Vaskivska G. O., Kosianchuk S. V.

Development of high school students’ value orientations as an area of school reforming

Humanization is the main principle of the State National Program «Education» («Ukraine of the XXI Century»), and a man is considered to be of the highest social value. The program is aimed at the development of abilities and meeting the diverse educational needs of an individual. The document emphasizes the priority of human values, the harmony of relations between human and the environment, society and nature. All these should ensure man’s interests, his identification, development and self-development, self-realization [3]. These are the main objectives of Ukrainian education. Priority goals and objectives of the school, personality oriented educational process must be represented by the following aspects: the diagnostics of learning and personal students’ opportunities; the development of students’ sphere of values; students’ health preserving and strengthening; ensuring students’ personal self-determination. The scope of our study concerns the second aspect of the educational process – students’ values. The students’ sphere of values should be reflected in the content of school education. Training activity is «an independent cognitive activity of a man, a factor in the development of a person as a whole [8, p. 677]». This activity plays an important role in formation of students’ values. The knowledge obtained in the learning process «helps a student to build new knowledge and actions in his own experience and to change already gained experience [8, p. 677]».

The analysis of the literature on this issue has shown that it is important to focus on the problem of Ukrainian education, which should provide the relationship between different areas of values. The problems of values ​​development in pedagogical science and practice are considered from the standpoint of phenomenological approach to the study of educational phenomena.

New approaches to the problems of education and training are developing in the paradigm of humanistic education. These approaches are described both, by Ukrainian and Russian researchers (G.O. Ball, I.D. Bech, N.M. Bibik, E.V. Bondarevska, M.I. Boryshevsky, O.V. Kyrychuk, O.Ya. Savchenko, V.O. Sukhomlinsky, O.V. Sukhomlinska, I.S. Yakymanska and others). In the scientific literature such concepts as values, value orientations, personal values, orientation, motivation, and motivational orientation are thoroughly studied. Recently, the problem has been of significant interest among scientists.

The creation of your own system of values is accompanied by teenagers’ appeal to the eternal philosophical issues that give a perfect idea of ​​morality. As E.F. Rybalko states, the development of the complex of teenager’s personality traits happens during the inclusion of different qualities among his moral values [7, p. 20-31]. In adolescence a prerequisite for the system of values to fulfill all its regulatory functions is formed. It is in adolescence when the moral outlook becomes a stable system of moral ideals and principles. This determines student’s behavior, activity, attitude to reality and to himself [1, p. 321]. The system of values really starts to act when a high school student understands the meaning of his life, identifies himself as a person. According to V. Frankl, that is in adolescence when the question of the meaning of life frequently occurs and is especially important [9]. The need to define their goals in life, to find their place in life is a specific feature of teenagers. As I.S. Kon noted, a characteristic feature of adolescence is the development of life plans, resulting as generalization of personal goals, motivations hierarchy, and formation of stable core values. The emergence of life plans, according to the researcher, is a phenomenon of social and ethical character [4, p. 136]. Thus, in adolescence the philosophy that creates the possibility of forming internal autonomous system of values appears. So, adolescence is crucial in forming individual values.

The influence of school on the formation of individual values ​​is defined both, by the peculiarities of the educational process, and by relationships with teachers and coevals. Regardless of the form and content of the learning process the individuality of a teacher is an important factor in the development of students’ values. But there are teachers who do not possess effective training and educational technologies, forms and methods. Staff problem restrains the development of students' value-semantic orientations. As Yu.V. Yanotovsky said, a creative teacher «does not only equip students with the knowledge, but helps them to form the attitude to the surrounding world [6, p. 156]». A creative teacher actualizes the confidence and creativity of students. Trust and creativity are viewed as the values of the educational process. Many native scholars impose on a creative teacher the solution of problems and contradictions happening while forming high school students’ value-semantic orientations. But no matter how creative and talented teacher is, he should firstly learn how to operate new technologies, and secondly, a teacher must be able to overview the educational process of the formation of students’ value-semantic orientations. It is a difficult task to enrich the value-semantic sphere of high school students with fundamental values. It is difficult because the Ukrainian society is experiencing hard times of self-formation. It is difficult because of changes in educational paradigms, and curriculum.

Teenagers are more oriented to values forming among coevals. This should be considered while implementing curriculum. The values of the surroundings are characterized, according to I.S. Kon, by specific functions (socialization factors): the peculiarities of the transmission of any information, the peculiarities of joint activity of different groups or coevals, the peculiarities of emotional contact [4, p. 136]. The set of individual characteristics (internal factors of human development) and socio-cultural surroundings characteristics determine the formation of ​​high school students’ values in the process of interaction. Such interaction is performed during the joint activity of students.

​​High school students’ value orientations (teenagers’ inner world is associated with the surrounding reality) form a complex hierarchical system of personal meanings. This system is an internal source of students’ life goals, where the goals are defined by personal meaning. Value experience of students’ emotional sphere is gradually transforming into a real activity. Emotional and cognitive components contribute to the cognition of reality, the development of value treatment. In such a way student’s cognitive-evaluative aspect develops, and this aspect is connected with the educational activities and processes of socialization.

We consider the formation of value orientations as the creation of pedagogical conditions that initiate the process of thinking, rethinking of humanistic values. This is a base for the students’ moral behavior and activity picture. The formation of values happens through creative and developmental technologies and information retrieval situations. Thus, the formation of values ​​in the content of school education is possible if relevant tasks (exercises) and tests are created. This especially applies to the humanities, including history, literature, social studies. The aim of humanitarian education is to form a coherent picture of the world during the joint activities of adults and coevals. While a coherent picture of the world forming, high school students conceptualize the achievements of human culture. So, students acquire skills and ways of thinking by which people have been building the world civilization throughout the ages. The system of values ​​is a program of life and it helps high school students to put into practice their models of personality.

To put into practice their models of personality they should be aware of other such models. The sources of such models are literature and history where literary characters and historical figures demonstrate their value experience. Value-semantic orientations should be studied using examples of literary works, historical events and situations. Studying the behavior of the literary characters and activities of historical figures, a student must critically evaluate the events described in textbooks. Using a method of discourse a teacher as a main subject and a carrier of socially important values ​​should direct students to realize such standards of behavior which are the basis of the formation of a citizen. Communication is an area where social becomes personal and the personal becomes social. While communicating the exchange of individual value differences happens.

There is a lot of knowledge about man, society, world and universe. So the problem of fundamentalization of knowledge becomes urgent. The process of fundamentalization of knowledge must be accompanied by appropriate innovative high school training technologies. Fundamentalization also requires a rethinking of the importance of the communication process in all its individual, interpersonal, social and cultural aspects. Here appear informational and educational differences. They arise in the process of learning, when some other information is added to the existing knowledge of the students. There are contradictions between the knowledge already obtained by students and new facts, between the same knowledge but of lower and higher levels of understanding, between scientific knowledge and practical usage. These contradictions are in the assessment of facts, events, literary characters, historical figures, etc.

The awareness of high school students, their age, and way of thinking, comprehension and evaluation of the world - all these affect the formation of value-semantic sphere. Solving the informational and cognitive conflict, students learn to think critically and evaluate a variety of events, issues and situations. Such training and education develop the skills of self-learning, self-education. It also teaches them to appreciate the achievements of Ukrainian society.

The main conditions for the effective implementation of creative and developmental technologies are the selection and structuring of learning material. Creative and developmental technologies are useful when the content of teaching material is:

a) aimed at fostering scientific concepts, laws, theories, that is theoretical in nature, reveals the causal relationships between events;

b) not entirely new, but still logically adds to the already learned one, through which students can do independent steps in the search for new knowledge;

c) clear to students and they can develop their own search to resolve the issues that are in the area of ​​development of their cognitive abilities.

Training material should contain informational and cognitive contradictions and create conditions for their occurrence. So, one of the conditions of creative and developmental technologies is appropriate structuring of the learning material. The most actual problems of high school students were found during the survey. 86.2% of high school students (we suggested to rank 14 most pressing problems of personal character) put the problem of choosing a future profession at the first place. The choice of purpose in life received 80.9%. The third place (77.9%) belongs to the problems associated with high school students’ well-being and health [5]. Thus, in the bases of high school students’ values ​​there is a personal self-identification, which is of evaluative nature. Active determination of their own position, relative to the public system of values, is considered through the problem of choosing future profession, purpose in life, health and well-being. These problems are referred to as values ​​that form the basis of high school students’ living position.

Formed in high school students, the system of values ​​will contribute to the generalization of knowledge about man, formation of the elements of the new humanitarian culture [2, p. 90]. The ability to use the knowledge for self-orientation in public life, for solving cognitive and practical problems will also develop.

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