Postgraduate S.S. Ivanova
E.L. Grigor'eva
O.V. Reutova
A.A. Zelenova
I.A. Sedov
Kozma Minin Nizhny Novgorod State University (Minin University), Nizhny Novgorod

Keywords: health-promotion technologies, multicultural educational environment.

Background. The health-promotion technologies implemented in multicultural educational environments are to be designed to attain the hereinafter stated objectives of the people’s physical, mental and social health formation with the relevant development and correction initiatives to form a basis for the children of legal migrants being duly socialized and self-fulfilled in the local multicultural environment of the Russian-speaking region with its special natural, social and other traditional fundamental conditions. These technologies make it possible to protect the original physical, intellectual and mental traits of the ethnic minorities, with a special focus on their traditional sports and games to help create a multisided educational environment for them.

Objective of the study was to develop and test efficiency of a health-promotion technology designed for a multicultural educational environment.

Study results and discussion. In the health-promotion technology development process, the following objectives were set:

1. Improve the somatic health rates of young residents of the Nizhny Novgorod region, with an emphasis on the dynamically developing ethnic communities.

2. Help the young residents accept and cultivate a variety of universal human ethical values including dignity, respect and tolerant attitudes to people of different nationalities.

3. Develop due mental settings [“anthropo-constructs”] and cognitive processes of importance for success of the children’s educational process.

4. Help the children get actively engaged in the social processes of the multicultural Russian-speaking region.

The core mission of the technology was to cultivate good physical, mental and social health, with the following goals:

1) Improve the objectively measurable health rates; cut down the morbidity and traumatism rates; develop the vitally important motor skills and qualities; and help accumulate sound motor experience;

2) Form semantics and technological basics for the socially positive activities including due physical culture and sports, with due corrective and developmental services provided in the sensitive developmental period; and

3) Facilitate the basic world outlook and due values-and-senses structure of a personality being formed through physical culture viewed as an important domain of social processes and a sound basis for personal development; encourage their engagement in the physical culture values with due health-awareness culture being formed, and facilitate the young people’s self-fulfilment in these activities [2].

The above goals should be attained in the context of the general national health improvement and the relevant problems-solving agenda. The national statistical reports show that the children and adolescents’ health deterioration trends that have been reported for the last 10-15 years are still in place. These trends are manifested first of all in the young people’s poor physical development standards, different musculoskeletal system disorders dominated by the postural ones, growing chronic disease rates and some other factors [1]. The migrants’ children are no exclusion as they are no less exposed to the relevant health risk factors.

The above goals are to be attained within the relevant project being implemented in the multicultural Children’s and Youth Ethno-Globe Centre that is designed to apply a variety of highly beneficial diagnostic, corrective and developmental methods. The corrective and developmental exercises applied under the project are duly combined for the gender-, age-, ethnics- and personality-specific groups of trainees. In a preparatory phase of the sessions, each group applies general developmental practices (GDP) including corrective exercises to prevent scoliosis and flat-footedness – since the national primary school system and its educational environments are known to expose students to risks of such health disorders. The training sessions include active and team games, track and field sports like races, jumps, throws – to ensure the training process being designed on a multisided and multifunctional basis [3]. In addition, we have applied national active sports and games – not only Russian, but also Armenian, Azerbaijan, Uzbek etc. to give the children every opportunity to match the sporting cultures and see how close they are in many aspects. Each training session is finalized by breathing and attention-developing exercises and games to help recover the mental and physical balance and concentrate on further activities with a focus on health-awareness development. In addition, the training sessions include different events to promote healthy lifestyles in the children.

To rate the students’ physical health, the project includes a variety of methodologies selected conditional on the following: they should be simple and user-friendly in application; free of labour-intensive analytical toolkits; require no massive and costly equipment; and applicable by operators having no special training. Such methodologies, for instance, include the Health Express-Test based on individual sickness rates i.e. the number of class days missed due to sickness and/or references to the health specialists. The lower are the day counts, the higher art the health rates under the test. 

Conclusion. The physical education and sport activity under the project being implemented in the multicultural Children’s and Youth Ethno-Globe Centre with a focus on the migrant ethnic communities in the Russian-speaking region is designed to develop good physical, mental and social health in the migrant children and adolescents to facilitate their successful socialization and self-fulfilment, with the following professional integration opportunities being offered by the project:

– Services of the local health establishments and general/ advanced educational institutions to assist them in their physical culture needs and individual sport careers and foster due motivations for healthy lifestyles, with a special focus on the children, adolescents and young people from the dynamically developing ethnic diasporas in the region; and

– Services of the coaching and sport communities in the area, with due assistance in the training and competitive process organization, management and control to cater for the needs of the new generation of the dynamically developing ethnic diasporas in the region.

References

1. Arshavskiy I.A. Fiziologicheskie mekhanizmy i zakonomernosti individual'nogo razvitiya (Physiological mechanisms and patterns of individual development) / I.A. Arshavskiy. – Moscow: Nauka, 2012. – 269 p.
2. Ivanova S.S. Realizatsiya studentami zdorov'eformiruyushchikh tekhnologiy v mezhetnicheskom prostranstve shkoly (Students' implementation of health promotion technologies in inter-ethnic school environment) / S.S. Ivanova // Sovremennye problemy nauki i obrazovaniya. – 2015. – # 1. – P. 487.
3. Samoylova N.I. Kul'tura dvigatel'noy aktivnosti kak element zdorovogo obraza zhizni (Motor activity culture as part of healthy lifestyle) / N.I. Samoylova. – Moscow, 2004. – 79 p.

Corresponding author: Svetlana-604@mail.ru

Abstract

The article reports the health-promotion technology development and implementation process and related problems that come up in a multicultural educational environment. The authors consider objectives and goals of the technology and the key thrusts of the ongoing regional initiatives to foster health-awareness culture in children of different ethnic groups. Special attention in the article is given to the progress of the multicultural Children’s and Youth Ethno-Globe Centre that took the lead in the new technology implementation in the migrant children’s education and development process. The article gives an overview of the tools and methods applied for their multisided harmonic development, with the relevant progress rating toolkits and performance rating criteria.

The concept is designed to help shape up, adjust and correct the child’s/ adolescent’s/ young individual’s personality from the dynamically progressing ethnic diasporas of the Nizhny Novgorod region through their integration in the sociocultural universe of the region to support the policies and initiatives to prevent negative social, national and/or religious conflicts of young residents of the Nizhny Novgorod region.

The concept was designed to meet the following most critical needs of the young people from the dynamically progressing ethnic communities in the region:

1. Employment needs of the young and adult community members within the region;

2. General and vocational education of the children and young people from the ethnic minorities;

3. Physical and mental health protection and rehabilitation, with an emphasis on the needs of the new generation;

4. Conflict-free communication with the local communities and nationalities of the Nizhny Novgorod region, with top priority given to the interested and tolerant communication skills development initiatives;

5. Knowledge of the values, cultural and historical traditions of the Nizhny Novgorod region viewed as a new home for the minorities; and

6. Promoting self-development and self-fulfilment in the minorities to help them fully employ the individual natural gifts and abilities in the new social environment.