ISSN 0798 1015

Vol. 39 (# 21) Year 2018. Page 28

Socialization of a personality under the conditions of globalization and informatization of the society

Socialización de una personalidad bajo las condiciones de globalización e informatización de la sociedad

Marina Georgievna SERGEEVA 1; Ludmila Zhalalovna KARAVANOVA 2; Marina Anatolievna BEREZNATSKAYA 3; Kirill Evgenyevich KLYCHKOV 4; Tatiana Evgenievna LOKTIONOVA 5; Vera Arnoldovna CHAUZOVA 6

Received: 12/01/2018 • Approved: 12/02/2018

Contents

1. Introduction

2. Research methodology

3. Research results

4. Discussion

5. Conclusion

References

1. Introduction

Modern social environment significantly influences the process of personality development and causes certain contradictions: on the one hand, the social-cultural modernization generates a need for a new approach to the problem of personal social self-realization and demands a higher activity from a person, who is viewed as a subject of social life, as well as his/her responsibility for their actions and behavior; on the other hand, the instability of modern society increases natural difficulties of personal maturity; the instability leads to personal development distortion and maladjustment in the society.

The modernization of the education system had as a consequence changes in the education content, forms, methods and technologies, which caused a necessity to estimate the results of the education system functioning. In the pedagogical science and practice, talks about the quality suggest analyzing graduates’ competences. Social competency is given special importance. It is considered to be one of the most significant indicators of specialists’ professional competency in the sphere of economic, labor and social relations. Modern society urgently needs socially competent members, able to show high adaptability, ready for new tasks and innovations, interested in developing their professional efficiency, planning their future and ready to take responsibility. There is a need in specialists who are ready to accept new development concepts that suggest active interaction of the society members. The society wants its competitive citizens to be able to influence the system of management and develop this attitude as a part of social conscience.

Social competency implies that the person, first of all, considers him-/herself to be a society member; possesses the system of ethical and moral standards typical for the society; recognizes the necessity to orient all his/her activity on the benefit of the society; takes social responsibility for the consequences of his/her actions; interacts with other society members; is prepared for a flexible role shift; is ready for changes and able to influence the process of changes in interpersonal relationships; strives and is able to gain public interest in his/her professional and social activity; aspires to balance his/her professional and social status with individual characteristics.

The problem of social competency development is relatively new in the modern native psycho-pedagogical science. The interest in it from the side of sociologists, psychologists, educators is connected with those changes which took place in the Russian society at the end of the 20th century (Karavanova and Sergeeva 2014).

2. Research methodology

The process of competency development is complex and multifaceted. It comprises the development of competences of a different nature and character. The basic competences comprise general and subject competences which are responsible for a specialist’s professionalism, i.e. how good is his/her command of content competences and how well he/she can use them in their professional activity. 

Literature analysis allowed defining competency as an integral personal-professional quality of an individual who has completed a certain level of education, which: 1) is expressed through the individual’s preparedness and ability for a successful, productive and effective activity, with its social significance and social risks taken into consideration, on the basis of the received education; 2) ensures efficient interaction with the surrounding world with the help of corresponding competences (Raven 2002).

Most researchers agree that the content of any competency contains: a) knowledge about the activity; b) the skill of flexibility within the situations of this activity; c) the skill to estimate one’s own resources and the others’ resources, to set tasks and find their adequate solutions; d) the experience of operations with tools; e) developed intuition, reflection and empathy (Machekhina 2007).

However, a lack of a unified understanding of competency essence generates diverse opinions of social competency. The problem of personal social competency development is of an interdisciplinary character, and, in contrast to the problem of general competency development and professional competency in particular, the directions of social competency development have been introduced in the study relatively recently. It should be noted that in the science, there are conditions for solving this problem. For theoretical insight into the given problem significant research has been carried out by Russian scientists, which has defined the essence and main characteristics of the social competency phenomenon; particular personal characteristics have become the object of study as well as psychological and pedagogical factors which determine a student’s social competency: conditions and factors of socialization and social adaptation; problems of personal self-identification, self-understanding, different types of social activity; the stages, levels and periods of a child’s social development have also been determined.  

Despite rather a short period of scientific interest in the social competency phenomenon, several approaches have been established in pedagogical literature by now, which allow determining key characteristics revealing the essence of this phenomenon and can help to build its model: а) a complex of social knowledge, skills, personal awareness of social processes; b) social interaction, personal ability and readiness for it, the skill to build relationships with other people and social organizations in the real life and work situations; c) a personality’s integral characteristic, which is formed in the process of education; d) the goal and the result of implementing special developing and educating programs in educational establishments (Sergeeva 2015).

The range of unsolved question comprises the following: social competency structure and specifics of its development on different education levels; the search of effective conditions, mechanisms and means of social competency development; modelling and projecting pedagogical conditions in an educational institution in which an individual will receive proper qualified assistance aimed at social competency development (Serickov 1999).

In Russia, assistance in the social competency development is still insufficient, despite the fact that in educational institutions, the infrastructure of support services has been actively developed in the past time, conceptual bases and variable models of their activity have been elaborated, a methodical base of pedagogical support has been accumulated and a special mechanism of interaction between the participants of the educational process – i.e. support aimed at students’ personal development – is being built.  The pedagogical support model of teenager social competency development has not been elaborated yet, the support services are not equipped with social technologies of educational environment enhancement focused on social competency development.

In foreign science, more attention is given to the problem of social competency. In their definitions, the range of components included in the structure of social competency is rather large:

- the ability of an individual to solve different problematic situations effectively and adequately;

- an individual’s everyday efficiency in his/her interaction with their environment;

- achieving certain social goals under specific social conditions, with appropriate means used and positive progress made;

- the ability to use resources of the social environment and personal resources with the purpose of achieving good results in development;

- the ability to be effectively involved in complicated interpersonal interaction, with proper understanding and usage of other people, etc.

The German psychologists W. Pfingsten and R. Hintsch define social competency as a command of cognitive, emotional and motor behavior modes, which in certain situations lead to a long-term advantageous correlation of positive and negative consequences (Hinsch and Wittman 2005).

H. Schröder and M. Vorwerg believe that the structure of social competency comprises four personal properties:

 1) sociability – an individual’s communicative potential;

 2) determination to create relationships – readiness for communication;

 3) influence – the property including the ability to persuade (the power of influence);

 4) “ego-conception” – cognitive-emotional image the center of which is self-esteem (Feldstein 1997).

R. Ulrich developed a concept which comprises seven characteristics of a socially competent person (Rogers 2001). According to him, a socially competent person has the following abilities:

1. To take decisions about themselves and to understand their own feelings and requirements.

2. To forget their own blocking unpleasant feelings and lack of confidence.

3. To see how to reach goals in the most efficient way.

4. To understand other people’s wishes, expectations and requirements properly, to estimate and consider their rights.

5. To analyze the sphere of social structures and establishments with their representatives’ roles, to include this knowledge in their behavior.  

6. To understand how to behave considering definite circumstances, other people, restrictions imposed by social structures and their own requirements.

7. To realize that social competency has nothing in common with aggression and implies respect to the rights and duties of other people.

In our research, we adhere to the position that social competency can be defined as social skills which allow a person to adequately follow the norms and rules of the society life. That is the reason why from the content point of view social competency is often seen as an active, self-motivated and constructive personal position in the society life, participation in the current events and personal responsibility for it, the desire to improve one’s personal life (Rean 1990).

Thus, social competency is a personal property which integrates personal social experience on a certain age level; cognitive, moral-ethic, personal characteristics which allow realizing an active life position and taking responsibility for the activity and behavior (Karavanova and Sergeeva 2014).

3. Research results

The comparative analysis of the notion social competency (Dewey 2003; Remschmidt 1994) allowed us to establish the components of social competency: the personal component, the social component, the cognitive component, the axiological component.

The personal component includes the ability to gain knowledge about the world and oneself, to take care of oneself and of others, to build relations with the society and surrounding people.

The social component includes social experience accumulated in the course of life while solving different conflict situations.

The cognitive component comprises social knowledge (knowledge of other peoples’ behavioral peculiarities; understanding the core of peoples’ sayings and their problems; knowledge of the ways of gaining necessary information);    social abilities (ability to address communication, offer help, attract the listener’s attention, show interest in the listener, empathize with the listener, get in contact with him/her and support them, understand the listener’s point of view, have a clear vision of the situation, argue in favor of one’s own point of view, prevent and handle with conflict situations, take responsibility for one’s own actions and sayings, be tolerant with people, prove one’s own opinion and hold one’s ground);   social skills (constructive interaction with different people, maintaining communication, sympathy in communication; understanding the psychological state of the other side; building communication considering the situation; being attentive to the listener; formulating one’s own ideas and speaking one’s own point of view; control over one’s own behavior, accomplishing all activity).

The axiological component is represented in personal axiological accents, in the ability to see and understand the surrounding reality and have a clear vision of it, to realize one’s own role and mission, to be able to choose goal and content attitudes for actions and behavior, to take decisions.

The focus of education on a personality means admitting the fact that each person possesses a necessary educational potential; the main thing is to help him/her realize this potential, i.e. provide personal pedagogical support in the course of the person’s social development. The process of pedagogical support is defined as assistance to the subject of development in building the orientation field in which the subject is responsible for his/her actions.

In our research, we take T.S. Kondratova’s opinion, who understands pedagogical support as: 1) professional interaction of teachers and other specialists (psychologists, doctors, etc.) which is aimed at a teenager’s personality with the purpose of pedagogical modification of the whole situation of development in order to enhance his/her personal resources necessary for social activity;  2) building relations which are reflected in personal qualities and axiological attitudes; 3) providing the possibility to receive experience of social interaction, which helps a person to become a subject of social actions and adequately follow the norms and rules of the society life (Kondratova 2009).

Pedagogical support is based on creating personality oriented pedagogical situations that are connected with the projection of such a way of the individual’s life which is appropriate to the nature of his/her personal development and is based on the technologies of active social teaching (discussions, trainings, business games) with the purpose of developing a subject of social activity (Bakhtigulova, 2014). Interactive engagement provides new experience and its theoretical insight through usage, allows adopting ways of activity organization and receiving new experience of activity, communication, emotions.

4. Discussion

As the research showed, in students’ social competency development, the most relevant are active teaching methods (Graham and Gray, 1977; Huizinga 2001). They are divided into non- operation (problem lecture, heuristic talk, teaching discussion, research laboratory work, etc.) and operation: non-simulation (the analysis ofreal situations, solving situational tasks, fulfilling action exercises in accordance with guidelines, etc.) and simulation (simulation activity on simulators, taking and playing roles, business game, moderation, etc.). 

The comparative analysis of operation teaching methods usage established their advantages (active teaching, collective thinking and action, teamwork as a tool of personal development, etc.) and disadvantages (ineffectiveness when used in large audiences; time-consuming; etc.). It allowed us to specify the usage of operation methods in developing economic competences: correlation with the graduate competency model, the necessity to develop teachers’ pedagogical mastery, the usage of the tutorial Simulated Company (Sergeeva 2015). We consider the tutorial Simulated Company, which was tested in the course of the research on different educational levels, to be a systemized complex of operation methods and have all characteristics typical of the methods (a certain form and supervision of students’ learning activity; specifics of knowledge digestion; managing and exchanging learning information between a teacher and a student; stimulation and motivation students’ learning activity; control over the educational process efficiency).

This tutorial provides a teacher with the following possibilities:

– in the educational process organization – projecting the elements of educational activity on the worksite; simulating students’ future real professional activity; to matching educational goals with commercial tasks; showing students interpersonal relations under market conditions, etc.;

– in setting pedagogical educational goals – shortening the distance between education and labor market requirements; establishing new relationships between a teacher and students; developing students’ personal properties in professional, managerial and ethic aspects; increasing students’ motivation with regard to their specialty; receiving the experience of teamwork, etc.;

– in solving pedagogical tasks – preparing a competitive specialist with a certain level of economic competences; increasing the graduate’s ability to adapt to new kinds and conditions of professional activity; motivating students to constantly develop their professional mastery; developing skills of quick orientation in the information stream, etc. 

The algorithm of developing the operation tutorial Simulated Company suggests the following stages:

– creation of the Simulated Company, which includes the presentation of the company (kinds of the company activity, name, logotype, moto, structure, etc.) and the analysis of the environment in which the company will function (the survey of goods demand and supply, competitive advantages, SWOT-analysis);

– functioning of the Simulated Company, which implies personnel recruitment (orders, personal files, etc.), control over professional activity (job descriptions, appraisals, staff turnover), building partnerships (bookkeeping documents on business trips expenses, agreements about collaboration);

– creating an automation-equipped working place.

The algorithm of developing the operation tutorial Simulated Company fortifies the found correlation between pedagogical goals at each stage and the used pedagogical methods. The first two stages of the algorithm (creation of the Simulated Company and functioning of the Simulated Company) are invariant and common for all specialties of professional education. The third stage is variable and oriented on a competitive specialty.

5. Conclusion

The increased requirements to the quality of comprehensive schools, colleges and university graduates demand a competency-based approach to the organization of the education process. The competency-based approach suggests not only developing knowledge, abilities and skills, but also learning action patterns in different life and work situations, which builds a person’s social competency.  In order to gain knowledge, abilities, skills and action patterns it is advisable to project real life and work situations, i.e. to use the context approach and the technology of project teaching and educating.  The projecting should go both from the side of a student (i.e. be realized by a student on his/her own) and a teacher (initiated, realized and supervised by a teacher). Combining the main principles of contextual teaching and elements of the technology of project teaching is the basis for the project-context approach usage in the teaching process of secondary school. Projecting situations of social life and activity is possible to realize by means of role-play projecting based on situation modelling and behavior projecting in these situations. For successful projecting of social life and work situations, special pedagogical conditions must be created and developed in educational institutions, which match with the concept of the competency-based  approach and principles of contextual teaching, the most important of which are modelling the context of social life in the educational space; the usage of motivating stimuli inspiring students to learn socially oriented actions and behavior; socially and personality oriented educational culture; a well-educated teacher’s personality and his/her humanistic attitude to a student’s personality; teachers continuous professional self-development.

The perspectives of research in the field of social competency development involve the search of innovative forms and technologies for an effective interaction of social educating institutions in the process of social competency development; the study of the influential capacity of wild socialization and pedagogical risks in the process of social competency development.  

References

Bakhtigulova, L.B. (2014). Professional pedagogic activity in the system education of a higher education institution. Moscow: FSBEI HPE MSUL.

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Feldstein, D.I. (1997). Social development in the time of childhood. Moscow: Flinta.

Graham, R.G. and Gray C.F. (1977). Instructions on operation games (Translated into Russian by F.V. Shirokova). Moscow: Sovradio.

Hinsch, R. and Wittman, S. (2005). Social competency. Moscow: Humanitarian Center.

Huizinga, J. (2001). Homo ludens (translated into Russian by V. Oshis). Moscow: EKSMO-Press.

Karavanova, L.Zh. and Sergeeva, M.G. (2014). The concept and model of professional and personal development of a social work graduate. Kursk: Regional Financial Economic Institute.

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Machekhina, O.N. (2007). Social competency development in high school students on the basis of project-contextual approach in modern educational process. Teaching History at school, 5, 15-19.

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Remschmidt, H. (1994). Adolescence: Personality problems (Translated into Russian by G.I. Laydina). Moscow: Mir.

Rogers, C. (2001). On Becoming a Person: A Therapists View of Psychotherapy (Translated into Russian by M. Zolotnick). Moscow: EKSMO-Press.

Sergeeva, M.G. (2015). Competence-based model of a graduate under the conditions of continuous professional education. Moscow: MIL.

Serickov, V.V. (1999). Education and personality. Theory and practice of pedagogical systems projecting. Moscow: Logos.

1. Peoples' Friendship University of Russia (RUDN University), 117198, Russia, Moscow, Miklukho-Maklaya st., 6; E-mail: sergeeva198262@mail.ru

2. Tver State University, 170100, Russia, Tver, Zhelyabova st. 33.  E-mail: karavanova_l54@mail.ru

3. Peoples' Friendship University of Russia (RUDN University), 117198, Russia, Moscow, Miklukho-Maklaya st., 6; E-mail: vladedmit01@mail.ru

4. Bauman Moscow State Technical University (national research university), 105005, Russian Federation, Moscow, 2nd Baumanskaya st., 7; E-mail: klychckov@yandex.ru

5. State Budgetary Comprehensive Educational Institution Technical Engineering School named after P.R. Popovich, 125319 Moscow, 8 March street, house 17; E-mail: loktionova.05@mail.ru

6. Peoples' Friendship University of Russia (RUDN University), 117198, Russia, Moscow, Miklukho-Maklaya st., 6; E-mail: sw.wl@mail.ru