Nikolay E. Veraksa

The article is dedicated to Malaysian system of preschool education. The author analyzes its history and present structure, aims and methods of their achievement. Special attention is drawn to “Permata” project which embraces children of early age and preschoolers, its major principles and results achieved.

Preschool education is becoming of increased importance for the general educational system. This poses questions of its effective management and instruments for improvement and assessment of its quality. The article analyses modern approaches to quality assessment of preschool education, like evaluation of educational programs, diagnostics of children’s cognitive development, and other complex scales. Special attention is paid to comparison of authentic and traditional approaches to assessment of child’s development. The authors provide with pros and cons of tests in preschool educational system, describe research aimed at studying authentic assessment.

One of the trends of modern social psychology is connected with the study of the environment in which a person develops. The article deals with an understanding of the mental development of the child from the perspective of ecological approach of U.Bronfenbrenner. The examples that reveal the relationship between the components of the social situation of development in terms of the ecological approach are given. The structure of the ecological environment of the person represented by the built-in one another microsystem mesosistemoy, exosystem and macrosystem. On the material of the research the features of each of the structures of ecological environment are demonstrated. It has been shown that human development is due to the interaction of the four main factors: personal characteristics, ecological environment, the activities in which he a person is involved, and the time. The concept of ecological validity is discussed. The importance of incorporating environmental considerations in the construction of educational work with children, planning research and development activities is shown.

The paper is devoted to the role of fairy tales in the cognitive and personal development of children. The article reviews the dialectical approach to the analysis of fairy tales. On the example of folk tales of the world, the generality of structural transformations inherent in fairy tales is shown.

The conclusion is made about the importance of fairy tales for the development of children’s creative abilities. Particular attention is devoted to the approach of L.S. Vygotsky, on the basis of which the grounds for correlating fairy tales with the age of the child are distinguished.

Analysis of the social situation of development at each age makes it possible to determine the essential aspects of fairy tales and narratives that are necessary for productive interaction between a child and an adult. Examples are given and a conclusion is made about the importance of following the principles of cultural-historical psychology for creating and using fairy tales as a way for a child to enter culture.