nothing”). Similar data indicating that language does not immediately act as a subject of analysis and assimilation for younger schoolchildren was obtained by L. S. Slavina when studying the process of mastering punctuation by primary school students. It turned out that the most typical punctuation error of children in grades II-III is skipping periods in the text and putting a period only at the end of the entire presentation. An analysis of this kind of errors showed that children of this age, when expressing their thoughts, do not have in mind the grammatical structure of the sentence, but the content of reality, which they express in speech. Therefore, they put a dot in those places where, as it seems to them, they have finished what they wanted to say about a given subject or situation (for example, a third-grade student puts four dots in his essay: the first after he has told everything about that , how the children went into the forest, the second - about how they were looking for a lost boy, the third - about how they were caught in a thunderstorm, and the fourth - about returning home).

Consequently, in order to successfully master grammatical knowledge at school, it is necessary, first of all, to highlight language for the child’s consciousness as a special form of reality that is subject to assimilation.

Currently, the question of highlighting for the child’s consciousness the subject of assimilation great attention are paid by D. B. Elkonin and V. V. Davydov, who study the process of formation educational activities V primary school schools. Based on experimental studies of initial learning to read, as well as the process of mastering elementary spelling rules and program knowledge of arithmetic, they came to the conclusion that there are two various types assimilation depending on whether the children were faced with a practical task (under the conditions of solving which knowledge was acquired) or an educational task. At the same time, by an educational task they understand a task in which the main goal of the student’s activity becomes the assimilation of the example given to him by the teacher of those actions or concepts that the teacher proposes.

Consequently, these studies also emphasize the importance of highlighting the educational task for the child’s consciousness, that is, the subject that is to be mastered.

Thus, starting with L. S. Vygotsky, the center of gravity in understanding the child’s intellectual readiness for schooling was transferred from the question of the stock of ideas to the child’s ways of thinking and to the level of awareness and generalization of his perception of reality.

However, research shows that the problem of isolating a learning task and turning it into an independent goal of a student’s activity requires from a child entering school not only a certain level of intellectual development, but also a certain level of development of his cognitive attitude to reality, i.e. a certain level of development of his cognitive interests.

We have already said that the need for external impressions, inherent in an infant, gradually develops with age under the influence of adults into a cognitive need specific to a person. We will not now dwell on all stages of the qualitative transformation of this need, which take place in early and preschool age. Let us only note that the desire for knowledge, for mastering skills and abilities in children of early and preschool age is almost inexhaustible. Children's “why” and “what is” have been the subject of repeated research, as a result of which it has always been necessary to state the enormous strength and intensity of the child’s cognitive activity. “If I,” writes Selly, “were asked to depict a child in his typical state of mind, I would probably draw the erect figure of a little boy, looking with wide eyes at some new miracle or listening to his mother tell him what something new about the world around us."

However, our observations show that the development of this cognitive need varies from child to child. For some it is expressed very clearly and has, so to speak, a “theoretical” direction. For others, it is more related to the child’s practical activity. Of course, this difference is primarily due to upbringing. There are children who early begin to navigate the practical life around them and easily learn everyday practical skills, but who have a weakly expressed “disinterested” interest in everything around them that characterizes “theoretic” children. These latter exhibit a vivid form of manifestation of the period of asking “why?” and “what is this?”, as well as periods of special interest in individual intellectual operations and “exercises” in them. Just as some children can open and close a door 100 or more times, practicing the corresponding movements, so these children “practice” either in acts of comparison, or in acts of generalization, or in acts of measurement, etc. “For some children,” writes Selly, “comparison through measurement even becomes a certain kind of passion; they like to measure the size of some objects by others, etc.”

A very interesting study by L. S. Slavina, which showed that in the first grade, among low-performing schoolchildren, a certain category of children can be distinguished, characterized by the absence of this kind of cognitive activity. She called children with this characteristic “intellectually passive.” “Intellectually passive” schoolchildren, according to her data, are distinguished by normal intellectual development, which is easily detected in play and practical activities. However, in learning they give the impression of being extremely incapable, even sometimes mentally retarded, since they cannot cope with the most basic educational tasks. For example, one of her subjects could not answer the question of how much it would be if one were added to one (he answered either “5”, then “3”, then “10”), until she translated this the problem on a purely practical level. She asked: “How much money will you have if dad gave you one ruble and mom gave you one ruble”; To this question the boy answered almost without hesitation: “Of course, two!”

Analyzing the features of the intellectual activity of the group of schoolchildren she identified, L. S. Slavina comes to the conclusion that an independent intellectual task not related to the game or practical situation, does not cause intellectual activity in these children. “...They are not used to and do not know how to think,” she says, “they are characterized by a negative attitude towards mental work and the desire to avoid active mental activity associated with this negative attitude. Therefore, in educational activities, if necessary, to solve intellectual problems, they have a desire to use various workarounds (memorization without understanding, guessing, the desire to act according to a model, using a hint, etc.).”

The correctness of this conclusion was then confirmed by L. S. Slavina by the fact that she found ways to instill in intellectually passive schoolchildren the cognitive activity necessary for successful learning at school. We will not dwell on this issue in more detail, since in this context we are only interested in the problem of readiness for schooling and, at the same time, that side of it that is associated with specific motivational aspects of children's thinking. It is quite obvious that, when considering a child’s readiness for schooling even only from the aspect of his intellectual sphere, we cannot limit ourselves to characterizing only the level of development of his intellectual operations. Research shows that a significant (and perhaps even leading) role here is played by the presence in children of a certain level of development of their cognitive needs.

However, the level of development of mental activity and cognitive interests also does not exhaust all the parameters of a child’s readiness for schooling. Now we will focus on one more parameter, namely the child’s readiness to voluntarily organize his cognitive activity.

Many psychologists have noted that the acquisition of knowledge about the surrounding reality in preschool childhood is characterized by its unintentionality. A preschool child learns mainly through play, through practical life activities, or through direct communication with adults. By playing, listening to fairy tales and stories, participating in other types of preschool activities (modelling, drawing, handicrafts, etc.), he gets acquainted with the world of objects and phenomena of reality around him, masters a variety of skills and abilities, comprehends the content and character of human beings accessible to his understanding. relationships. Thus, the knowledge that a child acquires during this period is, as it were, a “by-product” of various types of his play and practical activities, and the process of their acquisition is neither purposeful nor systematic - it occurs involuntarily only to the extent of the children’s direct abilities. cognitive interests.

In contrast, schooling is an independent activity, specially organized and aimed at its direct task - the systematic assimilation of a certain amount of knowledge and skills provided for by the school curriculum. This radically changes the structure of the process of acquiring knowledge, making it purposeful, deliberate, and voluntary. A. N. Leontyev, analyzing the commonality that unites the diverse demands of the school on the child’s psyche, comes to the conclusion that it consists mainly in the requirement that mental processes be arbitrary and controlled by the child’s consciousness. Under the leadership of A. N. Leontiev, a large number of studies were conducted that showed that, despite the involuntary acquisition of knowledge in preschool childhood, a certain degree of arbitrariness in the organization of mental processes already occurs in preschool children and is a necessary prerequisite for the child’s readiness for schooling.

3. The child’s readiness for the social position of a junior schoolchild. Now we must dwell on the last and, as it seems to us, no less significant issue of the child’s readiness for schooling, namely, the characteristics of his desire for a new social position of the schoolchild, which forms the basis and prerequisite for the formation of many of his psychological characteristics necessary for successful learning in school.

A child entering school must be prepared not only for the acquisition of knowledge, but also for that new way of life, for that new attitude towards people and towards his activities, which are associated with the transition to school age.

A study of first-graders found that among them there are children who, having a large stock of knowledge and skills and a relatively high level of development of mental operations, nevertheless study poorly. The analysis showed that where classes arouse direct interest in these children, they quickly grasp the educational material, solve educational problems with relative ease, and show great creative initiative. But if classes are deprived of this immediate interest for them and children must do academic work out of a sense of duty and responsibility, they begin to be distracted, do it more carelessly than other children, and are less eager to earn the teacher’s approval. This characterizes the child’s insufficient personal readiness for schooling, his inability to correctly relate to the responsibilities associated with the position of a schoolchild.

We will not analyze the reasons for this phenomenon now. It is only important for us to emphasize that intellectual and personal readiness do not always coincide. The child’s personal readiness for schooling (expressed in the child’s attitude to school and learning, to the teacher and to himself personally) presupposes a certain level of development of the social motives of the child’s behavior and activities and their specific structure, which determines the internal position of the student.

The study of the motives of students’ educational activities, which we carried out jointly with L. S. Slavina and N. G. Morozova, made it possible to reveal a certain consistency in the formation of the student’s position and thereby discover the essential features of this position.

Observations made in this study of children aged 5-7 years show that during this period of development, children (some a little earlier, others a little later) begin to dream about school and express a desire to learn.

Along with the emergence of a desire for school and learning, children’s behavior in kindergarten gradually changes, and by the end of this age they begin to be less attracted to preschool-type activities; They exhibit a clearly expressed desire to become more mature, to engage in “serious” work, and to carry out “responsible” assignments. Some children are beginning to break out of the kindergarten routine to which they so recently willingly obeyed. Even a strong attachment to their kindergarten does not keep children of older preschool age from wanting to go to school and study.

Where does this desire come from, how is it determined and what does it lead to?

We conducted experimental conversations with 21 preschoolers aged 6 to 7 years, in which, through direct and indirect questions, we tried to find out whether they had a corresponding aspiration and its psychological nature.

As a result of these conversations, it turned out that all the children, with the exception of one boy (6 years 11 months), expressed a very strong desire to “go to school as soon as possible and start learning.”

Initially, we assumed that the main motive for entering school for children of senior preschool age was the desire for a new environment, new experiences, new, more mature friends. This interpretation is also shared by other psychologists and educators, as it is supported by many observations and facts. Children 6-7 years old are clearly beginning to be burdened by the company of younger preschoolers; they look with respect and envy at the school supplies of their older brothers and sisters, dreaming of the time when they themselves will own the entire set of such accessories. It may even seem that for a preschooler the desire to become a schoolchild is connected with his desire to play at being a schoolchild and school. However, already in conversations with children, this idea was called into question. First of all, it was discovered that children, first of all, talk about their desire to learn, and entering school acts for them mainly as a condition for the realization of this desire. This is also confirmed by the fact that not all children’s desire to learn coincides with the desire to necessarily go to school. In the conversation, we tried to separate the two and often received answers that allowed us to think that it is the desire to learn, and not just the external attributes of school life, that is an important motive for entering school. Here is an example of one of these conversations with a girl (6 years 6 months):

Do you want to go to school? - I really want to. - Why? - They will teach letters there. - Why do you need to learn letters? - We need to study so that children understand everything. - Do you want to study at home? - They teach letters better at school. It's cramped to study at home, the teacher has nowhere to come. - What will you do at home when you come home from school? - After school I’ll read the primer. I will learn letters, and then draw and play, and then I will go for a walk. - What do you need to prepare for school? - We need to prepare an ABC book for school. I already have the primer.

Some children agree to study not even at school, but at home.

Do you want to go to school? - the experimenter asks the girl (6 years 7 months). I want it! Very much. - Do you only want to study at home? - It’s the same as at school or at home, just to study.

To confirm the data obtained through the conversation, we decided to conduct an experiment that would allow us to more clearly identify the nature and correlation of motives associated with children entering school and learning.

To do this, we conducted several experimental school games with preschoolers (a total of 26 children - boys and girls - aged from 4.5 to 7 years) participated. These games were held in different options: both with a composition of children mixed in terms of age, and with children of the same age, with each age separately. This made it possible to trace the dynamics of the formation of children’s attitudes towards school and highlight some important motives associated with this process.

When choosing this methodological approach, we proceeded from the following considerations.

As D. B. Elkonin’s research has shown, the central moment of play in preschool children always becomes what is most important for them, the most significant in the event being played out, that is, the content that meets the child’s current needs. Because of this, the same content in the game receives different meanings for children of different ages (see the study by D. B. Elkonin, as well as the study by L. S. Slavina). At the same time, the most semantically important moments are played out by children in the most detailed, realistic and emotional way. On the contrary, the content of the game, which appears as secondary for playing children, that is, not related to the satisfaction of dominant needs, is depicted sparingly, curtailed, and sometimes even takes on a purely conventional form.

Thus, we had the right to expect from the experimental game of school an answer to the question: what actually motivates children standing on the threshold of schooling to strive for school and learning? What real needs formed in them during preschool childhood and now encourage them to strive for a new social position as a schoolchild?

The results with playing school were quite clear.

First of all, it turned out that organizing a school game with children 4-5 years old is very difficult. They are not interested in this topic at all.

Let's, the experimenter suggests, play school.

“Come on,” the children answer, clearly out of politeness, while each continuing to do his own thing.

You will be students, okay?

I don't want to play at school, I want to go to kindergarten.

Who wants to play at school?

Silence.

And I will be a daughter.

Okay, you will go to school.

But I don’t want to go to school, but I’ll play with dolls.

And I will live in the house. And so on.

If in the end the experimenter manages to organize a game of school among the kids, then it proceeds as follows. The most important part of the game is coming and going to school. A “lesson” at school lasts only a few minutes, and the beginning and end of the lesson are always marked by bells. Sometimes the child who makes the calls does not make a gap at all between the first and second calls. It's clear that he just enjoys ringing the bell. But the main thing at school is change. During recess, children run around, play, and start new games that have nothing to do with playing school.

Coming “home” from “school,” one girl said with relief: “Well, now I’ll cook dinner,” and when it was time to go to school again, one of the participants in the game suddenly said: “It’s already Sunday. There is no need to study. We are going to walk. Oh, it’s snowing, I’ll go put on my hat,” etc. It’s quite obvious that children of this age have no desire to play school, and certainly no desire to study at school.

Playing school looks completely different for 6-7 year old children. They very willingly and quickly accept the theme of the game.

The experimenter asks: “Do you want to play school?”

The children answer unanimously: “We want!” - and immediately begin to set up the “classroom”. They set up tables and desks, demand paper and pencils (necessarily real ones), and improvise a board.

In games with children of this age, as a rule, all participants in the game want to be students, no one agrees to the role of a teacher, and usually this is the lot of the youngest or most unresponsive child.

The lesson takes center stage and is filled with typical educational content: they write sticks, letters, numbers. Children ignore the “bell”, and if it is given, many declare: “We don’t need a call yet, we haven’t learned yet.” During the break, children “prepare their homework” at home. Everything that does not relate to teaching is reduced to a minimum. Thus, one boy, portraying a “teacher” (Vasya, 6.5 years old), during a break in classes did not leave the table, spending the entire break in speech terms: “Now I’ve already left, now I’ve come, now I had lunch. Now let's study again."

It should be especially noted that as a result of children of senior preschool age playing at school, such products of their activity remain that clearly indicate the content that is most related to their needs. These are entire sheets of paper filled with letters, numbers, columns, and sometimes drawings. Interestingly, many of them have a “teacher” rating, expressed as “5”, “5+”, “4” (there are no bad grades!).

It is very interesting to watch the school game when children take part in it different ages. Then it is clearly revealed that for younger and older children the meaning of play lies in completely different moments: for kids - in all aspects of school life external to learning itself (getting ready for school, recess, coming home); for older people - precisely in learning, in classes, in solving problems and writing letters.

On this basis, even conflicts and quarrels arose in the game. So, for example, a younger child drags a chair to set up a “home”, another, older child takes away this chair to set up a “classroom”, some want to save recess, others want a lesson, etc.

These experiments finally convinced us that although children entering school are very attracted to the external attributes of school life and learning - backpacks, grades, bells, etc., this is not central to their desire for school. They are attracted precisely to learning as a serious, meaningful activity that leads to a certain result that is important both for the child himself and for the adults around him. Here, as if in a single knot, two basic needs of the child are tied, driving his mental development: the cognitive need, which receives its most complete satisfaction in learning, and the need for certain social relationships, expressed in the position of the student (this need, apparently, grows based on the child’s need for communication). The desire to go to school only for the sake of external attributes indicates the child’s unpreparedness for school.

4. The process of developing a child’s readiness for school. Let us now consider those processes of child development that create a child’s readiness for schooling by the end of preschool age. Let's start with the question of the formation of a cognitive need in him, leading to the emergence of a cognitive attitude towards the acquired knowledge.

We have already said that the inherent need for impressions in an infant gradually develops, along with the child’s development, into a need of a purely cognitive nature. At first, this need is expressed in the child’s desire to become familiar with the external properties of objects and to perceive them as fully as possible; then the child begins to trace connections and relationships between objects and phenomena of reality and, finally, moves on to cognitive interest in the proper sense of the word, that is, to the desire to know, understand and explain the world around him.

I. P. Pavlov considered the need for new impressions and its subsequent transformation as an unconditional orienting reflex (no less powerful than others unconditioned reflexes), which then turns into indicative research activities. He believed that in humans “this reflex goes extremely far, finally manifesting itself in the form of that curiosity that creates science, which gives and promises us the highest, limitless orientation in the world around us.”

We do not want to follow I.P. Pavlov in calling the child’s need for external impressions an orienting reflex, and the further cognitive need and cognitive activity of children as an orienting-exploratory one. We do not want to do this because it seems wrong to us to connect the so-called orienting activity, which already takes place in an infant, with the reflex of “natural biological caution,” that is, to consider it as a means of biological adaptation. We would like to emphasize the other side of this phenomenon, namely: that the child’s need for external impressions, while expressing the need of the developing brain, is nevertheless not directly related to the instinctively biological needs of adaptation. In a child, in any case, it has the character of a “disinterested” need, first for external impressions, and then for knowledge of reality and mastery of it.

In this context, we should recall the words of I.M. Sechenov, expressing his surprise at this need of the child: “The only thing that remains completely incomprehensible,” he writes, “is that feature of human organization, due to which the child already shows some kind of instinctive interest in fractional analysis objects that have no direct relation to its orientation in space and time. Higher animals, based on the structure of their sensory shells (at least the peripheral ends), should also be capable of very detailed analysis..., but for some reason they do not go either in it or in generalizing impressions beyond the needs for orientation. An animal remains the narrowest practical utilitarian all its life, but a person already in childhood begins to be a theoretician.”

So, when analyzing the child’s need for external impressions and its further development, we do not use Pavlov’s term “indicative reaction.” However, we would like to emphasize that both he and we are talking about the same phenomenon and that I. P. Pavlov’s provisions on the development of the “orienting reflex” and its transition to complex forms cognitive interest are for us another confirmation of the correctness of the assumption that in a child of senior preschool age the desire to learn is a stage in the development of his initial need for external impressions.

Although we do not have sufficient experimental material to understand the unique stages of development of cognitive needs in early and preschool age, there is still some data on the qualitative changes that take place towards the end of senior preschool age.

Studies of children's thinking, conducted by a group of psychologists under the leadership of A. N. Leontyev and A. V. Zaporozhets, led to the conclusion that in normally developing children of preschool age, cognitive activity begins to form as such, that is, activity directed and stimulated by cognitive activity. task. According to these studies, it is during preschool age that the formation of a cognitive task as a logical task occurs. However, this process has its stages. The preschooler's initially cognitive attitude to reality continues to be included in play and vital practical activities. For example, in a study by O. M. Kontseva, carried out under the guidance of A. V. Zaporozhets, it was shown that children even 6-7 years old, given the task of choosing the appropriate story for a fable, follow the line of similarity of the situations depicted in them, and not by the similarity of thoughts expressed in both works.

Further experiments showed that children can see not only the external similarity in the content of the fable and the story they have chosen, but also see those deeper connections and relationships that are contained in the allegorical meaning of the fable and which are revealed in another story given to the child for choice. However, children persistently follow the line of situational rapprochement between fable and story, since it is precisely these vitally practical connections and relationships that seem more significant to them. The same thing was found in another study, where children, under the guise of a “fourth wheel” game, were asked to throw out one picture out of four that seemed to them redundant and not suitable for the other three. For example, the child was given drawings of a cat, a bowl, a dog and a horse; or - a horse, a man, a lion and a cart, etc. As a rule, teenagers and especially adults discarded in this experiment a bowl, a cart, etc., i.e., pictures that were unnecessary from a logical point of view. As for preschool children, they often made decisions that were unexpected, from the point of view of adults: they rejected either a dog, or a horse, or a lion. Initially, it seemed that such decisions were the result of insufficient development of the generalizing activity of children's thinking. However, in fact, it was discovered that children are able to see the logical relationships presented in the selection of pictures, but that other, vitally practical connections and dependencies are essential for them.

So, for example, one of the subjects, a girl 5 years 7 months old, discarded the dog from the series: cat, dog, horse, bowl, explaining this by saying that “the dog will interfere with the cat eating from the bowl”; in another case, a boy from a series of pictures: horse, cart, man, lion - threw out the lion, arguing as follows: “Uncle will harness the horse to the cart and go, but why does he need a lion? The lion can eat both him and the horse, he needs to be sent to the zoo.”

“It should be said,” writes A.V. Zaporozhets about this, “that in in a certain sense This reasoning is logically flawless. What is peculiar is only the child’s attitude to the question, which leads him to substitution logical problem a mental solution to an everyday problem.”

This kind of approach to solving cognitive problems in the absence of appropriate education can linger for a long time in some preschoolers. Such preschoolers, when they become schoolchildren, exhibit the phenomenon of intellectual passivity, which we have already discussed in connection with the presentation of the question of the child’s readiness for schooling. However, with the normal development of cognitive activity in children, already in preschool age, the need begins to arise for solving special cognitive tasks, which, as such, stand out for their consciousness.

As we have already said, according to the data obtained in the research of A. V. Zaporozhets and his colleagues, initially such cognitive tasks are included in the play and practical activities of children and arise only occasionally, without changing the entire structure of children's thinking. However, gradually preschoolers begin to develop the new kind intellectual activity, which is characterized primarily by new cognitive motivation that can determine the nature of children’s reasoning and the system of intellectual operations used by the child. From this point of view, the study of A.V. Zaporozhets’ employee E.A. Kossakovskaya is interesting, showing how, in the process of solving puzzles by preschoolers of different ages, they gradually develop and develop the ability to pursue intellectual goals and how exactly the intellectual content of the task becomes for children the main content of their cognitive activity. The most important result of this study is the author’s conclusion that by the end of preschool age children, on the one hand, clearly lose interest in side aspects associated with solving puzzles (interest in the game in which the puzzle was given; in winnings resulting from successful decisions, etc.), on the other hand, they have as the leading motive of their activity the motive of learning to solve difficult problems.

Quite convincing data on the growth of interest in intellectual problems are also available in the PhD thesis of A. N. Golubeva. She studied what type of tasks—playful, labor-related, or intellectual—encouraged preschool children to persist more. It turned out that these were different tasks in different age groups. For children junior group tasks of game content had the greatest motivating force, for middle group- labor, and for older preschoolers (i.e., for children from 5.5 to 7 years old) - the actual intellectual task.

Summarizing the presented experimental data and considerations, we can say that the desire of children of senior preschool age for learning and school, revealed in our study, undoubtedly depends on the fact that during this period children have a new, qualitatively unique level of development of cognitive needs associated with the emergence of interest in cognitive tasks themselves.

Mussen, Conger and Kagan, based on an analysis of a number of American studies on this issue, also argue that the desire to solve intellectual problems, improve in this regard and the desire for intellectual achievements is a very persistent phenomenon that characterizes children 6-8 years of age.

So, by the end of preschool and the beginning of school age, children experience a qualitatively unique stage in the development of cognitive needs - the need to acquire new knowledge and skills, which is realized in our social conditions in learning as a socially significant activity that creates a new social position for the child.

Now let us trace the formation in a child of those psychological characteristics that ensure the emergence of arbitrariness in his behavior and activities. The task here is to understand how the child’s need and motives for such a structure arise in which he becomes able to subordinate his immediate impulsive desires to consciously set goals.

To do this, we will have to return again to the very roots of the development of the child’s needs and trace the process of their formation, but not from the side of their content, but from the side of structure.

Let us recall that, according to numerous psychological studies, young children depend mainly on the influence of an external “field”, which determines their behavior.

K. Levin and his colleagues were the first to experimentally demonstrate the “mechanism” of situational behavior typical for children of this age. This allowed us to build a hypothesis regarding the characteristics of the driving forces operating here and their further development. The hypothesis we put forward is largely consistent with the thoughts and data of K. Levin, although it does not completely coincide with them.

K. Levin's research has shown that objects in the surrounding world have the ability to induce a person to certain actions. Things and events in the surrounding world, says K. Levin, are by no means neutral for us, as acting beings: many of them present a more or less definite “will” towards us; they require a certain activity from us. Good weather, the beautiful landscape attracts us to a walk. The steps of the stairs encourage a 2 year old to go up and down; doors encourage opening and closing; small crumbs - to collect them, a dog - to caress them, a construction box encourages play; chocolate, a piece of cake - “they want to be eaten.” The strength of the demands with which things approach a child, according to Levin, can vary: from an irresistible attraction to a weak “asking for it.” Lewin distinguishes between the “positive” and “negative” “character of demands” (Aufforderungscharakter), i.e., the fact that some things encourage one to strive for them, while others repel them. But the most important thing for us lies in his assertion that the motivating power of things changes not only from the situation and from the individual experience of the child, but also from age stages its development.

K. Levin is inclined to connect the motivating power of things with the needs of the subject. However, he does not reveal the nature of this connection, and its further development is not traced. He only says that the change in the “nature of requirements” occurs in accordance with changes in the needs and interests of a person, that it stands in “close relation” to them.

Meanwhile, it seems to us that we can already speak more definitely about the connection between the child’s needs and the “demands” that things place on him.

It is known that the presence of a need in itself cannot motivate a child to action. In order for a need to become a motivator for a child’s activity, it must be reflected in his experience (i.e., become a need). The occurrence of an experience gives rise to a state of tension in the child and an affective desire to get rid of it and restore the disturbed balance.

However, the need, no matter how acute affective experiences it expresses, cannot determine the child’s purposeful action. It can only cause pointless, disorganized activity (we are not talking here, of course, about those instinctive biological needs, which are associated with the innate mechanism of their satisfaction). In order for a purposeful movement to occur, it is necessary to reflect in the child’s consciousness an object that can satisfy his need.

Returning from this point of view to the experiments of K. Lewin, we can assume that objects that constantly satisfy one or another need, as it were, fix (crystallize) this need in themselves, as a result of which they acquire the ability to stimulate the child’s behavior and activity even in those cases when the corresponding need has not been previously actualized: first, these objects only realize, and then cause the corresponding needs.

Thus, initially, when the child does not yet have developed speech and a developed system of ideas, he is entirely dependent on those external influences that come from his environment. The selectivity of the reaction to a particular object depends, firstly, on the presence of the child’s dominant needs at the moment (for example, a hungry child prefers food, a well-fed one prefers a toy), and secondly, the selectivity of the reaction depends on the connection that, in the process of personal the child's experience is established between his needs and the objects of their satisfaction. Finally, it also depends on the structure of the situation itself, that is, on the arrangement of various objects in it and the place that the child occupies among them1. The relationship between all these forces is contained in the concept of “psychic field”, to which, according to K. Lewin, the behavior of a small child is subject.

However, it is already very early, much earlier than K. Levin believed and than is still commonly thought, namely at the very beginning of the 2nd year of life, together with the appearance of the child’s first words, he begins to be emancipated to a certain extent from direct influences "fields". Often his behavior is no longer determined by the external objective situation immediately surrounding him, but also by those images, ideas and experiences that arose earlier in his experience and became fixed in the form of certain internal motivators of his behavior.

Let us give as an example one of our observations of a young child. Until one year old, managing this child’s behavior did not present any difficulties. To do this, it was only necessary to organize the system of external influences in a certain way. If, for example, he strove for some thing and if the need arose to distract him from this thing, then it was enough either to remove it from the field of perception, or to slip in another that could compete with the first in terms of novelty or colorfulness. But at approximately the age of one year, two to three months, the child’s behavior changed significantly. He began to persistently and actively pursue the subject that attracted his attention, and he was often unable to be distracted or switched to another subject by reorganizing external influences. If an item was removed, he would cry and look for it, and if his attention was diverted, after a while he would return to searching for the lost item. Thus, it became much more difficult to exclude him from the situation, since he seemed to carry within himself a cast of this situation and the corresponding ideas could not only determine his behavior, but even turned out to be winners in competition with the existing external situation.

This became especially clear in the next episode. M. (1 year 3 months), while playing in the garden, took possession of another child’s ball and did not want to part with it. Soon he had to go home for dinner. At some point, when the child's attention was diverted, the ball was removed and the child was taken into the house. During dinner, M. suddenly became very agitated, began to refuse food, be capricious, try to get out of the chair, tear off his napkin, etc. When they lowered him to the floor, he immediately calmed down and shouted “me... me “He went first to the garden, and then to the house of the child who owned the ball.

In connection with the emergence of this “inner plan,” the child’s entire behavior changed fundamentally: it acquired a much more spontaneous, active character, it became more independent and independent. Perhaps it is the emergence of this kind of internal stimulants of behavior, given in the form of affectively colored images and ideas, that determines a qualitatively new stage of child development in early childhood.

This assumption is confirmed by the data of T. E. Konnikova, according to which it is during the transition to the second year of life, in connection with the appearance of the first words, that children’s aspirations for an object become much more passionate and stable, and the dissatisfaction of these aspirations leads to the child’s first acute affective reactions.

The fact that a child at the beginning of the second year of life becomes different in his behavior is well known in the pedagogy of toddlers; It is not without reason that N.M. Shchelovanov, based on vast observational material, recommends transferring children to a new age group at 1 year 2-3 months. The expediency of this translation from a pedagogical point of view lies, as we think, in the fact that the emergence of an internal plan of motivation confronts educators with the task of a different approach to the child, a different way of managing his behavior. This new approach requires the teacher to be able to penetrate into the system of more stable and individual motivations hidden from external observation and take them into account in the educational process. In addition, educators are faced with the task of learning to organize not only the external environment, but also those internal impulses that arise in the child in connection with the images and ideas he has. If the pedagogical approach to children at this new, qualitatively unique stage of their development remains the same as before, then conflicts begin to arise between children and adults and children develop behavioral breakdowns, affective outbursts, and disobedience, i.e. children become “ difficult." Apparently, in these cases there will be a “crisis of one year”, a crisis of fundamentally the same order as other critical periods in the development of a child, already well known and described in the psychological literature (crisis of 3, 7 and 13 years). At the heart of critical periods, as can now be argued, lies a conflict that arises as a result of the collision of qualitatively new needs formed in the process of development with the unchanged way of life of the child and the attitude of adults towards him. The latter prevents the child from satisfying the needs that arise in him and causes the phenomenon of so-called frustration1.

However, we are not inclined to exaggerate the significance of the child’s first separation from the external situation. At the beginning of the second year of life, the child, although to a certain extent is emancipated from the direct influence of the environment, still remains a “slave” of a clearly given situation for a long time, since the images and ideas that motivate his behavior are of a specific situational nature.

This situational nature of a young child, his dependence on the “psychic field” was very well demonstrated in his experiments by K. Levin. He showed that the child, throughout his early years, continues to form a kind of dynamic part of the experimental situation; he acts in it according to the laws of the “field”, obeying the “demands” coming from the things around him. Separation from the situation occurs here only from time to time, without initially changing the entire style of child behavior.

The same situational connectedness of a young child, his inability to break away from a visually given situation and act on an internal, imaginary and imaginary plane, is also evidenced by various experiments conducted by L. S. Vygotsky and his colleagues. In particular, studies by L. S. Vygotsky showed that young children often refuse to repeat phrases that convey something that contradicts their immediate perception. (For example, in his experiments, a girl aged about 3 years old refused to repeat the words “Tanya is coming” while Tanya was sitting still in front of her eyes.) Thus, throughout early childhood, the child’s behavior is much more characterized by being bound by a situation than by freedom from her.

Nevertheless, one cannot underestimate the qualitative shift that has taken place here in the development of the child. The external environment, although in an almost unprocessed form, nevertheless turned out to be transferred to the internal plane, the plane of the child’s consciousness, and thereby gained the opportunity to determine his behavior differently, from the inside. This is undoubtedly a fact of fundamental importance, since it constitutes a turning point in the development of children's needs and in the nature of the child's relationship with the reality around him. The essence of the leap that took place here is that the child’s needs began to crystallize not only in real external objects that satisfy these needs, but also in images, ideas, and then (in the process of further development of thinking and speech) in the child’s concepts. Of course, in early age This process is carried out in a rudimentary form: only its genetic roots take place here. But it arose, and it is its implementation that leads to the main new formation with which the child enters the period of preschool childhood. This new formation is the emergence at a given stage of development of a connection between the child’s affect and intellect, or, in other words, the emergence in young children of images and ideas that have motivating power and come into play with motivational tendencies that control the child’s behavior.

The emerging new formation truly represents a qualitatively new stage in the formation of the child’s personality, since it provides him with the opportunity to act in isolation from the visually given “field” in a relatively free imaginary situation. This new formation will create the main prerequisite for the further development of the child’s motivational sphere and those forms of his behavior and activities that are associated with it. We mean, first of all, the possibility of the emergence in preschool age of the leading activity of this period - role-playing, creative play, in the process of which the formation of the personality of a preschool child is mainly carried out.

During preschool age, other qualitative changes occur in the development of motivation, which constitute a necessary prerequisite for the child’s transition to school education.

First of all, we should focus on the emergence by the end of preschool age of the ability to subordinate the motives of one’s behavior and activities.

We have already said that in early childhood, apparently, there is only competition between simultaneously active motivational tendencies, and the child carries out his behavior along the lines of the strongest, so to speak, winning the battle motives1.

Of course, it cannot be said that young children generally lack any relatively constant hierarchy of motives, any subordination of them. If this were so, then their behavior would be disorganized and chaotic. Meanwhile, it is known that children at this age can express certain preferences and act very directed and purposefully, and not only at the moment and in a given situation, but for quite a long time. This indicates that in the system of their motivation there are some dominant motives that can subjugate all other motives of the child. Consequently, even at an early age we are dealing with a certain hierarchical structure of the child’s motivational sphere, that is, with a certain, fairly stable affective orientation of his behavior. However, this entire hierarchical structure of motives and the associated purposefulness of activity are involuntary at this age. This structure arises, on the one hand, as a consequence of the presence at a given age of certain “need dominants” (i.e., specific dominant motives of behavior); secondly, it is associated with the child’s already quite rich individual experience, which also contributes to the emergence of dominant impulses. “In the transition period from early childhood to preschool,” D. B. Elkonin quite rightly writes, “personal desires also take the form of affect. It is not the child who owns his desires, but they who own him. He is in the power of his desires, just as he was previously in the power of an affectively attractive object.”

Only in preschool age, as research shows, does a subordination of motives begin to arise, based on a consciously accepted intention, that is, on the dominance of such motives that are capable of inducing the child’s activity contrary to his immediate desires.

The fact that the conscious subordination of motives actually develops only in preschool age and is the most important new formation of this particular age was shown by studies conducted under the leadership of A. N. Leontiev, in particular the study of K. M. Gurevich.

In this study, 3-4 year old children were asked to perform a system of actions that had no direct motivating force for them, in order to obtain a desired object or the opportunity to subsequently act in accordance with an immediate motivating force. For example, children were asked to put the balls of a boring mosaic into boxes in order to get a very attractive mechanical toy. In another case, the child was involved in a game that was extremely interesting for him, but required quite a long and painstaking preliminary preparation.

As a result of these and other similar experiments, A. N. Leontiev came to the conclusion that only in preschool age does the possibility of a child’s conscious and independent subordination of one action to another arise for the first time. This subordination, according to his thought, becomes possible because it is at this age that a hierarchy of motives first arises, based on the selection of more important motives and the subordination of less important ones to them.

We will not dwell here on some of the inaccuracies and ambiguities that, from our point of view, occur in A. N. Leontiev’s interpretation of the facts obtained by him and his collaborators. We, on the contrary, want to identify with him in his main statement, namely that in preschool childhood, apparently, there is a process of initial “actual, as he says, the formation of personality” and that the content of this process is the emergence of a new the relationship between motives and the child’s ability to consciously subordinate his actions to more important and distant goals, even if directly and unattractively.

However, we are interested not only in this fact itself, although it constitutes the main new development of preschool age, but in the “mechanism” of the occurrence of this phenomenon, in other words, its psychological nature.

It seems to us that to explain this it is necessary to put forward the hypothesis that in the preschool period of development not only a new correlation of motives appears, but that these motives themselves acquire a different, qualitatively unique character.

Until now, in psychology, needs and motives usually differed in their content and dynamic properties. However, all currently existing data suggest that, in addition to this, the needs of humans (namely humans, not animals) also differ from each other in their structure. Some of them are direct, immediate in nature, others are mediated by a consciously set goal or accepted intention. The structure of needs largely determines the way they motivate a person to action. In the first case, the impulse goes directly from the need to the action and is associated with an immediate desire to perform this action. For example, a person wants to breathe fresh air, and he opens the window; he wants to hear music, and he turns on the radio.

Most clearly, so to speak in its pure form, immediate needs are presented in organic needs, as well as in needs associated with the most firmly established habits of cleanliness, neatness, politeness, etc.

In the second case, that is, in the case of a mediated need, the impulse comes from a consciously set goal, an accepted intention, and may not only not coincide with the person’s immediate affective desire, but be in an antagonistic relationship to it. For example, a schoolchild sits down to prepare lessons that are boring for him only in order to be allowed to go for a walk or to the cinema. Here we have an example when a child’s immediate desire (to go for a walk), mediated by an accepted intention (for this we need to prepare homework), prompts him to take actions that are directly undesirable for him.

To make the discrepancy between the impulse coming from an immediate need and the impulse coming from an accepted intention more clear, we took a case with a conflicting relationship between both motivational tendencies (the desire to go for a walk or to the cinema and the reluctance to prepare homework). However, most often we have neither conflict nor coincidence here. Typically, the actions that a person carries out in accordance with the accepted intention, in themselves, before the adoption of the corresponding intention, were neutral for the subject. For example, a student decides to study foreign language, to which he has no immediate inclination, but which he needs for his chosen future profession. Or another example: a student may not directly feel the need to play sports, but he decided to achieve good physical development and therefore began to systematically play sports.

Undoubtedly, mediated needs (accepted intentions, set goals) are a product of ontogenetic development: they arise only at a certain stage, but, once formed, they also begin to perform an incentive function. At the same time, affective tendencies coming from a set goal or accepted intention have much the same character as affective tendencies generated by an immediate need.

K. Lewin's research, conducted under fairly strict experimental conditions, shows that in terms of the degree of tension and other dynamic properties, the motivating force coming from consciously accepted intentions (“quasi-needs”, in his terminology) is no less than the force of “real” ones. , “natural” needs. The experiments carefully carried out by him and his collaborators revealed common dynamic patterns between these and other affective tendencies - the desire to resume interrupted actions, saturation, replacement, etc.

So, from needs that directly and directly carry out their motivating function, it is necessary to distinguish mediated needs that motivate a person not directly, but through consciously set goals. These latter needs are specific only to humans.

Currently existing numerous studies of the characteristics of the motivational sphere of children and its development suggest that already in preschool childhood the child not only develops a new correlation of motives, but also the new type of motives described above, mediated needs, that can stimulate children’s activities in accordance with with accepted intention. Let us recall that in a study by K. M. Gurevich it was found that children aged 3-4 years are already capable of performing uninteresting and even very unattractive actions in order to achieve an attractive goal. This, of course, is a qualitatively new phenomenon in the development of the motivational sphere of a preschooler, since young children are not yet able to tear themselves away from what directly attracts them. But the subordination of motives observed in the experiments of K. M. Gurevich does not yet indicate that there was a conscious acceptance of the intention and the child’s action in accordance with this intention, that is, fully expressed mediated motivation. However, many observations and facts indicate that in preschool age, especially in middle and older years, children already develop the ability, if not independently, then after adults, to make decisions and act in accordance with them.

According to experiments conducted by members of our laboratory (L. S. Slavina, E. I. Savonko), it was found that in children from 3.5 to 5 years old it is possible to specifically form an intention that goes against the children’s immediate desire, and thus restrain their they are the manifestation of actions dictated by immediate impulse. For example, L. S. Slavina was able to create in children of this age the intention not to cry in those situations that usually cause them to cry.

Preliminary creation of the intention in children to behave in one way and not another is so effective that it can be used as a very effective educational tool. Thus, L. S. Slavina and E. I. Savonko specifically created the intention in children not to ask to buy toys in a store, not to demand a seat on a trolleybus, to share their toys with other children, etc. The coercive power of the intention adopted by the child was so It is great that sometimes children of primary preschool age, acting in accordance with the accepted intention, began to cry, regretting that they had accepted it; and in those cases when the children did not fulfill the accepted intention, they, as a rule, were so upset that the action on immediate impulse was devalued and did not cause joy.

Interesting data on this matter are available in the dissertation of N. M. Matyushina. In order to find out how much preschool children are able to restrain their immediate impulses, she asked preschoolers not to look at an object that was very attractive to them, and as “limiting motives” she took the following: direct prohibition from an adult, an incentive reward, punishment in the form of an exception the child from the game and, what interests us most in this context, the child’s own word. It turned out that already in children aged 3-5 years, “one’s own word” has no less restrictive meaning than an adult’s prohibition (although less than encouragement and punishment), and at 5-7 years, “one’s own word” has a stronger influence second only to an honorable mention award.

Thus, it can be considered established that in preschool age qualitatively new features of the child’s motivational sphere are formed, expressed, firstly, in the emergence of new mediated motives in their structure, and secondly, in the emergence in the child’s motivational sphere of a hierarchy of motives based on these mediated motives. This, undoubtedly, is the most important prerequisite for the child’s transition to school education, where the educational activity itself necessarily involves the performance of voluntary actions, that is, actions performed in accordance with the educational task accepted by the child, even in cases where these actions themselves are not directly attractive to a child.

5. The emergence of so-called “moral authorities” by the end of preschool age. In connection with this shift in the motivational sphere of a preschool child, another qualitatively new phenomenon arises, which also has great importance for the child to move to the next stage of development. It lies in the emergence in preschoolers of the ability not only to act on moral grounds, but even to refuse what directly attracts them. It is not for nothing that L. S. Vygotsky said that one of the most important new formations of preschool age is the emergence of “internal ethical authorities” in children during this period.

A very interesting hypothesis about the logic of the emergence of these instances is given by D. B. Elkonin. He connects their appearance with the formation of a new type of relationship that arises in preschool childhood between a child and an adult. These new relationships appear at the beginning of preschool age, and then develop throughout preschool childhood, leading by the end of this period to the kind of relationships that are typical for children of primary school age.

D. B. Elkonin believes that during preschool age, the close connection between a child and an adult, which characterized early childhood, significantly weakens and changes. The child increasingly separates his behavior from the behavior of adults and becomes able to act independently without constant help from others. However, he still has a need for joint activities with adults, which during this period acquires the character of a desire to directly participate in their lives and activities. But without being able to really take part in all sides adult life, the child begins to imitate adults, to reproduce their activities, actions, relationships in a play situation (apparently, this is precisely what explains the huge place that play occupies in the life of a preschool child).

Thus, according to the thoughts of D. B. Elkonin, at the turn of preschool childhood, an adult begins to act as a model to the child. This determines, from the point of view of D. B. Elkonin, the development of the entire moral-volitional sphere of a preschool child. “The subordination of motives,” he writes, “which A. N. Leontiev rightly pointed out, is only an expression of the clash between the child’s tendency to direct action and the direct or indirect demand of an adult to act according to a given model. What is called arbitrariness of behavior is essentially nothing more than the subordination of one’s actions to an orienting image as a model; The emergence of primary ethical ideas is a process of assimilation of patterns of behavior associated with their assessment by adults. In the course of the formation of voluntary actions and deeds in a preschool child, a new type of behavior arises, which can be called personal, i.e., one that is mediated by orienting images, the content of which are the social functions of adults, their relationships to objects and to each other.” .

It seems to us that the process of the child’s emergence of his internal ethical authorities is generally indicated by D. B. Elkonin correctly, although it requires a certain specification and addition. Indeed, an adult becomes a role model for a preschooler, and the demands that an adult makes on people and on the child himself, as well as the assessments that he gives, are gradually absorbed by the child and become his own.

Even for a preschool child, an adult continues to be the center of any situation. Positive relationships with him form the basis for the child’s experience of emotional well-being. Any violation of these relationships: disapproval of an adult, punishment, refusal of an adult to contact the child - is experienced extremely difficult by the latter. Therefore, the child constantly, consciously or unconsciously, strives to act in accordance with the requirements of his elders and gradually assimilates the norms, rules and assessments that come from them.

Play is very important for mastering ethical standards. In the game, preschoolers take on the roles of adults, act out the “adult content of life” and, thus, in an imaginary way, obeying the rules of the role, learn the typical forms of behavior of adults, their relationships, and the requirements that guide them. This is how children develop ideas about what is good and what is bad, what is good and what is evil, what can and cannot be done, how to behave with other people and how to relate to their own actions.

The presented idea about the mechanism of children’s assimilation of the first ethical standards of behavior and the first ethical assessments is confirmed by many psychological studies.

Works on this topic have shown that initially children’s moral ideas and assessments are merged with a direct emotional attitude towards people (or characters in literary works).

Summarizing the results of research on the formation of moral ideas and assessments in preschoolers, D. B. Elkonin writes: “The formation of ethical assessments, and therefore ideas, apparently follows the path of differentiation of a diffuse attitude, in which the immediate emotional state and moral grade". Only gradually does moral assessment separate from the child’s immediate emotional experiences and become more independent and generalized.

By the end of preschool age, as studies by V. A. Gorbacheva and some others show, the child, following the assessments of adults, begins to evaluate himself (his behavior, skills, actions) from the point of view of the rules and norms that he has learned. This also gradually becomes the most important motive for his behavior.

The assimilation of moral rules and norms of behavior during preschool age does not yet explain, however, how, according to what patterns, children develop the need to follow the learned norms and techniques. We believe that this need arises as follows.

Initially, compliance with the required norms of behavior is perceived by children as some kind of required condition to obtain approval from adults and, therefore, to maintain with them those relationships in which a preschool child experiences a huge immediate need.

Consequently, at this first stage of mastering moral norms of behavior, the motive that prompts the child to this behavior is the approval of adults. However, in the process of child development, fulfillment of behavioral norms, due to the constant connection of this fulfillment with positive emotional experiences, begins to be perceived by the child as something positive in itself. The desire to follow the demands of adults, as well as learned rules and norms, begins to appear for a preschool child in the form of some generalized category, which could be designated by the word “must”. This is the first moral motivational authority that the child begins to be guided by and which appears for him not only in the corresponding knowledge (one must act this way), but also in the direct experience of the need to act this way and not otherwise. In this experience, we think, the sense of duty is presented in its original, rudimentary form, which is the main moral motive that directly motivates the child’s behavior.

It is precisely this way of the emergence of a sense of duty as a motive for behavior that follows from the research data of R. N. Ibragimova (although she herself in some cases interprets them somewhat differently).

In this study, it was experimentally shown that a sense of duty does indeed arise in children at the border of early and preschool childhood, but that initially children act in accordance with moral requirements only in relation to those people and those children for whom they feel sympathy. This means that children's morality in its origins turns out to be directly related to the child's emotional attitude towards others. Only in older preschool age, according to R.N. Ibragimova, the moral behavior of children begins to spread to a wide range of people who do not have a direct connection with them. However, even at this age, older preschoolers, according to R.N. Ibragimova, when giving a toy that is attractive to them to children for whom they do not have feelings of sympathy, do not clearly experience expressed feeling satisfaction.

The emergence of a sense of duty makes significant changes in the structure of the child’s motivational sphere, in the system of his moral experiences. Now he cannot follow any immediate desire if it contradicts his moral feelings. Therefore, in older preschool age, children can observe complex conflict experiences that children have not yet experienced. A preschool child, without any influence from adults, may already experience shame and dissatisfaction with himself if he acted badly, and, on the contrary, pride and satisfaction if he acted in accordance with the requirements of his moral sense.

In this regard, in older preschool age, new features arise in the voluntary nature of children’s behavior and activities. If younger preschoolers (3-4 years old) were already able to perform uninteresting actions to achieve a goal that was very attractive to them (the experiments of K. M. Gurevich), then older preschoolers become able to completely abandon a tempting goal and engage in activities that are unattractive to them, guided only by moral motives. And they often do this with a feeling of joy and satisfaction.

Thus, moral motives are qualitatively new type motivation, which determines a qualitatively new type of behavior.

If we now turn to consider these motives themselves, it turns out that in their structure and mode of action they are heterogeneous. This is still little manifested in preschool childhood, but becomes obvious in the course of further moral formation of the individual. Moreover, the entire moral structure of his personality will depend on what kind of motivation is formed in the child.

We have already said that in the process of ontogenetic development, motives appear that are distinguished by a special mediated structure, capable of inducing the behavior and activity of the subject not directly, but through consciously accepted intentions or a consciously set goal. There is no doubt that moral motives should be classified precisely in this category.

However, experience shows that moral behavior is not always carried out at a conscious level. Often a person acts under the influence of an immediate moral impulse and even contrary to a consciously accepted intention. So, for example, there are people who act morally without thinking about moral norms or moral rules and without making any special decision for this. Such people, forced by circumstances to face the need to act immorally, and even having adopted the corresponding intention, sometimes cannot overcome the moral resistance that directly arises in them. “I know,” said one of the heroes V. Korolenko, “I should steal it, but I’ll tell you about myself personally, I couldn’t, my hand wouldn’t have raised.” This should also include the drama of Raskolnikov, who could not bear the crime he committed according to a consciously accepted intention, but which contradicted his immediate moral impulses.

An analysis of this kind of behavior suggests that it is prompted either by moral feelings, which, as indicated above, can be formed outside of the child’s consciousness, directly in the practice of his behavior and communication with people around him, or by motives that were previously mediated by consciousness, and then in in the course of further development and also on the basis of practice, behavior acquired a direct character. In other words, they have only phenotypic and functional similarities with direct motives, but in fact they are complex mediated motives in their origin and internal nature.

If this is so, then direct moral motivation represents the highest level in the moral development of the individual, and moral behavior carried out only according to a consciously accepted intention indicates that the moral development of the individual has been delayed or taken the wrong path.

Returning to the preschooler and summing up all that has been said, we can conclude that all the described new formations in the development of a child of this age - the emergence of indirect motivation, internal ethical authorities, the emergence of self-esteem - create the prerequisites for the transition to schooling and the new image associated with it life.

It is these new formations that indicate that a preschool child has crossed the border of his age and moved to the next stage of development.

The child's readiness to enter into new relationships with society at the end of preschool age is expressed in readiness for schooling. The child's transition from preschool to school image life is a very large complex problem that has been widely studied in Russian psychology. This problem has become especially widespread in our country in connection with the transition to schooling from the age of six. Many studies and monographs are devoted to it (V.S. Mukhina, E.E. Kravtsova, N.I. Gutkina, A.L. Wenger, K.N. Polivanova, etc.).

As constituent components psychological readiness Personal (or motivational), intellectual and volitional readiness is usually considered for school.

Personal, or motivational, readiness for school includes the child’s desire for a new social position as a student. This position is expressed in the child’s attitude to school, to educational activities, to teachers and to himself as a student. In the well-known work of L. I. Bozhovich, N. G. Morozova and L. S. Slavina (1951) it was shown that by the end of preschool childhood, the child’s desire to go to school is stimulated by broad social motives and is specified in his relation to the new social, “official” adult - to the teacher.

The figure of a teacher is extremely important for a 6-7 year old child. This is the first adult with whom the child enters into social relationships that are not reducible to direct personal connections, but are mediated by role positions (teacher - student). Observations and research (in particular by K.N. Polivanova) show that six-year-olds fulfill any teacher’s requirement with readiness and eagerness. The symptoms of learning difficulties described above arise only in a familiar environment, in the child’s relationships with close adults. Parents are not carriers of a new way of life and a new social role for the child. Only at school, only following the teacher, is the child ready to do everything that is required, without any objections or discussions.

In a study by T. A. Nezhnova (1988), the formation of a schoolchild’s internal position was studied. This position, according to L. I. Bozhovich, is the main new formation of the crisis period and represents a system of needs associated with a new socially significant activity - teaching. This activity represents a new, more adult way of life for the child. At the same time, the child’s desire to take a new social position as a schoolchild is not always connected with his desire and ability to learn.

The work of T. A. Nezhnova showed that the school attracts many children primarily with its formal accessories. Such children are focused primarily on the external attributes of school life - a briefcase, notebooks, grades, and some rules of behavior at school that they know. The desire to study at school for many six-year-olds is not associated with a desire to change their preschool lifestyle. On the contrary, school for them is a kind of game of becoming an adult. Such a student primarily emphasizes the social, rather than the actual educational aspects of school reality.

An interesting approach to understanding readiness for school was carried out in the work of A. L. Wenger and K. N. Polivanova (1989). In this work, the child’s ability to identify educational content for himself and separate it from the figure of an adult is considered as the main condition for school readiness. The authors show that at 6-7 years old, only the external, formal side of school life is revealed to the child. Therefore, he carefully tries to behave “like a schoolboy,” that is, sit up straight, raise his hand, stand up while answering, etc. But what the teacher says and what he needs to answer is not so important. For a child of the seventh year of life, any task is woven into the situation of communication with the teacher. The child sees him as the main character, often without noticing the educational subject itself. The main link - the content of training - falls out. The teacher’s task in this situation is to introduce the child to a school subject, introduce him to new content, open it (and not cover it with his figure). The child should see in the teacher not just a respected “official” adult, but a bearer of socially developed norms and methods of action. The educational content and its carrier - the teacher - must be separated in the child’s mind. Otherwise, even minimal progress in the educational material becomes impossible. The main thing for such a child remains the relationship with the teacher; his goal is not to solve the problem, but to guess what the teacher wants and please him. But a child’s behavior at school should be determined not by his attitude towards the teacher, but by the logic of the subject and the rules of school life. Isolating the subject of learning and separating it from the adult is the central point of the ability to learn. Without this ability, children will not be able to become students in the true sense of the word.

Thus, personal readiness for school should include not only broad social motives - “to be a schoolchild”, “to take one’s place in society”, but also cognitive interests in the content that the teacher offers. But these interests themselves in 6-7 year olds develop only in the joint educational (and not communicative) activity of the child with an adult, and the figure of the teacher in the formation of educational motivation remains key.

An absolutely necessary condition for school readiness is the development of voluntary behavior, which is usually considered as volitional readiness for school. School life requires the child to strictly follow certain rules of behavior and independently organize his activities. The ability to obey the rules and requirements of an adult is the central element of readiness for schooling.

D. B. Elkonin gives such an interesting experiment. The adult asked the child to sort out the pile of matches, carefully moving them one by one to another place, and then left the room. It was assumed that if a child has developed psychological readiness for schooling, then he will be able to cope with this task, despite his immediate desire to stop it is not too exciting activity. Children 6-7 years old, who were ready for schooling, scrupulously performed this difficult work and could sit at this activity for an hour. Children who were not ready for school completed this meaningless task for some time, and then abandoned it or began to build something of their own. For such children, a doll was introduced into the same experimental situation, which had to be present and observe how the child performed the task. At the same time, the children’s behavior changed: they looked at the doll and diligently completed the task given by the adults. The introduction of a doll replaced the presence of a controlling adult for children and made this situation educational. new meaning. Thus, behind the implementation of the rule, Elkonin believed, lies a system of relations between a child and an adult. At first, the rules are followed only in the presence and under the direct control of an adult, then with the support of an object that replaces the adult, and, finally, the rule set by the adult teacher becomes an internal regulator of the child’s actions. A child’s readiness for schooling presupposes the “incorporation” of the rules and the ability to be guided by them independently.

To identify this ability, there are many interesting techniques that are used to diagnose a child’s readiness for school.

For example, L.A. Wenger developed a diagnostically very valuable technique in which children must draw a pattern under dictation. To correctly complete this task, the child must both learn a number of rules that were previously explained to him and subordinate his actions to the words of the adult and these rules. In another method, children are asked to color the Christmas tree with a green pencil so as to leave room for Christmas tree decorations that other children will draw and color. Here the child needs to adhere to the given rule and not break it when performing an activity that is familiar and exciting to him - do not draw Christmas decorations yourself, not to paint the entire tree green, etc., which is quite difficult for a six-year-old.

In these and other situations, the child needs to stop the immediate, automatic action and mediate it with an accepted rule.

Studying at school places serious demands on the child’s cognitive sphere. He must overcome his preschool egocentrism and learn to distinguish between different aspects of reality. Therefore, to determine school readiness, Piaget's quantity conservation tasks are usually used, which clearly and unambiguously reveal the presence or absence of cognitive egocentrism: pouring liquid from a wide vessel into a narrow one, comparing two rows of buttons with different intervals, comparing the length of two pencils located on at different levels, etc. (see Chapter 2).

The child must see in a subject its individual aspects and parameters - only under this condition can one move on to subject-based learning. And this, in turn, presupposes mastery of the means of cognitive activity: sensory standards in the sphere of perception, measures and visual models, and some intellectual operations in the sphere of thinking. This makes it possible for indirect, quantitative comparison and knowledge of individual aspects of reality. By mastering the means of identifying individual parameters and properties of things and his own mental activity, the child masters socially developed ways of understanding reality, which is the essence of learning at school.

An important aspect of mental readiness for school is also the mental activity and cognitive interests of the child: his desire to learn something new, understand the essence of observed phenomena, and solve a mental problem. The intellectual passivity of children, their reluctance to think and solve problems that are not directly related to a gaming or everyday situation, can become a significant obstacle to their educational activities.
The educational content and educational task must not only be highlighted and understood by the child, but become the motive for his own educational activities. Only in this case can we talk about their assimilation and appropriation (and not about simply completing the teacher’s tasks). But here we return to the question of motivational readiness for school.

Thus, different aspects of school readiness turn out to be interconnected, and the connecting link is the mediation of various aspects of the child’s mental life. Relationships with adults are mediated by educational content, behavior is mediated by rules given by adults, and mental activity is mediated by socially developed ways of understanding reality. The universal carrier of all these means and their “transmitter” at the beginning of school life is the teacher, who at this stage becomes an intermediary between the child and the wider world of science, art and society as a whole.

“Loss of spontaneity,” which is the result of preschool childhood, becomes a prerequisite for entering a new stage of child development - school age.

A child’s readiness for school can be divided into psychophysiological, intellectual and personal.

Under psychophysiological readiness a certain level of physical maturation of the child is understood, as well as the level of maturity of brain structures, the state of the main functional systems of the body and the state of the child’s health, ensuring the functioning of mental processes that corresponds to age standards (Fig. 10.5). Readiness for school implies a certain level of physical development and physical health of the child, since they have a significant impact on educational activities. Children who are often ill and physically weak may experience learning problems even if they have a high level of cognitive development.

Data on the somatic health of children as a component of psychophysiological readiness for school are given in the medical record in sufficient detail (weight, height, body proportions, their correlation with age standards). At the same time, there is often no information about the state of the nervous system, while in many preschool children, upon additional examination, various types of minimal brain dysfunction (MCD) are discovered. A large number of children of senior preschool and primary school age have neuroses.

Rice. 10.5.

From the point of view of mental development, such preschoolers correspond to the norm and can be educated in a regular school. Minimal organic disorders of the nervous system can be compensated under favorable conditions of upbringing, training and timely psychocorrectional work. Children with MMD and neuroses are distinguished by a number of characteristics of behavior and activity that should be taken into account during the educational process: a decrease in the level of development of mnemonic processes and properties of attention, reduced performance, increased exhaustion, irritability, problems in the process of communication with peers, hyperactivity or inhibition, Difficulties in accepting a learning task and exercising self-control. As a result of a psychodiagnostic examination, such preschoolers may show a normal level of readiness for school, but in the process of learning according to the programs higher level difficulties, with intense intellectual load they may experience certain difficulties in educational activities; the success of developing knowledge, skills and abilities is reduced compared to other children who do not have deviations in the functioning of the nervous system.

There are various factors that cause the occurrence of functional and organic disorders in the development of the nervous system of children: pathology of pregnancy and childbirth, some somatic and infectious diseases in infancy and early age, head injuries and bruises, severe stress (death loved one, flood, fire, parental divorce), unfavorable family parenting styles.

With the start of schooling, the level of stress on the child’s body and psyche increases significantly. Systematic completion of educational tasks, a large amount of new information to be assimilated, the need to maintain a certain posture for a long time, changes in the usual daily routine, and being in a large student group cause great mental and physical stress for the child.

By the end of preschool age, the restructuring of the child’s physiological systems has not yet been completed, and intensive physiological development continues. Psychophysiologists note that, in general, in terms of its functional characteristics, the body of an older preschooler is ready for systematic learning at school, but there is an increased sensitivity to negative environmental factors, in particular to great mental and physical stress. Children more younger age The more difficult it is to cope with school loads, the higher the likelihood of problems occurring in his health. It should be borne in mind that the child’s actual age does not always correspond to the biological age: one older preschooler may be ready for school education in terms of his physical development, while for another child, even at seven years old, everyday educational tasks will cause significant difficulties.

The conclusion about the physiological readiness of older preschool children for school education is formulated taking into account the data of a medical examination. A child is considered ready for systematic schooling if the level of his physical and biological development corresponds to or exceeds his passport age and there are no medical contraindications.

To examine the physical development of a child, three main indicators are most often assessed: height (standing and sitting), body weight and circumference chest. Researchers note that in terms of physical development indicators, modern six- to seven-year-old children are significantly different from their peers in the 1960-1970s, significantly ahead of them in height and general development.

In older preschool age, children grow very quickly, which is due to neuroendocrine changes in the children's body (height increases by 7-10 cm per year, weight by 2.2-2.5 kg, chest circumference by 2.0-2.5 cm ), therefore this age period is called the period of “lengthening”. Girls tend to be more intense physical development compared to boys. Senior preschool age can be considered critical due to the fact that it is characterized by a decrease in physical and mental endurance and an increased risk of diseases. Criteria for biological age can be the number of erupted permanent teeth (Table 10.5), the formation of certain proportional relationships between the sizes of head circumference and height (Table 10.6).

Table 10.5

Number of permanent teeth in preschool children

Table 10.6

Body proportions of a child in preschool age

In accordance with the comprehensive health assessment scheme, children can be divided into five groups:

• children who have no functional abnormalities, a high level of physical development, and who rarely get sick (on average, this is 20-25% of the total number of future first-graders);
• children with some functional impairments, with a borderline state between health and a disease that has not yet become chronic. Under unfavorable factors, they may develop more or less pronounced health problems (on average, this is 30-35% of the total number of future first-graders);
• children with various chronic diseases who have pronounced somatic disorders, as well as children with a low level of physical development, for whom schooling from the age of six is ​​contraindicated due to increased intellectual stress (on average, 30-35% of the total number of future first-graders);
• children with chronic diseases who require long-term treatment, medical examination and constant monitoring by a doctor of the appropriate specialty and who are recommended to study at home, in educational institutions sanatorium type, specialized schools;
• children with significant health problems that exclude the possibility of studying in a comprehensive school.

In addition to diagnosing indicators of a child’s physical development (height, weight, chest circumference), when determining physiological readiness for school learning, the state of the main physiological systems of the body is revealed. During the medical examination, heart rate, blood pressure, lung capacity, arm muscle strength, etc. are determined.

In older preschoolers, the reserve capabilities of the cardiovascular system increase, the circulatory system improves, the respiratory system and metabolism are rebuilt and intensively developed. Senior preschool age is characterized by intensive development of the musculoskeletal system: skeleton, muscles, joint-ligamentous apparatus, changes in skeletal bones in shape, size and structure, continuation of the ossification process (especially the bones of the wrist and phalanges of the fingers, which should be taken into account when conducting classes with children ). In older preschool age, the large muscles of the trunk and limbs are quite well developed, which allow them to perform various complex movements (running, jumping, swimming). However fine motor skills The hands of many children are not sufficiently developed, which causes difficulties in writing and rapid fatigue when performing graphic tasks. Incorrect posture, sitting at a desk for a long time, or performing graphic tasks for a long time can cause poor posture, curvature of the spine, and deformation of the dominant hand.

An important component of a child’s psychophysiological readiness is the normal functioning of the nervous system. Violations nervous activity can lead to rapid fatigue in children, exhaustion, instability of attention, low memory productivity and, in general, have a negative impact on educational activities. Identifying the parameters of psychophysiological readiness for learning makes it possible to take into account the individual characteristics of children in the learning process and thus prevent many psychological and pedagogical problems.

Under intellectual readiness for a child to learn, a certain level of development of cognitive processes is understood - mental operations of generalization, comparison, classification, identification of essential features, the ability to make inferences; a certain stock of ideas, including figurative and moral ones; level of development of speech and cognitive activity.

The intellectual component of readiness also presupposes that the child has an outlook, a stock of specific knowledge, including:

• formed elementary concepts such as: species of plants and animals, weather phenomena, units of time, quantity;
• a number of ideas of a general nature: about the types of work of adults, about their native country, about holidays;
• concept of space (distance, direction of movement, size and shape of objects, their location);
• ideas about time, its units of measurement (hour, minute, week, month, year).

The correspondence of this awareness of children with the requirements of the school is achieved by the program according to which the kindergarten teacher works.

However, in domestic psychology, when studying the intellectual component of a child’s psychological readiness for school, the emphasis is not on the amount of acquired knowledge, although this is also an important factor, but on the level of development of intellectual processes. The child must be able to identify the essential in the phenomena of the surrounding reality, be able to compare them, see similar and different; he must learn to reason, find the causes of phenomena, and draw conclusions.

Intellectual readiness for school education implies the formation in children of elementary skills in the field of educational activities, namely the ability to identify and accept an educational task as an independent goal of activity, an understanding of the content of learning, educational actions and operations.

Children’s intellectual readiness for learning is judged by the following criteria:

• differentiation, selectivity and integrity of perception;
• concentration and stability of attention;
• developed analytical thinking, providing the ability to establish basic connections between objects and phenomena;
• logical memory;
• ability to reproduce a sample;
• sensorimotor coordination.

A child’s intellectual readiness for schooling is directly related to the development of thought processes. Developed visual-figurative thinking and a sufficient level of development of generalizations (prerequisites for verbal-logical thinking) are required. An older preschooler has to solve increasingly complex and varied problems that involve identifying and using various connections and relationships between objects and phenomena. Curiosity and cognitive activity stimulate children's use of thinking processes to understand the surrounding reality, which goes beyond the boundaries of their immediate practical activity. It is important that children have the opportunity to foresee the results of their mental actions in advance and plan them.

An important component of a child’s intellectual readiness for school is speech development. Speech development is closely related to intelligence and is an indicator of both the general mental development of a preschooler and the level of his logical thinking, while the ability to find individual sounds in words is important, i.e. developed phonemic awareness. Sufficient lexicon, correct sound pronunciation, ability to construct a phrase, sound analysis skills of a word, knowledge of letters, ability to read.

Attention must be of a voluntary nature. Children need to be able to voluntarily control their attention, directing and holding it on the necessary objects. To this end, older preschoolers use certain methods that they adopt from adults. Memory should also include elements of arbitrariness, the ability to formulate and accept a mnemonic task. To implement them, it is necessary to use techniques that help increase memorization productivity: repetition, drawing up a plan, establishing semantic and associative connections in the memorized material, etc.

Thus, the intellectual readiness of children for school education consists of ideas about the content of educational activity and methods of its implementation, basic knowledge and skills, a certain level of development of cognitive processes that ensure the perception, processing and preservation of various information in the learning process (Table 10.7). Therefore, preparing preschool children for learning should be aimed at mastering the means of cognitive activity, developing the cognitive sphere, cognitive decentration and intellectual activity of the child.

Table 10.7

Characteristics of children's intellectual readiness for schooling

Under the child’s personal readiness for school it is understood that there is developed educational motivation, communication skills and joint activities, emotional and volitional stability, which ensures the success of educational activities (Fig. 10.6).

Rice. 10.6.

L. I. Bozhovich identifies several aspects of a child’s mental development that have the most significant impact on the success of educational activities. These include a certain level of development of the child’s motivational-need sphere, which presupposes developed cognitive and social learning motives, developed voluntary regulation of behavior. L. I. Bozhovich considers educational motives, which she divided into two groups, to be the most significant component in a child’s psychological readiness for schooling:

• broad social motives for learning, or motives associated with the child’s needs for communication with other people, for their evaluation and approval, with the student’s desires to occupy a certain place in the system of social relations available to him;
• motives related directly to educational activities, or the cognitive interests of children, the need for intellectual activity and the acquisition of new skills, abilities and knowledge.

N.V. Nizhegorodtseva and V.D. Shadrikov identify six groups of motives in the structure of the motivational sphere of future first-graders:

• social motives based on an understanding of the social significance and necessity of learning and the desire for the social role of the student (“I want to go to school, because all children should study, this is necessary and important”);
• educational and cognitive motives, interest in new knowledge, desire to learn something new;
• evaluative motives, the desire to receive a high assessment from an adult, his approval and disposition (“I want to go to school, because there I will only get A’s);
• positional motives associated with interest in the external attributes of school life and the student’s position (“I want to go to school, because there are big ones, and small ones in kindergarten, they will buy me notebooks, a pencil case and a briefcase”);
• motives external to school and learning (“I’ll go to school because my mother said so);
• a play motive that is inadequately transferred to educational activities (“I want to go to school because there I can play with friends”).

A child who is ready for schooling wants to study because he strives to take a certain position in society, which gives him the opportunity to be included in the world of adults, and also because he has developed a cognitive need that cannot be satisfied at home. The synthesis of these two needs leads to the formation of a new attitude of the child to the surrounding reality, which L. I. Bozhovich called “the internal position of the schoolchild,” i.e. a system of needs and aspirations of the child associated with school, such an attitude towards school when involvement in it is experienced by the child as his own need. L. I. Bozhovich considered this new formation to be a purely historical phenomenon and very significant, regarding it as a central personal positioning that characterizes the child’s personality structure, determines his behavior and activities, and also determines the characteristics of his relationship to the surrounding reality, to other people and to to myself. With the schoolchild’s internal position formed, the child recognizes the school lifestyle as the life of a person who is engaged in educational, socially useful activities that are evaluated by other people. The internal position of the schoolchild is characterized by the fact that the child rejects preschool playful, individually direct methods of action and develops a positive attitude towards learning activities in general, especially towards its aspects directly related to learning. The child considers educational activity to be an adequate path to adulthood for him, since it makes it possible to move to a new age level in the eyes of the younger ones and find himself in an equal position with the elders, and corresponds to his motives and needs to be like an adult and perform his functions. The formation of a student’s internal position directly depends on the attitude of close adults and other children to learning. The formation of a student’s internal position is one of the most important prerequisites for the successful inclusion of a child in school life.

Case Study

An experimental study by M. S. Grineva revealed that older preschoolers undergo a structural restructuring of personal readiness for school. At five years old, the internal position of a schoolchild is associated only with the child’s ability to accept and maintain a role in the process of solving a social problem; the components of self-awareness, motives for learning and emotional attitude towards school are not associated with the idea of ​​oneself as a schoolchild. In six- and seven-year-old children, a relationship appears between the student’s internal position and the sphere of self-awareness, which is mediated by the motivational aspects of the attitude towards school.

The structure of a child’s personal readiness for school includes characteristics of the volitional sphere. The arbitrariness of a child’s behavior manifests itself when fulfilling the requirements and specific rules of an adult. Already in preschool age, a child needs to overcome emerging difficulties and subordinate his actions to the goal. Many skills as prerequisites for the successful mastery of educational activities by a primary school student arise precisely on the basis of voluntary regulation of activity, namely:

• conscious subordination of one’s actions to a certain rule, which generally determines the method of action;
• performing activities based on orientation to a given system of requirements;
• attentive perception of the speaker’s speech and accurate completion of tasks in accordance with oral instructions;
• independent performance of necessary actions based on a visually perceived model.

In essence, these skills are indicators of the level of actual development of voluntariness, on which the educational activity of a primary school student is based. But this level of voluntary regulation of activity can only manifest itself if play or learning motivation is formed.

The new formation “internal position of the schoolchild,” which arises at the turn of preschool and primary school age and represents a fusion of two needs – cognitive and the need to communicate with adults at a new level – allows the child to be involved in the educational process as a subject of activity, which is expressed in social formation and fulfillment of intentions and goals, or, in other words, voluntary behavior of the student. There is no point in talking about voluntariness as an independent component of readiness for school, since voluntariness is inextricably linked with motivation. The emergence of a certain volitional orientation, the highlighting of a group of educational motives that become the most important for the child, leads to the fact that, guided in his behavior by these motives, he consciously achieves his goal, without succumbing to any distracting influence. The child needs to be able to subordinate his actions to motives that are significantly removed from the goal of the action. The development of volition towards purposeful activity and work according to a model largely determines school readiness child.

An important component of a child’s personal readiness for school is also the development of communication skills, the ability to interact in a group, performing joint educational activities. Features of relationships with adults, peers and attitude towards oneself also determine the level of a child’s psychological readiness for school, since it correlates with the main structural components of educational activity. Communication in a lesson situation is characterized by the exclusion of direct emotional contacts and the absence of conversations on extraneous topics. Therefore, preschoolers should develop a certain attitude towards the teacher as an indisputable authority and role model, and non-situational forms of communication should be formed. Personal readiness for school also implies a certain attitude of the child towards himself, a certain level of development of self-awareness.

The effectiveness of educational activities largely depends on the child’s adequate attitude towards his abilities and results. educational activities, behavior. Personal readiness also presupposes the formation of mechanisms of emotional anticipation and emotional self-regulation of behavior.

Thus, personal readiness for schooling presupposes a combination of certain characteristics of the volitional, motivational, emotional spheres and sphere of self-awareness of the child, necessary for the successful start of educational activities.

Svetlana Knyazeva
The problem of psychological readiness for school

« The problem of psychological readiness for school»

teacher-speech pathologist: Knyazeva S. I.

The problem of studying a child’s psychological readiness for school Many researchers have been engaged in both foreign and domestic psychology(L. I. Bozhovich, L. A. Wenger, M. I. Lisina, N. I. Gutkina, E. O. Smirnova, E. E. Kravtsova, D. B. Elkonin, St. Hall, J. Iirasek , F. Kern).

Psychological readiness for learning at school is considered at

current stage of development psychology as a complex characteristic of a child, revealing levels of development psychological qualities , which are the most important prerequisites for normal inclusion in a new social environment and for the formation of educational activities.

IN psychological dictionary concept« school readiness» is considered as a set of morpho-physiological characteristics of an older child preschool age, ensuring a successful transition to a systematic, organized schooling.

V. S. Mukhina claims that readiness for schooling is

the desire and awareness of the need to learn, arising as a result of the child’s social maturation, the emergence of internal contradictions that set motivation for learning activities.

L. A. Wenger considering the concept « readiness for school» , by which he understood a certain set of knowledge and skills, in which all other elements must be present, although the level of their development may be different. The components of this set are primarily motivation, personal readiness, which includes "internal position schoolboy» , strong-willed and intellectual readiness.

Towards mental maturity (intellectual) the authors attribute the child’s ability to differentiated perception, voluntary attention, analytical thinking, and so on.

By emotional maturity they understand the child’s emotional stability and almost complete absence of impulsive reactions.

They associate social maturity with the child’s need to communicate with children, with the ability to obey the interests and accepted conventions of children’s groups, as well as with the ability to take on a social role schoolboy in a social situation schooling.

Concept psychological readiness for school

Traditionally, there are three aspects school maturity: intellectual, emotional and social. Intellectual maturity is understood as differentiated perception (perceptual maturity, including isolating a figure from the background; concentration; analytical thinking, expressed in the ability to comprehend the basic connections between phenomena; the ability to remember logically; the ability to reproduce a pattern, as well as the development of fine hand movements and sensorimotor coordination. You can to say that intellectual maturity understood in this way largely reflects the functional maturation of brain structures.

Emotional maturity is generally understood as a reduction in impulsive reactions and the ability to perform a not very attractive task for a long time.

Social maturity includes the child’s need to communicate with peers and the ability to subordinate his behavior to the laws of children’s groups, as well as the ability to play the role of a student in a situation schooling.

Components psychological readiness for schooling

Psychological readiness for learning at school reflects the general level of development of the child, is a complex structural-systemic formation, the structure psychological readiness for schooling corresponds to psychological structure of educational activities, and its content (educational-important qualities - UVK) determined by the abilities of educational activities and the specifics of educational material at the initial stage training.

Components psychological readiness of the child to study at school include the following Components:

1. Intelligent readiness;

2. Personal readiness;

3. Psychophysiological readiness.

1. Intelligent readiness. Intelligent readiness shows the child’s development of basic mental processes: perception, memory, thinking, imagination, symbolic function of consciousness.

Intelligent child's readiness for school lies in a certain outlook, a stock of specific knowledge, and an understanding of basic laws. There must be developed curiosity, a desire to learn new things, a fairly high level of sensory development, as well as developed imaginative ideas, memory, speech, thinking, imagination, i.e. everything mental processes.

By the age of six, a child should know his address, the name of the city where he lives; know the names and patronymics of your relatives and friends, who and where they work; be well versed in the seasons, their sequence and main features; know the months, days of the week; distinguish the main types of trees, flowers, animals. He must navigate time, space and the immediate social environment.

By observing nature and the events of the surrounding life, children learn to find spatiotemporal and cause-and-effect relationships, generalize, and draw conclusions.

The child must:

1. Know about your family and everyday life.

2. Have a supply of information about the world around you and be able to use it.

3. Be able to express your own judgments and draw conclusions.

2. Personal readiness. At the age of 6-7, the foundations of the future are laid personalities: a stable structure of motives is formed; new social needs emerge (the need for respect and recognition from adults, the desire to fulfill what is important to others, "adults" affairs, being an adult, need for recognition peers: among the elders preschoolers interest in collective forms of activity is actively shown and at the same time - the desire to be the first, the best in games or other activities; there is a need to act in accordance with established rules and ethical standards, etc.); a new one arises (indirect) the type of motivation is the basis of voluntary behavior, the child learns a certain system of social values, moral standards and rules of behavior in society, in some situations he can already restrain his immediate desires and act not as he wants at the moment, but as "necessary" .

In the seventh year of life, the child begins to realize his place among other people, he develops an internal social position and a desire for a new social role that meets his needs. The child begins to realize and generalize his experiences, a stable self-esteem is formed and a corresponding attitude towards failures in activities is formed (some people tend to strive for success through high achievement, while for others the most important thing is to avoid failures and unpleasant experiences).

Child, ready for school, wants to study both because he wants to take a certain position in human society, namely a position that opens access to the world of adulthood, and because he has a cognitive need that he cannot satisfy at home. The fusion of these needs contributes to the emergence of a new attitude of the child to the environment, called by L. I. Bozhovich "internal position schoolboy» . He characterizes the internal position as a central personal positioning that characterizes the child’s personality as a whole. It is this that determines the child’s behavior and activity and the entire system of his relationships to reality, to himself and the people around him. Lifestyle schoolboy as a person, engaged in a socially significant and socially valued activity in a public place, is recognized by the child as an adequate path to adulthood for him - it corresponds to the motive formed in the game “become an adult and actually carry out his functions” .

3. Psychophysiological readiness for learning at school

By the age of seven, the structure and functions of the brain are sufficiently formed, close in a number of indicators to the brain of an adult. Thus, the weight of the brain of children during this period is 90 percent of the weight of the adult brain. This maturation of the brain provides the opportunity to assimilate complex relationships in the world around us and contributes to solving more difficult intellectual problems.

Back to top schooling The cerebral hemispheres and especially the frontal lobes, associated with the activity of the second signaling system, responsible for the development of speech, develop sufficiently. This process is reflected in the speech of children. The number of generalizing words in it sharply increases. If you ask four- to five-year-old children how to name pear, plum, apple and apricot in one word, you can observe that some children generally find it difficult to find such a word or it takes them a lot of time to search. A seven-year-old child easily finds the right word ( "fruits").

By the age of seven, the asymmetry of the left and right hemispheres is quite pronounced. Child's brain "moves to the left", which is reflected in cognitive activities: It becomes consistent, meaningful and purposeful. More complex structures appear in children's speech, it becomes more logical and less emotional.

Back to top schooling The child has sufficiently developed inhibitory reactions that help him control his behavior. The adult's word and his own efforts can ensure the desired behavior. Nervous processes become more balanced and mobile.

The musculoskeletal system is flexible; the bones contain a lot of cartilage tissue. The small muscles of the hand develop, albeit slowly, which ensure the formation of writing skills. The process of ossification of the wrists is completed only by the age of twelve. Hand motor skills in six-year-old children are less developed than in seven-year-olds, so seven-year-old children are more receptive to writing than six-year-olds.

At this age, children grasp the rhythm and tempo of movements well. However, the child’s movements are not dexterous, accurate and coordinated enough.

All of the listed changes in the physiological processes of the nervous system allow the child to participate in schooling.

Further psychophysiological the development of a child is associated with the improvement of the anatomical and physiological apparatus, the development of physical characteristics (weight, height, etc., improvement of the motor sphere, development conditioned reflexes, the relationship between the processes of excitation and inhibition.

Thus, to the components school readiness include intellectual readiness(formation of such mental processes such as perception, memory, thinking, imagination, personal readiness(formation of a stable structure of motives, the emergence of new social needs, new types of motivation, the assimilation of moral values ​​and social norms, psychophysiological readiness(formation of brain structures and functions).

Psychological readiness for school- this is a necessary and sufficient level mental child development for mastering school programs in conditions training in a peer group.

Thus, the concept psychological readiness for schooling includes:

Intellectual readiness(the child has an outlook, a stock of specific knowledge);

Personal readiness(readiness to the adoption of a new social position - position schoolboy having a range of rights and responsibilities).

-psychophysiological readiness(general health).

The problem of children's readiness to study at school is relevant due to the fact that the success of subsequent schooling depends on its solution. Knowledge of the characteristics of the mental development and psychological readiness for school of six- and seven-year-old children will make it possible to specify the tasks of educational work with children of this age and to provide a solid basis for further successful learning at school.

A child's readiness for school presupposes that he comprehensive development. Readiness indicators are a set of properties and characteristics that describe the most significant achievements in a child’s development. These main components of readiness for school are: motivational, mental, personal, volitional, and physical readiness.

Personal readiness for school covers three main areas of a child’s life relationships: relationships with adults, relationships with peers and attitude towards oneself.

Speaking about the need to develop arbitrariness in children’s communication with adults, it is worth paying attention to the fact that children who are not psychologically prepared for school very often do not contain the context of the learning situation. In all questions, statements and addresses to them by teachers, they perceive only the direct, immediate situational meaning, while educational situations are always conditional, have a different, deeper plan associated with educational problem and educational tasks. The child’s understanding of the other content of such situations of communication with adults, which are conditional in nature, and the stable content of the context of this communication constitutes the main content of arbitrariness in the communication and interaction of children with adults.

The second most important component of a child’s personal readiness for school is a certain level of development of communication skills with peers. In a team, the child realizes and asserts himself as an individual. The team creates opportunities for the development of independence, activity, initiative, creativity and individual identity of each person. In collective activities, interest in peers and communication with them is formed, a friendly attitude towards other children is cultivated, personal sympathies and friendships are born, and the ability to live and work together is acquired. These qualities and skills are crucial for the formation of various abilities of the child, for example, to be able to understand the point of view of another, to accept a particular task as a common one that requires joint action, to look at oneself and one’s activities from the outside.

The third component of personal readiness for school is associated with the development of a child’s self-knowledge, which manifests itself, in particular, in changes in his self-esteem. Most often, preschoolers are characterized by a biased high assessment of themselves, their capabilities, their activities and their results. However, some of them have unstable and sometimes even low self-esteem. For a normal, painless inclusion in school life, a child needs a “new” self-esteem and a “new” self-awareness. Thus, the emergence of a more adequate and objective self-esteem indicates serious changes in the child’s self-awareness and can be an indicator of readiness for schooling and the school lifestyle in general.

The physical readiness of a child to study at school presupposes the necessary state of health, which will ensure his long-term sitting at a desk in a certain static position, holding a pen or pencil in a certain way, and the ability to carry a briefcase or backpack. The child’s muscles should be sufficiently developed, movements should be coordinated and precise. Of particular importance is the readiness of the hand to perform small and various movements that are needed to master writing. So, physical readiness is determined by the level of morphological and functional development and the state of mental and somatic health.

A child’s motivational readiness to study at school begins with a positive attitude towards school, a desire to learn, and a desire to gain knowledge. It is based on the cognitive orientation of the preschooler, curiosity, acquiring the forms of cognitive activity, first cognitive interests. Cognitive orientation is manifested in the ability to separate the known from the unknown, to experience a feeling of satisfaction from the knowledge gained, joy and delight from performing intellectual tasks.

The desire to become a student and learn appears at the end of preschool age in almost all children. It is due to the fact that the child begins to realize his position, which does not correspond to his age capabilities. He is no longer satisfied with the ways of approaching the lives of adults that the game gives him. Psychologically, the child seems to outgrow the game (although he will not lose interest in it for a long time) and the student’s position seems to him to be a certain model of adulthood. Education, as a responsible problem that everyone respects, begins to be recognized as a way to achieve the desired change in situation, a “way out” of childhood. Learning is attractive because this serious activity is important not only for children, but also for those around them.

The very fact of entering school changes the child’s social position and his civic role. He has responsibilities and his own school life. His status in the family environment changes: he has the right to his own workplace in the room, to the time necessary for studies, the right to entertainment and rest. This is what shows the child in the eyes and reinforces the great importance of learning.

The development of the cognitive sphere to a certain extent determines readiness for learning, since mastering knowledge and the fundamentals of science presupposes a previously established cognitive orientation. Thus, the main components of motivational training are correct ideas about learning as an important and responsible activity, as well as cognitive interest in the environment.

A child’s mental readiness for school is a combination of the following components:

General awareness, a certain outlook of the child, understanding of the holistic picture of the world, the sum of knowledge, skills and abilities that can ensure the development of school curriculum. A child is well prepared for school when he can use his knowledge in stories, games, generalize things familiar to him and establish connections between them: compare, combine into groups, highlight common and important features, perform other actions based on this knowledge;

Level of cognitive processes: perception, thinking, imagination, language training (speech culture, its coherence, significant vocabulary, grammatical structure and sequence of presentation of the material), a sufficient level of development of sign-symbolic function and cognitive activity. The key indicators are the development of logical thinking and memory (the main indicator is the performance of intentional memorization), which indicate the maturity of the brain centers, their functional readiness to assimilate knowledge, skills and abilities. The thinking of children entering school is mainly visual and figurative.

During preschool age, children begin to lay the foundations of verbal and logical thinking. This type of thinking is finally formed in adolescence.

A six-year-old child is capable of a simple analysis of the environment, dividing into the essential and the unimportant, he can construct simple reasoning and draw the right conclusions from them. However, this ability is limited by children's knowledge and ideas. Within the framework of the known, the child easily establishes cause-and-effect relationships. He uses expressions: “if... then”, “because”, “therefore” and others; his everyday considerations, as a rule, are quite logical.

The emotional-volitional readiness of a child to study at school means the ability to control his behavior and voluntarily direct his mental activity. Exactly at a certain level volitional development A schoolchild’s ability to concentrate on completing school assignments, direct attention in class, remember and reproduce material is determined. The formation in first-graders of responsibility for student affairs and a conscientious attitude towards their responsibilities is facilitated by the motives developed during preschool childhood for the obligation to comply with the rules of behavior and the requirements of adults. If a child is accustomed to being guided only by his own desires, and motives such as “shoulds” and “shouldn’ts” are incomprehensible to him, then it is difficult for such a child to get used to school requirements and follow the rules for students.

Mental processes in children of early and primary preschool age are transient in nature. Children actively perceive, remember, and reproduce what attracts and causes a vivid impression.

By the end of preschool age, the subordination of motives also develops: the child’s ability to give preference to one impulse over others, to consciously regulate his behavior on the basis of the subordination of motives, for example, to give in to desires to play with friends until duty duties are completed, to resist the temptation to eat candy in order to treat your younger brother or sister.

When entering school, children, as a rule, want to study well and fulfill the teacher’s requirements. But not everyone has the necessary prerequisites for this. This is especially true for disorganized children who lack self-control and other strong-willed qualities.

Volitional readiness is manifested in achieving the most important goals for the child in the game, in the process of various types of activities, in communicating with different people.

An important factor in the volitional development of six-year-old children is the formation of motives related to the content of relationships in the children's team. The need for friendship with peers also gives rise to the desire to find one’s place in this team and achieve recognition. It is in the process of interaction that children develop their strong-willed character traits.

Emotional readiness is expressed in the satisfaction, joy, and trust with which the child goes to school. These experiences make him open to contacts with the teacher and new friends, support self-confidence and the desire to find his place among his peers. An important point emotional readiness are experiences associated with the learning activity itself, its process and first results.

All components of readiness are interconnected and interdependent. Thus, physical development is the basis for the maturation of brain centers, which in turn is a prerequisite for its intellectual activity. The degree of volition and development of the child’s emotional sphere depends on the state of formation of the ability to exert volition. The hierarchy of motives is a prerequisite for mastering voluntary behavior and is considered as a component of personal readiness and the like.

Observations by physiologists, psychologists, and teachers show that among first-graders there are children who, due to individual psychophysiological characteristics, have difficulty adapting to new living conditions, can only partially cope (or cannot cope at all) with the school regime and curriculum. Features of school adaptation, which consists in the child’s adaptation to a new social role as a student, also depend on the child’s degree of readiness for schooling.

The level of readiness of children for school can be determined by such parameters as planning, control, motivation, level of intellectual development, etc.

Based on the results of the study, the level of readiness for school is determined:

A child is not ready for school if he does not know how to plan and control his actions, his learning motivation is low, he does not know how to listen to another person and perform logical operations in the form of concepts;

A child is ready for school if he knows how to control his actions (or strives to do so), focuses on the hidden properties of objects, on the patterns of the surrounding world, strives to use them in his actions, knows how to listen to another person and knows how (or strives) to perform logical operations in form of verbal concepts.

Thus, readiness for schooling is a complex multifaceted problem, covering a period not only of 6-7 years, but including the entire period of preschool childhood as a preparatory stage for school, and junior school age as a period of school adaptation and the formation of educational activities. The main components of readiness for school are: motivational, mental, personal, volitional, and physical readiness. All components of readiness are interconnected and interdependent. The success of social adaptation to school, which consists in the child’s adaptation to a new social role as a student, also depends on the degree of readiness of the child for schooling.

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