The problem of psychological readiness for schooling in psychological and pedagogical research.

The child's willingness to enter into a new relationship with society at the end of preschool age is expressed in school readiness. The transition of a child from a preschool to a school lifestyle is a very large complex problem that has been widely studied in Russian psychology. This problem has become especially widespread in our country in connection with the transition to school education from the age of 6. Many studies and monographs have been devoted to it (V.S.Mukhina, E.E. Kravtsova, G.M. Ivanova, N.I. Gutkina, A.L. Venger, K.N. Polivanova, etc.).

As a component of psychological readiness for school, personal (or motivational), intellectual and volitional readiness.

Personal, or motivational, readiness for school includes the child's desire for a new social position of the student. This position is expressed in the child's attitude towards school, educational activities, teachers and himself as a student. In the famous work of L.I. Bozovic, N.G. Morozova and L.S. Slavina showed that by the end of preschool childhood the child's desire to go to school is stimulated broad social motives and is concretized in his relation to the new social, "official" adult - to the teacher.

The figure of a teacher for a 6-7 year old child is extremely important. This is the first adult with whom the child enters into social relations that are not reducible to direct personal ties, but role-mediated(teacher - student). Observations and research (in particular, by KN Polivanova) show that six-year-olds fulfill any requirement of a teacher readily and willingly. The symptoms of learning disabilities described above occur only in a familiar environment, in a child's relationship with close adults. Parents are not carriers of a new way of life and a new social role for the child. Only at school, following the teacher, is the child ready to do whatever is required, without any objections or discussions.

In the study by T.A. Nezhnova studied the formation internal position of the student. This position, according to L.I. Bozovic, is the main new formation of the crisis period and represents a system of needs associated with a new socially significant activity - teaching. This activity represents a new, more mature way of life for the child. At the same time, the child's desire to take a new social position of the student is not always connected with his desire and ability to learn.

The work of T.A. Nezhnova showed that the school attracts many children, primarily with its formal accessories. Such children are focused primarily on external attributes of school life - briefcase, notebooks, notes, some of the rules of conduct they know at school. The desire to go to school for many six-year-olds has nothing to do with the desire to change the preschool lifestyle. On the contrary, school for them is a kind of adult game. Such a student first of all singles out the social, and not the actual educational aspects of school reality.

An interesting approach to understanding school readiness was implemented in the work of A.L. Wenger and K.N. Polivanova (1989). In this work, as the main condition for school readiness, the child's ability to identify educational content and separate it from the adult figure. At the age of 6-7, only the external, formal side of school life is revealed to the child. Therefore, he carefully tries to behave "like a schoolboy," that is, to sit upright, raise his hand, stand up while answering, etc. But what the teacher says and what needs to be answered is not so important. For a child of the seventh year of life, any task is woven into the situation of communication with the teacher. The child sees in him the main character, often not noticing the subject itself. The main link - the content of training - falls out. The task of the teacher in this situation is to introduce the child to the school subject, add it to new content, open it. The child should see in the teacher not just a respected "official" adult, but a bearer of socially developed norms and methods of action. The educational content and its carrier - the teacher - must be separated in the mind of the child. Otherwise, even minimal progress in teaching material becomes impossible. The main thing for such a child is the relationship with the teacher, his goal is not to solve the problem, but to guess what the teacher wants to please him. But the behavior of a child at school should be determined not by his attitude to the teacher, but by the logic of the subject and the rules of school life. Isolating the subject matter and separating it from the adult is central to learning. Without this ability, children will not be able to become disciples in the proper sense of the word.

Thus, personal readiness for school should include not only broad social motives - "to be a schoolboy", "to take their place in society", but also cognitive interests in the content offered by the teacher. But these interests themselves in b - 7-year-olds develop only in the joint educational (and not communicative) activities of a child with an adult, and the figure of the teacher in the formation of educational motivation remains key.

Absolutely necessary condition school readiness is the development arbitrary behavior, which is usually seen as a strong-willed readiness for school. School life requires the child to strictly follow certain rules of conduct and self-organization their activities. The ability to obey the rules and requirements of an adult is central to school readiness.

D.B. Elkonin describes such an interesting experiment. The adult offered the child to take apart a bunch of matches, carefully shifting them one by one to another place, and then left the room. It was assumed that if a child has formed a psychological readiness for schooling, then he will be able to cope with this task despite his immediate desire to stop this not very exciting activity. Children 6-7 years old, who were ready for schooling, meticulously performed this hard work and could sit for this lesson for an hour. Children who were not ready for school for some time performed this meaningless task for them, and then abandoned it or began to build something of their own. For such children, a doll was introduced into the same experimental situation, which had to be present and observe how the child completes the task. At the same time, the behavior of the children changed: they looked at the doll and diligently performed the task given to the adults. The introduction of the doll, as it were, replaced the presence of a controlling adult for the children and gave this situation an educational, new meaning. Thus, according to Elkonin, the system of relations between a child and an adult lies behind the fulfillment of the rule. At first, the rules are fulfilled only in the presence and under the direct control of an adult, then with reliance on an object that replaces the adult, and finally, the rule set by the adult teacher becomes an internal regulator of the child's actions. A child's readiness for schooling involves "Nurturing" the rule, the ability to be guided by it independently.

For identifying this ability, there are many interesting techniques that are used to diagnose a child's readiness for school.

L.A. Wenger has developed a technique according to which children must draw a pattern under dictation. For the correct execution of this task, the child must also learn a number of rules that were previously explained to him, and subordinate his actions to the words of an adult and these rules. In another technique, children are encouraged to paint the Christmas tree with a green pencil so as to leave room for Christmas tree decorations that will be drawn and painted by other children. Here, the child needs to keep in mind the given rule and not break it while performing the usual and exciting activities for him - not to draw Christmas decorations himself, not to paint over the whole tree in green and so on, which is difficult enough for a six-year-old.

In these and other situations, the child needs to stop direct, automatic action and mediate it with an accepted rule.

School education makes serious demands on cognitive sphere child. He must overcome his preschool egocentrism and learn to distinguish different sides reality. Therefore, to determine school readiness, Piaget's tasks for maintaining quantity are usually used, which clearly and unequivocally reveal the presence or absence of cognitive egocentrism: pouring liquid from a wide vessel into a narrow one, comparing two rows of buttons located at different intervals, comparing the length of two pencils lying on different levels, etc.

The child should see in the subject its individual sides, parameters - only under this condition can one move on to subject teaching. And this, in turn, presupposes the mastery of the means of cognitive activity: sensory standards in the field of perception, measures and visual models and some intellectual operations in the field of thinking. This makes it possible to indirectly, quantitatively compare and understand individual aspects of reality. Mastering the means of isolating individual parameters, properties of things and their mental activity, the child masters socially developed methods of cognizing reality, which is the essence of learning in school.

An important aspect of mental readiness for school is also mental activity and the cognitive interests of the child; his desire to learn something new, to understand the essence of the observed phenomena, to solve a mental problem. Intellectual passivity of children, their unwillingness to think, to solve problems that are not directly related to play or everyday situation, can become a significant brake on their learning activities. The educational content and the educational task should not only be highlighted and understood by the child, but should become the motive of his own educational activity. Only in this case can we talk about their assimilation and appropriation (and not about simple execution assignments of the teacher). But here we come back to the question of motivational readiness for school.

Thus, different aspects of school readiness turn out to be interconnected, and the connecting link is mediation of various aspects mental life child. Relations with an adult are mediated by educational content, behavior - by the rules set by an adult, and mental activity - by socially developed methods of cognizing reality. The universal bearer of all these means and their "transmitter" at the beginning of school life is the teacher, who at this stage acts as an intermediary between the child and the wider world of science, art, and society as a whole.

“Loss of spontaneity”, which is the result of preschool childhood, becomes a prerequisite for entering a new stage in the development of a child - school age.

Various approaches to the concept of psychological readiness of children for schooling in the works of modern psychologists.

Psychological readiness for schooling is a necessary and sufficient level of mental development of a child for mastering the school curriculum in conditions of study in a peer group.

Psychological readiness for systematic schooling is the result of all the child's previous development in preschool childhood. It is formed gradually and depends on the conditions in which the body develops. Readiness for schooling presupposes a certain level of mental development, as well as the formation of the necessary personality traits. In this regard, scientists highlight the intellectual and personal readiness of the child to study at school. The latter requires a certain level of development of social motives of behavior and moral and volitional qualities of the individual.

Thus, the psychological readiness for schooling is manifested in the formation of the main mental spheres of the child: motivational, moral, strong-willed, mental, which, in general, ensure the successful mastery of educational material.

In foreign studies, psychological maturity is an identical concept of school maturity.

Studies (G. Gettser, A. Kern, J. Jirasek and others) traditionally distinguish three aspects of school maturity: intellectual, emotional and social.

Intellectual maturity is understood as differentiated perception, including: the selection of figures from the background; concentration of attention; analytical thinking, expressed in the ability to comprehend the basic connections between phenomena; the possibility of logical memorization; the ability to reproduce a sample, as well as the development of fine hand movements and sensorimotor coordination. Understood in this way, intellectual maturity reflects the functional maturation of brain structures.

Emotional maturity is generally understood as a decrease in impulsive reactions and the ability to perform tasks that are not very attractive for a long time.

Social maturity includes the child's need for communication with peers and the ability to subordinate his behavior to the laws of children's groups, as well as the ability to play the role of a student in a school situation.

In Russian psychology and pedagogy, the problem of a child's readiness for the beginning of systematic schooling has been studied in various aspects (L.S. Vygotsky, L.I. Bozhovich, D.B. Elkonin, N.G. Salmina, L.A. Venger, V. V. Kholmovskaya and others). Here the general and special readiness of children for school stands out. General readiness includes personal, intellectual, physical and socio-psychological. Special readiness includes preparing children for mastering the subjects of the primary school course (these include the initial skills of reading, numeracy, etc.).

Now we will sequentially consider various approaches to the concept of a child's psychological readiness for school.

So, A. Kern in his concept proceeds from the following assumptions:

There is a close connection between physical and mental development.

The moment a child grows up to school requirements depends primarily on the internal processes of maturation.

An important indicator of this maturation is the degree of maturation of visual differentiation of perception, the ability to isolate an image.

Poor school performance depends not so much on insufficient intellectual development as on insufficient readiness for school.

But further research showed that the relationship between the level of physical and mental readiness for school was not so close that one could judge the other by one indicator. The development of a child turned out to be highly dependent on his environment, and the so-called ability to isolate an image could be trained. Nevertheless, if the solution to the problem proposed by Kern no longer stood up to criticism, then the following provision of his concept was unshakable: “The child's lack of readiness for school, or, as is often said, the ability to learn, later leads to excessive stress and thus possible serious consequences. Children who have not yet reached the school requirements should not go to school, but prepare for it. "

Thus, further development of research in this direction consisted in expanding the set of measurable features.

A. Anastazi interprets the concept of school maturity as “mastering skills, knowledge, abilities, motivation and others necessary for an optimal level of mastering school curriculum behavioral characteristics ".

I. Shvantsara more succinctly defines school maturity, as the achievement of such a degree in development, when the child becomes able to take part in school education. I. Shvantsar singles out the mental, social and emotional components as the components of readiness for learning at school.

Domestic psychologist L.I. Back in the 60s, Bozovic pointed out that the readiness to study at school is made up of a certain level of development of mental activity, cognitive interests, readiness for arbitrary regulation of one's cognitive activity and for the social position of a student. Similar views were developed by A.I. Zaporozhets, noting that the readiness to study at school "is an integral system of interrelated qualities of a child's personality, including the features of its motivation, the level of development of cognitive, analytical and synthetic activity, the degree of formation of mechanisms of volitional regulation of actions, etc." ...

G.G. Kravtsov and E.E. Kravtsova, speaking of readiness for schooling, emphasize its complex nature. However, the structuring of this readiness does not follow the path of differentiating the general mental development of the child into intellectual, emotional and other spheres, but the types of readiness. These authors consider the system of the child's relationship with the outside world and highlight indicators of psychological readiness for school associated with the development of various types of child's relationship with the outside world. In this case, the main aspects of children's psychological readiness for school are three areas: attitude towards an adult, attitude towards a peer, attitude towards oneself.

Almost all authors researching psychological readiness for school give a special place to arbitrariness in the problem under study. D. B. Elkonin believed that voluntary behavior is born in a collective role-playing game, which allows the child to rise to a higher stage of development than playing alone. The collective corrects violations in imitation of the supposed model, while it is still very difficult for a child to independently exercise such control. “The control function is still very weak,” writes D.B. Elkonin - and often still requires support from the situation, from the participants in the game. This is the weakness of this emerging function, but the meaning of the game is that this function is born here. That is why play can be considered a school of voluntary behavior. "

The child's readiness for schooling can be conditionally divided into psychophysiological, intellectual and personal.

Under psychophysiological readiness a certain level of physical maturation of the child is understood, as well as the level of maturity of brain structures, the state of the main functional systems organism and the state of health of the child, ensuring the functioning of mental processes corresponding to age standards (Fig. 10.5). School readiness implies a certain level physical development and the child's somatic health, as they have a significant impact on learning activities. Children who are often sick and physically weakened may experience learning difficulties even with a high level of cognitive development.

Data on the somatic health of children as a component of psychophysiological readiness for school are given in the medical record in sufficient detail (weight, height, body proportions, their correlation with age standards). At the same time, there is often no information about the state of the nervous system, while in many preschoolers, with additional examination, it is found of various kinds minimal brain dysfunction (MMD). A large number of children of older preschool and primary school age have neuroses.

Rice. 10.5.

From the point of view of mental development, such preschoolers correspond to the norm and can be trained in a regular school. Minimal organic disorders of the nervous system are able to compensate under favorable conditions for education, training and timely psychocorrectional work. Children with MMD and neuroses are distinguished by a number of characteristics of behavior and activity that should be taken into account in the course of the educational process: a decrease in the level of development of mnemonic processes and properties of attention, decreased performance, increased exhaustion, irritability, problems in the process of communication with peers, hyperactivity or lethargy, difficulties in accepting a learning task and exercising self-control. As a result of a psychodiagnostic examination, such preschoolers may show normal level readiness for school, but in the process of learning according to programs of an increased level of complexity, with an intense intellectual load, they may have certain difficulties in educational activities; the success of the formation of knowledge, skills and abilities is reduced in comparison with other children who do not have abnormalities in the functioning of the nervous system.

Allocate various factors causing the occurrence of functional and organic disorders in the development of the nervous system of children: pathology of pregnancy and childbirth, some somatic and infectious diseases in infancy and early age, head injuries and bruises, severe stress (death of a loved one, flood, fire, divorce of parents), unfavorable family parenting styles.

With the beginning of schooling, the level of stress on the body and psyche of the child increases significantly. The systematic fulfillment of educational tasks, a large amount of new information to be assimilated, the need to maintain a certain posture for a long time, a change in the usual daily routine, and being in a large student collective cause great mental and physical stress for the child.

By the end of preschool age, the restructuring of the child's physiological systems has not yet been completed, and intensive physiological development continues. Psychophysiologists note that in general, in terms of its functional characteristics, the body of an older preschooler is ready for systematic schooling, but there is an increased sensitivity to negative environmental factors, in particular to great mental and physical stress. Children over younger age the more difficult it is to cope with school loads, the higher the likelihood of disturbances in his health. It should be borne in mind that the actual age of the child does not always correspond to the biological one: one senior preschooler, in terms of his physical development, may be ready for school education, and for another child, even at the age of seven, everyday educational tasks will cause significant difficulties.

The conclusion about the physiological readiness of older preschoolers for schooling is formulated taking into account the data of a medical examination. A child is considered ready for systematic schooling if the level of his physical and biological development corresponds to the passport age or exceeds it and there are no medical contraindications.

To examine the physical development of a child, three main indicators are most often assessed: height (standing and sitting), body weight and chest circumference. The researchers note that in terms of physical development, modern six-seven-year-old children differ significantly from their peers in the 1960s-1970s, significantly outstripping them in growth and general development.

In senior preschool age children grow very quickly, which is due to neuroendocrine changes in the child's body (growth increases by 7-10 cm per year, weight by 2.2-2.5 kg, chest circumference by 2.0-2.5 cm), therefore this age period called the period of "stretching". Girls are characterized by more intensive physical development than boys. Older preschool age can be considered critical due to the fact that it is characterized by a decrease in physical and mental endurance and an increase in the risk of diseases. The criteria for biological age can be the number of erupted permanent teeth (Table 10.5), the formation of certain proportional relationships between the size of the head circumference and growth (Table 10.6).

Table 10.5

Number of permanent teeth in preschool children

Table 10.6

The proportions of the child's body in preschool age

In accordance with the comprehensive health assessment scheme, children can be divided into five groups:

children who do not have functional abnormalities, high level physical development, rarely getting sick (on average, this is 20-25% of the total number of future first-graders);
children with some functional impairments, with a borderline state between health and a disease that has not yet passed into a chronic form. With unfavorable factors, they may develop more or less pronounced health disorders (on average, this is 30-35% of the total number of future first-graders);
children with various chronic diseases who have severe somatic disorders, as well as children with a low level of physical development, who are contraindicated in school from the age of six due to increased intellectual stress (on average, this is 30-35% of the total number of future first-graders);
children with chronic diseases who need long-term treatment, clinical examination and constant supervision by a doctor of the relevant specialty and who are recommended to study at home, in educational institutions sanatorium type, specialized schools;
children with significant health impairments, excluding the possibility of studying in a general education school.

In addition to diagnosing indicators of a child's physical development (height, weight, chest circumference), when determining the physiological readiness for schooling, the state of the main physiological systems of the body is revealed. During the medical examination, heart rate, blood pressure, lung capacity, arm muscle strength, etc. are determined.

Older preschoolers have increased reserve capacity. of cardio-vascular system, the circulatory system is being improved, the respiratory system and metabolism are being rebuilt and intensively developed. For older preschool age, intensive development of the musculoskeletal system is characteristic: the skeleton, muscles, articular-ligamentous apparatus, changes in the bones of the skeleton in shape, size and structure, the continuation of the ossification process (especially the bones of the wrist and phalanges of the fingers, which should be taken into account when conducting classes with children ). In older preschool age, large muscles of the trunk and limbs are well developed, which allow performing various complex movements (running, jumping, swimming). However, the fine motor skills of the hand in many children are not sufficiently developed, which causes difficulties in writing, rapid fatigue when performing graphic tasks. Incorrect posture, prolonged sitting at the table, prolonged performance of graphic tasks can cause postural disorders, curvature of the spine, deformities of the leading hand.

An important component of a child's psychophysiological readiness is the normal functioning of the nervous system. Nervous activity disorders can lead to rapid fatigability of children, exhaustion, instability of attention, low memory productivity and, in general, have a negative effect on learning activity. Revealing the parameters of psychophysiological readiness for learning allows taking into account the individual characteristics of children in the learning process and thus preventing many psychological and pedagogical problems.

Under intellectual readiness a child for learning is understood to be a certain level of development of cognitive processes - mental operations of generalization, comparison, classification, highlighting essential features, the ability to reason; a certain stock of ideas, including figurative and moral; the level of development of speech and cognitive activity.

The intellectual component of readiness also presupposes the presence of a child's outlook, a stock of specific knowledge, including:

formed elementary concepts of the type: species of plants and animals, weather phenomena, time units, quantity;
a number of general ideas: about the types of work of adults, about the home country, about holidays;
the concept of space (distance, direction of movement, size and shape of objects, their location);
ideas about time, units of its measurement (hour, minute, week, month, year).

The compliance of this awareness of children with the requirements of the school is achieved by the program according to which the kindergarten teacher works.

However, in Russian psychology, when studying the intellectual component of a child's psychological readiness for school, the emphasis is not on the amount of acquired knowledge, although this is also an important factor, but on the level of development of intellectual processes. The child should be able to highlight the essential in the phenomena of the surrounding reality, be able to compare them, see similar and different; he must learn to reason, find the causes of phenomena, draw conclusions.

Intellectual readiness for schooling implies the formation of elementary skills in children in the field of educational activity, namely the ability to single out and accept the educational task as an independent goal of activity, an idea of the content of teaching, educational actions and operations.

The intellectual readiness of children for learning is judged by the following criteria:

differentiation, selectivity and integrity of perception;
concentration and stability of attention;
developed analytical thinking, which provides the ability to establish basic connections between objects and phenomena;
logical memory;
the ability to reproduce a sample;
sensorimotor coordination.

The child's intellectual readiness for schooling is directly related to the development of thought processes. Developed visual-figurative thinking, a sufficient level of development of generalizations (prerequisites for verbal-logical thinking) is necessary. The older preschooler has to solve more and more complex and varied problems that involve the selection and use of various connections and relationships between objects and phenomena. Curiosity and cognitive activity stimulate the use of thinking processes by children for cognition of the surrounding reality, which goes beyond the boundaries of their direct practical activity. It is important that children have the opportunity to foresee the results of their mental actions in advance, to plan them.

An important component of a child's intellectual readiness for school is the development of speech. Speech development is closely related to intelligence and is an indicator of both the general mental development of a preschooler and the level of his logical thinking, while the ability to find individual sounds in words is important, i.e. developed phonemic perception. Adequate vocabulary, correct sound pronunciation, the ability to build a phrase, skills sound analysis words, knowledge of letters, ability to read.

Attention should be arbitrary. Children need to be able to arbitrarily control their attention, directing and holding it on the necessary objects. To this end, older preschoolers use certain methods that they adopt from adults. Memory should also include elements of arbitrariness, the ability to formulate and accept a mnemonic problem. To implement them, it is necessary to use techniques that contribute to increasing the productivity of memorization: repetition, drawing up a plan, establishing semantic and associative links in the memorized material, etc.

Thus, the intellectual readiness of children for schooling is made up of ideas about the content of educational activity and the ways of its implementation, elementary knowledge and skills, a certain level of development of cognitive processes that ensure the perception, processing and preservation of various information in the learning process (Table 10.7). Therefore, the preparation of preschoolers for learning should be aimed at mastering the means of cognitive activity, the development of the cognitive sphere, cognitive decentration and intellectual activity of the child.

Table 10.7

Characteristics of children's intellectual readiness for schooling


Stock of knowledge, horizons	Elementary concepts of mud: species of plants and animals, weather phenomena, time units, quantity; a number of general ideas: about the types of work of adults, about the home country, about holidays; the concept of space (distance, direction of movement, size and shape of objects, their location); ideas about time, units of its measurement (hour, minute, week, month, year)
Ideas about the content and methods of performing educational activities	Elementary ideas about the specific content of training; academic work skills (landing at a desk, orientation on a page in a notebook, the ability to act in accordance with a rule, etc.)
Development of cognitive processes	Ability to highlight the essential; the ability to see similarities and differences; ability to concentrate; the ability to remember the necessary information; the ability to explain and reason;
	the ability to generalize and differentiate; understanding of speech; the ability to formulate statements to express your thoughts; correct pronunciation; developed phonemic hearing; cognitive activity.

Under the child's personal readiness for school means the presence of developed educational motivation, communication skills and joint activities, emotional and volitional stability, which ensures the success of educational activities (Fig. 10.6).

Rice. 10.6.

LI Bozhovich identifies several aspects of the child's mental development that have the most significant impact on the success of educational activities. These include a certain level of development of the child's motivational-need sphere, which presupposes developed cognitive and social learning motives, developed voluntary regulation of behavior. L. I. Bozhovich considers educational motives to be the most significant component in a child's psychological readiness for schooling, which she divided into two groups:

broad social motives of learning, or motives associated with the child's needs in communicating with other people, in their assessment and approval, with the student's desires to take a certain place in the system of social relations available to him;
motives directly related to learning activities, or the cognitive interests of children, the need for intellectual activity and in mastering new skills, skills and knowledge.

N.V. Nizhegorodtseva and V.D.Shadrikov distinguish six groups of motives in the structure of the motivational sphere of future first-graders:

social motives based on an understanding of the social significance and necessity of learning and striving for the social role of a student ("I want to go to school, because all children must learn, this is necessary and important");
educational and cognitive motives, interest in new knowledge, desire to learn something new;
evaluative motives, the desire to get high marks from an adult, his approval and disposition ("I want to go to school, because there I will only get A's);
positional motives associated with an interest in the external attributes of school life and the student's position ("I want to go to school because they are big, but in kindergarten they are small, they will buy me notebooks, pencil case and a portfolio");
motives external to school and learning ("I will go to school because my mother said so);
a play motive, inadequately transferred to educational activities ("I want to go to school, because there you can play with friends").

A child who is ready for schooling wants to learn because he seeks to take a certain position in society, which makes it possible to join the world of adults, and also because he has a developed cognitive need that cannot be satisfied at home. The synthesis of these two needs leads to the formation of a new attitude of the child to the surrounding reality, which L. I. Bozhovich called "the inner position of the student", i.e. the system of the child's needs and aspirations associated with the school, such an attitude to school, when the child experiences participation in it as his own need. L.I.Bozhovich considered this new formation to be a purely historical phenomenon and very significant, regarding it as a central personal positioning, which characterizes the structure of a child's personality, determines his behavior and activities, and also determines the characteristics of his relationship to the surrounding reality, to other people and to to myself. With the formed internal position of the student, the child realizes the school way of life as the life of a person who is engaged in educational socially useful activities, assessed by other people. The internal position of the student is characterized by the fact that the child has a rejection of preschool-play, individual-direct methods of action and there is a positive attitude towards learning activity in general, especially towards its aspects directly related to learning. The child considers educational activity to be an adequate path to adulthood for him, since it makes it possible to move to a new age level in the eyes of the younger and to be in an equal position with the elders, corresponds to his motives and needs to be like an adult and perform his functions. The formation of the student's internal position directly depends on the attitude of close adults and other children to learning. The formation of the student's internal position is one of the most important prerequisites for the successful inclusion of a child in school life.

Practical example

An experimental study by M.S. Grineva revealed that senior preschoolers undergo a restructuring of their personal readiness for school. At five years old, the inner position of the student is associated only with the child's ability to accept and maintain a role in the decision process social task, components of self-awareness, motives for learning and emotional attitude to school are not associated with the idea of oneself as a student. Six-year-old and seven-year-old children develop an interconnection between the student's internal position and the sphere of self-awareness, which is mediated by the motivational aspects of attitudes toward school.

The structure of a child's personal readiness for school includes the characteristics of the volitional sphere. The arbitrariness of the child's behavior is manifested when the requirements and specific rules of the adult are fulfilled. Already in preschool age, the child needs to overcome the difficulties that arise and subordinate his actions to the set goal. Many skills as prerequisites for the successful mastering of the educational activity of a younger student arise precisely on the basis of an arbitrary regulation of activity, namely:

deliberate submission of their actions to a certain rule, which generally conditions mode of action;
performance of activities based on targeting system of requirements;
attentive perception of the speaker's speech and accurate performance of tasks in accordance with oral instructions;
independent execution necessary actions based on the visually perceived sample.

In essence, these skills are indicators of the level of the actual development of randomness, on which the educational activity of a younger student is based. But this level of voluntary regulation of activity can manifest itself only under the condition of formed game or educational motivation.

The neoplasm "internal position of the student", which arises at the turn of preschool and primary school age and is a fusion of two needs - cognitive and the need to communicate with adults at a new level - allows the child to be involved in the educational process as a subject of activity, which is expressed in social formation and fulfillment of intentions and goals, or, in other words, arbitrary behavior of the student. It makes no sense to talk about arbitrariness as an independent component of readiness for school, since arbitrariness is inextricably linked with motivation. The emergence of a certain volitional orientation, the highlighting of a group of educational motives that become the most important for the child, leads to the fact that, guided in his behavior by these motives, he consciously achieves the set goal, not succumbing to any distracting influence. The child needs to be able to subordinate his actions to motives that are significantly removed from the goal of the action. The development of arbitrariness for purposeful activity, working on a model largely determines the child's school readiness.

An important component of a child's personal readiness for schooling is also the development of communication skills, the ability to interact in a group, performing joint learning activities. Peculiarities of relationships with adults, peers and attitude to oneself also determine the level of psychological readiness of a child for school, since it correlates with the main structural components of educational activity. Communication in a lesson situation is characterized by the exclusion of direct emotional contacts, the absence of conversations on extraneous topics. Therefore, preschoolers should develop a certain attitude towards the teacher as an indisputable authority and role model, and extra-situational forms of communication should be formed. Personal readiness for school also implies a certain attitude of the child towards himself, a certain level of development of self-awareness.

The effectiveness of educational activities largely depends on the child's adequate attitude to his abilities, the results of educational actions, and behavior. Personal readiness also presupposes the formation of mechanisms of emotional anticipation and emotional self-regulation of behavior.

In this way, personal readiness for schooling presupposes a combination of certain characteristics of volitional, motivational, emotional spheres and the sphere of self-awareness of a child, which are necessary for a successful start of educational activity.

Psychological readiness to study at school is considered at

the current stage of development of psychology as a complex characteristic

a child who reveals the levels of development of psychological qualities,

which are the most important prerequisites for normal inclusion in a new

social environment and for the formation of educational activities.

In the psychological dictionary, the concept of "readiness for schooling"

considered as a set of morpho - physiological characteristics

a child of older preschool age, ensuring a successful transition to

systematic, organized schooling.

V.S. Mukhina argues that readiness for schooling is

desire and awareness of the need to learn resulting from

social maturation of the child, the appearance of internal contradictions in him,

setting motivation for learning activities.

D.B. Elkonin believes that the child's readiness for schooling

presupposes the "rotation" of the social rule, that is, the system of social

relationship between a child and an adult.

The most complete concept of "readiness for school" is given in the definition

L.A. Venger, by which he understood a certain set of knowledge and skills, in

which all other elements must be present, although their level

development can be different. The components of this set are, first of all

is motivation, personal readiness, which includes "internal

position of a student ”, strong-willed and intellectual readiness. (10)

The child's new attitude to environment arising at

admission to school, L. I. Bozhovich called the "internal position of the student",

considering this neoplasm as a criterion of readiness to learn at school. (8)

In her research, T.A. Nezhnova indicates that the new social

position and corresponding activity develop insofar as

they are accepted by the subject, that is, they become the subject of his own

needs and aspirations, the content of his "internal position". (36)

A.N. Leontiev considers directly the driving force behind the development of the child

his real activity with changes in the "internal position". (28)

V last years increasing attention to the problem of readiness for school

training is given abroad. In addressing this issue, as noted

J. Jirasek, theoretical constructions are combined, on the one hand,

practical experience, on the other. The peculiarity of the research is that in

the intellectual capabilities of children are at the center of this problem. It finds

reflection in tests showing the development of the child in the field of thinking,

memory, perception and other mental processes. (35)

According to S. Shtrebel, A. Kern, J. Jirasek, a child entering school

must have certain characteristics of a schoolchild: be mature in

mental, emotional and social relationships. (28)

differential perception, voluntary attention, analytical

By emotional maturity, they mean emotional resilience and

almost complete absence of the child's impulsive reactions.

They associate social maturity with the child's need to communicate with

children with the ability to obey interests and conventions

children's groups, as well as with the ability to take on a social role

the student in the social situation of schooling.

It should be noted that, despite the variety of positions, all

readiness for schooling use the concept of "school maturity",

based on the false concept that the emergence of this maturity

due mainly to the individual characteristics of the process of spontaneous

maturation of the innate inclinations of a child and substantially independent of

social conditions of life and education. In the spirit of this concept, the main

attention is paid to the development of tests that serve to diagnose the level of school

maturity of children. Only a small number of foreign authors - Vronfenvrenner,

Vruner - criticize the provisions of the concept of "school maturity" and emphasize

the role of social factors, as well as the characteristics of social and family

education in its origin.

Components of a child's psychological readiness for school

are:

Motivational (personal),

Intellectual,

Emotionally - strong-willed.

Motivational readiness - the child's desire to learn. V

A.K. Markova, T.A. Matis, A.B. Orlov showed that

the emergence of a child's conscious attitude to school is determined by the way

submission of information about it. It is important that the information provided to children about the school

were not only understood, but also felt by them. Emotional experience

is ensured by the inclusion of children in activities that activate both

thinking and feeling. (31)

In terms of motivation, two groups of learning motives were identified:

1. Broad social motives of learning or motives associated with needs

child in communication with other people, in their assessment and approval, with a desire

student to take a certain place in the system of public

relationships.

2. Motives directly related to educational activities, or

cognitive interests of children, the need for intellectual activity

and in mastering new skills, skills and knowledge.

Personal readiness for school is expressed in the child's attitude to school,

teachers and educational activities, also includes the formation of children

qualities that would help them communicate with teachers and

classmates.

Intellectual readiness presupposes a child's outlook,

stock of specific knowledge. The child must have a systematic and dismembered

perception, elements of a theoretical attitude to the studied material,

generalized forms of thinking and basic logical operations, semantic

memorization. Intellectual readiness also involves the formation of

the child's initial skills in the field of educational activities, in particular,

the ability to highlight a learning task and turn it into an independent goal

activities.

V.V. Davydov believes that a child should own mental

operations, be able to generalize and differentiate objects and phenomena

the world around you, be able to plan your activities and carry out

self-control. At the same time, a positive attitude towards learning is important, the ability

to self-regulation of behavior and the manifestation of volitional efforts to perform

assigned tasks. (eighteen)

In Russian psychology, in the study of the intellectual component

psychological readiness for school, the emphasis is not on the amount of learned

a child of knowledge, but at the level of development of intellectual processes. That is

the child should be able to highlight the essential in the phenomena of the environment

reality, to be able to compare them, to see similar and different; he

must learn to reason, find the causes of phenomena, draw conclusions.

Discussing the problem of readiness for school, D.B. Elkonin in the first place

set the formation of the necessary prerequisites for educational activities.

Analyzing these premises, he and his staff identified the following

parameters:

The ability of children to consciously subordinate their actions to the rules, in general

determining the mode of action,

Ability to focus on a given system of requirements,

Ability to listen carefully to the speaker and accurately perform tasks,

offered orally,

Ability to independently perform the required task visually

perceived pattern.

These parameters of the development of arbitrariness are part of the psychological

readiness for school, teaching in the first grade is based on them.

D.B. Elkonin believed that voluntary behavior is born in the game in

a team of children, allowing the child to rise to a higher

step (41)

Studies by E.E. Kravtsova (25) showed that for development

arbitrariness in a child during work, a number of conditions should be met:

It is necessary to combine individual and collective forms

activities,

Consider age features of the child,

Use games with rules.

Research by N.G. Salmina showed that for first grade schoolchildren

with a low level of randomness, a low level of play

activity, and, therefore, are characterized by learning difficulties. (53)

In addition to these components of psychological readiness for school,

researchers highlight the level of speech development.

R.S. Nemov argues that the speech readiness of children for learning and

learning is primarily manifested in their ability to use for arbitrary

management of behavior and cognitive processes. Equally important

is the development of speech as a means of communication and a prerequisite for mastering writing.

This function of speech should be given special care during the secondary and

older preschool childhood, since the development of written language is essential

determines the progress of the child's intellectual development. (35).

By the age of 6-7 years, a more complex independent

the form of speech is a detailed monologue statement. By this time

a child's lexicon consists of about 14 thousand words. He already owns

word measurement, the formation of tenses, the rules for making a sentence.

Speech in children of preschool and primary school ages develops

in parallel with the improvement of thinking, especially verbally -

logical, therefore, when psychodiagnostics is carried out development of thinking,

it partially affects speech, and vice versa: when the child's speech is studied, then

the obtained indicators cannot but reflect the level of development of thinking.

Completely separate linguistic and psychological types of analysis

speech is not possible, as well as separate psychodiagnostics of thinking and speech.

The fact is that a person's speech in its practical form contains both

linguistic (linguistic) and human (personal

psychological) beginning.

Summarizing what was said in the paragraph above, we see that in

cognitively, the child before entering school already reaches a very

a high level of development, ensuring the free assimilation of school

curriculum.

In addition to the development of cognitive processes: perception, attention,

imagination, memory, thinking and speech, in psychological readiness for school

includes formed personality traits. To enroll in school

the child must develop self-control, work skills, skills

communicate with people, role behavior. In order for the child to be ready for

learning and assimilation of knowledge, it is necessary that each of the named

characteristics was quite developed, including the level

development of speech.

At preschool age, the process of mastering speech is mainly completed:

* by the age of 7, the language becomes a means of communication and thinking of the child,

also a subject of conscious study, since in preparation for

school begins teaching reading and writing;

* the sound side of speech is developing. Younger preschoolers start

be aware of the peculiarities of your pronunciation, the process ends

phonemic development;

* the grammatical structure of speech is developing. Children are assimilated

patterns of morphological order and syntactic. Assimilation

grammatical forms language and the acquisition of a larger active vocabulary

allow them to be specific at the end of preschool age

Thus, the high demands of life on the organization of upbringing and

training intensifies the search for new, more effective psychological -

pedagogical approaches aimed at bringing teaching methods into

compliance with the psychological characteristics of the child. Therefore the problem

psychological readiness of children to study at school receives a special

importance, since the success of subsequent training depends on its decision

The mental development of children in the transition from preschool to school age

Problems of school readiness of 7-year-old students.

Traditionally, there are five separate aspects of a child's readiness for schooling:

physical(determined by indicators of weight, height, muscle tone, vision, hearing);

intellectual(not only vocabulary, outlook, special skills, but also the level of development of cognitive processes and their focus on the zone of proximal development, higher forms of visual-figurative thinking, the ability to single out an educational task and turn it into an independent goal of activity);

emotional-strong-willed(a decrease in impulsive reactions and the ability to perform a not very attractive task for a long time);

personal and socio-psychological(the formation of the child's readiness to accept a new "social position", the formation of which is conditioned by the new attitude of others to the child).

Accordingly, with insufficient development of one of the above parties, problems of successful learning arise. Comprehensive preparation of the preschooler for school is carried out.

Traditionally in Russian psychology, a child who has reached the age of 7 was considered a junior schoolchild. Based on the periodization of the mental development of D.B. Elkonin in a 7-year-old child, all psychological neoplasms characteristic of primary school age have been formed (loss of immediacy in social relations, generalization of experiences associated with assessment, a certain level of self-control, etc.). At the same time, it is noted that the transition from one psychological age to another is marked by a change in the leading type of activity, for example, in preschool age it is a role-playing game, and in primary school age it is a systematic teaching. Discussing the problem of readiness for school education, D.B. Elkonin, in the first place put the formation of psychological prerequisites for mastering educational activity, to which he attributed: the child's ability to consciously subordinate his actions to a rule that generally determines the mode of action; the ability to focus on the system of rules in work; the ability to listen to and follow the instructions of an adult; the ability to work according to the model. According to the author, these prerequisites are formed within the framework of preschool activities, among which play takes a special place.

Psychological readiness for school is a complex education that presupposes a sufficiently high level of development of motivational, intellectual spheres and the sphere of arbitrariness. By the end of preschool age, there are three lines of development (P. Ya. Halperin):

1 - the line of formation of voluntary behavior, when the child can obey school rules;

2 - the line of mastering the means and standards of cognitive activity, which allow the child to move on to understanding the conservation of quantity;

3 - the line of transition from egocentrism to decentration. Development along these lines determines the child's readiness for schooling.

To these three lines, which were analyzed by D. B. Elkonin, motivational readiness should be added child to school. Intelligent readiness includes: orientation in the environment; stock of knowledge; development of thought processes (the ability to generalize, compare, classify objects); development different types memory (figurative, auditory, mechanical, etc.); development of voluntary attention. Openness to school Intrinsic motivation, that is, the child wants to go to school because it is interesting there, and he wants to know a lot, and not because he will have a new knapsack or because his parents promised to buy a bicycle (extrinsic motivation). Preparing a child for school includes the formation of his readiness to accept a new "social position" - the position of a schoolchild who has a range of important responsibilities and rights, occupying a different, compared to preschoolers, a special position in society. Strong-willed readiness for school. The formation of the strong-willed readiness of the future first grader also requires serious attention. After all, hard work awaits him, he will need to be able to do not only what he wants, but also what the teacher, the school regime, the program will demand of him. By the age of six, the basic elements of volitional action are formed: the child is able to set a goal, make a decision, outline a plan of action, execute it, show a certain effort in case of overcoming an obstacle, evaluate the result of his action. L. S. Vygotsky said that readiness for school education is formed in the course of training itself. The transition to the school system is the transition to assimilation scientific concepts, the transition from the reactive program to the program of school subjects.

Any psychological concept usually has its own history.... We are now used to the combination of “ready for school”. But this is a rather young term. And the problem of school readiness is also very young. In the early 80s, they just started talking about her. And even such great psychologists as A.V. Davydov, did not attach serious importance to it. And the problem of readiness arose in connection with the experiments in teaching six-year-olds. As long as the children went to school from the age of seven or even from the age of eight, no questions arose. Of course, some studied better, others - worse. The teachers dealt with this and explained the reasons for the failure in their own way: “ bad family"," Launched "," there are not enough stars from the sky. " But when faced with six-year-olds, their familiar, well-established methods of work suddenly collapsed. Moreover, the predictions of the school success of children and the usual explanations for their failures turned out to be untenable. Here comes a nice child from an intelligent family. Raised. Parents pay a lot of attention to him, develop him as best they can. He reads and counts. It would seem, what else to want from a future student? Just teach him - and you get an excellent student. It doesn't work that way! Six-year-olds were not accepted everywhere. As a rule, these were elite schools that had the opportunity to select children in one way or another. The teachers were selected according to their usual indicators. And six months later, it turned out that almost half of the selected children did not live up to the hopes placed in them. Not that they did not get excellent students: a problem arose even at the level of mastering the program. It seemed that the difficulties that had arisen could be solved: since the children are poorly trained, it means that they are poorly prepared. And since you are ill prepared, you need to cook better. For example, from the age of five. And this "better" again meant "read, count", etc. And again nothing worked. Because nothing good can be done with a child by mechanically lowering the educational bar, ignoring the laws of his psychological development.

Readiness- this is a certain level of human mental development. Not a set of certain skills and abilities, but a holistic and rather complex education. Moreover, it is wrong to narrow it down solely to “school readiness”. Each new stage of life requires a certain readiness from the child - readiness to engage in role-playing games, readiness to go to camp without parents, readiness to study at a university. If a child, due to his developmental problems, is not ready to enter into extended relationships with other children, he will not be able to participate in role play.

For a child to turn from a preschooler into a schoolchild, he must change qualitatively. He must develop new mental functions. They cannot be trained in advance because they are absent at preschool age. "Training" is generally an incorrect word in relation to little child... Motor skills, thinking, memory - all this is wonderful. Only has nothing to do with school readiness.