Pedagogical culture: definition, components

2024 Author: Henry Conors | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-12 02:43

One of the important and at the same time complex characteristics of the activity of a modern teacher is such a complex concept as pedagogical culture. Given the versatility of the educational process both in a modern school and in a family, it should be noted that it is not so easy to define it, clearly indicating what it is. But still, let's try to do it, taking into account the ideas of authoritative teachers of the past and present century, modern trends in the development of culture and society.

Difficulty of definition

To limit the concept of pedagogical culture to any one, even capacious, definition today is quite difficult. The main difficulty comes from understanding what culture is. A lot has been written about it today, only there are more than five hundred definitions of it. The second problematic point is the complexity of pedagogical activity. Various speculative concepts will not give a complete picture ofthe object of our study.

The second problem is the difficulty of defining the boundaries of pedagogy. It's no secret that a huge part of the world's population has to act as a teacher.

The third problematic point is that modern culture today has turned into a turbulent stream, in which there are many components that complicate the process of educating a personality.

Problems of culture

Metamorphoses of the last decades: the change of the political regime, the formation of an open society, the increase in the pace of globalization have had a significant impact on the sphere of culture. The change in the role of the state in the cultural upbringing of the society, the absence of the so-called monopoly on culture led to the fact that, in addition to freedom of choice and creative self-expression, the appearance of a low-quality cultural product became an essential weight. Instead of freedom of choice, they got its absence, which is expressed in the fact that there was nothing to choose from.

The transmission of the pro-Western way of life has led to the fact that respect for the national heritage has been largely lost. Interest in the original national culture, its traditions is only now gradually beginning to revive.

Replacing spiritual ideals with material ones turns a person into a consumer of all kinds of goods and products, and the inability to purchase both increases social tension in society.

Problems of culture become more and more obvious with the growth of other social problems and all this is reflected in a certain way in the processupbringing, which today within the family is limited to the task of providing only material needs. Educational institutions have also lowered their standards, becoming retransmitters of outdated knowledge in innovative packages.

Opinions and theories

Returning to the concept of pedagogical culture, we note that it is quite young. Its appearance is due to the fact that in modern society there is a transition from technocratic views on the learning process to humanitarian ones. Authoritarian attitudes are changing to democratic ones, and in connection with this, the responsibility of the teacher increases. There is a need to determine not only the measure, but also the standard of education quality. Based on this, there is a need for such a concept as pedagogical culture.

There are many theoretical developments in this direction, considering various aspects of this problem: communicative, moral and ethical, historical, technological and even physical. In their studies, the authors are unanimous in that they represent pedagogical culture as a reflection of the general culture, which manifests itself in the features of the teacher's pedagogical activity and is realized in the sum of his professional qualities.

Delimitation from related concepts

As part of the qualitative characteristics of the teacher's activity, in addition to the concept under consideration, others are also used that are similar in meaning: professional culture, competence, and others. Let's determine the place of each of them in the system of cultural characteristics of the teacher.

Aboutcompetence, one can cite the opinion of the authoritative opinion of A. S. Makarenko, who believed that the skill of a teacher is determined by his level in the profession and directly depends on the constant and purposeful work of the teacher on himself. The combination of these two most important components allows you to get pedagogical skills as an output. In other words, the competence of the teacher, which is an indispensable condition for the formation and development of his skills, allows you to form a meaningful part of the pedagogical culture.

As already mentioned, pedagogical culture is part of the general culture of the modern teacher. The professional culture of a teacher can be represented from several angles:

• careful attitude to rapidly changing priorities in education and upbringing;
• presence of own pedagogical opinion;
• peculiarities of the spiritual world of the teacher's personality;
• preferences in the choice of methods, teaching techniques, etc.

It should be noted that the presented set of characteristics allows us to determine the relationship between professional and pedagogical culture. As already noted, not only teachers, but also parents take part in pedagogical activity. So they also have this kind of culture. The above set of characteristics specifies the teacher's activity and therefore it can be argued that professional culture is an integral part of pedagogical culture. The latter can be implemented at a professional level by teachers and lecturers, and atunprofessional other participants in the educational process (usually parents).

A few words about other participants in the pedagogical process

Let's consider such a phenomenon as the pedagogical culture of parents. In general, it can be represented as a certain level of preparedness of parents for raising children. It depends on him what the results of this process will be.

The concept includes a number of elements:

• parents have a sufficient level of responsibility for their children;
• formation of the necessary knowledge about the upbringing and development of the child;
• development of practical skills to organize the life of children in the family;
• effective communication with educational and educational institutions (kindergarten, school);
• pedagogical culture of parents.

Pedagogical culture at this level is the sum of various knowledge: pedagogy, psychology, medicine and other sciences.

On the role of ideas in pedagogy

A lot has already been said about this today. Various pedagogical ideas were expressed at one time by Aristotle and Plato, Leo Tolstoy and Grigory Skovoroda, A. S. Makarenko and V. A. Sukhomlinsky.

One of the most famous ideas of the latter was the priority of the process of education over training. The brilliant teacher created his concept on the basis of universal and moral values, giving priority to the development of the child's personality.

Today the pedagogical ideas of the classics have not lost their significance, but at the same time new ones are required. That is why conferences, round tables and other forms of exchange of experience and production of new ideas are so popular today.

Noting the importance of these ideas, the famous educator S. T. Shatsky, said that it was they who opened up new paths both in the practice of pedagogy and in its science.

Features of communication between teacher and student

Professional and pedagogical communication is a whole system of interactions between a teacher and a student, which is implemented for the purpose of training and education. The elements of the system are determined by a number of characteristics of the student and depend on the age, level of preparedness, characteristics of the subject being studied.

Specialists identify two systems:

• subject-object system, in which the teacher is implemented as a speaker, and the student is a listener, it is also called monologue;
• subject-subject, where the teacher and student are in continuous communication, are in dialogue.

Today, the second is considered more progressive, because it allows the student to actively participate in the learning process. This form of conducting a lesson allows the student to quickly understand the topic, and the teacher gives the opportunity to more objectively assess the knowledge of the student.

Definition and levels of pedagogical culture

Finally, having considered all the components, we can give a more complete definition of what constitutes a pedagogical culture. This is a complete systemwhich includes universal human values as a foundation, its content is formed by the methods of pedagogical activity, communication technologies, competence, and the driving component is pedagogical skills and the desire for continuous professional and personal self-development.

Based on this definition, the following levels of pedagogical culture can be distinguished:

• high: characterized by the presence of all the elements listed in the definition;
• medium: the lack of proper pedagogical experience, as a rule, affects the skill, while competence can be at the proper level; sometimes this level characterizes the absence of any type of self-development;
• low: typical for a novice teacher, when communication technologies are still being established, competence is being formed, own methods of pedagogical activity have not been developed.