Teaching geography in middle school: psychological and pedagogical aspects of taking into account age related psychological characteristics of pupils

Кovchyn N. А., Candidate of pedagogic sciences,

Іnstitute of Pedagogics of the NAPS of Ukraine

The processes of globalization in the education field as well as becoming Ukraine a part of this field are sure to cause some transformation processes in the education system, its improvement and renewal.

Current changes in education model are being studied by philosophers, educators, psychologists and many other scientists.

For instance, Кremen' V. who deals with philosophical basis of modern education renewal is the first in the history of soviet science to analyze the concept of humanocentism – a new way of philosophical perception of the human [3].

Development of content-genetic concept in psychology as well as formation of scientific concepts in education (Davydov V., Yel'konin D.) has led to the appearance of works on developing education. This problem is still being studied by Buryns'ka N., Кusnesova N., Chernykova I., Tsvetkova L. and others. The issue of geography teaching process improvement in secondary and high schools is being given attention by a lot of other modern scientists.

The article raises the issue of psychological characteristics of geography teaching in secondary school as well as advances the statement that organization of geography teaching process aimed at cognitive possibilities and intellectual skills development, systematization and interactive thinking is a way to form integral geographical picture in middle school pupils [2, 5].

In order to make geography teaching in middle school more effective it is of primary importance to study special character of psychological development of intellectual possibilities and skills of this age. Actually, the issue of cognitive changes in adolescence was profoundly studied by Craig G., Piage J., Leites I [1,4,6].

Cognitive changes in teenagers have specific nature. At this time intellectual skills development continues, consequently, consciousness broadens, imagination borders become bigger, thinking diapason is exposed to changes as well. These growing cognitive possibilities contribute to the rapid knowledge accumulation that open for teenagers a range of problems both complicating and enriching their life. In particular, cognitive development at this age is characterized by abstract thinking development and mega cognitive skills use. Both of these factors greatly influence on the broadness and content of the teenager’s thinking as well as his moral thinking ability [1].

Given the specific nature of cognitive changes they should be taken into account in the process of modeling of new age geography school books for middle school pupils. Teenagers' abstract thinking is characterized by J. Piaget as formal operational thinking. Specialists still argue about the nature of abstract thinking – whether it appears suddenly and all at once or it makes a part of a gradual, continual process of cognitive development.

According to the Piaget’s theory of development it is formal operational thinking development that defines cognitive changes at this age. This new way of data processing is abstract by its nature and it is not forced by slavish “here and now”. Formal operational thinking includes thinking about possibilities as well as comparing reality with events that might or might not happen. It is easier for young children to deal with concrete evidence – based facts whereas teenagers tend to treat every event as one of the possible to happen. (Keating, 1990). Formal operational thinking is determined by ability to formulate, check and evaluate hypotheses. It allows to manipulate known elements that can be checked as well as those ones that contradict well-known facts. While learning geography this specific characteristic of thinking makes it possible for the pupils to hypothesize about origin of different geographical phenomena, their connection as well as to understand further forecast of global geographical processes.

Therefore, formal operational thinking can be characterized as second - order logic. First-order thinking reveals and studies connections between geographical objects. Second-order thinking implies ideas about ideas, searching for connections between relationship and manoeuvering between reality and possibility. (Inhelder, & Piaget). Actually, there are three key characteristics of teenagers thinking:

1. Ability to take into account all combinations of variables while looking for problem solution.

2. Ability to concede the influence of variables on each other.

3. Ability to unite and divide variables hypothetically and didactically. (« If there is X, there will be Y») (Gallagher, 1993) [1, 6].

It is considered that not everyone is capable of formal operational thinking. Moreover, teenagers and adults reaching this level are not always able to retain it. For instance, a lot of people coming across something unknown often tend to turn to more concrete way of thinking. Obviously, certain level of intellect is needed for formal operational thinking to be developed. Cultural and socioeconomic factors, especially educational level, are of primary importance as well. (Neimark, 1975). Тhe fact that not everyone reaches formal operational thinking level has made some psychologists think that this level should be viewed not as an independent stage of intellect development but as expanding of concrete operations. This possibility was even conceded by Piaget (Piaget, 1972). However, he underlined that elements of this type of thinking are of primary importance for mastering advanced science, mathematics and geography.

The appearance of formal operational thinking is explained by some as continuous process while others view it as a sudden jump. Regarding Piaget's concept of quantitative sudden jump in development of cognitive skills described above, not every scientist agrees with him. Some psychologists consider it to be a much more gradual process with some turns from formal operational thinking to earlier stages and backwards. For instance, D. Keating (Keating, 1976, 1988) states that the borders between children, teenagers and adult thinking are artificial. He views cognitive development as a continuous process and believes that children may have latent abilities of formal thinking operations. He emphasizes that some children are capable of dealing with abstract ideas. It is improvement of speaking skills and accumulation of world interaction experience that the appearance of the mentioned above skills might be connected with but not due to cognitive knowledge. All these cognitive features of teenagers influence on the process of geography learning in middle school.

Information processing approach to cognitive development at adolescence also has to be deeply studied to make the process of geography learning more effective.

As apposed to Piaget, information processing approach adherers emphasize the idea of improving skills that is known as meta knowledge. Meta knowledge include such skills as ability to think about ideas, form strategies and plan. Due to appearance of these new cognitive skills teenagers learn to analyze and to consciously change thinking processes. It is these cognitive skills that provide efficient formation of integral scientific geographical picture of the world.

Information processing approach adherers state that cognitive development in adolescence include the following:

1. More effective use of some data processing mechanisms such as memory saving and transfer components.

2. Development of more difficult strategies for different types of problem solving.

3. More effective ways of getting information and saving it in symbols.

4. Development of higher - order functions(meta functions) as well as planning and decision making, increasing flexibility when choosing methods from a bigger base of scenarios. (Sternberg).

Robert Sternberg (Sternberg, 1984,1985) divided intellect into 3 data processing components that can be evaluated separately. In Sternberg's opinion each of these components has its own function:

1. Meta components – these are executive processes responsible for planning task solutions and monitoring . Ability to choose certain strategies to remember things or perform current control over quality of list of elements that are learnt by heart are good examples of such processes(meta memory).

2. Performance components - these are information-processing mechanisms involved in the execution of any task and invoked by a particular sequence of operations, such as encoding, relevant inference and response selection.

3. Knowledge acquisition components - are those processes involved in the gaining and storing of new information.

Actually, cognitive development, and consequently, intellectual growth include knowledge accumulation as well as data processing components development. These two processes are interconnected. Problem solving is more effective when knowledge a person possesses is more appropriate. Moreover, people who know more effective methods of storing and acquiring information are more likely to have full database.

Teenagers solve problems and think more effectively at the geography classes than children during all geography learning process. However, the range of scenarios and schemes they can use is much bigger. As you remember, children in preschool age also develop simple scenarios for everyday activities. Teenagers develop more complicated scenarios for special circumstances (going camping) or procedures (choice of the camping leader). When they try to solve a problem or work out some social situation, they can think about essence of all such things borrowing some information from more complicated scenarios.

To sum up, intellectual activity of the middle school teenage pupils acquires a range of special features. To form an effective adequate integral geographical picture of the world special features of psychological process in adolescence need to be profoundly studied as well as need for organization of geography teaching process and working out modern geography textbooks to be based on the results of the present study.

List of references

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2. Коvchyn N. А. The role of modern geography textbook in consistency knowledge formation of pupils / N. А. Коvchyn. – Problems of modern textbook: edited volume. – Кyiv. : Pedagogichna dumka, 2011. – 11. – 800 pp. – Bibliography. : p. 163-167.

3. Кremen' V. G. Philosophy of humanocentrism in education / V. G. Кremen'. – 2. – Кyiv. : «Znannya» Ukrayiny, 2011. – 520pp. – Bibliography. : p.504-511.

4. Leites N. S. Intellectual abilities and age /N. S. Leites. – М. : Pedagogika, 1971. – 278 pp.

5.Тоpuzov О. M. Тheoretacal – methdological basis of individual - oriented textbook / О. М.Тоpuzov. – Problems of modern textbook: edited volume. – Кyiv. : Pedagogichna dumka, 2011. – #10. – 784 pp. – Bibliography. : p. 8-15.

6. Piaget J. Selected psychological works / Jean Piaget. – М. : Mezhdunarod. ped akademiya, 1994. – 680 pp.