Larisa F. Bayanova

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 key actors in the normative interaction situations are a child and an adult. It is an adult, who is broadcasting rules to the child, and who can evaluate the degree of congruence of the child as a subject of culture (of the normative situation). The paper presents an analysis of the psychology of the child’s correspondence with the rules of culture – cultural congruence. Education of the individual in a culture is the formation of the creative potential of the child, based on the capacity of critical analysis and reflection. The authors emphasize that the education of the individual requires means that differ from those that are needed for raising the subject. The article describes a technique for identifying the cultural congruence among 5-6 years old children. The method is based on the identified range of human interaction in the social situations between the child and the adult. It allows to determine compliance of the child with the standards on the basis of indicators of five scales which together form integral indicator of cultural congruence.

The article provides an overview of international research relating to the study of interaction between child and rule in a normative situation. The reason why the analysis of the articles brings up the issue of child and rule interaction stems from L.Vygotsky’s theory of cultural determination and provisions of N.Veraksa’s theory of culture as a system of normative situations. In contrast to Russian authors who reflect the psychology of a child’s interaction with culture, their foreign counterparts focus on more specific points, consequently, research in developmental psychology has more to do with phenomenology than theory or conception. Among the sources of the articles cited are works recently written by scholars in the field of child psychology and dedicated to different aspects of a child’s learning the rules of the cultural context of its development. Research into the issue of interaction between the child and the rule is empirical in nature and involves addressing specific situations which contain certain cultural norms. The article analyzes the studies related to the safety of children, the role of imitation in learning the rules, mass media influence on the nature of rules to be learned, formation of pro-environmental behavior through a system of specific rules and everyday behaviors which the researchers call contextually normal, the interrelation between a child’s knowledge of rules and relevant discursive strategies in children’s struggle for power.

This article presents a review of recent international studies on the problem of the creativity in childhood. The appeal to the problem of children’s creativity is methodologically set forth by the cultural-historical theory of L. Vygotsky. Unlike the works of Russian authors considering the problem of creativity in the context of the imagination, activity and creative potential of the individual, international authors focus on more particular research: cross-cultural differences in creativity, the relationship between pedagogical activity and the creativity of children, the effects of fixation on creativity, divergent thinking in the context of creativity etc. The article provides the review results of recent research in the field of developmental psychology where the problem of creativity is discussed in four ways. The first line of research combines resources which provide the theoretical underpinning of creativity and contemplate its structure. The second considers creativity in its cultural context. The third discusses creativity of teachers. The fourth reflects specific empiric studies of creativity in the childhood. These studies are both theoretical and empirical. The finding confirm the relevance of the study of creativity precisely in childhood, since the development and formation of the personality begins at an early age, therefore it is important to take into account the specificity of creativity in relation to and in interaction with other mental processes and personal states in early ontogeny.

Methodology. The development of self-regulation in preschoolers is determined by the features of a cultural situation, which consists of a set of invariable normative rules. To abide by the cultural rules means that a child develops his/her “cultural congruence” (Bayanova). This process reflects the child’s evolution as an agent of a culture. The cognitive aspect of self-regulation was studied in the framework of the model of “executive functions” (Miyake). This model includes three related and simultaneously independent factors, such as Working Memory, Flexibility and Inhibitory Control.

The aim of the research is to explore how the assimilation of cultural rules of a “normative situation” (Veraksa) may influence the development of executive functions in preschoolers of different genders.

Method and structure of the research. 113 children aged 5-6 (58 boys and 55 girls) and 113 mothers (aged 24-44) took part in the research. All of the children attended kindergartens of Tatarstan. The assessment of cultural congruence was carried out using a questionnaire for parents, which included invariable rules for children 5-6 years old and allowed for assessing the extent to which children follow these rules. Diagnostics of executive functions was implemented with a set of techniques, which included the subtests of the test battery NEPSY-II (Korkman et al., 2007) and the DCCS (Zelazo, 2006).

Results. It was revealed that boys with a “higher” level of cultural congruence better develop verbal memory, whereas boys with a “low” level of congruence better switch from one task to another and better memorize visual images. The features of the development of executive functions in the group of girls on the whole do not depend on the level of their cultural congruence,

Conclusions. The data obtained indicate the gender specificity of the influence of cultural congruence on executive functions in preschoolers, which substantially clarifies the results obtained in other studies.

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.