S.V. Dmitriev, professor, Dr.Hab.
E.V. Bystritskaya, associate professor, Ph.D.
Nizhny Novgorod state pedagogical university, Nizhny Novgorod

Key words: educational training, interactive educational environment, self-regulation, personality development, self-organizational criterion, corporality, integral individuality, creativeness.

Any kind of spiritual and practical activities (science, culture, education) sooner or later reaches such a level of maturity when there is a need for reconsidering the fundamental basis, specification of methodology and search for new paradigms for more effective solution of problems arising in the society. The authors of the paper submit various problems for experts in the sphere of physical culture, plan some ways (approaches, methods) of their solution, but “do not give” final answers (for “truth is a process”). The present paper is dedicated to the readers who form their personal “teaching credo”.

Traditional pedagogics with the main task of stimulation and monitoring of behavior and consciousness of the “abstract personality” (based on “the ideological standardization”) turned a person into an “object of assimilation and reproduction of certain volume of knowledge, skills and abilities” (public standardized information – “to all and for all”). Unfortunately, modern pedagogics, psychology and didactics remain functional systems by the principle of construction. In order to pass from the functional approach (functioning are procedures leaving the initial structure untouched) to activity organized education (correlated with the way of personality development) the traditional “educational ontology” is to be changed. Human consciousness is known to form and develop within the “sociocultural universe”, where personality experience is crystallized, along with his ideas and activities.

The purpose and tasks of the paper were to design anthropic educational technologies (focused on personality and identity as a social and spiritual essence of the man of action) based on the principles of activity organized, sociocultural approach in the social pedagogical sphere.

Results of research. Culture represents an experience of people’s creative activity taken in its general – historically developed and historically developing — forms. It is some kind of “spiritual-active roots” which feed and cultivate the identity of the man of action, providing it with methods and ways of sociocultural actions. The sociocultural status of education is set not only by the task of spiritual and personal transformation of a person and his consciousness, but also technological procedures of transfer and reproduction of culture. The combination of the two functions – transformation of individual consciousness and expanded reproduction of culture – underlies the development of anthropic educational technologies. But herewith, this very combination acts as a global problem of modern education. Personality can't be designed from the outside, it is an infinite process of human personal formation, “self-construction”. Strictly speaking, culture (unlike science, engineering and technology) can't be “transferred” to a person by means of educational standards (only information is transferred). Cultural values are non-technological at least since they represent themselves as an internal manifestation of human spirit (it is an ideal object), organizing the processes of “world humanization” and “human cultivation”, “reproduction of own life in other people” and “self-returning”.

Within the theory of sociocultural actions, we are working in didactics of professional pedagogical education, the concept of “psychosemantics of personality’s activity consciousness” is subjected. This term is related to the reflective and semantic sphere of human sociocultural activity based on personality’s axiological systems, psychosemantic programs of control and regulation in their relation to goals, means and results of cognitive and transformative activities. On the one hand, human self-consciousness together with design and technological consciousness (where mostly “provided from the outside” standards of knowledge, social stereotypes, codes and personality dispositions are in action) generate a system-organized mental sphere as one of supreme forms of reality reflection and transformation. On the other hand, activity organized consciousness is a self-generated system, originated from activity and stimulating personal development through effective activity, including human creative motor actions. The core of the paradigm of activity consciousness is a “design tetrastructure” of educational technologies, made of four “categorial regulators”: (1) personality in activity development; (2) activity communication in development of social perception and interpersonal interaction; (3) self-consciousness in development of self-concept (“I-concept”) and an ego identity; (4) activity in development of personality’s reflective consciousness and self-identification.

“To be - means to communicate. To live - means to participate in a dialogue” (V.M. Rozin). Here the following communicative abilities are required: (1) ability for modelling other people’s thoughts in own consciousness; (2) for interperception, reflective introspection, deducation (absorption in a subject); (3) ability for combining cooperation with rivalry (along with conflict-free interaction); (4) ability for taking other person’s side (to look at problem situation from his side) to specify the viewpoint; (5) ethical values, social and personality identification are important factors of self-control.

Search for the grounds for self-identification, external and internal mutual perception, self-establishment in society should be carried out both in “inner-personal dialogue” and in dialogue with other people, “dialogue of cultures” and in “identification matrices” of professional activity. As we know, personality doesn't acquire social culture as a whole — it masters only the aspects connected with its axiological-semantic system and spiritual and practical activities. Personality is derived from culture (“combination of public relations”), but culture is also derived from personality – an ensemble of its individual social codes, semantic mediators, verbal and sign and extralinguistic connotations. Actual personality incompleteness, of multidimensional and multiworld integrity of his “personosphere” (A.V. Petrovsky's term) is always present in a person. “I am being created – I am still not present” is a title of one of the poems by Vyacheslav Ivanov. (Like the Latin expression “Fio, ergo non can” – “I’m being formed, therefore, so I am not present”). As a matter of fact, the personality/ identity formation is a “transversal (cyclically large scale in time, with bifurcation) project” of internal development and self-reflection (inner self). It should be marked, that educational training (focused mainly on the forming – instead of already formed – functions) should arouse and activate the internal processes of “constant rebirth” of personality self-movement. It is clear that technically mastered (trained to automatism) types and ways of activity are incapable of further development (improvement of personality competences and thesaurus) of the man of action, creator, righteous person.

“Person’s live culture” is always focused on culture creation, instead of reproduction (translation) of “cultural standards” (Fig. 1). The inner mechanisms of development are usually not progressing spontaneously based on the biogenetic program and should be constructed on the basis of sociocultural programs. That reflects the public area of activity, advances the area responsible for formation of personality’s individual mental sphere. Thus, various ways of actions are mastered while studying, already existing in the system of social inheritance (social and pedagogical programs, educational technologies). Herewith, the technology of person’s sociocultural development as an interiorization of the programs set from the outside (“self” an ensemble of public relations) should be complemented with the mechanisms of exteriorization, personal self-identification, individual self-determination, methods of “sacral didactics” (M.K. Mamardashvili, A.P. Azarov). Here the most significant are the methods of inceptional doctrine (Engl. inception – an intention of creativity, motivation to self-training) – teacher’s “inquiry”, interpretation of the comprehended and its repeated “analysis through synthesis”, engineering of knowledge, skills and abilities.

Fig. 1. Subsystems of quality evaluation of design of  educational training environment of graduate school of education

A person can transform into a personality only in case of being a subject of development of his own sociocultural actions. The program of self-realization and the program “be impatient” – to “burn with desire” for acting creatively are necessary. Here it is important not just “to start functionally” professional qualities in compliance with the educational standards in the expert in some area, but to create preconditions for person’s ultimate development (using the methods of acmeological design, affirmation, semantic diversification and reflective self-organization of personality’s consciousness). Here one should take into account not only cognitive mechanisms of reflection of the subject environment, but also sociocultural mechanisms of formation of activity consciousness – formation of the world image (world-view, world outlook, world interpretation), the project attitude to the world (construction of environment) and the system of spiritual and practical activities introduced into this image (personality’s sociocultural life in society, occasions with other people).

It is necessary to teach so that the subject content (“knowledge transfer”) was not only transmitted, but also didactically designed, along with formation of the dialogue of outlooks (the drama of innovative ideas, the conflict of scientific mutually denying concepts, educational paradigms). A professional should be taught “problem thinking” (M. Blok), “thinking global –acting locally” (R. Dyubo), “thinking dialogical” (M.M. Bakhtin), “thinking reflectively” (I.N. Semenov). The main heuristic value of the paradigm of the activity organized consciousness is in both world outlook and regulatory principles, acquired (mastered) within human socialization, laying its basis. The methods of regulating self-training and self-development are especially important for a student. The specified principles and methods underlie the world perception and transformation mechanisms based on formation of (1) human general conceptual and world outlook system; (2) metacognitive abilities; (3) perceptive, mental and activity consciousness orientations (operational and technological readiness and aspiration for activity, internal growth and self-development); (4) axiological and semantic habitus (lat. habitus – here “internal constitution”) – the integral system of positions, dispositions and self-reflections.

Gabitus is one of the basic notions of the concept of modern French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, who considers it as a system of acquired predispositions (with the new status of principles), generating and organizing mental fields of perceptions, representations, concepts meant to function in practical activity. In our interpretation the position-personality habitus is a system of positions (dispositions) of internal belief (with some rank in system values – system of value-focused consciousness). Related to activity/ human actions, habitus acts more like a forming than derivative system defining the trends to personal growth/ development/ self-actualization. “Personality self-progress” associated with the aspiration to growth of self-value (according to F. Lersh) serves as a “module of development” of the subject of perception, assessment and transformation (self-attitude – self-orientation). In his actions/ activity a person is “mirrored” (by Ch. Kuli) in the depths of his “psychosphere” rather than reflected in people’s consciousness. He displays the external (material and physical subject environment) and internal (sociocultural of personality and activity environment) world of the personality.

As we know, effective action is primary, human intelligence is in the background. (The former represents the reason, the latter – consequences). “Self” is undoubtedly active and only active…” (I. Fikhte). As noted by S. Frene: “One becomes a smith only with an anvil”. It is important to emphasize the constructive specifics of creation of the conceptual world image: the way how it “has come to light” to the person by means of cognitive and subject-instrumental mechanisms, in terms of practical actions. Here the social-subject world means “human project” and activity is a semantic program of creation of value-focused actions. It should be noted, that value belongs to effective human activity which is the mean value for the personality/ identity of the man of action, but not to the sphere of “material things” (things are indifferent).

Herewith, the personality’s inner subject world includes intersubject character-semantic spaces, spiritual and practical life of different people. It is the subject world of the personality that is a dialogue of different subjects of culture, dialogue of senses of sociocultural, value-focused activity. As for educational technologies, it is important to take into account not only the dialogue manner of training methods (e.g. “question-answer” construction of educational process in cooperation with a student), but also the dialogue manner of the content of his activity of contemplations (skill for self-training of the “internal opponent”, for taking other peoples’ side and intercultural interaction with them).

Person as a subject of activity “faces” objectivity of public consciousness not only in the sphere of individual state of mind (here the so-called reflexology of behavior of the biological individual – “bioid” is dominating), but also in the sphere of spiritual and practical participation of the personality in the sociocultural life, that is itself realization of the subject-object-subject relations reflected and mediated by public consciousness (here cultural event reflection is dominating). Herewith, “cartesian split” between the object and the subject is overcome - personality represents both of it at the same time (“objective spirit”, according to G. Gegel). As a matter of fact, reality of the world reflected by the person becomes uniform and represents indivisible integrity (pan-coherence, by E.E. Harris), underlying both matter and activity consciousness (anthropic principle, by J.A. Willer; “holomovement” by D. Bom; “holotrop aspiration” as an “orientation to integrity of life”, by S. Grof). Therefore, the physicists’ statements should be noted: “Consciousness and matter are various aspects of the same reality” (K. Veyzekker); “The subject and the object are uniform” (E. Schrodinger); “Contrasts are not contradictory, but supplementary” (N. Bor). Borders in the pan-coherent reality are “fuzzy variables”, “transparent” (“illusive”) barriers, though exist objectively (E.Е. Harris).

Human activity consciousness transforms “things-themselves” (objective reality) into “things-for-us” (reflectively organized object of activity unlike object) by means of the instrumentally reformative, sense creating activity. “Thing-itself” becomes a subject (and means) of activity according to human sociocultural nature. Let's emphasize that objectification is not always material, real and can be of spiritual character. The arising from subject-object-subject interactions new “sociocultural world” – the man-made world of culture – can be called neither material, nor ideal, neither objective, nor subjective. It represents “a synergetic composite” of material and ideal, objective and subjective, the unity of consciousness and life, forming a new, sociocultural, essence which is inexistent neither in the matter, nor in the consciousness, neither in the object, nor in the subject, taken separately. Products and results of sociocultural activity are impossible to separate  completely from the identity of the man of action – they are included in the structure of his spiritual and axiological and existential “self”. In the sociocultural world the object becomes a co-object (is subjectified), and the subject “is transcribed” in the culture objectivity (translated into its language), is personified in the “man-made object” he creates. It is possible to say that not only the creator creates “Man-made work”, but the work generates the creator as well. It concerns generation of the spiritual-personality thesaurus, but not on assimilation of some information. Person learns and transforms itself as a part of the World and the World as a part of it becomes a real measure of all things and phenomena (by Protagor). It reminds the words of K. Marks that “person pulls from himself the patrimonial forces”. It requires creation of the corresponding university social and educational environment with the functions of educative (teaching) developing environment. Let's remember the catch phrase by M.K. Mamardashvili: “Consciousness is an ability of bigger consciousness”. The transformation of spiritual-activity “self” requires the semantic integration of culture, science, art and education. As noted by A.S. Pushkin, “Not nature teaches us to love, but Steel and Chateaubriand”.

Fig. 2 describes student’s activity consciousness as a continuum of its reflection/ display/ transformation in terms of relations with other social members, including the ones within the university educational environment. As follows from the scheme, the anthropic, synergetic educational paradigm (derivative of the word “image”) establishes the correlation of ideal (consciousness) and real (life). Education as a sociocultural value is realization by the subject of his own interaction with the world around, providing both world change and transformation of the personality consciousness, thinking and activity. The world around is a common educational environment (the sphere of interaction of a person with nature, society and other people), where we take a certain place (stipulated by sociocultural values, self-identification mechanisms and personal view), where personal needs and abilities are being developed by mastering educational technologies: for what? what? how?).

The essential features of educational activity are: (1) searching process that can not be completely reduced to logic of studied object (it is a probabilistically developing, stochastic mechanism); (2) need for perfection; (3) act of creation (process, mechanism and result); (4) tendency to development (dominant evolutionary, but not constructive process); (5) available “personified product” (material and ideal). The essential features are implicative (in close interdisciplinary, metasubject relationships) – here ideas-plans, heuristic search, probability world reflection and discovery are correlated.

“The fact of the matter is settled not by the purpose but by its realization” (G. Gegel), searching technologies of probability and fan-shaped character, differ by thought direction not only forward, but also backward and aside (sideways, bypassing) from the studied object. University “educational compendium” should be essentially “incomplete”, have an “open” system of knowledge, leave “an open window of possibilities” for further development. Here a training/ developing professional is more important rather than a trained expert. The term “Dasein-analytics” is used in researches of foreign philosophers K. Durkheim, M. Heidegger (sein – infinite life – in our interpretation “to be in the clouds”; dasein – “to stand on guilty earth”). “He who managed to find Archimedes point in himself is happy” (F. Tyutchev). Anthropic educational technologies “form” a person who creates and transforms the world in his sociocultural activity. Herewith, the world mastered by mankind (anthroposphere, sociosphere, technosphere) appears as a measure to man. Therefore, the pedagogical social sphere is to be organized according to the humanity principle, as a sphere of universal (homo totus), but not “partial person”.

“Education of personality” is known to advance developments (by L.S. Vygotsky). Therefore, on the first stages of education (stage of informative orientation to the subject; motivation stage – search for sense of activity) the functions of personality training (formation of needs for thinking and action) should dominate, followed by next stages where anthropic training and developing technologies are realized: “Involve me – and I shall learn!” (Chinese proverb). Thus person masters knowledge in the context of his actions: “I do, studying “and “I study, doing”. Here in his activity both object (first of all – effectiveness of methods applied) and subject of action (abilities of thinking creative and acting) are subject to a trial. Creativity processes – creativity as self-expression and creativity as mental self-control – can (and should) be present on both of the first stages of education (associated with personality involvement into activity process) and on the next stages of technical and technological organization of required actions and actions of thoughts. Creative personality penetrates into the process of product receipt and becomes a part of the product.

Professionally-personality knowledge is formed by thinking, while thinking and for practical actions with some objects. The latter was proved to result not from abstraction from objects of “the subject and real world”, but is designed and reconstructed from human actions with these objects. The knowledge “derived” from activity with objects becomes a system setting factor of personality self-organization – it is its driver, “information replicator”. So “live knowledge” are assimilated through mastering of “live actions”, generating activity consciousness and the identity of the man of action. Culture creating actions are always focused on the new, unknown, forthcoming. Here the determinant is purpose-setting by a personality solving some problem (reflection of what “should be”; here “the image of future result” acquires design and regulatory functions), rather than direct subject and object interaction, becomes a determinant. This level of mental (psychosemantic, “sense creating”) reflection expresses constructive and creative aspects of human intelligence, personality’s activity-organized consciousness, his acmeological and axiological orientations.

It is common knowledge that the person adapted for the subject-social environment (mainly based on congenital self-control mechanisms) won't develop. Anthropically-focused person is more self-creating rather than creating a sociocultural product. It requires sociocultural mechanisms of human social self-identification. The latter can be represented by: (1) personified expression of the personality’s spiritual and axiological world and “transportation” of certain cultural senses of activity to “social life”; (2) self-manifestation in the system of activity and introduction of personality into the world structure, and (3) introduction of this structure into the person’s “subject world” by referring to axiological identification of what is most significant for the personality and society. Subject itself (individual or “collective”) is an axiological criterion of any object.

Clearly, educational standards, standardized constructs of social experience are followed in training and educational activities (here the choice of means and methods is limited by measures of disciplinary subject and subject situation). Anthropic-activity technologies (setting the measure of personality’s internal semantic space) are based on free choice, reflective search for personal position and method of action in some subject or educational situation. Search and selection of needed information, effective construction of sociocultural actions are carried out in the situation of “free will” and “freedom of choice” of methods of action while working and taking a decision. Freedom is based on acceptance of position related to an object of activity, other person and to itself, ability of the subject for reflective semantic organization of personal actions (in case of lacking reflection, there is no choice of methods of action based on personality’s axiological systems). Reflection should be considered not only as an analytical method (instrument) of world measurement and interaction with it, but also as a method developing personality. While mastering actions the main thing is to form the ability for construction of operational algorithms in various situations (also when working the general methods of action for a wide range of tasks), but not its development. Prospective reflection “paves the ways” to the goal-setting future (semantic project). Contextual reflection (retroreflection-aided) defines efficiency of means and methods of construction of actions (technological-semantic program and mechanisms of its realization).

Fig. 2. The chart of reflection and personification of personal inner world – in his desire for “being personality” and “being himself”

Conclusion. The anthropic educational technologies we considered form the methods of “sociocultural heuristics”, promoting conversion of student’s cognitive motivation into his searching and administrative activities. The most significant of them are: (1) intellectual and informative search (formulation of the problem of consciousness, search for needed knowledge); (2) communicative-personality search (work of personal viewpoint, including world outlook); (3) didactic search (transformation of “educational standards” into means and methods of training activity); (4) technological search (development of program and operating mechanisms of activity); (5) spiritual and moral search (formation of personal senses and axiological evaluation scales of activity). Reflection as a process in activity and as a mechanism in personality development (sense generation and objectivation of senses in the form of knowledge) should be closely correlated with the value choice and construction of the “conceptual world image”, based on the “great synthesis” of science, theory of design and sociopedagogical control, coordinated with the person’s person.

As we proved, personality is developed not by “transferred knowledge” – script formulations (here growth, but not development, takes place), but by its special (didactic) designing. Anthropic educational technologies should highlight “personality’s formation by means of knowledge”, but not formal logic mechanisms of “knowledge formation”. It is not a question but a problem for the present state of education, including the following subject areas of research: (1) technology of generation of personal thoughts and actions focused on results (“reflection what”) and ways of its achievement (“reflection how”); (2) development of principles and ways of “acquiring” knowledge reflecting subject activity (subject reflection), along with system of actions of thoughts on acquiring such a knowledge (reflective methodology); (3) development of pedagogical knowledge control systems, associated with conversion of information into professionally-personality competences (reflective processes of intellectual search, analysis, synthesis, sorting, classification, reflecting specifics of the procedures of professional knowledge creation); (4) amplification of reflective activity personality experience (its increase, specification, transformation, expansion of limits of subject situation to ensure rather extensive space for searching for needed decision).

Bibliography

1. Dmitriev S.V. Anthropic-Activity Paradigm In Pedagogics (Polemic Remarks)/ S.V. Dmitriev, E.V. Bystritskaya // Teoriya i praktika fizicheskoy kultury. – 2013. – № 1. – P. 101. (In Russian)

Author’s contact: stas@mts-nn.ru