Problems of Developing Self-Reliance in Learning in Primary School Children

The newly introduced state standard for primary education implies the formation of self-reliance in primary school children. However, this task is not an easy one to fulfill. Developing self-reliant learners can be challenging due to a number of fundamental contradictions such as the ones between the freedom offered to the child and the forced nature of some education methods; between the new educational tasks and the established school practices; between the invariant character of training standards and variability of individual learning features of schoolchildren. Overcoming these contradictions requires not only the formation of new teaching competencies in future teachers, but a fundamental change in the teacher’s professional position. It’s not enough to simply improve several means and methods of teaching, it’s important to develop and apply radically new education technologies: create an active and versatile educational environment, initiate mediated management of child learning and development, introduce individualization on the basis of personal activities of children, carry out pedagogical observations of every individual’s development. A lesson called “Self-taught learner”can be considered an example of such active and variable educational environment that promotes self-reliance in learning in children. In this lesson, every child masters some new learning content on their own and carries out basic learning actions step-by-step, moving along his/her individual learning route.

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