All articles

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.

In this empirical study we analyse how children (aged four- to six-years-old) through communicative engagement with their teachers around their own drawings are supported in developing representational insight, that is, going from indicative sign-making to symbolic understanding. Theoretically, the analysis is informed by a sociocultural perspective, particularly Vygotsky’s work on concept development. The empirical data consist of approximately five hours of video observations of teacher–child communication in preschool. The activities analysed were designed by the teachers according to two different principles for facilitating discernment of the conventional meaning of symbols: contrast and induction. While one design is seen to be more powerful than the other in supporting children’s symbolic development, these patterns are, in the study and in everyday early childhood practice, intertwined with other communicative features such as establishing intersubjectivity. The implications for research and educational practice are discussed.

Relevance. Observing the modern processes taking place in the educational society, it is impossible not to note the marked generation gap and, as a result, the depreciation of cultural ideals and values among young people and the younger generation. The article presents the experience of testing the pedagogical technology “Artifact”, based on the key ideas of the cultural and historical approach and designed to make cultural artifacts the semantic and value core of the educational process of a preschool educational organization.

Progress of the study. The study involved 147 preschoolers aged 4 to 7 years attending preschool educational organizations in Moscow and the Voronezh Region. The study was supposed to design a complex of psychological and pedagogical conditions for the development of a cultural sample by a child through the acquaintance of preschoolers with a cultural artifact, the restoration of cultural meanings and contexts, and to obtain products of children’s creativity (children’s artifacts) created on its basis.

The results of the study. In each age group participating in the study, the original cultural artifacts were identified and based on them, various children’s artifacts with partial or complete reproduction of mastered cultural samples were obtained using the Artifact technology.

Conclusions. A cultural artifact, as an entry point into culture under specially designed psychological and pedagogical conditions, is an object of cognition appropriate to preschool childhood and a source of a cultural sample offered to a child for development in the zone of proximal development. Being a part or the basis of a children’s creative product (children’s artifact), a cultural sample becomes a particle of the culture of the future and an important condition for the formation of a conscious and value-based attitude of the younger generation to cultural heritage. Thus, the Artifact technology has been successfully tested in the conditions of real pedagogical processes in kindergartens and can be recommended for solving problems related to the implementation of a value-oriented component of educational programs and the assignment of traditional Russian values by preschoolers.