The problem of school failure has always received special attention from both psychologists and teachers (M.N. Danilov, V.I. Zynova, N.A. Menchinskaya, T.A. Vlasova, M.S. Pevzner, A.N. Leontyev), A.R. Luria, A.A. Smirnov, L.S. Slavina, Yu.K. Babansky).
Despite the close attention of teachers and psychologists, scientists and practitioners to the problem of school failure, the number of students experiencing learning difficulties is continuously growing.
The problem of academic failure is pedagogical, psychological, and medical.
Failure to achieve results is reflected in that the student has weak reading and counting skills, weak intellectual skills of analysis, generalization, etc. systematic underachievement leads to pedagogical neglect, which is understood as a complex of negative personality qualities that contradict the requirements of the school and society. This phenomenon is extremely undesirable and dangerous from a moral, social, and economic point of view. Educationally neglected children often drop out of school and join risk groups. Failure to perform is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon of school reality, requiring versatile approaches to its study.
Underachievement is interpreted as a discrepancy between students' preparation and the mandatory requirements of the school in the acquisition of knowledge, the development of skills and abilities, the formation of experience in creative activity and good manners. Preventing underachievement involves timely detection and elimination of all its elements.
Unfortunately, in pedagogy more research is focused on already formed, fixed underachievement. But in order to know and apply in pedagogical practice the forms and methods of work aimed at preventing underachievement, it is necessary to grasp the moment when it is just emerging.
V.S. Tsetlin: Underachievement is understood as a discrepancy between students’ preparation and the requirements of the content of education, which is recorded after a significant period of the learning process - studying a topic, the end of a quarter, half a year, or year. In school practice, the term “lag” is often used. V.S. Tsetlin definition: “ A lag is a failure to fulfill requirements (or one of them), which occurs at one of the intermediate stages within that segment of the educational process that serves as a time frame for determining academic performance." The concept of “lag" refers to both the process of accumulating failure to meet requirements and each individual case this failure.
Failure and lag are interconnected. Various backlogs, if they are not overcome, grow, intertwine with each other, and ultimately form underachievement. In this regard, the task of preventing academic failure is to prevent these growths and immediately eliminate them.
2. Signs of falling behind – the beginning of student failure
1. The student cannot say what the difficulties of the problem are, outline a plan for solving it, solve the problem independently, or indicate what was new as a result of solving it. The student cannot answer a question based on the text or say what new things he learned from it. These signs can be detected by solving problems, reading texts, and listening to a teacher explain.
2. The student does not ask questions about the essence of what is being studied, does not attempt to find or read additional sources to the textbook. These signs appear when solving problems, perceiving texts, and at those moments when the teacher recommends literature for reading.
3. The student is not active and distracted at those moments of the lesson when there is a search, mental tension and overcoming difficulties are required. These signs can be noticed when solving problems, when perceiving the teacher’s explanation, in a situation of choosing a task for independent work.
4. The student does not react emotionally (with facial expressions, gestures) to success and failure, cannot evaluate his work, and does not control himself.
5. The student cannot explain the purpose of the exercise he is performing, say what rule it is based on, does not follow the instructions of the rule, skips actions, confuses their order, cannot check the results obtained and the progress of the work. These signs appear when performing exercises, as well as when performing actions as part of more complex activities.
6. The student cannot reproduce definitions of concepts, formulas, proofs, and cannot, while presenting a system of concepts, depart from the finished text; does not understand the text based on the studied system of concepts. These signs appear when students ask relevant questions.
3. Teacher-scientists see the main reason for academic failure primarily in the imperfection of teaching methods. Experience of innovative teachers V.N. Shatalova, S.N. Lysenkova and others confirm the correctness of this point of view.
Poor progress, according to Yu.Z. Gilbukh, can be divided into general and specific. By general underachievement, he means a persistent, relatively long-term lag of a student in both main subjects of the school curriculum: language and mathematics. A specific lag affects only one of these subjects, with satisfactory or even good performance in the remaining subjects of the school course. In case of general and specific lag, a range of causal factors is determined, which are the subject of analysis in the process of determining the causes of difficulties. Various kinds of deviations from the individual optimum of educational activity are often observed. The abilities of these children are constantly not fully realized; their mental development improves more slowly than it could be under conditions of class differentiation.
The failure of schoolchildren is naturally related to their individual characteristics and the conditions in which their development takes place. Pedagogy recognizes the teaching and upbringing of children at school as the most important of these conditions.
4. Types of fixed academic failure according to A.M. Helmont.
First view– general and deep lag (in many or all academic subjects for a long time). Second type– partial, but relatively persistent failure (in one or three of the most difficult subjects). Third type– episodic failure (sometimes in one or another subject, relatively easily overcome).
5. Psychologists A.F. Anufriev and SP. Kostromin identified a number of difficulties in teaching primary schoolchildren:
Approximately 20% of children in the entire class may miss letters in written work. This phenomenon has several reasons - low level of development of phonemic hearing, poor concentration of attention, lack of development of self-control techniques, individual typological characteristics of the personality.
19% of children constantly make spelling mistakes, although they can answer any rule by heart - this is a case of the so-called “ underdeveloped spelling vigilance." Possible reasons are: low level of development of voluntariness, lack of formation of methods of educational activities, low level of volume and distribution of attention, low level of development of short-term memory, poor development of phonemic hearing.
About 17% of the class suffers from inattention and distraction. The reasons were identified as follows: low level of development of voluntariness, low level of attention span, low level of concentration and stability of attention.
14.8% of children have difficulty solving math problems - Poorly developed logical thinking, poor understanding of grammatical structures, lack of ability to focus on a system of signs, low level of development of imaginative thinking.
Approximately 13.5% of children have difficulty retelling the text. Causes: lack of formation the ability to plan one’s actions, poor development of logical memorization, low level of speech development and imaginative thinking, low self-esteem.
13.1% of children are restless. Most often this is caused low level of development of volition, individual typological characteristics of the personality, low level of development of the volitional sphere.
12.7% of children have difficulty understanding the teacher’s explanation the first time. Causes: poor concentration of attention, unformed acceptance of educational activities, low degree of perception and arbitrariness.
11.5% of children have constant dirt in their notebooks. The reason may be in poor development of fine motor skills of the fingers and insufficient attention span.
10.2% of children do not know the addition (multiplication) table well. It's connected with a low level of development of mechanical memory and long-term memory, with poor concentration and unformed methods of educational activity.
9.6% of children often fail to complete tasks for independent work. Causes - unformed methods of educational activities, low level of development of voluntariness.
9.5% of children constantly forget school items at home. Causes - low level of development of voluntariness, low level of concentration and stability of attention and the main reason is high emotional
instability, increased impulsiveness.
The child copied poorly from the board - 8.7% - did not learn to work according to the model. 8.5% of children do their homework well, but do their work poorly in class. The reasons are various - low speed
the course of mental processes, lack of formation of methods of educational activity, low level of development of voluntariness.
6.9% - any task must be repeated several times before the student begins to complete it. Most likely the culprit low level of development of volition and lack of formation of the skill to perform
tasks according to oral instructions from an adult.
6.4% of children constantly ask again. This may indicate a low level of attention span, weak concentration and stability of attention, a low level of development of attention switching and the development of short-term memory, and an undeveloped ability to accept a learning task.
5.5% of children have trouble understanding their notebooks. Causes - low level of perception and orientation in space and poor development of small muscles of the hands.
4.9% - often raise their hand, but remain silent when answering. They do not perceive themselves as a schoolchild, or they have low self-esteem, but possible difficulties in the family, internal stress, individual typological characteristics.
0.97% - comment on the teacher’s grades and behavior with their comments. Causes - difficulties in the family, transfer of the mother’s function to the teacher.
0.7% of children cannot find their desk for a long time. The reasons are hidden in poor development of spatial orientation, low level of development of imaginative thinking and self-control.
6. Reasons for the failure of children of primary school age. What reasons most often lead to a lag in general development. If we trace the history of the development of such children, we find that the cause is most often some kind of disease suffered in early childhood e. Which one is not important. It is important that it was long enough. Poor or even slightly reduced vision limits the child’s movements, makes it difficult to navigate in space, makes him awkward, and prevents him from participating in general games. Failures of this kind also affect the child’s mood and affect his character. The presence of mild disorders of the central nervous system interferes with the normal functioning of certain brain systems and delays its timely development. A severe somatic illness that occurs in the first years of life can have a negative impact on the development of a child. For example, long-term or recurring pneumonia can lead to memory loss.
If in family there are complications then a whole chain of unfavorable reasons is activated. What are these complicating moments? First place should be given here lack of communication. Particularly annoying are those cases when adults create a lack of communication, avoiding all contacts with the child, except for “business” ones. If there is a child, then communication with him should be placed in one of the first places in the circle of family responsibilities. Here is what V.A. writes about this. Sukhomlinsky: “If a child in the first 2-3 years of his life does not open through the closest, dearest person to him - his mother - the whole human world to the extent that it is accessible to children at this age, if together with an affectionate, caring, anxious “, with the wise expression of his mother’s eyes, he does not hear the subtlest emotional shades of his native word - his mental life will go completely differently than it would have gone under the condition of proper maternal upbringing.” The second unfavorable moment for children, which has a serious impact on their development, is conflictual relationships in the family, especially if they are aggravated by parental alcoholism. The life of such a child resembles the life of a hunted animal. His still fragile psyche is simply traumatized. Particularly difficult are deviations in mental development baby . These deviations vary in severity and in the reasons that cause them. A slight lag in a child’s cognitive activity may be unstable and not very noticeable at first. However, gradually, if you do not pay attention to the baby’s mental passivity, it will begin to affect itself more and more sharply, and subsequently make it difficult to study at school. All children have memory deficiencies, and they relate to all types of memorization: involuntary and voluntary, short-term and long-term. One of the main reasons for the insufficient level of development of involuntary memory in children with mental retardation is their low cognitive activity. The development of involuntary memory does not stop at primary school age. It continues to improve in the next stages of ontogenesis. Meanwhile, as the child grows up, voluntary memory increasingly comes to the fore, realized as a special form of activity. Without a sufficient level of development of voluntary memory, full-fledged learning is impossible. It is known that at primary school age, visual material is absorbed better than verbal material. It turns out that the form of presentation of the material is especially important for children who are lagging behind. A significant lag and originality is found in the development of mental activity in children. This is expressed in the lack of formation of such operations as analysis, synthesis, in the inability to identify essential features and make generalizations, in the low level of development of abstract thinking. These students are characterized by an inability to organize their mental activity. Serious problems arise when studying mathematics. In the studies of V.I. Lubovsky, G.I. Zharenkova point out the shortcomings of speech regulation of actions, which explains the disorganization and lack of purposefulness characteristic of the activities of these students. One of the most common internal reasons for academic failure is the insufficient development of thinking among schoolchildren, the unpreparedness of these children for intense intellectual work in the learning process. For approximately every fifth underachieving student, this is the main reason for poor knowledge, and it can sometimes be very difficult to eliminate it. Another common reason for academic failure is student's reluctance to learn . Due to the lack of sufficiently strong positive incentives for the learning process itself. Reluctance to learn can arise for various reasons. They all boil down mainly to learning difficulties. For example, a student does not know how, cannot force himself to study. Sometimes reluctance to learn is generated by the objective difficulty of the subject for the student. In this case, you should stimulate him by all available means, show him the joyful side of learning and overcoming difficulties, the inner beauty of the subject. The student's reluctance to study may be caused by the student's lack of interest only in this subject. A student may be capable, it is easy for him to study, and if he wanted, he could do well. However, he is indifferent only to this subject. Here you should look for and find an approach that would rediscover for a given student the merits of the subject being studied. Lack of interest in learning from the first steps of learning is fraught with yet another problem in the future. Teacher A. Novikov wrote about this very well: “We place a child who reads fluently, writes well and draws well in first grade only because he is seven years old. He “goes through” the alphabet and writes sticks along with everyone else; studying immediately turns out to be a dull, monotonous task for him that does not require work. By the fourth grade, when he begins to encounter incomprehensible things, he can no longer cope with them, since he is not used to working and is still naively confident that studying at school is a trifle. This is the reason for the sharp decline in the academic performance of many 11-12 year old children who shone with their success in primary school. They don’t know how, they’re not used to opening a book, finding the right topic, reading it, thinking, writing something down, asking a question about the topic. They haven't needed any of this until now. A common cause of persistent underachievement is indiscipline individual students . Their number increases widely, increasing in the upper grades. Experience with such students shows that if you find feasible and interesting work for them, both in the classroom and outside of it, they gradually improve. The authority of the teacher, interest in the subject, and work outside of class hours determine the success of the fight against indiscipline. The subjective reasons for academic failure include the sometimes encountered personal enmity student to teacher. Persistent dislike and disrespect for the teacher greatly interfere with the mobilization of the student’s efforts and give rise to poor performance. Life experience and pedagogical duty should help the teacher find an approach to such students. Often it is enough to discover and correct some of your mistakes in order to regain respect for yourself. It is important that there is no falsehood in the relationship between teacher and student. Any insincerity will only worsen the relationship.
A common reason for academic failure is the so-called preventive two. Sometimes a teacher punishes a student for refusing to answer. From the outside, this approach seems objective. But when such bad marks accumulate, they, as a rule, develop in the student’s personal plan into a new quality - a state of uncertainty, indifference to assessment. After all, sooner or later, such students get three for a quarter, but they simply cannot get four. Thus, imaginary rigor and objectivity gives rise to poor academic performance, indifference to studies, reluctance to work and, as a consequence, more bad grades!
Underachievement may be associated with street problem. Rest and games in the fresh air are, of course, necessary. However, there are often so many temptations, and there is so little parental control and student diligence that not very enthusiastic students spend most of their time after school in the company of street friends. Since the curriculum involves systematic work at home, all the prerequisites for lag and failure arise.
One of the troubles of any person (and perhaps doubly so for teachers) is the conservatism and stability of the images of those with whom he communicates. Once formed, this image freezes in its original form, almost forever. At any given moment in a child's life, to describe any of them only as a “capable but lazy” or “diligent girl” is to say nothing. Moreover, the frozen image of the student interferes with interaction with him for a long time. Stable performances create a certain atmosphere in the classroom; the student finds himself covered, like a network, by the system of expectations of the teacher and classmates. Children who perform poorly in the early years of school usually remain at that level of achievement. A low teacher rating reinforces general negative expectations, and expectations give rise to corresponding results and grades... It turns out to be a kind of vicious circle of failure - and at an increasingly descending level. It is known how this failure affects development: self-esteem decreases, educational interests disappear. Not having the opportunity to establish himself in his studies, special knowledge of any academic subject, general erudition - something that is respected in the class - a teenager, denying all school values, rebels, violates discipline, finds friends and a business that helps to assert himself outside the school walls, in companies. Alas, this is familiar to everyone - in every class, in every yard there are disadvantaged schoolchildren from whom nothing good is expected. Usually to the student’s educational activities encourage many motives. However, one or two motives dominate among them. The early formation of school interests, as well as broad social ones, including prestigious ones, increases the activity of schoolchildren’s educational activities. A negative attitude towards school and fear of punishment negatively affect the tone of educational activities. Typically, such motives are formed in schoolchildren with low academic performance, and when correcting work with them, it is very important to influence the motivational side of their personality. A child may have good general development and be able to manage himself, but if he has not developed the appropriate motivation, things will be difficult. And with motivation, as you know, a person can move mountains. There may be a general underdevelopment of the motivational sphere of a primary school student against the background of a sufficient and even high level of intellectual sphere for successful learning. A child can study well, but does not want to. He has no interest in educational activities, he does not show cognitive activity, chooses easy ways to achieve the goal, strives to get a quick result without any stress.
The leading type of perception can also cause academic failure. Auditory-oriented children do not perceive well what is written on the board or in a textbook, visually-oriented children may not perceive the teacher’s explanations by ear, and kinesthetic children need to touch everything to perceive information. For the success of teaching all students, we teach immediately taking into account all types of perception. Firstly, each child understands the material presented in his leading system, and secondly, this contributes to the development of other channels of perception in the student and allows them to develop. At the same time, the child perceives the material better and better every time.
Failure to achieve academic results is an eternal “headache” for teachers, one of the main problems of the educational process.
It cannot be said that the problem of academic failure is a problem that has emerged at the present stage.
Many educators and psychologists have been working on finding a solution to this problem for a long time.
One of the American psychologists gave a figurative comparison of the entire mass of children with a flock of birds flying south in the fall: in the middle there is a solid cloud of birds, in front and behind the solid mass thins out.
Ahead are those who are achieving, behind are those who are lagging behind and those who are not achieving.
What are the reasons for academic failure and how to organize work with unsuccessful students? This is what this article is about.
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Reasons for failure. Working with underachieving students.
What is academic failure? Failure to achieve – a lag in learning, in which the student does not master the knowledge provided for by the curriculum at a satisfactory level within the allotted time.
To find a way to overcome academic failure, you need to know the reasons that give rise to it. Contrary to popular belief, student failure is not always explained by low mental abilities or reluctance to learn. Failure to achieve success is always caused by a combination of reasons, one of which is decisive.
Famous psychologists Yu.K. Babansky and V.S. Tsetlin is isolatedtwo groups of reasonsfailure: external and internal.
What can be attributed to external causes?1) First of all, social reasons, i.e. decline in the value of education in society, instability of the existing educational system. “The purposeful work of an educational institution to prevent academic failure can yield proper results only with a general improvement in social conditions.” (V.S. Tsetlin) Unfortunately, we will not be able to solve this problem locally.
2) External reasons include the imperfection of the organization of the educational process on site (uninteresting lessons, lack of an individual approach, overload of students, undeveloped methods of educational activities, gaps in knowledge, etc.).
3) It should also be noted that there is a negative influence from the outside - the street, family, etc. During times of active educational work, this reason receded into the background. But now it is more relevant than ever, because... We have lost the ways to combat it, and creating them anew is very difficult.
So, the external reasons for academic failure are:
1. Social reasons (declining value of education in society).
2. Imperfection of the educational process.
3. Negative influence of family, street.
Well, what are they? internal reasons for underachievement?1) One of the most important reasons today is the increase in health defects caused by a sharp deterioration in the level of material well-being of families. Medical institutions note that every fourth newborn in St. Petersburg has serious health problems from the moment of birth. Of course, all this must be taken into account when organizing the educational process. It is clear that a person suffering from certain ailments is not able to withstand colossal training loads.
2) Internal reasons should also includelow intelligence development,which should also be timely reflected in the compilation of programs and the creation of new textbooks. The course material should be manageable for most students.
3) Internal reasons should includethe problem of lackmotivation for learning:The student has an incorrectly formed attitude towards learning, he does not understand its social significance and does not strive to be successful in his educational activities.
4) And finally, the problem of weak development of the volitional sphere in students.By the way, the last reason is rarely paid attention to. Although K.D. wrote about this. Ushinsky: “Teaching based only on interest does not allow the student’s will to strengthen, because not everything in learning is interesting, and a lot will have to be taken by willpower.”
So, the internal reasons for academic failure are:
1. Health defects of modern students.
2. Weak intellectual (mental) development.
3. Lack of motivation to study.
4. Poor development of the student’s volitional organization.
Thus, a number of reasons are intertwined in the student’s real life. And it’s not just a matter of reluctance to learn, but it’s much more complicated than it seems at first glance.
In the eyes of teachers, as a rule, all unsuccessful students are alike. This gives rise to a number of problems: there is no individual approach, completely irrational methods of working with students are used.
According to psychologist N.I. Murachkovsky, certain types of underachieving students can be identified. The author based his division into types two indicators : features of mental activity and the orientation of the child’s personality, his attitude to learning. Various combinations of these indicators led to the following results.
Types of underachieving students:
1. Low quality of mental activity (weak development of cognitive processes - attention, memory, thinking, lack of development of cognitive skills, etc.), combined with a positive attitude towards learning.
2. High quality of mental activity coupled with a negative attitude towards learning.
3. Low quality of mental activity is combined with a negative attitude towards learning.
This typology, in our opinion, is of great practical importance. Knowing the true reasons for academic failure, we will be able to provide differentiated assistance to each group of students.
Who needs any help?
One of the most common measures to overcome academic failure is the organization of additional classes for those who are lagging behind during extracurricular hours. Moreover, it is used for all students, regardless of the exact reason that caused them to lag. So the teacher often leaves students from the first and second groups after lessons. He gives both of them a task and says: “Sit and study!”, But these students need different kinds of help. Additional lessons with students from the second group are to some extent justified, since they do not prepare for schoolwork at home. But why did students from the first group end up here? After all, they always prepare for lessons conscientiously, are very diligent and diligent. They do not have time for a completely different reason, and therefore, they need a different form of correctional work. Another example. After lessons, the teacher leaves students with an asthenic state, weakened, and suffering from fatigue. They need a gentle regime of educational work, but the teacher, not knowing the true reason, places additional burdens on their shoulders. There is little benefit from such help; it only creates the outward appearance of struggling for academic performance. In both of the above examples, the teacher used an extensive approach to overcome academic failure: increasing the teaching load. The trouble with this approach is not only that it leads to overload, but that the teacher does not differentiate assistance to students depending on the reasons that caused the failure.
So, these examples convince us that each group of underachievers needs to select certain forms and methods of assistance - both during school hours and in extracurricular elements of working with students.
For the first group of underachievers(with poor development of mental activity, but with a desire to learn), specially organized classes are recommended on the formation of cognitive processes - attention, memory, individual mental operations: comparison, classification, generalization. Classes on developing educational skills: algorithm for solving a problem or working with its condition, developing reading speed, etc. The main thing in working with them is to teach them how to learn. It is useless to appeal to a sense of duty, conscience, or to call the parents of these students to an educational institution. They themselves painfully experience their failures. On the contrary, we must rejoice with them at every victory, even the slightest, every advance forward.
Reason for poor student performance second group is their internal personal position – reluctance to learn. For various reasons, their interests lie outside the scope of educational activities. They attend educational institutions without any desire, avoid active cognitive activity during lessons, and have a negative attitude towards the teacher’s instructions. We can say this about the students in this group: if there is motivation, there will be productivity in learning activities!
And finally, the most difficult group of underachieving students is third type. It’s sad that there are more and more such students. This is where positive psychology can help us. Each student has his own strengths, his own positive qualities. The teacher needs to find this area of the student’s life and focus the child’s attention on what he really can do.
Working with underachieving children.
But life shows that we do not know such 100% successful methods of work as to teach everyone. There have been, are and will be underachievers. How to work with underachievers?
1. Pedagogical prevention- search for optimal pedagogical systems, including the use of active methods and forms of teaching, new pedagogical technologies.
2. Pedagogical diagnostics- systematic monitoring and evaluation of learning results, timely identification of gaps.
3. Educational therapy- measures to eliminate educational gaps. In domestic education, these are additional classes. In the West - alignment groups. The advantages of the latter are that classes are conducted based on the results of serious diagnostics, with the selection of group and individual training tools. They are taught by special teachers, and attendance at classes is mandatory.
4. Educational influence.Since academic failures are most often associated with poor upbringing, individual planned educational work should be carried out with unsuccessful students, which includes work with the student’s family.
What if there are any preventive measures to prevent academic failure?
At different stages of the lesson, the teacher should place the following emphasis in teaching:
In the process of monitoring preparedness, learn:
- Specially control the assimilation of issues that usually cause the greatest difficulties for students
- Carefully analyze and systematize the mistakes made by students in oral answers and written work, identify those typical for the study group and concentrate on eliminating them.
- Monitor the learning of material by students who missed previous classes
- At the end of studying a topic or section, summarize the results of mastering basic concepts, laws, rules, abilities, skills of learning, identify the reasons for the lag
When presenting new material:
- It is imperative to check during the training session the degree of understanding of the basic elements of the material presented by the student.
- Stimulate questions from students in case of difficulties in mastering educational material
- Use means of maintaining interest in learning knowledge
- Ensure a variety of teaching methods that allow all students to actively learn the material
During independent work, I study in a training session:
- Select assignments for independent work on the most significant, complex and difficult sections of the educational material, trying to achieve a greater effect with a smaller number of exercises, but presented in a certain system.
- Include in the content of independent work exercises to eliminate errors made during answers and written work. Provide instructions on how to perform the work. Encourage asking questions to the teacher if you have any difficulties yourself. work.
- Skillfully assist students in their work and develop their independence in every possible way.
- Teach the ability to plan work, perform it at the proper pace and exercise control
When organizing independent work outside of class:
- During homework, ensure repetition of what has been covered, concentrating attention on the most significant elements of the program that cause the greatest difficulties.
- Systematically assign homework to work on common mistakes.
- Clearly instruct students about the procedure for performing housework, check the degree of understanding of these instructions by low-performing students
- Coordinate the volume of the house. Assignments with other teachers, eliminating overload, especially for low-performing students
So, measures to prevent student failure can be reduced to the following:
necessary
1. Comprehensively improve the effectiveness of each training session
2. To form students’ cognitive interest and positive motives
3. Implement an individual approach to learning.
4. Develop a special homework system.
5. Strengthen work with parents.
6. Involve student activists in the struggle to increase students’ responsibility for learning.
a) Classification of causes of school failure
To talk about the causes of school failure, it is necessary to distinguish the definitions found in the literature, which are sometimes used as synonyms: school difficulties, academic failure, school maladjustment.
By school difficulties we mean the whole range of school problems that may arise in a child in connection with the beginning of systematic education at school Dubrovinskaya N.V., Farber D.A., Bezrukikh M.M. Psychophysiology of the child. M., 2000.. They, as a rule, lead to pronounced functional stress, deterioration of health, disruption of socio-psychological adaptation, as well as a decrease in educational performance.
According to experts, school difficulties that were not identified and compensated in time lead to poor academic performance.
Failure usually means unsatisfactory grades in any subject (or in all subjects at once) in a quarter or in a year.
In turn, school failure can provoke the emergence of school maladaptation, that is, a state of students in which they do not master the curriculum and experience difficulties interacting with peers and teachers.
According to N.N. Zavadenko Zavadenko N.N. How to understand a child. M., 2000. school maladjustment differs in 31.6%; children. Of these, 42% are boys and 18.6% are girls.
The concept of “underachievement” is interpreted differently in the pedagogical and psychological literature. According to L.A. Regush Regush G.A. Teach teachers // Psychological newspaper. 1999. No. 9., “in psychology, when talking about underachievement, they mean its psychological causes, which are, as a rule, the properties of the student himself, his abilities, motives, interests, etc. pedagogy considers forms, methods of organizing teaching, and even the education system as a whole as a source of failure.”
Underachievement is associated with the individual characteristics of children, with the conditions of their development, with the conditions of their development, with hereditary factors. That is why it is necessary to systematize various approaches to the problem of underachievement and to identify the causes that cause it.
There are various concepts and theories of academic underachievement. Thus, representatives of the biologization theory believe that the main reason for academic failure is innate factors that cannot be changed by training. According to the sociogenetic approach, academic failure is a consequence of the influence of an unfavorable environment.
The problem of school failure in the history of pedagogy and psychology has been and is being given a lot of attention (Ananyev B.G., 1982; Bozhovich L.I., 1962, 1968, 1978; Vygotsky L.S., 1997; Menchinskaya N.A., 1971; Slavina L.S., 1958, etc.). In different historical periods this problem was interpreted differently. B.S. Bodenko Bodenko B.N. Analysis of the psychological prerequisites for academic failure and methods of its correction at the initial stage of education. M., 1998. offers the following periodization.
In the 1920-1930s, the works of the Soviet scientist traced the connection between academic failure and such social factors as the social origin of parents. I.A. Armyanov, P.P. Blonsky, L.S. Vygodsky made attempts to consider the underachieving student in the context of his holistic, biosocial development.
In the 1940s - 1950s, M.A. Gelmont, M.A. Danilov, E.I. Monoszon, S.M. Rives et al., paying attention to this problem, considered the main reason for academic failure to be the shortcomings of the learning process, and emphasized the importance of the level of the teacher’s pedagogical skill. Research by L.S. Slavina are devoted to identifying purely psychological reasons and became the basis for identifying certain types of underachieving students.
The 1960s - 1970s can be characterized as a time of increased attention to the student’s personality, to his formation as a subject of training and education (Babansky Y.K., Bozhovich L.I., Kalmykova Z.I., etc.). In order to prevent and overcome underachievement, optimization of educational attainment in schools is proposed.
In the works of the 1980s (Borisov P.P., Kalmykova Z.I., Matyukhin M.V.), the main reasons for academic failure are considered to be a violation of the main components of the psychological structure of educational activity. In addition, the influence of individual-typical and age-related personality traits of children on the success of their education is noted.
Currently, scientific thought is characterized by the theory of two factors, i.e. acceptance of both biological and sociological theories by Dembélé Baba. Intellectual reasons for the failure of younger schoolchildren: Abstract. St. Petersburg, 1994.. M.M. Bezrukikh Bezrukikh M.M. Why is it difficult to study? M., 1995. notes that the problem of academic failure is pedagogical, medical, psychological, and social. That is why, in the last decade, there have been more and more frequent calls to unite the efforts of specialists from various fields in improving the performance of schoolchildren.
There is an opinion that to identify the causes of academic failure, a comprehensive examination of E.K. Clicquot is necessary. Comprehensive research to optimize learning. SP.b, 1998.. To the psychological examination it is necessary to add anthropometric (type of build) and psychophysiological (properties of the nervous system) examinations.
Harold B. Levy Harold B. Levy. Square pegs to round holes. St. Petersburg, 1995. notes that recently the volume of research devoted to the problem of academic failure has increased so much that not a single scientist can keep track of them. “Psychologists hardly read medical journals, doctors are not interested in psychological literature, and school teachers read neither.”
The criterion for determining failure is the teacher recording unsatisfactory grades at the end of the quarter.
A huge variety of reasons for academic failure reflected in the literature, according to A.F. Anufrieva Anufriev A.F., Kostromina S.N. How to overcome difficulties in teaching children. M., 1997. to the fact that the teacher, finding out the cause of difficulties in learning, experiences difficulty in choosing diagnostic methods and correctional programs.
Depending on the reasons that cause academic failure, there are several approaches to classifying types of academic failure. Let's look at some of them.
So, A.A. Budarny distinguishes two types of academic failure - absolute and relative.
· relative underachievement is characterized by insufficient cognitive load of those students who could exceed the mandatory requirements of the school curriculum and the capabilities of individual students.
A.M. Gelmont and N.I. Murachkovsky Murachkovsky N.I. How to prevent school failure. Minsk, 1977. present another classification, built depending on the stability of the lag. They identify three degrees of school failure and the reasons for its occurrence in each case.
Table 1
Polish researcher V.S. Tsetlin Tsetlin V.S. School failure and its prevention. M., 1977. Analyzing the literature on the problem of underachievement, he focuses our attention on the fact that along with fixed underachievement, there is hidden underachievement, that school underachievement can be expressed not only in knowledge gaps, but also in the attitude of students to learning.
A - general failure, which leads to stupidity;
B - general failure (corrected and uncorrected) or special (corrected and uncorrected).
C - underachievement caused by the child's unrealized potential. The highest degree of this failure leads to “B”, i.e. to general academic failure.
N.P. Lokalova N.P. Lokalova How to help a low-performing student. M., 1997, distinguishes two types of school failure: general lag in learning and lag in individual subjects.
In order to achieve effective work to overcome school failure, it is necessary, first of all, to determine the causes that cause it. Among specialists paying attention to this problem, there is no single point of view on the causes of academic failure, but an analysis of the relevant literature has made it possible to identify several groups of factors leading to school failure:
· physiological factor;
· social factor;
· psychological factor.
P.P. Blonsky (1930, 1965) believed that the causes of academic failure could be pathological heredity (nervous and heart diseases), unfavorable uterine childhood, poor academic performance of the parent, etc.
L.S. Slavina names the following reasons for academic failure:
· incorrect attitude towards learning;
Difficulties in mastering educational material;
· inability to work;
· lack of cognitive educational interests;
· lack of skills and methods of learning activities or incorrectly formulated skills and methods of learning activities.
Yu.K. Babansky, N.I. Murachkovsky identifies such reasons for underachievement as gaps in knowledge, work organization skills, underdevelopment of individual thought processes, etc.
P.P. Borisov offers a detailed classification of the reasons for academic failure, combining all possible reasons into 4 large blocks.
1. Pedagogical reasons: shortcomings in the teaching of certain subjects, gaps in knowledge from previous years, incorrect transfer to the next grade;
2. Social and domestic reasons: unfavorable conditions. Misbehavior of parents. Financial security of the family, lack of a home regime, child neglect;
3. Physiological causes: illness, general poor health, upper respiratory tract diseases. Infectious diseases, impaired motor functions of the central nervous system (CNS), diseases of the nervous system;
4. Psychological reasons: features of the development of attention, memory, slowness of understanding, insufficient level of speech development, immaturity of cognitive interests, narrow-mindedness.
A.L. Wenger and G.A. Tsukerman Wenger A.L., Tsukerman G.A. Psychological examination of junior schoolchildren. M., 2001. Among the reasons causing academic failure, the following are distinguished:
Problems related to mental development;
Behavioral problems;
Emotional and personality problems;
Learning problems:
Neurotic manifestations (tics, enuresis), etc.
G.I. Vergeles, L.A. Matveeva, P.I. Raev Vergeles G.I., Matveeva L.A., Raev I.A. Junior schoolboy. Help him study. SPb., 2000. believe that school failure can be caused by:
Mental characteristics of the student;
Lack of volume and quality of knowledge;
Insufficiently formed educational activities;
Relationship with others;
Deformation of teaching motives.
Experts believe that at different stages of ontogenesis and different stages of education, the leading causes of school failure may be different. During critical periods (beginning of schooling, puberty), physiological and psychophysiological reasons will predominate; in other periods, social reasons may be more significant.
O.P. Matveeva cites interesting facts that make it possible to highlight the contradiction in views on the problem of underachievement of various subjects of the pedagogical process:
1. 80% of parents who sought advice about school difficulties believe that the main reasons for the child’s failures are related to the teacher (injustice of teachers - 29%; inability to find an approach to the child - 48%; low qualifications - 23%);
2. Teachers (88%) attribute their difficulties in working with children to the incorrect attitudes of their parents (passivity and inattention to children - 31%, unwillingness or inability to help the child - 18%).
According to research data, experts have identified the points of view of teachers, parents, administration representatives and children on the problem of academic failure Monina G.B. Panasyuk E.V. Training for interaction with underachieving students. St. Petersburg, 2003. .
A survey of 104 teachers determined that teachers consider the main reasons for academic failure to be:
Health 60%;
Family problems 32%;
Low student self-esteem 16%;
Anxiety 18%;
Pedagogical neglect of children 24%;
The complexity of the program is 16.5%.
Parents (100 people surveyed) tend to believe that the main reasons for their children’s academic failure are:
Uninteresting teaching of the subject - 36%;
Laziness of the child - 32%;
Lack of children's attention - 28%;
Lack of individual approach - 24%;
Heavy study loads - 24%.
A survey of 94 psychologists showed that they consider academic failure to be a consequence of:
Parents' ambitions 30%;
Immaturity of mental functions of children - 28%;
Insufficient consideration of individual characteristics of students 28%;
Children's health problems 20%.
The above figures showed: in order to optimize the learning process at school, it is necessary to use an integrated approach, take into account the points of view of parents, teachers, doctors, etc. and we must not forget that the search for the causes of poor performance and ways to solve the problem must proceed, first of all, from the interests of the children themselves .
An analysis of the literature devoted to the problem of school failure made it possible to identify several factors from the reasons cited by many authors that can lead to failure. Conventionally, they can be displayed in the following diagram:
Diagram 1. Factors leading to academic failure
b) Psychological reasons for academic failure
Some experts note that in different cases, school failure can be caused by various psychological reasons. N.P. Lokalova recognizes that there is an urgent need to provide assistance to teachers who work with low-performing students. However, she believes that help will be effective only if the psychological causes of academic failure are known. There may not be a direct and unambiguous correspondence between the external manifestations of difficulties and their psychological causes.
At the heart of any one difficulty in educational activity, notes N.P. Lokalova, there may be different psychological reasons, but the same psychological reason can cause different external manifestations. For example, a student may be inattentive due to the immaturity of the actual attention processes and due to insufficient load on mental activity, as well as due to a lack of interest in learning, or the presence of personal problems. Difficulty breathing, mental activity (for example, memory processes, attention, etc.).
Psychological reasons for underachievement usually include the characteristics of the student himself, his abilities, motives, interests, etc.
Among the psychological factors, several areas that influence learning can be identified:
· cognitive;
· motivational;
· emotional-volitional;
Cognitive sphere
L.B. Ermolaeva-Tomina, I.A. Akopyants, V.K. Voevodkina Ermolaeva-Tomina L.B., Akopyants I.A., Voevodkina V.K.. Learning through the development of cognitive processes. M., 1998. They believe that for schoolchildren to successfully master each subject, it is necessary to develop in them certain qualities of cognitive processes.
Many experts, in particular Dembele Baboi, have proven in the process of research that there is a certain relationship between the level of manifestation of certain characteristics of attention, memory, thinking, and school performance. D.B. Elkonin Elkonin D.B. Psychology of teaching younger schoolchildren. M., 1977. states that at present the possibility of forming (if certain learning conditions are created) a significantly higher level of mental development at primary school age has been experimentally proven.
However, deficiencies in the development of mental processes in some cases can be caused by age-related characteristics of mental activity.
The concrete thinking of younger schoolchildren makes it difficult to understand the figurative meaning of words and phrases, syncretism of thinking (lack of necessary and sufficient analysis of all data) leads to incorrect conclusions, inertia leads to the formation of patterns, unambiguousness (confined to only one side of the subject or phenomenon under consideration) leads to the inability to operate simultaneously with all the data necessary to solve the problem, etc.
Education should take place parallel to the mental and physical development of the child, and not contradict it. During the period of study in primary school, the leading function of a child is sensory perception, and learning must be built on its basis (from sensory cognition to abstract understanding).
Recognizing the need to develop cognitive processes in order to improve academic performance, a number of scientists adhere to the following point of view: in order to successfully master many school subjects, students must have a high level of memory development, because memory is the most important cognitive process that underlies learning.
D. LappLapp D. Improving memory at any age. M., 1993. gives the following diagram:
D. Lapp argues that whenever this chain is broken, forgetting occurs every time.
At primary school age, memorization techniques are intensively developed, so it is during this period that it is advisable to introduce children to mnemonic techniques that help structure and memorize material. Primary school children are characterized by verbal and logical thinking.
Many authors believe that some features of the development of thinking can cause academic failure. Insufficient organization of independent active work of thinking in the learning process is revealed when the acquired knowledge needs to be applied in practice. L.S. VygotskyVygotsky L.S. Psychology. M., 2000. believes that primary school age is a sensitive period for the development of conceptual thinking. The formation of scientific concepts at this age is just beginning. Depending on their perception and type of thinking, all children can be divided into “thinkers” and “practitioners” and “artists”. When constructing a lesson, the teacher should focus on this feature of the child.
According to many authors, an insufficient level of attention development can also cause difficulties in mastering the curriculum. In first-graders, voluntary attention is poorly developed, unstable, the volume of attention is small, they can do the same thing for 10-20 minutes.
O.M. Razumnikova and E.I. Nikolaeva Razumnikova O.M. Nikolaeva, E.I. Correlation between assessments of attention and learning success. Questions of psychology, 2000, No. 1. A study was conducted that showed that one of the factors of educational success is the behavior of children in the classroom, which teachers often consider from the point of view of the effectiveness of the attention function. Attention impairment may be a consequence of physiological changes or the result of the child’s situational psychological state (lack of motivation to learn, conflicts with the teacher, with parents, peers). The study authors believe that the more symptoms of attention disorders, the lower the grades in all subjects.
This point of view is shared by G.M. PonomarevaPonomareva G.M. On the dynamics of the organization of attention of underachieving schoolchildren in grades 1-4 // On the question of the dynamics of learning motivation among first-graders. M., 1978., which claims that all schoolchildren who do not perform well as a result of mental retardation are children without developmental disabilities, but who do not succeed in the Russian language and mathematics, as well as the majority of students who consistently perform at “3” have defects in organization attention, which, of course, may be one of the reasons for learning difficulties.
Research by T.M. Matyukhina, T.P. Meshkova, N.V. Gavrisha Matyukhina T.M., Meshkov T.A., Gavrish N.V. On the connection between the properties of attention and academic failure in 2nd grade students. Questions of Psychology, 1998, No. 3. showed that the relationship between academic performance in individual subjects and the properties of attention turns out to be different in groups of attentive and inattentive second-graders. Russian language performance among attentive students correlates with accuracy rates in attention distribution tests. For attentive students, the distribution of attention has a great influence (determined by accuracy indicators); to a lesser extent, the dependence of learning success on the amount of attention is found. For inattentive students, the relationship between the properties of attention and the success of learning to write correctly is chaotic.
Of all the properties of attention studied (focus, stability, switchability, distribution, volume), the largest connection was found between academic performance and switchability of attention.
Research by N.I. Murachkovsky proved that unsuccessful students generally do not have pathological disorders of memory and attention.
E.S. Gobova Gobova E.S. Understanding children is an interesting thing. M., 1997. Recommends that in order to build an effective training program, take into account which channel of information perception is used by each child (visual, auditory, kinesthetic), in what form the information received is stored in the mind (in the form of visual, auditory, kinesthetic images) and how the child checks the correctness of their solution (for example, when writing a dictation).
M.I. Krupennikova Krupennikova M.I. Effective methods and techniques for organizing a lesson // RYAS, 1997, No. 4. provides data confirming that in approximately 75% of writers visual memory dominates.
If a child has well-developed visual, auditory and kinesthetic systems, learning is easy for him. If the child relies on only one of the systems, the teacher must give the material in accordance with this system. Michael Grinder Grinder M. Fixing the school assembly line. M., 1995. and Betty Lou Leaver Betty Lou Leaver. Whole class teaching. M., 1995. It is recommended that teachers explain new material based on the leading learning style, then reinforce it based on a weak system and test knowledge again based on the child’s preferred style.
E.S. Gobova, M. Grinder connect academic performance with a knowledgeable representative system of the student. The style of school learning changes from class to class (primary school - kinesthetic, middle school - auditory, high school - visual), in this regard, the child who has developed all three systems will be successful. Visual children, as a rule, are the most prepared for learning to write correctly (Monina G.B.) Monina G.B. An integrated approach to solving the problem of academic failure in the Russian language // Practical psychology at school. St. Petersburg: Imaton, 1998..
In connection with the above, the teacher faces the need to develop all channels of perception in students. Gobova, Grinder, Sirotyuk, Leaver and others recommend multisensory learning for children, during which information is provided through several channels. For more successful learning, it is necessary to use all three channels of perception: visual, auditory, kinesthetic.
Emotional-volitional sphere
A.O. Drobinskaya Drobinskaya A.O. School difficulties of non-standard children. M., 2001. Paying special attention to the emotional sphere of the child in the book “School difficulties of non-standard children” writes: “When analyzing each individual case of persistent difficulties in learning and disruption of adaptation to school, it is necessary to take into account not only developmental characteristics, health status and gaps in knowledge, but also the emotional state of the student, the direction of his personal efforts and interests.”
L.M. Strakhova Strakhova L.M. The impact of the teacher’s emotional behavior on the development of the cognitive sphere of students // Educational activity and development of the cognitive sphere of students. Volgograd: 1991. notes the connection between emotional processes and thinking and believes that the teacher plays the main role in the emergence of emotional connections in the educational process.
The author considers the emotional connection between the teacher and students to be the main factor in the productivity of the cognitive sphere. The teacher stimulates the mental activity of children, emotionally coloring mental operations. In the complex activation of cognitive functions (perception, attention, memory, thinking), a necessary condition is the teacher’s ability to use the speech properties of expressiveness, which activate the attention of students and contribute to a conscious understanding of educational material.
Many experts note the influence of self-esteem on a child’s success in school. Of course, the confidence with which a student answers the teacher’s questions at the blackboard depends not only on the level of knowledge and preparedness for the lesson, but also on the level of his self-esteem. A low level of self-esteem creates problems both in mastering educational material (“I still won’t understand this”; “I’ll never remember this”) and in relationships with classmates and teachers (“I won’t answer at the blackboard, everyone laughs at me “,” “I won’t go to biology class, the teacher still thinks I’m stupid and won’t give me more than a bad mark”)
As a rule, children come to school with a desire to learn, but gradually increasing difficulties and problems that arise at school for some children lead to the formation of a negative attitude towards the teacher and a decrease in self-esteem. According to R.M. Granovskaya Granovskaya R.M. Elements of practical psychology. St. Petersburg, 1997, the self-esteem of younger schoolchildren is non-judgmentally based on the opinions of surrounding adults and in key aspects remains until adolescence.
Another option for the influence of educational success on the formation of a student’s self-esteem: there are cases where a child, successfully and without problems, with practically no effort, moves from class to class. Against the backdrop of easy success, the habit of constant approval is consolidated, a high level of aspirations and high self-esteem develop. But when a student in high school, where the material requires deep and serious study, suddenly realizes that he no longer has a clear superiority in relation to his classmates, and even faces difficulties in his studies, his self-esteem plummets.
Inappropriately high self-esteem can also lead to problems both for the student himself and for those who surround him and interact with him. Conflict situations between a teacher and a student are not so rare, when the latter refuses to attend lessons in a subject, unreasonably considering himself to know the course material better than the teacher himself, and as a result, has significant problems in mastering the material in the subject. Sometimes a child does not agree with a fairly given assessment, considering himself to be right and disagreeing with the arguments of teachers who are trying to explain the essence of the problem and suggest ways to solve it.
The formation of adequate self-esteem depends on the teacher’s attitude towards the child, and on his position in the school community.
Poor academic performance, as a rule, leads to a deterioration in the child’s relationships with classmates, a complication of relationships with parents and teachers, and, as a result, a decrease in the level of self-esteem. The child becomes conflicted, withdrawn, or seeks communication outside of school and family.
Volitional action is characterized by the fact that it is the subject’s own, proactive, and at the same time conscious and meaningful action. N.P. Mayorova Mayorova N.P. Underachievement. St. Petersburg, 1998. states that a child is only ready for school when his volitional qualities are formed, when he himself can set a goal and achieve it. An important component of learning activities is student self-control.
The lack of strong-willed qualities such as initiative, independence, etc. can affect the success of a child’s education. However, it can be assumed that the formation of volitional qualities can be carried out only if there is a positive emotional attitude of the child to learning.
Motivational sphere
A.N. Leontiev Leontiev A.N. Psychological issues of consciousness of teaching. M., 1975. indicates the possibility of a direct dependence of intellectual processes on the motivation of activity: only with a certain kind of motives is real, and not formal, mastery of the operations of theoretical thinking possible.
The learning objectives can be considered completely solved, notes D.B. Elkonin, only under the condition of developing full-fledged motives for educational activity. The child’s attitude towards learning, i.e. educational motivation also plays a decisive role in the formation of a student’s personality. Highlighting external and internal motives for learning, L.I. Aidarova Aidarova L.I. Psychological problems of teaching Russian to primary schoolchildren. M., 1978. External motivation includes everything that lies outside the activity itself: “reinforcements after completing a task, external control,” etc. To internal motivation - that which follows from the task of the activity itself, “ensuring its continuous learning from within.” L.I. Aidarova believes that such motivation develops in the process of activity itself, mainly due to the preservation of indicative and exploratory moments in it. Reproductive education, which is carried out in traditional programs, has one goal - gaining knowledge and approving the approval of others. In developmental programs (with productive learning), the main motive, in addition to knowledge, will be the learning process itself.
The level of schoolchildren's motivation to study decreases towards the end of primary school age, which may be a shortcoming in the organization of education, in particular, with the system for assessing children's knowledge.
Lou Leaver believes that “students without motivation to learn simply do not exist. Some, perhaps even many, students are hampered in their motivation by unaccepting teachers, parents, peers who learn faster, and educational materials that cater to other types of students.” Thus, the cause of academic failure is not a psychological one, but a social one.
According to A.A. Sirotyuk Sirotyuk A.L. teaching children with SS taking into account psychophysiology. M., 2000. The teacher should set himself the task of forming a motive for achievement in children, creating a situation of success that is associated with the motivational sphere and is determined by the psychological aspects of the child’s individuality.
So, D.B. Bogoyavlensky Bogoyavlensky D.B. Psychology of spelling acquisition. M., 1966. considers “the creation of a problem situation a necessary condition for the emergence of active mental activity. The need for knowledge arises in cases where obstacles and difficulties appear on the student’s path, which he cannot overcome without the necessary information.”
A problematic situation can become the first step of the independent work method, which will force the student to turn to analysis, synthesis, comparison, and generalization.
However, Z.I. Kalmykova Kalmykova Z.I. Psychological problems of the learning process. In the book. Psychological problems of teaching primary schoolchildren. M., 1978. calls for very clear restrictions on the application of the problematic principle, believing that in some conditions it is better to focus on reproductive thinking.
The variety of approaches to the problem of teaching effectiveness, many unrelated classifications of the causes of academic failure, and recommendations complicate the teacher’s process of analyzing specific cases of children’s failure in the classroom. The introduction of a practical psychologist position in a school can be useful in increasing the effectiveness of teaching, since it is this specialist who is called upon to help the teacher understand the flow of psychological information and understand the reasons for the failure of each individual student in each specific case.
c) Physiological reasons for academic failure
It's no secret that children's health has been steadily deteriorating over the past decades. An increasing number of children come to school already having one or another chronic disease. Since the 1990s, there has been a decrease in the number of preschool children with normal physical development. According to the Research Institute of Hygiene and Disease Prevention of Children and Adolescents Astapov V.M. Introduction to defectology with the basics of neuro- and pathology. M., 1994. The number of absolutely healthy children decreased to 15.1%, while the number of children with certain health conditions increased to 67.6%.
In preschool children (4-7 years old), the most common diseases are diseases of the musculoskeletal system, respiratory organs, skin diseases, and boys have a less favorable picture compared to girls.
School is a very serious and complex plan in the life of every child. The task of preserving the health of the child should be considered no less important than the pursuit of excellent condition at any cost. The condition of study should be marked not only by grades in the diary, but also by accompanying good health.
Today, medical statistics show that only 10% of school graduates can be considered absolutely healthy. There is a clear trend towards deterioration in the mental health of children and adolescents. The main forms of childhood mental pathology are neuroses, psychopathy, and deviant behavior.
That is why specialists working with children and parents need to take into account the child’s health status and the option of his individual development when organizing the educational process, both at school and at home. Children with poor health are more in need of a gentle regimen, control over the academic load, and attentive attention from teachers and parents.
Let's consider some special cases of special development of children, with which worried parents most often turn to a psychologist.
Left-handedness
Left-handed children deserve special attention from teachers. The main difficulties of such a child usually begin upon entering school. Many experts believe that training for left-handed people should take place using a different teaching method than the generally accepted one. It should be remembered that left-handedness is not a deviation in health, but only another normal variant of development, a manifestation of individuality within normal limits.
A left-handed child is not very comfortable in a right-handed world: holding a spoon in his right hand and holding a pencil. But the main difficulties, as a rule, begin at school.
Almost 90% of people have a dominant right hand and only 10% have a dominant left hand, or are equally proficient in both their right and left hands. Leonardo da Vinci, Charlie Chaplin, I. Pavlov, V. Dahl were left-handed. Left-handed and right-handed people have different brain structures and, therefore, choosing a dominant hand for any activity is very difficult.
Left-handed children are characterized by increased emotionality with a weakening of inhibitory processes; it is advisable to involve such children in outdoor games and give a variety of assignments that require frequent switching of attention. It should be remembered that by retraining a child, changing the leading hand, we inevitably cause a restructuring in brain activity.
There is still no clear and unambiguous answer to the question of what causes left-handedness and how such a person differs from a right-handed person, but it is known that left-handedness is the result of a special organization of the brain and determines not only the dominant hand, but also some features of the organization of higher mental functions (speech, reading, writing). Of course, left-handedness cannot be considered a pathology, much less a prerequisite for decreased mental abilities.
In June 1985, the first all-Union seminar “Protecting the health of left-handed children” was held, at which the following decisions were made:
· refuse to retrain left-handed children;
· oblige medical workers of pedagogical institutions to identify left-handedness during medical examinations of children and enter data about this into outpatient records.
If a left-handed child was retrained in preschool age, then “double” retraining after the first quarter of 1st grade is strictly contraindicated.
Fortunately, parents and teachers who retrain left-handed people are now becoming less and less common, but the problem of teaching a left-handed child (determining the methods of teaching writing, sitting, positioning of the notebook; the child’s work in labor lessons and in school workshops, selecting special tools) still remains unresolved.
There are generally accepted rules for communication between left-handed children. When writing with the left hand, it is not recommended to require children to write with the same slant as right-handed people. It is strictly contraindicated to require a left-handed child to write continuously; the trajectory of movement when writing ovals should be lighter, from top to bottom, from left to right, and easier connections in the form of “loops”.
Left-handed children are more likely than right-handed children to have mirror writing, pronounced handwriting impairments, for example, incorrect letters (optical errors), and most often they have lower writing speed and poorer coherence. When writing, drawing, reading, everything should fall on the right side.
The general tactics of behavior of teachers and parents who consider the child’s left-handedness as an individual development option within the normal range, the creation of favorable conditions for the formation of motor skills will help left-handed children adapt to a predominantly right-handed world and study successfully at school.
Asthenic syndrome
As mentioned above, one of the possible reasons for school failure is the child’s physical health. Many diseases that previously affected mainly adults are becoming increasingly common in children.
A frequently ill child is more irritable, gets tired faster, has a reduced level of physical and mental activity, is less resistant to various types of stress, and is less able to work.
However, general weakening of the body can also be congenital. By the beginning of school, a somatically weakened child often looks younger than his age and is characterized by excitability, capriciousness, fatigue, and tearfulness. Additionally, changes that occur in the body in connection with the growth spurt that occurs in the 6-7th year of life can further reduce the child’s endurance to stress. The period of primary school education may coincide in time with the period of intensive growth of the child’s body.
The likelihood of such a coincidence is especially high in children with delayed development; their level of biological development often does not coincide with the calendar one. Changes that, with timely development, occur in the senior preschool age, occur already at the school desk. The child’s stability during this period decreases; the usual school load may turn out to be excessive and have an adverse effect on health. Moreover, this load tires a weakened child, and the resistance to the educational load and various diseases decreases even more.
Difficulties in adapting to school conditions are caused not only by the increased fatigue of these children and reduced performance, but also by infantile mental characteristics that differ in a frequently ill, weakened child: lack of independence, fearfulness, timidity, extreme dependence on an adult.
Despite the fact that the intellectual activity of such children may be relatively intact, the systematic academic load and stay in a children's group often turns out to be too much for them. The standard load turns out to be excessive: fatigue occurs faster than in healthier children. Accumulating fatigue and lack of timely rest (they manage to get tired, are exhausted long before the break between lessons and do not have time to rest during the break) leads to the formation of asthenic syndrome, i.e. a state of neuropsychic weakness, rapid exhaustion, fatigue from any activity, inability for prolonged stress.
The child's sensitivity to external stimuli (loud sounds, bright lights) increases, he becomes irritable, whiny, impatient, headaches appear more often, attention and memory deteriorate. The painful increase in sensitivity can be so pronounced that the child suffers from ordinary everyday irritants - being in a noisy classroom becomes unbearable for him, the sound of a school bell makes him flinch, the teacher's loud voice causes a headache.
Dysregulation of vegetative processes is clearly manifested: indigestion and vascular tone, lethargy to the point of fainting, all kinds of pain that have no organic basis. Sleep becomes superficial, anxious, the child often wakes up in the morning, feels tired, depressed and does not want to do anything.
Much attention is paid to the school success of a frequently ill child by the social and living conditions of the family and the style of education. A child growing up in conditions of social and pedagogical neglect, as a rule, does not receive sufficient treatment at home and may spend most of the year in hospitals and sanatoriums. Frequently missed lessons, gaps in knowledge, constant changes in learning conditions, lack of a permanent group of children and disruption of friendly ties lead to a disruption in school motivation (their decrease) and the level of aspirations. The child ceases to cope with the material available to him.
Another problem is overprotective upbringing, which makes it difficult for a child to develop independence and adequate self-esteem. Fixing a child on his illness and lowering the level of requirements leads to the fact that, when faced with real school difficulties, he is not ready to overcome them to achieve the required result. A child, feeling discomfort, is more inclined to avoid solving the problem than to make any efforts to resolve it.
In both cases, the combination of asthenia of the child and inadequate social and living conditions can lead to a distorted formation of the personality, which will turn out to be maladapted not only to school, but also to mobile social conditions in general.
Mental infantilism syndrome
A number of children upon entering school have traits of mental immaturity (primarily, this manifests itself in the emotional-volitional sphere), maintaining, according to the definition of L.S. Vygodsky, an earlier child’s mental organization. Such children exhibit a later development of educational activity and more direct behavior than is required by school conditions.
This condition, when a child seems to be “delayed” at the previous age stage of mental maturation, is called mental infantilism syndrome.
It is customary to distinguish between several tests of mental infantilism.
1. Harmonic - a proportional combination of physical and mental immaturity in the absence of painful deviations in the child’s mental state. This form of infantilism usually occurs when the child is genetically predisposed to later development; the presence of infantile traits in childhood can also be detected in close relatives. Sometimes it occurs in twins and premature babies. The development of children with harmonious infantilism has a favorable prognosis: with proper organization of upbringing and education, these children over time catch up with their peers academically, the negative trends in their personal development are smoothed out by Drobinskaya A.O. School difficulties of non-standard children. M., 2001..
2. Disharmonic - based on a delay in the development of the frontal lobes of the human brain, caused by objective factors and improper upbringing. Children with a simple form of mental infantilism are assessed by their behavior as being 1-2 years younger than their age. Parents and educators are often embarrassed by their naivety, lack of adaptation to reality, and manner of freely treating adults. Peers approach them as equals, but communication is difficult or does not work at all.
3. Psychogenically conditioned - an artificial delay in the socialization of the psyche and physically healthy child by an egocentric or anxious-suspicious style of education. Infantilism is cultivated by overprotection, the child is protected from difficulties and communication with peers is limited. Missed age development may be missed forever: the child did not have objective prerequisites for the development of infantilism, it was caused artificially. According to V.I. Zakharov, this type of mental infantilism is more difficult to correct.
Mental infantilism is not a general mental retardation. Speech development, the ability to draw - develop in full accordance with age standards, they master reading and counting in a timely manner.
The most noticeable signs of infantilism become at the beginning of school, when children find themselves ineffective in educational activities: they do not understand their responsibilities in the classroom, they do not have a sense of responsibility to the school and the teacher. Classes at school are hampered by increased physical activity, inability to exert stress, and lack of educational motivation. The interests of these children correspond to preschool age, and the leading form of activity remains play (they bring toys to class and say that they would like to stay in kindergarten).
At the beginning of school, an infantile child is not able to voluntarily control his behavior. His behavior is impulsive and direct: he can get involved in the general work, actively carry out the task, but if he gets tired of playing “school”, he can get up and walk around the class, talk with his neighbor at his desk, and do other things. He does not understand school rules and regulations.
Repressive measures only increase the risk of school maladjustment for such a child. The most effective technique in working with such a student is to maintain direct interest in what is happening in the class.
However, mental infantilism can also be combined with a low level of intellectual capabilities of the child. In this case, it is advisable to conduct additional individual lessons with the child in the form of didactic games.
Experts note a number of features of the psychophysiological development of infantile children that influence the success of their education:
Motor infantilism - the movements of infantile children are often impetuous, insufficiently coordinated and accurate; the development of motor stereotypes is difficult, which is especially clearly manifested when teaching a child to write, draw and when performing labor;
Concrete-figurative and visual-effective thinking predominates;
A lack of verbal-semantic memory was noted (the greatest difficulty for memorizing material is that requiring awareness of the connection between its parts);
Lack of active attention, increased distractibility, inability to concentrate;
Inability to work according to instructions at a common pace for the entire class.
Thus, the construction of correctional work with infantile children implies taking into account their physiological characteristics, level of mental development and general readiness for school.
Psychoorganic syndrome
Learning difficulties and behavioral disorders can be a consequence of the so-called psychoorganic syndrome. Psychoorganic syndrome (in Russian literature) is a complex of impaired intellectual activity, emotional-volitional sphere and behavior that arises as a result of organic brain damage. In the English-language literature, the name “minimal cerebral dysfunction” is accepted to refer to the psychoorganic syndrome.
This concept is quite vague, since it does not have clear boundaries and degrees of expression. It may include individual manifestations characteristic of hyperdynamic syndrome, cerebroasthenia, organic infantilism, and may also cause a complex of these disorders.
The causes of such disorders are complications during the mother's pregnancy, her illness, occupational hazards, intoxication, unfavorable course of childbirth (oxygen deficiency of the fetus during childbirth, birth injuries), severe illnesses suffered at an early age, and brain injuries.
The manifestations of this syndrome vary depending on age.
School-age children are characterized by impulsiveness, emotional incontinence, a weak sense of the situation, and insufficient self-criticism. In some cases (with severe damage, disturbances in temperament and drives may be noted (increased suggestibility, pleasure as the main motive of behavior), short temper with manifestations of aggressiveness, disinhibition of drives (sexuality, gluttony, increased desire for new impressions, leading to vagrancy). Similar The conditions are called psychopathic-like; they significantly disrupt the child’s personality structure and behavior.
Often, cognitive impairments come to the fore. At primary school age, the most common disorders in the development of so-called school skills are:
Dysgraphia (writing);
Dyslexia (reading);
Dyscalculia (counting);
Correction of difficulties and assistance to children with brain disorders should be comprehensive and include both psychological and pedagogical, speech therapy, and medical support from a neuropsychiatrist. Drug therapy will help increase the child’s overall tone and performance, normalize sleep, improve attention and memory. The help of a teacher is necessary for repeated repetition of the material covered and the formation of the necessary knowledge, skills and abilities.
Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder
Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a medical diagnosis that can only be made by a doctor after a diagnostic examination.
Traits that characterize attention deficit hyperactivity disorder are usually:
Active attention deficit;
General motor restlessness, restlessness, many unnecessary movements;
Lack of purposefulness of actions and their impulsiveness.
According to epidemiological studies, the frequency of ADHD among preschoolers and schoolchildren is = 4.0 - 9.5% Zavadenko N.N. How to understand a child. M., 2000..
Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder occurs in various diseases and developmental disorders (more often with long-term consequences of organic brain damage) and is combined with memory and performance disorders, but the main manifestation of this deviation in the development of a child is an attention defect. The child's attention span and concentration are reduced (he can concentrate on something for only a few moments, his distractibility is extremely increased - he reacts to any sound, to any movement in the classroom).
Such children are often irritable, hot-tempered, and emotionally unstable, which makes it difficult for them to communicate with peers and adults. The emotional tension characteristic of such children, the tendency to acutely experience the difficulties that arise when communicating at school, lead to the fact that negative self-esteem and hostility to everything related to schooling are easily formed and recorded by Drobinskaya A.O. School difficulties of non-standard children. M., 2001..
These deviations are secondary in nature, but increase the child’s school maladjustment. Prosperous personal development and successful school adaptation directly depend on the extent to which the adults around the child are able to understand his difficulties arising from his painfully increased activity and emotional imbalance.
The first manifestations of hyperactivity syndrome are as follows: increased muscle tone, excessive sensitivity to all stimuli (light, noise), sleep disturbance, mobility and excitability during wakefulness.
With age, disinhibition decreases significantly or disappears completely (in adolescence, a child may become inert and lacking initiative), however, instability of attention and impulsiveness of actions, as a rule, remain. According to Zavadenko, cognitive and behavioral impairments persist in almost 70% of adolescents and more than 50% of adults who were diagnosed with ADHD in childhood.
The inability to maintain concentration and control over one's impulses for a long time becomes most pronounced at the initial stage of schooling; it causes disruption in the acquisition of knowledge and often leads to disciplinary problems. All this significantly disrupts school adaptation.
The prognosis for the success of a child’s learning and development depends on the following factors:
The degree of severity of motor disinhibition and instability of attention;
The nature of cognitive impairment;
The presence of secondary emotional and personality disorders;
Carrying out adequate comprehensive drug treatment;
Psychotherapeutic support (with the aim of preventing secondary deviations in personal development).
To treat the syndrome, drugs are primarily used that affect metabolic processes in the central nervous system and stimulate the maturation of inhibitory and regulatory structures of the brain. The choice of drug and therapeutic dose is individual.
Unfavorable social and pedagogical conditions are a risk factor and can lead to disruption of personal development. Children and adolescents with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder are predisposed to behavioral disorders and antisocial behavior.
With the provision of timely therapeutic and pedagogical support, and with successful personal development, a hyperactive child is able to adapt to society, subsequently lead a normal working life, and adequately establish interpersonal relationships.
d) Social reasons for academic failure
A dysfunctional, single-parent family, lack of contact with parents, low financial level of the family, school educational environment, the media - all these social factors can also lead a child to failure in learning.
Social environment
V.M. Astapov Astapov V.M. Introduction to defectology with the basics of neuro- and pathology. M., 1994. believes that academic failure in most cases is not due to impairments in cognitive activity, but to other reasons. First of all, children are unprepared for schooling, lack of prerequisites and skills for learning activities. In a class with a low level of educational attainment, this lack of preparedness can develop into pedagogical neglect.
Often the cause of academic failure is unfavorable living conditions in the family, lack of both control and assistance in learning from adults, conflicts in the family, and lack of routine.
Family parenting style influences a child's success. High academic performance is facilitated by parents’ constant desire for a systematic relationship with the child, communication with him, and spending leisure time together. When parents see a child in their home, a little loser, performance in the subject is low. Schoolchildren who experience hostility (rejection) from their parents have low academic performance. And then the cause of school troubles becomes the influence of the family, the family “climate”. And not necessarily only in dysfunctional families... outwardly the family may even be good, but the child in it does not have a very sweet life.
But most often, these are, of course, dysfunctional families. And a special conversation about children who have drinking parents.
The fact is that it is the child’s mental health that is the determining factor on which successful adaptation to school and successful learning depend. It is precisely in the neuropsychic sphere of children that the circumstances of the life of a drinking family sharply hit them. And as a result - homelessness of children, intellectual and emotional hunger, gross pedagogical neglect, delayed development...
Under such conditions, even those children whose normal intelligence is reduced are unprepared for school. But what about children with obvious neuropsychic disorders?
These children are characterized by:
General weakness, retarded growth and physical development;
Predisposition to frequent diseases, especially chronic ones;
Obvious sleep disturbances: children have trouble falling asleep, cry out in their sleep, wake up in fear;
Slow development of motor, speech functions, cognitive activity.
Many mothers in families where fathers suffer from alcoholism do not fully realize that they will definitely face great difficulties in raising their child’s education.
Restless, fussy, distracted, inattentive, disinhibited children from such families cause teachers concern from the very first days. Noteworthy is the poverty of their speech, limited vocabulary, lack of knowledge and information about the world around them, lack of development of many skills, without which successful learning is impossible, and generally not a very great desire to learn.
At the beginning of school, such children behave very spontaneously: they often play in class, do not understand the school situation, and cannot critically evaluate their actions and actions. They are careless about their studies and do not care about failures. And happiness is if parents “come to their senses” at least a little, and understand that their child requires a particularly careful and attentive approach, and shouting and punishment, which are usually not stingy in such families, will not help.
Unfortunately, in life, the answer to a child’s bad behavior and whims is often shouting, irritation, or punishment.
This is how a stressful situation develops, a vicious circle for a child: he is punished at home, he is not allowed to go out, he is deprived of pleasures and rest; At school, “for hooliganism” they are kicked out of class and shamed in front of the class.
Of course, it’s difficult with such children, but still there is only one way - patience, endurance. No matter how difficult it is, it is unacceptable to respond to a child’s breakdown with your own breakdown! We must calmly point out to the child the wrongness of his action; remember, for example, what his favorite cartoon character does in such a situation, explain why this is good and this is bad... Try to communicate more with the baby, play with him, develop his speech. If he doesn’t understand something, repeat it and explain.
It is necessary for such a difficult child to have a favorite pastime, a hobby - think, look... Do not forget to praise the child for the slightest success and support his confidence in his affairs.
And don’t be afraid to seek advice from a psychotherapist or psychologist. Don’t put off this visit, don’t hope that all this will go away! You will only waste time. Qualified advice from specialists, and, if necessary, treatment, will help you provide your child with educational conditions that are feasible for him, and this is extremely important.
Another factor that greatly influences the process of school adaptation and school difficulties. This is disharmony in family relationships, both between adults and between adults and children.
Psychological tension between family members creates an unfavorable background for the child’s development, disrupts necessary contacts, and reinforces incorrect behavior. In such families, they often cannot find a single line: it happens that the mother punishes, the father regrets, and vice versa. The child very quickly finds a beneficial style of behavior for himself, adapts, gets out of it, and then transfers the same style of behavior to his peers. Parents sometimes reproach each other for poor upbringing. “Your son got a bad grade again,” the father in such a family says with harsh satisfaction, and the mother can add no less angrily: “He, by the way, is not only mine; I would have raised him myself!” And such a father begins to educate with a belt... The child experiences nothing but anger and humiliation. He cannot come to terms with this - and begins to hate both his studies (for which he suffers) and his parents...
In such families there is no joy, ease of relationships, mutual support and affection. Instead, there is constant bullying, tension, sullenness... And the children do not make noise, do not laugh, do not have fun, but are irritated among their friends with anger, aggressiveness, and fights. Or they become isolated in their sorrows, turning into little old men.
Of course, conflict-free families can have their own mistakes in upbringing... It seemed that it could really be harmful to the child that the mother takes all his affairs to heart, gets easily upset, worries about him? She is worried that he will be late for school, not having time to do something; that neighbor Kolya is much better than her son... She tries to help with everything, she prepares homework with him - and is very upset if she still doesn’t get the desired grade. “No, I don’t say anything to him, I don’t scold him, but when I open the notebook, I’m sure to sigh with chagrin and struggle to hold back my tears. But he doesn’t react, he doesn’t care.” And the child, in the absence of his mother, says: “I’m very afraid of upsetting her... I’m so afraid that even when I’m writing a dictation, I think: I’ll make a mistake, they’ll give me a bad mark, and then she almost cries.” In fact, the mother is afraid of school problems and aggravates the situation, and in the child it strengthens the feeling of self-doubt in his abilities and knowledge.
Situations when children's successes do not correspond to the aspirations of their parents can be very different. It happens that a child, according to parents, is “the worst of all,” and instead of support, he is rejected emotionally, psychologically, and physically punished. Often parents naively (there are no other words) hope that the best way to mobilize a young student is fear. They don’t beat the child, they just scare him: that he will get a bad grade, that he will be kicked out of school, that he cannot become anything... But this is psychological beating! A mother really wants her child to be an excellent student. But he can’t - he’s afraid of his mother. And this fear paralyzes the child’s will, weakens activity and self-confidence...
How to fight?
The main difficulty for parents is the ability to combine demandingness with respect for children - and at the same time maintaining emotional, cordial contact with them. An exaggerated sense of duty, excessive adherence to principles and moral pressure turns into the fear of “being the wrong person”, otherwise - the fear of insolvency, as well as an alarming premonition of possible failures and defeats. Then eliminating fears becomes a difficult task, requiring frequent assistance from a psychotherapist.
Sometimes psychological beating is not at all perceived by parents as a powerful remedy. Do you remember that Agnia Barto has a poem that perfectly illustrates this tactic of parental behavior?
I earned a D
Because of the three-digit numbers.
It would be better if my dad
Screamed, stomped his feet,
I would throw things on the floor
Broke a plate on the floor!
No, he is silent for hours...
He won't say a word
As if I'm not Pavlik
It's like an outsider.
He didn't answer me
Didn't notice me
Silent even at lunch,
Silent during tea.
He has an indifferent look
He glances at me briefly
As if I'm not Pavlik
I am a table or a bench.
And silence is a burden to me!
I'm going to bed out of grief!
So, the bottom line: what can aggravate school difficulties or lead to their occurrence?
1. Misunderstanding. Parents do not see the true reasons for the difficulties, attributing everything to laziness, reluctance, and “bad inclinations.”
2. Discrepancy between the requirements and expectations of parents and the capabilities and needs of children. The good intentions of parents to teach everything at once: music, choreography, painting, and a foreign language - are met with school difficulties as overcoming an obstacle; But adults most often do not give up without a fight, and their children become victims.
3. Rejection of children. We tell mom about the tactics of communicating with the board and advise her to kiss her good night... And the answer was unexpected: “I can’t kiss her. She’s like a wolf cub, I physically feel her rejection.” At the heart of this situation is a deep, long-standing conflict that the mother could not or did not want to remove or soften. And this constant tension in the relationship between mother and daughter, this confrontation later led first to school stress, and then to neurosis.
4. Vagueness of parents. Imagine a family. Where strictness and exactingness reign, where any mistake is put on the line, causing universal condemnation, there is barely an alternative and no concessions, where the elder is always right, and the younger has no right to have his own opinion. This is how a downtrodden, weak-willed, insecure person is formed, or vice versa, an embittered person who constantly restrains protest. In both the first and second cases, he will most likely not be able to overcome any difficulties.
5. Inequality of relationships, inconsistency in treatment of children. This happens more often in families where parental zeal manifests itself from time to time. An educational impulse arose - and a diary and notebooks were demanded, a fight was arranged, conditions and golden promises were set. But a few days pass... and again no one is interested in the child! Mom has her own affairs and worries, dad has his own.
Child psychiatrist Buyanov M.I. identifies several types of defects in upbringing in the family:
1. Cinderella-type upbringing, when parents are overly picky, hostile or indifferent towards their children, placing increased demands on them, without giving the necessary affection and warmth. These children are downtrodden, timid, always afraid of beatings and insults.
2. Education according to the type of family idol. In such cases, all the children’s demands are met. The whole life of the family is centered only around their desires and whims. Children grow up capricious, willful, stubborn, do not recognize prohibitions, and do not understand the limitations of their parents’ capabilities. Selfishness, disregard for one's responsibilities, inability to delay receiving pleasure, and a consumerist attitude towards others are the consequences of such an ugly upbringing.
3. Overprotection - the child is deprived of independence, his initiative is suppressed, and his potential is not allowed to develop. Many of these children grow up indecisive, weak-willed, unadapted to life; they get used to the fact that someone will decide and do everything for them.
4. And on the contrary - hypoprotection. This type of upbringing, when the child is left to himself, is not controlled by anyone. No one develops in him the skills of social life, no one teaches him to understand “what is good” and “what is bad.”
5. Education like a crown prince. It is more common in wealthy families, whose members occupy a high position in society. Such parents devote a lot of time to their careers, do not spend enough time with their children, getting rid of them with gifts and permission to do whatever they want. Instead of receiving affection, warmth and care from their parents, children receive surrogates of emotions from them. Parents entrust their upbringing to relatives or random people - as long as the children do not interfere...
With all these types of upbringing, the occurrence of difficulties at school is more likely to be predicted. And correction sometimes does not have an effect - until the attitude towards the child at home changes.
Parent-child relationships are a factor in the formation of anxiety in children, and as a result, the cause of school failures. It is interesting to note that not only child-parent relationships influence the success of education, but also vice versa: if children study well, as a rule, family relationships also become warmer. For successful education, children need emotional acceptance, a high level of parental demands and prohibitions, and the absence of conflicts in the family regarding the upbringing of the child.
The phenomenon of “invulnerable children” is known, who, being in dysfunctional family conditions, are adapted in learning and behavior. Experts believe that a similar phenomenon manifests itself in the presence of high intelligence and focused personality of the child.
Of no small importance is the coincidence of the expectations of parents and teachers about the child. To improve the quality of students' knowledge, it is desirable to establish a close relationship between the school and the students' parents.
Method of teaching
The school educational environment can have both positive and negative effects on the child’s personality, behavior and learning success.
Psychologists and teachers have ambivalent assessments of the influence of various social factors, in particular the school educational environment, on the success of children’s education. From the point of view of teachers, the reason for the ineffectiveness of teaching is Thomas Thomas and the methods of organizing teaching; psychologists, among the negative factors of the influence of the school on the underachievement of children, more often name such a reason as teacher-student interaction.
Research also shows more specific reasons for failure in studies P.I. Pidkasisty. Pedagogy. Tutorial. M., 1998.:
A cruel, unified education system, the content of education is the same for everyone, and does not satisfy the needs of children;
Uniformity, stereotyping in teaching methods and forms, verbalism, intellectualism, underestimation of emotions in teaching;
Inability to set learning goals and lack of effective monitoring of results;
Neglect of student development, practicality, coaching, focus on rote learning.
Conclusion: didactic, psychological, methodological incompetence of the teacher leads to failure in studies.
Many authors believe that by improving the organization of the pedagogical process, it is possible to more effectively form positive typical characteristics of students (features of mental activity), which will contribute to improved academic performance. Educational and life tasks should be parallel, in this case children will know the purpose of studying the subject and successfully master the material.
K.P. Galenkina Galenkina K.T. Activation of teaching methods. L., 1960. notes that the main drawback of teaching is the passion for verbal methods, as a result of which verbal and logical thinking develops, but personality traits associated with the direct perception of the world around us and practical actions are not improved. Training, according to L.V. Zankova Zankov L.V. About some issues of primary education. Uch. Newspaper, 1956, No. 94., gives rise to “verbalism”, i.e. operating with words that are not associated in the child’s mind with specific ideas.
The predominance of verbal methods leads to a gap between the knowledge and skills of students; children know the rules, but write illiterately, i.e. their knowledge is passive.
Some experts call the main contradiction of education the collective form of education itself, in which “student-student” communication is excluded, and only “teacher-student” communication prevails.
Indeed, the most important principle of teaching and educating schoolchildren is an individual approach, but if there is no knowledge of the psychological causes of students’ mistakes, even individual teaching will not be effective.
Harald B. Levy notes that teachers, trying to improve the learning process, change the volume of material or the sequence of its presentation, but do not think about the question of how children assimilate the information received. In his opinion, no one comprehensive program can be suitable for all students, since each child's problems are different.
Harald B. Levy proposes to help struggling students through the joint efforts of a qualified teacher, interested parents and an attentive doctor, since it is difficult for an individual “narrow” specialist to look at the problem as a whole.
Some learning difficulties may be caused by “pseudo-reasons” - organizational or pedagogical passivity.
E.S. Gobova cites poorly designed textbooks as one of the reasons for academic failure. She believes that the textbook should be created taking into account the interests of children, and have a parallel existing methodology for the teacher.
To eliminate the didactic causes of academic failure, there are the following means:
1. Pedagogical prevention - the search for optimal pedagogical systems, including the use of active methods, forms of teaching, new pedagogical technologies, problem-based and programmed learning, computerization. Yu.K. For this purpose, Babansky proposed the concept of optimizing the UVP. In the USA they are moving along the path of automation, individualization, and psychologization of learning.
2. Pedagogical diagnostics - systematic monitoring and assessment of learning outcomes, timely identification of gaps. To do this, there are conversations between the teacher and students, parents, observations of a difficult student with recording of data in the teacher’s diary, conducting tests, analyzing the results, summarizing them in the form of tables according to the types of mistakes made. Yu.K. Babansky proposed a pedagogical council - a council of teachers to analyze and solve the didactic problems of lagging students.
3. Pedagogical tyranny - measures to eliminate the educational gap. In a domestic school these are additional classes. In the west there are alignment groups. The advantages of the latter are that classes are conducted based on the results of serious diagnostics, with the selection of group and individual training tools. They are taught by special teachers, and attendance at classes is mandatory.
4. Educational influence. Since academic failures are most often associated with poor upbringing, i.e. Low-performing students should receive individual VR, which includes work with the student’s family.
Ready for school
Among social reasons, a special place is occupied by the child’s readiness to study at school. A child's enrollment in school dramatically changes his entire life. This period is equally difficult for 6-year-old and 7-year-old children. Of course, the better prepared the child’s body is for the changes associated with learning at school, for the difficulties that may arise, the easier and sooner he will overcome them, the more painless the adaptation process will be in the first grade.
At the beginning of school, a child must not only be mature physically and socially, but also achieve a certain level of mental, emotional and volitional development. At the moment, almost all children are prepared for school: in kindergarten, at home or in special preparatory groups. Most often, this is done by educators or primary school teachers themselves: children are taught to read, count, and sometimes write. As a rule, the main influence in such preparation is given to the intellectual development of the child. However, pedagogical readiness for schooling is not sufficient when determining the complex concept of a child’s psychological readiness for school.
What is “school readiness”? This is a complex complex determined by the morphological, functional and mental development of the child, suggesting a fairly high level of development of the child’s motivational, intellectual and voluntary spheres. The development of motivation and volition is usually called personal readiness for learning, and it is just as important for a child’s successful educational activity as intellectual readiness.
In addition, the concept of “readiness for school” is important in the conditions of mass education at school, since the teacher in his work is guided by a certain average level of development of children, at which the curriculum falls, as defined by L.S. Vygotsky, into the zone of proximal development of a child of a given age Vygotsky L.S. Thinking and speech. M.., 1982.. According to N.I. Gutkina Gutkina N.I. Diagnostic program for determining the psychological readiness of children 6-7 years old for schooling // Psychological Science and Education. M., 1997., if the current level of the child is such that his personal “zone of proximal development” is lower than that required for mastering the curriculum, then such a child is not psychologically ready for school education; he cannot master the material required by the program and most often falls into the category of lagging behind students.
Thus, determining the degree of readiness is one of the measures to prevent academic failure. This is a signal for teachers, parents and specialists that the child requires additional attention to himself as a student, in which case an individual approach is necessary, a search for effective means and methods of teaching that take into account his characteristics and capabilities.
Most domestic and foreign experts recommend conducting a medical, psychological and pedagogical examination approximately six months to a year before entering school. The results of such an examination will help not only determine the child’s level of readiness for school, but also, if necessary, carry out a special set of developmental and correctional measures. And parents can receive the necessary recommendations to improve the child’s health and eliminate shortcomings in upbringing.
Are there many actually “unprepared” children in school? According to statistics conducted by M.M. Bezrukikh Bezrukikh M.M., Efimova S.P. The child goes to school. M., 1996. the number of such children ranges from 10 to 50% in urban schools and can reach 75% in rural schools. At the age of 5 - 5.5 years, about 80% of children are not ready for intellectual schooling. At 6 years old they are already 51%, at 6.5 years old 32%. And by the age of 7, the number of children “unprepared” for school drops to 13%.
Giftedness
Another group of students that often causes additional trouble for teachers are gifted children. In recent decades, one of the problems causing concern among both teachers, psychologists, and parents is the problem of declining interest in learning, and as a consequence, the indicators of intellectual development of gifted children starting to study at school. According to A.M. Matyushkin, about 30% of American students expelled from schools for poor academic performance are gifted and super gifted children. According to data on our country, quite frequent conflicts with teachers among highly intelligent schoolchildren are accompanied by negative emotions of the latter both towards the teacher himself, and towards the school and even the discipline taught Matyushkin A.M. Mysteries of giftedness. M., 1993..
Of course, gifted children differ from each other in the degree of giftedness, cognitive style, and areas of interest.
Teachers often do not consider such a student to need individual approach and help. It is believed that if a child successfully masters the subjects of the program, then he should have high school motivation. However, practice shows that a gifted child may, for one reason or another, be in a negative mood towards school, which undoubtedly affects the performance of his further education.
Very often, parents of a gifted child turn to a psychologist with the question of whether it is possible to send their child to school earlier than usual. They explain that their son or daughter is noticeably ahead of his classmates in kindergarten and it’s time for him to do something more challenging. Due to their advanced intellectual development, gifted children often do only their favorite things and are isolated from their peers. They need to develop communication and cooperation skills, they must learn to be friends and live in a team. The ability to cope with schoolwork is not necessarily an indicator that a child should go to school.
As a gifted child progresses through the next grades of elementary school, parents often hear him complain that he is bored in class. In this case, the child may only get an “A” grade, and may not be the strongest student in the class.
Much in the fate of a gifted child will depend on the characteristics of training and upbringing. How will certain learning strategies affect the development of mental abilities? Gifted children need special programs and specially trained teachers.
However, not all children's giftedness stands the test of time and the course of age development. B.M. Teplov wrote that the height of giftedness is revealed only by the results of a person’s life work, and its direction manifests itself much earlier: in stable interests and inclinations, in the success of various types of activities, in the individual’s mastery of various subjects.
A gifted child is not just an abstract bearer of talents, but first of all a person with his own strengths and weaknesses. The school should promote both the mental and personal development of a gifted student. It is a calm and constructive attitude towards the talent and originality of such a child that will allow him to feel not like a “black sheep” among other classmates, but a student who will always be helped and who will be interested in school.
Teacher burnout
Some socio-pedagogical reasons for underachievement are associated not with the reluctance and inability of teaching staff to effectively build the learning process, but with the emotional and physical overload of teachers.
Working with people, and with children in particular, requires great emotional investment. Young teachers who have just graduated from special educational institutions come to work with a burning desire to show the wonders of pedagogy and become a true friend and teacher for those children with whom they have to work. However, they are soon faced with difficult professional everyday life; many realize that they are unable to change the work system that has developed in a particular school, gradually losing their enthusiasm. The tense situations in the work of a teacher include the following: interaction with students in the classroom, during which various manifestations of violation of discipline on the part of students and conflict situations arise; difficulties in relationships with colleagues and school administration; conflict situations with the parents of certain students due to different assessments of the same child, lack of attention to the child in the family.
The emotional resources of a person who finds himself in such a difficult situation can gradually become depleted, and then the body and psyche develop various defense mechanisms. “Emotional burnout syndrome” is one of such mechanisms. Boyko V.V. “Emotional combustion” syndrome in professional communication. St. Petersburg, 1999. Another definition of this mechanism - “emotional definition” - we often encounter in everyday life. This concept characterizes an acquired stereotype of behavior, most often in professional behavior. Emotional burnout is a form of professional personality deformation.
Regardless of whether a teacher works in a kindergarten or a school, his devastation affects children's attitude towards school and their desire to learn. If a teacher works in the lower grades, then, according to E. Golizek, children develop negative feelings towards school in general. If this happens to a high school teacher, then an atmosphere of indifference and tension is created in the lessons, causing negative feelings in teenagers not only towards the teacher, but also towards the subject itself. Golizek E. Overcoming stress in 60 seconds. M., 1995..
According to M.A. Berebina from 7300 surveyed teachers of secondary schools Boyko V.V. “Emotional combustion” syndrome in professional communication. St. Petersburg, 1999:
56% note that they experience constant and significant intellectual overload;
24% consider intellectual stress to be moderate but constant;
32% of respondents indicate the constant nature of emotional overload;
18.4% of teachers believe that their work causes significant physical strain.
The teacher works in a mode of constant external and internal control. During the day of lessons, dedication and self-control are so great that mental resources are practically not restored by the next working day. Anxiety, depression, emotional rigidity and emotional devastation are the price of responsibility that a teacher pays. All this is aggravated by complex social, economic and everyday factors and chronic health conditions.
E. Golizek, in his book “Overcoming Stress in 60 Seconds,” offers the following recommendations from teachers:
1. Continue to improve your professional skills, participate in courses, seminars and other professional development activities, this will help overcome the feeling of inadequacy;
2. Schedule rest breaks; Coffee and lunch breaks should not be devoted to checking notebooks or preparing for classes; take your mind off school worries;
3. Be aware of new ideas: using the same materials year after year inevitably leads to boredom and emptiness; change lesson plans and assignments - this will maintain interest in teaching;
4. Communicate with colleagues, exchange ideas and new knowledge.
It's nice when your own child studies at “4” and “5”. It’s nice when you enroll children with high quality knowledge into your class; with them you feel satisfaction in your work, you see the results of your own work; I am calm with them when submitting a statistical report on progress to the head teacher of the school.
The Government takes care of gifted children and students with high real educational potential, approving the “Gifted Children” program, and is echoed by regional authorities and the Department of Education. Students who receive certificates for prizes in the Olympiad, scientific and practical conference of schoolchildren feel comfortable and confident. Television is in a hurry to talk about young prodigies...
But according to some special laws of nature, not always understandable to humans, other children live next to the child prodigies - students with low real educational capabilities, poorly or completely uneducated schoolchildren. They are not written about in newspapers, they are not filmed, parents talk about them without pride in their voices, teachers sigh heavily when they accept such a student into class.
And it turns out that there are many more such children than successful ones in education. They want everything that a gifted child feels: attention, a little fame, praise, and a sense of confidence... But in their lives, most likely, the opposite is happening. It seems that school has a unique opportunity to relieve a child of the burden of failures and significantly mitigate this negative factor in personal development.
For this purpose, in our school in 2001. a pedagogical laboratory was created on the problem “Social and pedagogical aspects of preventing school failure.”
The underachieving schoolchild is a legendary figure both in life and in pedagogy. Among those who failed were Newton, Darwin, Walter Scott, Linnaeus, Einstein, Shakespeare, Byron, Herzen, Gogol. In the math class, Pushkin was the last to study. Many outstanding people experienced learning difficulties in school and were classified as hopeless. These facts confirm that with a lagging, unsuccessful student, not everything is simple and straightforward. Who is an underachieving student? This is how it is said in the textbook by Ivan Pavlovich Podlasy:
An underachieving student is a child who cannot demonstrate the level of knowledge, skills, speed of thinking and performance of operations that the children studying next to him demonstrate. Does this mean that he is worse than them? Most likely no. Special examinations of the intelligence of children who are lagging behind in their studies show that in basic indicators they are not only worse, but even better than many well-performing schoolchildren. Teachers are often surprised: how could this or that student, who was listed as a hopeless failure, achieve success. But there is no miracle - it was a child who did not suit what was offered to him at school.
Our school is designed for the average student. Anyone else feels uncomfortable in it. A child who is not average, underperforming, with developmental disabilities. You can't make friends with a school like this. And not because callous, soulless people work here. But because they are limited by general conditions and requirements, they are forced at some point to provide the results of their work. The requirements are strict and merciless: if you haven’t learned to read at a given speed, you’re bad; if you don’t know how to solve problems, you’re lagging behind; if you can’t remember a poem, you’re an underachiever.
The school pays all its attention to those who are lagging behind. Let's consider some categories of children who are classified as underachieving:
1. Children with disabilities– these are those who, for various reasons, have had deviations from age norms.
They have difficulty completing tasks. They have very low self-esteem. Such children are more likely than others to receive comments from the teacher. They don’t want to be friends with them or sit at the same desk. The state of dissatisfaction with their position at school pushes them to unmotivated violations of discipline: shouting from their seats, running along the corridor, pugnacity.
2. Children not developed enough for school(they make up 1/4 of all unsuccessful students).
They were diagnosed with disorders in the early period of development (pathology of pregnancy and childbirth, birth injuries, serious illnesses). They suffer from various chronic diseases. They often live in unfavorable microsocial conditions. Underdeveloped children have difficulty adapting to the learning conditions at school, the daily routine, and the workload. And already in the first stages of education they form a completely definite risk group for the development of school maladaptation and academic failure. And most often they form a group of difficult, persistently underperforming students who create a problem for the school.
3. Functionally immature children.
They study diligently and conscientiously, they have a desire to complete all school assignments. But already in the first months of training, their behavior and well-being change. Some become restless, lethargic, whiny, irritable, complain of headaches, eat poorly, and have difficulty falling asleep. All this is understandable for now: after all, the child is adapting to new conditions, and this does not pass without leaving a trace. But one or two months pass, and the picture does not change, there is no success. And it becomes clear that some functions of the body are not yet ripe for school; studying is not yet possible. Some children get tired quickly (no school endurance), others cannot concentrate, others do not confirm the results of entrance tests, the hopes they showed in the first days. There are lagging, poorly performing students, and some do not master the program at all. Many children often get sick, miss classes and, as a result, begin to fall behind.
4. Weak children.
It's no secret that among children entering first grade, almost
Only 20-30% are healthy. According to incomplete data, 30–35% of first-graders suffer from chronic ENT diseases, 8–10% have visual impairments, more than 20% of children are at risk for developing myopia; 15-20% have various disorders of the neuropsychic sphere, most often as a consequence of organic damage to the cerebral cortex at different stages of development.
These children have difficulty adjusting to school. They were protected at home, not allowed to strain themselves, their development lags behind the norm (limited supply of information, knowledge, skills, poor orientation in the environment, difficulties in contact with peers, teachers, incorrect behavior in the classroom, insufficiently developed educational motivation).
There is another category of weakened children. These include children who were allowed everything at home. They are disinhibited, uncontrollable, get tired quickly, are unable to concentrate or work for a long time. In each class there are about 30-40% of such children. Teaching them is not an easy pedagogical task, which requires a lot of effort from teachers, as well as spiritual and professional skills.
5. Systemically lagging children.
Excessive emotional, mental, and physical stress associated with systematic education can cause a significant deterioration in the health of these children, especially if in the early period they already had various disorders and developmental delays. Learning difficulties are more often observed in children who have several types of developmental and behavioral disorders. At first glance, all the individual functions seem to be sufficiently developed, but there is no overall harmony. These children make up the group of systemically lagging behind. Minor deviations in various functional systems, combined with each other, lead to visible disorders: disinhibition, motor restlessness, hyperactivity. They are not able to organize their activities, are not able to fix their attention, cannot establish normal relationships with peers, react sharply to refusal, do not control themselves, forget good intentions, prefer to do only what they like.
Behavioral disorders, as a rule, are combined in such children with a whole range of difficulties in writing, reading, and mathematics. In 1st grade, for a long time they cannot learn the correct form of letters, write beautifully and accurately, they have dirty, sloppy notebooks. By the end of the school year, they do not master the curriculum for the corresponding grade. The peculiarities of their behavior, constant conflicts, violent reactions significantly complicate the situation in the classroom.
6. Non-standard children.
Among them are all those who “drop out” for various reasons from “high school”: highly gifted, talented, prodigies - and hopelessly retarded, exceptional in mental development.
There is another group of children; These are the so-called “slow” children - slow-witted, and this is a feature of their character. This may be due to illness, developmental delay, and characteristics of the nervous system, character, and temperament. These children are healthy and often very gifted. They differ from their peers only in the slow pace of activity. Others take longer to get involved in work and have a harder time switching from one type of activity to another. The overall pace of the class is too much for them. They are in a hurry, nervous, but still cannot keep up with others. The letters are getting worse and worse, and the number of errors is increasing. They have a hard time at school.
Non-standard, exceptional children also include children who are overly fast, constantly excited, and always in a hurry. These are the ones who raise their hand before they have even heard the question. They jump up, get nervous, flush with excitement - hurry, hurry. The teacher sees and understands them: he will rein them in, give them a difficult task that must certainly be completed, and will work with them patiently.
7. Children deprived of family and school.
A significant portion of schoolchildren are brought up in unfavorable microsocial conditions. This is social neglect: alcoholism of parents, an atmosphere of quarrels, conflicts, cruelty and coldness towards children, punishments, sometimes unfair, on the one hand, and permissiveness on the other. Sometimes the school further aggravates the difficulties of their lives, mercilessly pushing them into the category of pedagogically neglected. Pedagogical neglect is added to social neglect. The teacher is familiar with absent-minded, forgetful students with very unstable academic performance. They become tired already in the first lesson. They have difficulty understanding the teacher’s explanations, sit with an indifferent gaze, lie down on their desks, and sometimes fall asleep. The lessons seem prohibitively long to them. Their fatigue is expressed in a sharply reduced performance, a slow pace of activity, they do not have time to complete tasks with the whole class. During the lesson, they are distracted by external stimuli, whiny, and careless in their work. They often laugh for no reason. When reading, they lose lines and do not make semantic accents. Sometimes they diligently complete their homework, but in class they get lost and confused when answering.
Children deprived by family and school are hard to miss. In practice, an experienced teacher immediately determines: who wants to learn and who does not; who is hardworking and who is lazy; who is disciplined and who is disobedient. Although first impressions may be wrong.
In practice, it is customary to distinguish groups strong, weak and average students. The main formal criteria are, of course, academic performance and discipline. A simple comparison determines the excellent students, the “average students” and the laggards; exemplary and hooligans. If the teacher supports such a distribution, then both parents and children adopt his views. But the saddest thing is that the students also accept the roles assigned to them. Excellent students try to be on top all the time, jealously monitoring each other's successes, and poor students obediently agree with their status.
Much attention is paid to the characteristics of the selected groups. Among the excellent students there are simply talented children who learn easily and who do not attach much importance to grades - they just like to learn. There are also students for whom a high grade is a way to stand out and show their superiority. Such children are very jealous of other people's successes and may beg the teacher for good grades; they cry or get angry because of a three, which, in their opinion, was given unfairly. Vain, envious creatures, they are a worthy reserve for future careerists, flatterers, and sycophants. There are “reluctant excellent students” - drilled children, intimidated by parental strictures, who are carefully checked at home.
Lagging students also represent a heterogeneous group: there are good-natured lazy people, overly timid, shy children, highly distractible and inattentive children, and excellent intellectuals with non-standard behavior. Many of them suffer because of their poor academic performance.
The child came to school with a firm determination - to study for “4” and “5”. At first, he learns, tries, and improves his performance. But by the end of elementary school he may “see the light”; to find out that being an excellent student is not so honorable in the eyes of classmates. The primary attitude of some elementary school graduates is split. This explains the sharp decline in their performance in 5th grade. This is usually blamed on the lack of preparedness of children and the poor work of primary school teachers. But it is not always the case. Children's views change, values and guidelines are revised.
Thus, in the process of school study, several groups of students are distinguished - achievers, “averages” and lagging behind. These groups are heterogeneous; they have their own redistribution.
How do best practices and science define academic failure?
M.A. Danilov connects underachievement with the driving forces of the learning process, namely its contradictions. He believes that underachievement occurs when the contradictory unity of students' capabilities and what is required of them is disrupted. V. Okon agrees with M.A. Danilov, because he defines failure as a violation of the interaction between participants in the educational process (students and teachers) and external conditions. Particular characteristics of educational work are given in the work of R.L. Ginsburg. It indicates different levels of mastery of educational material. By educational material, he means textbook paragraphs, and he correlates different types of assimilation with a certain level of semantic processing of the text. R.L. Ginzburg divides students into the following groups:
1. Poor students who cannot follow the progress of the teacher’s explanation have great difficulty understanding the text of the textbook.
2. Underachieving students who partially cope with analysis and synthesis, for example, only when it comes to specific objects and phenomena.
What this or that group has in common is a reluctance to strain their mental powers and a negative attitude towards more complex forms and methods of work.
Unfortunately, in pedagogy more research is focused on established, fixed underachievement. But in order to know and apply in pedagogical practice the forms and methods of work aimed at preventing underachievement, it is necessary to grasp the moment when it is just emerging. There is a famous phrase: “It is easier to prevent a disease than to treat it.” It seems that this quote applies not only to physical ailments, but also to such a pedagogical phenomenon as academic failure. Our task is to detect the first signs of academic failure, analyze them and propose effective measures.
So what is underachievement? We found the best definitions in the book by V.S. Tsetlina “Unachievement of schoolchildren and its prevention.” Here are the lines from this book: “Unachievement is understood as a discrepancy between students’ preparation and the requirements of the content of education, which is recorded after a significant period of the learning process - studying a topic, the end of a quarter, half a year, or a year.” Here is V.S. Tsetlin defines lag. “A lag is a failure to fulfill requirements (or one of them), which occurs at one of the intermediate stages within that segment of the educational process that serves as a time frame for determining academic performance. The word “backlog” denotes both the process of accumulating non-fulfillment of requirements, and each individual case of that non-fulfillment, i.e., one of the moments of this process. A lag is a break in continuity.” One cannot but agree with the author of the book that failure and lag are interconnected. He further points out that failure as a product synthesizes individual lags; it is the result of the process of lag. Various backlogs, if they are not overcome, grow, intertwine with each other, and ultimately form underachievement. In this regard, the task of preventing academic failure is to prevent these growths and immediately eliminate them.
What are the main factors of academic performance? First of all this:
- requirements for students arising from the goals of the school;
- psychophysical capabilities of students;
- social conditions of their life;
There are many reasons causing school failure. It is not at all necessary that they act together and at the same time; one, even the weakest one, is enough. From this it becomes clear why early school failure is so difficult to correct, despite the significant efforts of teachers. Among the reasons why children fall behind in school, pedagogy names the following:
- unfavorable heredity;
- disorders of nervous activity;
- general inability to perform intellectual work;
- physical weakness;
- school immaturity;
- pedagogical neglect;
- insufficient speech development;
- fear of school, teachers;
- infantilism (i.e. childishness)
Members of the pedagogical laboratory have identified trends towards underachievement in the Norilsk industrial region. Here are the main aspects influencing student performance in CPD:
- poor heredity (children of the third generation come to school - grandchildren of the builders of Norilsk and Talnakh.;
- Polar night, asthenic state;
- decreased vision (children practically do not look into the distance, as a result, the eye muscles weaken);
- physical inactivity (scientists have identified the dependence of brain development on movement);
- nutrition (lack of vitamins);
- society;
- migration (in our school, 39% of unsuccessful students are students who do not speak Russian or do not speak it fully);
- activations (in the 2002–2003 academic year for the period November–March there were 40 activations in primary schools, 14 in 9 grades);
- northern conditions (parents go on vacation early and return late, which leads to the child falling behind in his studies);
- a socio-economic situation that has reduced the material standard of living of people (parents are forced, in addition to their main job, to earn extra money at another job - the child is left to his own devices).
Another reason lies, it seems to us, in the teacher. Gone are the extra free after-school tutoring for low-performing students. And there are many reasons for this: the lack of hours for additional classes (we often hear that a teacher is not obliged to study with poor students after school in his free time (a salesperson does not work after the store closes, a doctor tells patients “The appointment is over”), and electives, of which there are very few , used to deepen students’ knowledge); student interest decreases and indifference to their own grades appears, and the teacher waits and often does not wait for the student to come and pass the test, the relative financial well-being of families and paid higher education reduce the role of school assessment, and ultimately the teacher in the child’s future.
And another reason for student failure is Her Majesty Laziness. Not everyone, obviously, knows that laziness as a state of inactivity, mental lethargy, passivity also has a different nature and can be “normal” And pathological. Most often it manifests itself at school age. According to doctors, most lazy schoolchildren are completely healthy people. But for some students, laziness is one of the manifestations of pathologies. The main signs are inactivity, low performance, disorder of will, indifference to life, high subordination to others. A common cause of this condition is “somatogenic asthenia, i.e. physical and psychological weakness caused by somatic illness.” It can be completely overcome thanks to a gentle regime. In healthy students, most often the cause of laziness, as noted by the classic of Russian pedagogy, K. D. Ushinsky, is a direct aversion to the activities that adults encourage the child to do. The reasons for this reluctance are also different, but, the teacher says, education itself is to blame. Thus, there are often cases when demands are made on a child, and he is burdened with many responsibilities, demands of duty, which can cause the opposite effect. Sometimes, Ushinsky writes, laziness arises “from unsuccessful attempts at learning.” From the very beginning of mastering a new activity for a child, he is faced with failure. Systematic failures frighten him and make him lazy. However, if a child achieves success without making any effort, he can also become lazy. But upbringing is also to blame for this. It seems that not all teachers know that, as they say, laziness is different. The pedagogical laboratory carries out research into the causes of underachievement in our school on certain aspects.
To identify the causes of underachievement, it is necessary to understand its types.
Scientists and teachers in Poland, for example, distinguish two types: fixed (problems in knowledge) and hidden (changes in the student’s attitude to learning).
The classification of types of fixed academic failure according to A.M. is more acceptable to us. Helmont.
Type I – general and deep lag (in many or all academic subjects for a long time).
Type II – partial, but relatively persistent failure (in one or three of the most difficult subjects).
Type III – episodic failure (either in one or another subject, relatively easily overcome).
For determining reasons for school failure and there are several factors to consider.
Firstly, these are general indicators of the child’s health, health group, observations from specialists. Problems of physical condition are solved by specialists; psychological assistance in this case is supportive in nature, subject to all medical recommendations.
Secondly, it is necessary to take into account the social situation of the child’s development, the characteristics of child-parent relationships, the teacher-student relationship, and the adequacy of the demands of adults to the mental and physical capabilities of the child. Psychological support in this case includes counseling parents and teachers, and conducting educational work.
It is important for a psychologist to be able to differentiate negative behavioral manifestations, which can be explained by the psychophysiological characteristics of a certain age and are temporary, from maladaptive behavior caused by social conditions or disorders of the psychoneurological sphere.
In the process of a child’s education at school, there are two most critical periods: the beginning of education in 1st grade and the period of education in 5-7th grade. Psychophysiologists note that these periods are associated with a pronounced restructuring in the activity of the basic physiological systems of the child’s body, when educational work and mental activity are accompanied by high functional tension. This can manifest itself in increased fatigue, increased impulsivity, and a decrease in the arbitrariness of mental processes.
At the beginning of the first year of study, the process of adaptation to school takes place, which includes social, psychological and physiological aspects. Let's consider the three main stages of physiological adaptation.
Stage I – indicative: in response to the whole complex of influences associated with the beginning of systematic learning, the body of a first-grader experiences stress in almost all systems. Intellectual and emotional stress is accompanied by prolonged static tension while maintaining a certain posture of work in the classroom. This explains the low level and instability of performance and concentration. Teachers and parents celebrate "forgetfulness", "absent-mindedness" child. This stage lasts 2-3 weeks.
Stage II – adaptive: the student’s body is looking for optimal responses to pedagogical influences and parental demands. The discrepancy between the requirements of adults and the capabilities of a first-grader leads to the fact that at the end of the school day, fatigue, learning activity decreases. Depending on the adaptation capabilities and somatic state, this period of time is individual for each child.
Stage III – relatively stable adaptation: the child’s body finds optimal options for responding to the educational load. A first grader develops ways of behavior that help him avoid receiving negative evaluations from adults, literally and figuratively. Psychophysiologists note that all the adaptation period lasts approximately 5-6 weeks. The first month of training is considered especially difficult, because... “a study of the reactions of the body of first-graders during lessons based on indicators of the cardiovascular system showed that the stress of a child’s heart can be compared with the stress of an astronaut in a state of weightlessness.”
Subsequently, at 5-6 weeks of training, performance indicators become more stable, the stress of the body’s main life-support systems decreases, and relative adaptation to the entire complex of loads associated with training occurs. And although the period of acute physiological adaptation ends, the entire first year can be considered a period of unstable and intense regulation of all body systems. Special studies have shown that when reading aloud, metabolism increases by 48%, answering at the board and tests lead to an increase in heart rate by 15-30 beats, systolic pressure increases, etc.
The difficulty of the adaptation process can be determined by changes in children’s behavior: excessive excitement, even aggressiveness, or lethargy, apathy; under unfavorable conditions, a feeling of fear arises, refusal to attend school. Positive indicators are the formation of adequate behavior, establishing contacts with the teacher and peers, mastering the skills of educational activities, and the desire to receive positive feedback.
In adolescence, at the initial stages of puberty (approximately in grades 5–7), according to psychophysiologists, regressive deviations are detected in the organization of voluntary attention given by verbal instructions. The teacher may note that teenagers in the classroom seem to be in a state of prostration, “they don’t see or hear anything.” The student’s behavior is characterized emotional instability, uncontrollability, decreased performance. These observed changes are based on powerful biological changes accompanied by a decrease in self-control. At the same time, the need for self-affirmation increases, responses are impulsive, and the adequacy of assessing one’s behavior is reduced. The unfavorable phase of puberty for different schoolchildren occurs at different ages, and in the same class there are teenagers with different adaptive capabilities, so an individual approach becomes especially important.
Based on the above, we can conclude that one group of reasons for school failure may be psychophysiological age or individual characteristics.
A description of psychological work on harmonizing social relationships and supporting children with developmental problems is beyond the scope of the article; here we provide recommendations that will help teachers and parents organize the process of learning and homework for schoolchildren.
II. Performance dynamics
It is also necessary to take into account that each child has individual pace of performance. Changes in performance throughout the day allow you to see at what “cost” this or that pedagogical result is achieved. If learning requires significant mental and physical effort from the child, then fatigue can occur not only in the evening, but also in the middle of the day, for example, when the child has just returned from school and has not yet started doing homework. Understanding this will help you choose the optimal time to do homework or attend extracurricular activities. In other words, decide to do homework soon after school or after rest, start completing tasks with subjects that are difficult for the child or easier ones.
General patterns of performance dynamics include:
- working in- gradual increase in performance;
- optimum- a stable period when the body works most efficiently;
- pre-fatigue- compensatory restructuring, when the child can still work efficiently, but at the cost of significant stress. This period is characterized by a decrease in attention, an increase in the number of distractions, a decrease in the pace of activity, and an increase in physical activity. By an effort of will, the child can continue working, but not for long;
- fatigue- a special functional state of the body that occurs both during long-term, but uninteresting work, and during short-term intensive work. The first signs of fatigue are well known to teachers and parents: attention is impaired, the number of errors increases, and handwriting changes. Sometimes this manifests itself externally as sweating of the hands, redness of the face, and possible complaints of headache or “stomach pain.”
Let us emphasize that often increased physical activity also indicates fatigue. Parents believe that if a child begins to show excitement, then this indicates “irrepressible energy,” and he should be loaded with additional physical exercises to “throw out emotions.” However, if this is a consequence of fatigue, then the additional load can increase functional tension, the child cannot calm down for a long time.
The level of performance may change throughout the day:
- The initial level of performance can be high, medium or low. Such a student works consistently in class and at home; class and homework are almost the same in quality.
- Performance can decrease not only at the end of the day, but also in the middle. The teacher notes that at 4-5 lessons the child shows signs of fatigue, forgets to write down homework, and becomes absent-minded.
- With a low or average initial level, performance increases in the middle of the day or only towards the end. It is noted that in the last lessons the student copes with tasks more easily; if control types of work occur at this time, then they are of better quality than at the beginning of the day.
- Performance improves in the first half of the day and worsens in the second. At the end of the first lesson, working capacity increases, “gets involved in work”, but by the end of the school day the initial low or average level of working capacity begins to decrease, and by the evening such a student will do his homework sluggishly and for a long time.
- Performance worsens in the first half of the day and improves in the second. The initial average or low level of performance increases by the end of the school day; such a student will be much better at doing homework than working in class.
Here are several options for performance dynamics. Of course, a teacher or parent may not be able to determine the type of performance, but understanding that they are different with a variety of options will help to find a more adequate approach to the child.
For example, strong emotional stress, even positive, can overstimulate a child, which will lead to faster fatigue. Knowing the characteristics of the type of performance, a teacher or parent will be able to understand that negative behavior is caused not by negative character traits, but by fatigue: it has become difficult for the child to control his behavior. This will help avoid unnecessary blame for the child.
III. If additional classes do not bring results
An important aspect in a child’s education is the characteristics of mental activity. In most cases, difficulties arise in the first months of school and, if you choose the right approach to the child, the learning process will gradually stabilize. Traditional methods of developing mental qualities in children with poor memory and poor concentration are not always effective. Often, additional classes tire the child even more and have the “backfire” in learning.
"Unusual Child"
The child is characterized as physically developed or slightly weakened. However, they note that he often “switches off”, does not respond to comments, works only at the beginning, gets tired quite quickly, can be active during recess, but responds poorly in class, does not remember the material well, and is inattentive. Such children sometimes look unusual, withdraw into themselves, and often give strange, non-standard answers. Parents often mistake this specificity for talent and send their children to various studios and clubs. It is difficult for such parents to understand that additional activities can cause overwork and nervous exhaustion. Such children are emotionally “sluggish” and can relive the impressions they receive for a long time. Light positive emotions have a good effect on them, while strong ones deplete them.
"Naughty"
Such a child is sometimes called hyperactive, overly active. However, upon closer attention, this turns out to be motor disinhibition, forced, uncontrollable reactivity, which is combined with increased excitability, “chaotic grasping” of everything that catches the eye and fatigue. In front of unfamiliar adults, they behave in the same way as in front of relatives; such children can easily be provoked into conflict, even in the presence of teachers. A harsh remark is met with a sharp response. Such a child tries, but cannot keep his promise; he often causes irritation rather than sympathy, while he himself suffers greatly. During the learning process, it also periodically “switches off” without noticing it. As a result, even with a good memory, learning the material may be inconsistent. It is difficult for the child to maintain mental performance until the end of the day, although he remains physically active until late in the evening. Strong emotions can disorganize the behavior of such a child.
"Slow-witted"
The teacher notes that the child is slowly mastering the educational material, and it is difficult to switch him to another task. He “swings for a long time,” but then works quickly. The desire of adults to push such a child leads to the fact that he begins to get nervous and cannot get into work for even longer. Parents and teachers attribute this to the child’s stubbornness, but in a calm environment he is able to switch to a new type of activity much faster. For such a child, the previous instruction may overlap with the subsequent one and lead to confusion; words or numbers from the previous exercise or task may emerge, which leads to “wild” mistakes. Such a child does not cope well with short and quick independent work, and teachers and parents believe that the child is lazy and can work “whenever he wants.” At a slow pace of work, he learns much better.
"Capable but lazy"
The child is immediately actively involved in activities, but does not work for long, gets tired quickly, and finds it difficult to regulate his performance. Such a child is often scolded for laziness, lack of will, unwillingness to work hard, to finish the job he started. Such a child writes short independent works well, but long ones - poorly. By the end of the lesson, the child may “switch off” and turn in unfinished work. Such a child is constantly raised at school and at home, the father tries to make him strong-willed, and the mother tries to make him neat and organized. Attempts to practice in various sports sections only aggravate the difficult situation.
"A little inattentive"
Such a child also gets tired quickly, but with the help of volitional self-control he can regulate his activity. His memory capacity is reduced, voluntary attention is poorly developed, but his intelligence does not suffer. Attempts to train the attention and memory of such children lead to nothing but overwork. The performance of such a child usually remains throughout the entire school day, but “blackouts” still occur. The child can continue to act without noticing that the instructions have changed or some condition has appeared. Consequently, such a child also has specific gaps in knowledge.
Obviously, for most children, all the problems described are not total. However, the manifestation of one or another quality should not be ignored and the child needs to be helped. First of all, you should consult a doctor who can determine the cause of these “features”. For such children, it is important to alternate classes with rest, change the type of activity, especially when preparing homework. If the lesson has been delayed and the child cannot cope, you should postpone the task for a while and then return to it.
- Homework should begin with a brief review of what was covered in class. This will help clarify how correctly the child understood the educational material.
- The “Say it in short” technique turns out to be effective: the child is asked to present part of what he read in one or two sentences, “as I understand it.”
- For “minutes of rest” it is good to use various rhythmic exercises (with and without music), and physical exercises for different movements. For example, “One hand catches up with the other”: the child stands with his hands down, counting one hand on the belt, two - the other hand on the belt, three - one hand to the shoulder, four - the other hand. Then the movement goes down.
- Exercise “Clapping”: clap the rhythm of the memorized poem with your palms. A more complex option - a loud clap indicates a stressed syllable in a word. For example: “LAM-pa.”
- To avoid doing homework twice on a draft and in a notebook, you can, to train your hand before writing, invite your child to color or outline a large picture with a pencil.
- To make the reading process easier, it is good to use a ruler under the line you are reading. Increasing reading speed is achieved not by using more text, but by repeating short paragraphs or sentences. A child will learn a text better if he reads it in “pieces”, several times each, since it is difficult to retain the entire text in memory, especially for a first-grader. When learning to read, the goal is understanding, not speaking out loud, so the child must be given the opportunity to understand the text.
- It is recommended to more often show, tell, play out or draw graphically the information that must be learned.
- At the end of the work, you need to praise the child for his efforts. Fear and negative emotions reduce the learning ability of any person, especially a first-grader.
- In the evening, it is better to simply read to the child again what he needs to remember, and not demand that he repeat. Teachers and parents know the “overlearning effect” if the material was learned so intensively that it led to overwork and forgetting.
- During the first grade, parents should not immediately rely on the child’s independence; gradual development of school skills, assistance, interest and sincere participation will have a positive effect on the acquisition of knowledge.
When is the help of a speech therapist needed?
First-graders encounter spelling errors such as “mirror writing,” missing letters, missing words, etc. During the first half of the year of study, the number of such errors decreases; in this case, it is the automation of the writing skill, which will continue for some time. If such errors increase, handwriting becomes illegible, there are a lot of blots in notebooks, then this indicates that the student has problems, at least with phonemic perception, as well as difficulties in developing visual-motor coordination, the presence of movements that complicate the writing process .
Manifestation of dysgraphic errors in written works
It is necessary to distinguish the nature of errors in students’ written work so that correctional work is targeted. These errors can be caused by phonetic-phonemic underdevelopment of speech, violation of grammatical structure, and insufficient vocabulary. These children, as a rule, had problems with sound pronunciation in preschool age and studied with a speech therapist. However, within the framework of preschool age, speech therapy work is traditionally aimed at the formation of correct sound pronunciation, and work on other aspects turned out to be insufficient. Such schoolchildren need further help from a speech therapist; the teacher’s work in mastering the rules of grammar is difficult. During a psychological examination, confusion is revealed in the reproduction of the names of objects, for example, to the picture “saucepan” the child answers “frying pan”, during auditory perception he confuses the sound series, instead of “ice, flag, notebook” he answers “ice, frag”, “sword” ( low-frequency) is replaced by “ball” (which occurs more often in the child’s experience).
Here is a table on the differentiation of dysgraphic and spelling errors, which shows that the student additionally needs speech therapy help.
At the level of written work performed “by ear” (dictations)
Insufficient development of phonemic perception leads to various types of dysgraphic errors
|
Spelling mistakes |
|
|---|---|
|
mixing and replacing consonants corresponding to oppositional sounds |
spelling of paired voiced and voiceless consonants |
|
skipping vowels |
spelling soft and hard consonants |
|
various distortions of the sound-letter composition of a word: underwriting, omissions, extra letters, rearrangements |
spelling of softening “b”, dividing “b”, “b” |
|
separate writing of parts of words |
spelling double consonants |
|
mixing and replacing iotized ones (“I”, “Yu”, etc.) |
spelling unpronounceable consonants |
|
spelling vowels after sibilants |
At the level of written work (presentation, essay, i.e. written personal speech)
The following types of errors are explained as a consequence of the phonetic-phonemic development of speech, as well as a limited vocabulary and violations of the grammatical structure of speech:
|
Specific (dysgraphic) errors |
Spelling mistakes |
|---|---|
|
mixing, replacing words according to meaning and acoustic similarity |
spelling of gender and case endings |
|
deformations of the syllabic structure of a word - underwriting, omissions, rearrangements, replacement of syllables |
spelling of unstressed vowels in the root of the word, in prefixes, in endings |
|
errors of prepositional control and case form, agreement errors |
spelling of prefixes, suffixes, and various parts of speech |
|
combined spelling of a preposition with a word, separate spelling of a prefix with a stem |
spelling of capital letters, conjunctions and allied words |
|
violation of word order in a sentence |
spelling of homogeneous members of a sentence |
|
sentence deformations |
difficulties in isolating the main idea of the text, supporting words |
|
lack of sentence boundaries |
|
|
incorrect definition of the main and subordinate clauses, unlawful use of allied words |
|
|
difficulties in constructing coherent, detailed written texts |
|
|
difficulty identifying parts of text |
|
|
violation of the sequence and logic of the text |
In addition to specific errors in written work, such children also have difficulty understanding extended sentences, complex tense structures, and understanding the terms of word problems, especially phrases such as “so much, how many.”
Lack of formation of spatial representations
Insufficient development of spatial, spatio-temporal representations is manifested in violations of graphic activity, reading, writing, mastery of mathematical operations, and difficulties in the formation of abstract logical thinking. In other words, the examination reveals problems in conducting intellectual operations. In this case, the psychologist carries out work on the formation of spatial representations, which is carried out in the logic of ontogenesis, i.e. gradual formation.
Based on the above, we can conclude that the reasons for school failure are:
1) at the causal level:
- specificity of the neurobiological functional organization of brain systems;
- specificity of the individual profile of functional asymmetry;
- social development situation;
- individual somatic condition;
2) level of basic components of mental development:
- randomness of mental activity;
- spatial and spatiotemporal representations;
- basic affective regulation.
A psychological and pedagogical conclusion on the causes of school failure should include a description of psychophysiological characteristics, the results of a diagnostic examination of the level of basic components of mental development and recommendations for further support, including additional consultations with specialists such as a speech therapist, a doctor, a social teacher, and, if necessary, a defectologist. In this case, accompanying and developmental work will be carried out comprehensively and will be effective.
Psychologist-consultant FPPM HSC
methodologist of the Laboratory of Practical Psychology of the Medical Center of the Northern Administrative District