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Background. The article presented as a discussion brings up the variety of relevant topics on the dialectical thinking formation: “Why is the modern education not interested in developing the dialectical thinking?”; “If based on the dialectical and formal logic, will educ programs be marked with internal inconsistencies?”; “Can psychology define the operational structure of dialectical thinking as well as in the theory of formal-logical thinking?” The discussion emphasises that digitization calls for new didactic methods to build a mind able to find flexible solutions in contradictory situations. 

Objective. The discussion advocate for using both the dialectical and formal logic in the modern education. 

Results. The discussion explores the highlights of N. E. Veraksa dialectical thinking concept. The discussion also demonstrates the operational structure presented by the dialectical mental actions of unification, transformation, reversal or change of alternative. The article considers the preferable age to start training dialectical thinking in a child: despite Jean Piaget’s thesis that a preschool child’s mind is insensitive to contradictions, the study recommends to start teaching children to solve contradictory situations at an early age. The article analyses the opportunities and prospects of implementing dialectical thinking concepts in the modern education.

Conclusions. The main conclusion of the article is that digitization of childhood featuring information-dense social situations of development encourages the psychological science to come up with methods of developing thinking in new cultural environment. One of such children’s cognitive deve­lopment methods is dialectical thinking in solving contradictory problems.

The relevance of the topic of the article. Dialectical thinking can act as a means of solving communicative and personal tasks by the subject. A dialectical strategy for solving such problems allows the subject to identify all the variety of characteristics, including mutually exclusive ones, and transform them. This contributes to a more tolerant attitude of the subject towards people around him and towards himself and, consequently, successful socialization.

Research methods. The article presents an analysis of studies carried out within the framework of the structural-dialectical approach on the issues of personality development and socialization of a preschool child. In accordance with the hypothesis, the directions of research are determined.

The first direction is the study of dialectical structures in arbitrary self-regulation and psychological and pedagogical conditions that contribute to the formation of a dialectical strategy of self-regulation in preschool children.

The second direction is the study of dialectical structures in the Self-concept and the possibility of forming in preschool children dialectical mechanisms of transformation of contradictions arising in the process of self-knowledge.

The third direction is the study of dialectical structures in social perception and the conditions for the formation of dialectical social intelligence in preschool children.

Conclusion. The study of dialectical structures in the development of the personality and socialization of the child will expand the possibilities of applying the structural-dialectical approach in practical psychology. It is important to develop dialectical thinking in children already in preschool age. The formation of a dialectical attitude towards oneself, people and events can contribute to the harmonization of relations with the outside world and oneself. This understanding opens up prospects for the development of methods of psychological correction of interpersonal relationships and personal development based on the formation of dialectical thinking in children, as well as the development of theory and practice of dialectical counseling and dialectical psychotherapy.

The relevance of the topic of the article. The development of tools for diagnosing the development of thinking in childhood is of interest for modern scientific research and educational practice. If the diagnosis of the formation of formal-logical operations in thinking has well-established traditions, then the creation of means for determining how a child thinks dialectically - in a contradictory situation, is at the beginning of its path in the field of developmental psychology. Since dialectical thinking is associated with the development of the child’s creativity, with flexibility, the creation of diagnostic methods to identify the formation of dialectical thinking is an urgent educational task.

The aim of the study. The design and psychometric evaluation of the methodology for determining the formation of the child’s dialectical mental action of changing the alternative are provided.

Description of the research progress. The methodology for diagnosing the dialectical mental action of changing an alternative consists of 15 series of 6 pictures each depicting images of flora, fauna and familiar objects of everyday life known to children. Children are invited to form two classes from six pictures. When choosing a classification basis, the action of changing the alternative is performed. The study involved 100 children aged 6 years 10 months to 8 years 2 months.

Research results. In the process of psychometric evaluation of the methodology for diagnosing the dialectical mental action of changing alternatives, procedures for calculating validity, reliability and discriminativeness were carried out.

Conclusion. High indicators of constructive and criterial validity, retest reliability of the method, its discriminativeness allow using it as a diagnostic tool in determining the child’s ability to use the dialectical mental action of changing the alternative.

The relevance of the topic of the article. For the wide educational practice of kindergartens, the question of the psychological mechanisms of creative thinking is fundamental, since their formation begins precisely at the age of three to five years. If during this period of a person’s life the educational process is structured in such a way that the child’s creative thinking is not supported or even suppressed, then it will be very difficult, and sometimes impossible, to compensate for gaps in cognitive development at later life stages. It should be emphasized that, as a rule, teachers do not support creative thinking or even act to the detriment of it precisely because of a lack of understanding of the key principles of its development, which, in particular, are related to ensuring a balance of activities that actualize formal-logical, dialectical and symbolic structures of thinking.

The aim of the study. The work is aimed at identifying the features of the structure of cognitive abilities that make up the complex mechanism of creative thinking, which is one of the basic problems of psychology of cognitive development today. The question is posed of how dialectical thinking, formal logic and the ability to symbolize are related in preschool age. The assumption is verified that the use of Piaget’s tools, focused on fixing reversibility relations and the formation of the phenomenon of preservation, will reveal new aspects of the relationship between formal-logical and dialectical thought structures.

Description of the research progress. 272 preschoolers from Moscow and other regions of the Russian Federation were individually diagnosed. For data processing, methods of correlation analysis and verification of the independence of parameters according to the Pearson’s chi-squared criterion were applied.

Research results. The results of the study showed that the connection between the three lines of cognitive development of preschoolers is traced more consistently in relation to formal and dialectical thinking. With regard to symbolization, the connections are less consistent. The article concludes that normative, transformative and symbolic abilities are relatively independent lines in the cognitive development of preschoolers.

Conclusion. The data obtained indicate the complexity and heterogeneity of the mechanism of creative thinking and the heterogeneous structure of relationships between formal-logical and dialectical structures, as well as the ability to symbolize. Therefore, the program for the development of creative thinking for preschoolers should have a balanced character: by influencing one type of structures, we cannot expect that the rest will also develop as a result of this influence. To actualize the complex mechanism of a child’s creative thinking in the pedagogical terms, it is necessary to design problem situations together with the children, the resolution of which requires both the use of formal and dialectical logic and the ability to invent symbols, images, metaphors.

Relevance (context) of the subject of the article. The problem of creative abilities is becoming increasingly important in two contexts at once – both in the context of human self-realization, and in the context of the development of practices and production. A special place is occupied by the development of creative abilities in preschool age: even in the works of Lev Vygotsky, it was said about the importance of considering the germs of creativity in the game and fantasy of children. Today, within the framework of the cultural-historical approach, there are a number of scientific schools that study the possibilities of diagnosing and developing children’s creativity.

The aim of the study is to analyze the approaches to the study of children’s creativity in cultural-historical psychology in order to understand what answers to the questions posed by Lev Vygotsky, were discovered over the past decades, and what remained unanswered. It is also important to see how the questions themselves were transformed, since the raising of a new question is a sign of the development of science. The correlation of existing approaches is important for the development of new research programs in the logic of cultural-historical psychology.

Description of the research. The article analyzes various approaches to the research and development of creative abilities: V.V. Davydov and V.T. Kudryavtsev, D.B. Bogoyavlenskaya, N.E. Veraksa and O.M. Dyachenko, V.N. Druzhinin, L.F. Obukhova. The general and specific characteristics of the interpretation of children’s creativity in different approaches of the cultural and historical tradition are highlighted. The conducted research correlates with the questions about the creative nature of the human psyche and about children’s creativity, posed by L.S.Vygotsky.

Research results. The article concludes that despite all the differences in the approaches that have appeared in the logic of the cultural-historical tradition, they are united by the idea of the resourcefulness of preschool childhood and the importance of educational efforts aimed at maintaining the “sprouts of creativity”. In Russian studies, the question is raised about the means of creative abilities that allow us transforming the present situation (dialectical structures and symbols), as well as about the affective-volitional component of the creative process – the ability to detect a task. All this distinguishes the concepts that were born within the framework of the cultural-historical approach from the theory of creativity by J. Guilford and E. Torrance. At the same time, it is indicated that children’s activities (playing, storytelling, experimentation, etc.) are still rarely considered in research as a context for the manifestation of creative abilities.

Conclusion. The article concludes that it is important to conduct new research, both ascertaining and longitudinal, which will allow us to take the next steps in understanding how the means of developing creative abilities are mastered in children’s activities and how this affects the formation of creative abilities in subsequent ages.

The article describes the results of the development and testing of a scale for evaluating conditions for the development of creative abilities in kindergarten. The review part discusses the process of “democratizing the concept of creativity” and changing ideas about the importance of developing creative abilities in preschool childhood as a significant trend in modern psychology and education. The methodological basis of the work is: structural-dialectical approach (N. Veraksa), where the construct of “dialectical thinking” is used to describe intellectual creativity, which is understood as a system of mental actions that allows solving paradoxical situations, transforming contradictory situations in such a way that a new solution to the problem appears; the concept of imagination, which is understood as the ability to “grasp” the whole before the parts and transfer the features of one object of reality to another (Ilyenkov, 1984; Dyachenko, 1996); an approach to the development of ECERS quality assessment scales.

The scale for assessing the conditions for the development of creative abilities in kindergarten presented in the article includes four indicators: understanding of development processes, questioning, invention and transformation of contradictions, imagination.

32 preschool groups took part in the approbation. The validity of the instrument was assessed by the method of contrasting groups identified on the basis of expert assessments. Reliability was determined by the method of consistency of expert assessments: in each group, experts carried out the assessment in pairs and independently of each other. The focus of the observations was: working with imagination, quality questions addressed to children, to allow easy experimentation, supportive emotional atmosphere, sensitivity to children new and original solutions and inventions emphasis is on working with thinking as a process, reflecting the processes of change and transformation, capable to resolve conflicts.

The analysis showed that the assessment tool makes it possible to distinguish between contrasting groups for all four indicators at a significance level not lower than 0.05, which indicates its validity. Also, a high consistency of expert assessments was found both at the level of indicators and at the level of individual indicators, which indicates its reliability. The Alpha-Cronbach coefficient is 0.87, which indicates a good level of internal consistency of the instrument. The tool allows to identify and analyze the parameters of the quality of preschool education, attention to which is not emphasized in other scales, for example, in the ECERS-3 scales for a comprehensive assessment of the quality of preschool education.

The obtained data on the reliability and validity of the developed tool allow us to conclude that it can be used to assess the conditions for supporting and developing the creative abilities of children in preschool groups.

The article presents the methodological basis and theoretical substantiation of the possibility of using training as a means of work aimed at the development of dialectical thinking of preschool age children.

The method of training of dialectical thinking is based on the methodology of structural-dialectical approach by N.E. Veraksa, general principles of correctional- developing work and requirements to training as a method. The special conditions defined by the specificity of dialectical actions as an object of influence are as follows.

1. Inclusion of conflict situations in different types of children’s activities.

2. Children’s understanding of the following terms reflecting dialectical relations and transformations: “opposite”, “middle”, “series”, “transformation”, “union” and “back”.

3. Matching of children’s understanding of such dialectical thinking actions as transformation, serialization, mediation, treatment, unification to their complexity.

4. Formation of dialectical thinking actions according to the theory by P.Y. Galperin of gradual formation of mental actions

5. Application of dialectical schemes that allow to fix opposites and relations between them, as well as dialectical transformations. Thirty-six children aged 6-7 participated in the cohort study. “What can happen at the same time?” and “Unusual tree” methods by N.E. Veraksa were used to evaluate the effectiveness of the training.

The results of the testing of the training demonstrate its effectiveness. The indicators of dialectical thinking of children participating in the training increased. Differences in the indicators at the stating and control stages according to U - Mann Whitney’s criterion in the cohort are not significant: the empirical value = 145.5, in experimental group it is significant: the empirical value = 87; U criteria = 109, p≤0.05.

The developed methodology can be applied in the development work of teachers and psychologists and preschool teachers.

Goal-setting. The paper focuses on narrative abilities of preschool children as a resource for their cognitive development. Considering the speech and language development by children applies Lev Vygotsky’s cultural-historical approach. The development is viewed as a dialectical process: development is considered not as a gradual growth, but as a series of qualitative transformations. The study emphasizes two statements from Lev Vygotsky’s analysis: first, the idea of the genetic connection of telling (and drawing) stories with the future learning of reading and writing; second, the idea of connection between figurative and verbal means of creating narratives at the preschool age. Lev Vygotsky’s ideas were considered in relation with current studies on children’s narrative abilities.

Procedure and Methods. The paper describes the study on connection between the structure of children’s narratives and the dialectical thinking of preschoolers.

Applied methods: “What can be at the same time?” (N.Veraksa); “What can be the other way round?)” (A. Belolutskaya); “Children’s test of cyclic representations” (N. Veraksa, S. Senyukova), “Tell a story” (A. Mak Keib). The study involved 34 children aged from five years to six years and eleven months. Each child was studied individually to avoid the influence of other children on the content of the story. A study on the method “Compilation of history using a dialectical pattern” (I. B. Shiyan) involving 44 senior preschool children (5 – 6.5 years of age) has been conducted. Children were asked to invent their own story (based on imagination or describing real events that happened to the child) using a dialectical pattern (beginning, middle, end) or without using one.

Results and Conclusion. The connection with the success of dialectical approach was detected only for stories based on the pattern. The study came to conclusion that using the “beginning, end, middle” storytelling pattern encourages children to create a more complex narrative, including operating with opposites. The creation of narratives can be used as a resource of cognitive development, in particular development of dialectical thinking in senior preschool children.

Background. The development of creative thinking is one of the important tasks of early childhood education. It is important to understand the role children’s activities, particularly story-telling, can play in this development. Of particular interest are narrative practices that create a social situation that supports children’s writing.

Objective: to analyze the influence of the narrative practice of “fairy tales with provocations” on the development of creative (dialectical) thinking of older preschoolers and individual parameters of fairy tale stories that children create.

Methods. The study involved 60 children aged 6-7 years. To diagnose creative (dialectical) thinking, the “What can happen at the same time?” (Veraksa N.E.) technique was used; to diagnose creative thinking and the ability to create symbolic images, the “Fire” subtest was used (the “Three Stories” method by Shiyan O.A.). We proposed the narrative practice “Fairy Tales with Provocations” as a way to activate children’s creative thinking.

Results. According to the results of the initial diagnostics, no significant differences were found; the results of the children in the experimental and control groups did not have any of the study parameters. The final diagnostics showed that in the control group no significant positive changes were found compared to the initial diagnosis in any of the studied parameters, while in the experimental group significant positive changes were found at a significant level in everyone according to all measurable parameters: creative (dialectical) thinking, creative transformations and artistic (symbolic) image in narratives, as well as the structure of narratives.

Conclusion. The study showed that the narrative practice “Fairy Tales with Provocations” is an adequate way to develop creative (dialectical) thinking, and also has a positive effect on the stories that children create: they become more complex and structured, they contain more creative transformations and artistic (symbolic) images. All this suggests that such symbolic activities as writing fairy tales are an important space for the development of children’s creativity. The results can be used to build educational work with children based on the resource of children’s activities.