Коvchyn N. А., cand. of ped. sciences,

scientist of Institute of pedagogy

of NAPS of Ukraine

The role of elective geography in optimization of education process in a specialized school.

In the optimization of education process practical use of elective geography courses in a specialized school is a very important stage.

At present implementation of elective geography courses, organizing specialized classes and schools depends on the specific situation of the specific educational establishment such as regional development conditions which influence the direction of specialization; school staff, national and cultural peculiarities and traditions of the people who live here etc. Studies of practical experience have revealed that to a higher extent profiled education is implemented to «suit the teacher», i.e. it is determined by the teacher's personal preferences. Discussion analysis results showed that some of the teachers from different schools working in profiled and specialized classes use educational programs for specialized schools and specialized classes which have been published in subject magazines as well as their own programs.

Analysis and evaluation determination as well as teachers' attitude to the situation of profiled education implementation in high school is very important for this research. Questionnairing and teacher interviewing have shown that methodology of pupils selection into specialized classes is what makes the main difficulty. Majority of teachers (70 %) consider the level of pupils' progress in studies i.e academic performance to be the main selection criterion. At the same time only 11 % of teachers agree on the benefits of other criterion. In their schools in the process of selection the results of specialized and all round research of pupil's intellectual abilities and skills are taken into account too. Such an approach of senior pupils' selection to profiled and specialized classes tend to lead to negative effects. Thus, for example, in a specialized math class created on the basis of this approach, i.e. according to the pupils' interests, one third of pupils failed to fully cope with the program for socialized classes. As for the rest of the class, some pupils consider the program to be difficult, and it was due to a lot of time and effort that they took in the material. It indicates that selection and grouping of senior pupils in appropriate typological groups was not perfect and all the criteria necessary for profiled education selection were not taken into account.

In the conditions of profiled education the continuity between comprehensive schools and higher education establishments has become a burning issue. 25% of teachers believe that the continuity fails to exist. Such a situation reduces the chances of proper profiled preparation of pupils and makes it difficult for individualization development of cognitive abilities, cognitive activity and education process motives. In the process of profiled education organization one of the problems of differentiation is the issue of identifying the place of a school psychologist in the education process since cognitive abilities of senior pupils are always under change.

Profiled (external) education process differentiation of senior pupils is closely connected with the internal one (staged). It requires appropriate educational and methodological base which would take into account development of cognitive abilities and interests of every pupil; the latter is demonstrated by the amount of the material learnt, skills acquired and by the motivation to learn. Availability of such didactic support increases the efficiency of profiled eduction process of senior pupils.

Effective implementation of profiled education requires further research of its psychological and pedagogical aspects and implementation of worked out programs into education practice.

When forming profiled groups or classes for learning geography according to elective courses comes up one of the major problems - defining the criteria of grouping pupils in appropriate groups.

P. Sikorskyi considers a person's genotype to be a psychological basis for such grouping i.e. his or her individualized type of cognitive, emotional and -volitional spheres. Moreover, the scientist proves that typological formation of pupils is not static and a personality can be studied only in the process of education using as many methods and techniques as possible as well as involving psychological services [3]. A. Kirsanov[2] agrees with P. Sikorskyi to some extent. He offers the following criteria to unite pupils into typological groups: cognitive activity, emotional and volitional spheres as well as attitude towards learning, interests, inclinations and personal qualities.

S. Маksymenko and V. Аndriyevska offer other criteria of uniting pupils in typological groups – level of mental abilities development as individual and psychological abilities of a personality which are an essential condition of any activity and stable and positive dynamics of acquiring knowledge and skills.

S. Tyschenkо adds to the idea above and states that the most preferable conditions for skills formation are created in the process of profiled and person-oriented education and bringing up of children [1].

In the basis of our methods of cognitive abilities diagnosis for organization of profiled education lies systematic and structural approach according to which the process of thinking is viewed not as a number of separate intellectual activity techniques but as a complicated system with its own main components: motivational (stimulus of activity), informative (knowledge) and operational (ways of activity), which are interconnected [3; 4].

When forming our diagnostic method model, we defined basic criteria for diagnostics of cognitive abilities: input knowledge, thinking operations (intellectual skills) and education activity motives.

Thus, implementing our model of profiled geography education according to elective courses to diagnose interests, aptitudes and cognitive abilities of senior pupils we worked out a complex methodology that combines pedagogical and psychological components

Pedagogical component of our complex diagnostics methodology provides diagnosing the level of verbal intellectual skills, the level of education activity motivation in general and motivation to learn geography in particular. Psychological component determines the level of non verbal intellectual operations, concentration, memory.

For checking the efficiency of geography elective courses implementation in specialized school education practice index dynamics of level of the following cognitive abilities were studied: intellectual skills, knowledge and motivation to learning as well as the number of pupils who decided to go to another (parallel) class The organization of education according to elective courses was implemented in experimental classes and then the results were compared with the ones in control classes with traditional methods of learning.

The results of the experiment have revealed that in experimental classes after a year of studying the index of the geography knowledge acquired has grown considerably, as well as formation level of intellectual skills and motivation to educational activities and pupils' interests. In control classes all indexes are much lower, moreover, average motivation index of educational activity doesn't tend to grow and among many pupils it even tends to go down.

To sum it up, elective geography courses implementation encourages cognitive skills development, personal growth of senior pupils as well as their successful adaptation to specialized school learning conditions.

Literature

1. Kyrsanov А. А. Pedagogical basis of education process individualization : thesis ... D. Ed./ Кyrsanov А. А. – L., 1982. – 434 p.

2. Коrchuganova І. P. Intellect diagnosis as a component of pupils' selection in specialized gymnasium classes: methodological recommendations/ І. P. Коrchuganova // Practical psychology. – Symu, 1992. – P. 194–196.

3. Sikors'kyi P.І. Theoretical and methodological basis of differentiated schooling. Lviv, : Каmenyar, 1998. – 196p.

4. Soviet encyclopedic dictionary. –M. 1987.