Psychological and pedagogical aspects of the age-spec-ificity of children 6-10 years old include plasticity of the nervous system, restructuring of thinking, impressionability, weak inhibition, impulsivity, de-velopment of volitional processes, a tendency to imitate, the emergence of new motives of behavior, the formation of an internal plan of action, the transition from play to learning, role correlation of oneself with the student, psychological adaptation to the school environment, assessment of behav-ior by the teacher, naive likes and dislikes, interpersonal relationships in the classroom, the establishment of strong friendships.
psychological and pedagogical aspects, age specificity, children 6-10 years old, nervous system, thinking, attention, memory, voli-tional processes, behavior, learning, psychological adaptation
Economic and sociocultural modernization, technologization, and informatization inherent in modern Russian and planetary societies are changing childhood. In this regard, in this article we intend to consider the psychological and pedagogical aspects of the age specificity of this age group of children, adjusted for ontological transformations caused by the dynamics of human civilization and Russian society. The relevance of the article follows from the requirements of the Federal State Educational Standard of Primary General Education [1], which takes into account the age characteristics of primary schoolchildren, their specific personality neoplasms, which determine adequate strategies for teaching and upbringing.
The age period of 6–10 years was revealed in the studies of V.V. Davydov, D. B. Elkonin, L. I. Aidorov, A. K. Dusavitsky, A. K. Markova, Yu. A. Poluyanov, V. V. Repkin , VVRubtsov, GA Tsukerman and others. The named scientists identified the characteristic psychophysiological traits of a younger student. At the same time, they also believed that the physiological appearance and psychological content of a 6–10 year old child would be wrong to consider constant. In early school childhood, the child's relationship with the outside world changes. A new system of relations arises, determined by the student's functions. The leading role of educational activity does not exclude, however, its other types: play, sports and art, elements of work.
The child acquires a new standard for imitation - a teacher who personifies the social ideal of high civic values, intelligence, behavior, culture. Children develop a special attitude towards the teacher, which is acutely experienced. Up to grade 4, a child is under the influence of a class teacher, who forms high moral and moral qualities in the first along with the learning process.
A 6–10 year old child retains the immediacy of perception and the spontaneous, unconscious creed typical of preschool childhood. He admits the possibility of the existence of good and evil forces, idealized folklore characters. Intensively developing empirical thinking determines the emergence in the minds of children of questions about morality and ethics. The neoplasms of children of this age are arbitrariness, an internal plan of action and reflection. Arbitrariness consists in deliberate goal-setting and deliberate search for means to achieve the set goals, overcoming possible obstacles. As part of the educational process, the child plans and implements his plans for himself, in the inner plan.
The dynamic chain of the internal plan of action presupposes the embodiment of external manipulation of material objects into their images, after which the initial action is translated into a "loud speech" with the subsequent pronouncement of this action "to oneself". The last stage is characterized by the complete assimilation of the action, its coagulation and transformation into a mental one.
In the period of childhood we are considering, the functional of the brain and nervous system develops. Physiologists (V.P. Petrunek, L.N. Taran) believe that by the age of 7, the cerebral cortex practically matures. However, the dominant zones located in the frontal regions of the brain, which are in charge of programming, regulation and control of complex forms of mental activity, are finally formed only by the age of 12. The result is an imperfection of the regulatory function of the cortex, which determines the specificity of behavior, activity and emotional sphere: children of this age group are easily excitable, emotional, and often distracted.
At the age of 7, the child is subject to a second physiological crisis, associated with a sharp endocrine shift. It is accompanied by intensive growth of the body and internal organs, the restructuring of the vegetative system. Physiological restructuring of children is marked by unstable mental performance, sporadicity, fatigue, moodiness, vulnerability. At the same time, in essence, the ongoing changes are deeply positive and are a consequence of the child's adaptation to new age realities.
The psychophysiological development of children is different: boys lag behind girls. The child has new cognitive needs, interest in the surrounding reality, new competencies are formed. Thinking dominates other processes (consciousness, motor reactions, etc.) and acts as an intellectualizing factor for the development of other mental functions: “Memory becomes thinking, and perception becomes thinking” [2]. A child of primary school age begins to reason logically, to use specific operations. At the same time, the thinking of a 6–10-year-old child is in a state of transformation: the priority of the visual-figurative is “contested” with the subsequent transfer of the palm to the verbal-logical, conceptual.
Visual-figurative thinking communicates to the solution of problems a visual, direct plan of ideas stored in memory. The child's imagination manipulates images of real objects. Thanks to this, the prerequisites are created for the child to acquire verbal-logical thinking, coupled with the operation of concepts. Concrete representations are embodied in concepts that express the properties of objects and phenomena, as well as the connection between them.
The lack of systemic knowledge in a 6–10 year old child is replaced by perception: he judges the world around him based on his visual sensations. For example, observing trusting, good relations between members of his family, a child transfers a feeling of security and well-being to other families.
J. Piaget, who studied the stages of development of children's thinking, found that a 6–7 year old child lacks ideas about the constancy of the basic properties of things, he is not able to center - take into account and compare several attributes of an object. The child takes note of only one attribute, ignoring the rest [3, p. 78]. The phenomenon of centralization explains children's egocentrism, when the child's own view of the world seems to be the only correct one.
The development of thinking is associated with the formation of a complex mental action - analysis, which includes the decomposition of the whole into parts, differentiation of the general and the particular, the isolation of the essential and the insignificant. Psychologists (IV Dubrovina, VP Petrunek, LN Taran; J. Rodari and others) believe that the first signal system and the right hemisphere are active in children 6–10. For this reason, most children of this age are of the artistic rather than the thinking type. In addition, the development of children's thinking is determined by their individual characteristics (learning ability, mindset, pace of mental activity, etc.).
According to LA Venger, children of 6–10 years old have a sufficient level of sensory culture [4], because they have developed ideas about sensory standards. They are generally recognized samples of the external properties of objects. For example, the visual perception of children is characterized by sensory standards of color, shape, size. The standards of auditory perception are phonemes, pitch ratios. The olfactory and gustatory standards are well developed. The specificity of perception in a 6–10-year-old child is manifested in the fact that he highlights bright, attention-getting properties. It is no coincidence that the positive characters of children's fairy tales are depicted in bright colors in accordance with the accepted standards of beauty.
The development of the child's perception is carried out as his perceptual activity. It is a systematic study of a perceived object (in our example, a positive character in a fairy tale) with the aim of isolating and analyzing its properties and building a holistic image. Perception acts as the basis for cognitive activity, “becomes thinking”. Thus, a child of this age is already capable of analyzing perception. Teaching a child to observe leads to the appearance of synthesizing perception, thanks to which connections are established between the elements of what he saw, heard, felt. The child is able to “conjecture” a fragmentary image given in sensations.
Assimilating social values, the child complements them with images. They consist of the imprints of reality accumulated by the child and form his experience. An important condition for the development of imagination is the inclusion of a 6–10 year old child in a variety of activities. The palette of children's imagination is formed from what children see, hear, experience. Differences in the field of control of imagination by consciousness lead to the fact that children carry out mental transformation of the situation in different ways. It should be borne in mind that an overdeveloped imagination can lead a child away from reality. It is obvious that it is advisable to train the imagination.
Another emerging feature of the thinking of a 6–10-year-old child is the ability to generalize material, which includes the identification of the common in the diverse and the cognition of the main on this basis. The task of the educator is to develop the child's ability to generalize the material of spiritual and moral content that comes daily through various channels of perception.
The implementation of the named function is possible only with the participation of memory, the mechanisms of which are memorization, preservation, recognition and reproduction of information accumulated by the child. The most productive type of memory in children of this age group is involuntary memory. She captures vivid events exciting them. Along with involuntary, figurative (visual, auditory) memory is sufficiently developed. Verbal and logical memory is less developed. The specificity of the memory of younger schoolchildren is that they better remember visual material in comparison with verbal material, the names of objects in comparison with abstract concepts. In the latter case, abstract material must be supported by facts. In addition, the child must be interested, motivated in learning. Over time, the memory of a 6–10-year-old child acquires arbitrariness and controllability.
Within the framework of increasing its mnemonic function, mechanical memorization is successfully carried out. Children begin to assimilate both concrete and abstract concepts, which entails a deepening of the volume of memory, an increase in the speed of assimilation and reproduction of the material. Neoplasms of a child of this age include an internal plan of action, reflection, arbitrariness of mental processes. Gradually, he develops metacognition, which is based on complex intellectual processes that allow children to exercise current control over their thinking, knowledge, memory, actions.
In the problem of memorization, domestic psychologists (L.M. Zhitnikova, A.G. Liders, V.Ya. Lyaudis, A.K. Markova, I.Yu. Matyugin, E.N. Chakaberia, E.L. Yakovleva, etc. ) distinguish written speech, drawing, etc. as significant for children of this age. In parallel with written speech (symbolic means), the child indirectly masters memorization. According to I.V. Dubrovina, E.E. Danilova, A.M. Prikhozhan, the memory of children is different. Inconsistencies are manifested in the speed of memorizing and reproducing material, types of activities.
An important parameter of mental activity at this age is involuntary attention. Its dominance determines the selection by the child of everything bright, presentable. Children are not yet able to concentrate on activities for a long time, their attention is unstable. The reason for this is the immaturity of the neurophysiological mechanisms underlying attention. Volitional regulation is only taking shape. In this regard, the material for assimilation should be emotionally saturated due to the colorful video sequence, timbre and height-varying sound sensations.
Voluntary attention is formed at the age of 8-9 and is conditioned by the general intellectual development of the child, his cognitive interests and the ability to act purposefully. The educational process contributes to the development of this type of attention. At the same time, the ability to distribute it is still only being formed; there is rapid fatigue, frequent distraction of the child. He holds attention for no more than 15-20 minutes. When performing external actions, attention is more stable, mental actions - less stable. In the process of expanding the interests of the child and accustoming him to educational work, both types of his attention are actively developing. Only by the age of 9-10 do children acquire the ability to carry out a program of actions for a sufficiently long period of time.
The teacher should take into account that the parameters of attention are determined by the individual-typological characteristics of the child and develop in different ways. Therefore, it is important to coordinate the individual-typological characteristics of the child with the boundaries of training his attention. It should be borne in mind that the volume of attention is growing worse than the properties of distribution and stability.
Children 6-10 years old are impressionable and emotional. Their experiences are quite complex: the joy of personal success and the praise of an authoritative adult, grief from a mistake, excitement before a public speech, fear of the unconscious, etc. The child basically does not understand the reasons for his feelings. However, his positive spiritual and moral qualities are fixed in the best way when his behavior and actions are supported by pleasure and satisfaction. For good behavior, good aspirations of the child should be praised.
The development of will in children of this age category is determined by the requirements of adults, conditioned by social goals and norms. The clarity of the formulation of these requirements and the constancy of their presentation by the educator, school collective, family determine the reliability of the results of spiritual and moral education. In different situations, the child is forced to share something valuable with friends, to refuse the preferred (games, cartoons, etc.) - sacrifice should acquire a personal meaning for him. Overcoming difficulties should be morally enriching: the child feels that he is kind, intelligent, more mature. Positive self-esteem and self-esteem are formed.
For the general mental development of the child, the development of his brain structures, movement and the development of motor skills are of great importance. Fine and gross motor skills of children should be developed in a targeted manner, because it is often lagging behind due to parents' inattention to drawing, paper cutting, embroidery, designing, etc. The culture of children's yard games, the purpose of which is to improve motor skills, should be revived.
At the same time, during this age period, a new type of relationship with others is developing. The role of the children's community and peers is growing. The social life of a child is formed by interpersonal relationships in the educational space of the class and school. Interpersonal skills are generally poorly developed. Girls show a higher level of reflection and social responsibility, flexibility, the ability to verbally demonstrate socially approved forms of behavior, although there are more “selfish” girls than boys.
By the age of 9-10, the child's personal qualities are manifested: organizational skills, independence, hard work, perseverance, patience, sincerity, perseverance, generosity, etc. These qualities should become fundamental in education.
1. Federal state educational standard of primary general education (grades 1 - 4). Approved by the order of the Ministry of Education and Science of Russia dated October 6, 2009 No. 373; as amended by orders of September 22, 2011 No. 2357.
2. Elkonin D.B. Selected psychological works. M., 1989.S. 44.
3. Obukhova L.F. Jean Piaget's concept: pros and cons. M., 1981, 191 p.
4. Pedagogy: textbook. M .: TK Welby, Publishing house Prospect, 2007.S. 95, 145
