The Child on the Threshold of Becoming a Pupil

Abstract

The functions of a preschooler's imagination that are required for a child to become immersed in the new social situation of development that characterizes the beginning of the early school ages are analyzed. The new social situation of development consists, above all, of new forms of interaction for the child with adults and other children within new primary activity—education. Imagination is viewed as a condition for the development of interaction during the older preschool ages based on a number of important indicators—the degree of development of social-communication skills and communicative competence—that underlie the “social component” of school readiness.

Keywords::

• communicative competence
• culture of behavior
• imagination
• interaction
• new social situation of development
• play
• pupil's position
• school counseling
• school readiness
• school adjustment
• social-communication skills
• “social component” of school readiness

Notes

English translation © 2015 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC, from the Russian text © 2015 “Vestnik RGGU. Psikhologiia. Pedagogika. Obrazovanie.” “Rebenok na poroge uchenichestva: voobrazhenie kak uslovie razvitiia obshcheniia starshikh doshkol'nikov,” Vestnik RGGU. Psikhologiia. Pedagogika. Obrazovanie, 2015, no. 2, pp. 87–98. Translated by Steven Shabad. Translation reprinted from Journal of Russian & East European Psychology, vol. 52, no. 3. doi:10.1080/10610405.2015.1175832.

^1. V.T. Kudriavtsev, Psikhologiia razvitiia cheloveka (Riga, 1999).

^2. G.A. Tsukerman [Zuckerman] and K.N. Polivanova, Vvedenie v shkol'nuiu zhizn’ (Moscow, 2010).

^3. K. Mustakas [C. Moustakas], Igrovaia terapiia (St. Petersburg, 2000).

^4. Ibid., p. 138.

^5. Ibid.

^6. Ibid.

^7. In the field of cultural-historical psychology, a study by A.A. Nurakhunova back in the early 1990s was designed in a similar manner (A.A. Nurakhunova, “Psikhologicheskaia korrektsiia affektivnykh proiavlenii u detei starshego doshkol'nogo vozrasta,” Avtoref. kand. dis…. psikhol. nauk [Moscow, 1991]). It shows that the psychological problems of so-called affective children (preschool children) are related not to peculiarities of the emotional sphere per se but to the lack of development of the primary functions of imagination. The author made a correction to affective manifestation by developing in children an ability to create varied semantic interpretations of an affectogenic situation and thereby to orient themselves meaningfully in their own inner experiences.

^8. E.V. Il'enkov, Filosofiia i kul'tura (Moscow, 1991).

^9. V.T. Kudriavtsev, “Voobrazhenie—‘tretii glaz kul'tury,’” Vestnik RGGU. Psikhologiia. Pedagogika. Obrazoivanie (in press).

^10. See V.V. Davydov, Teoriia razvivaiushchego obucheniia (Moscow, 1996).

^11. From this side “the ability to see the whole earlier” was studied under the direction of V.T. Kudriavtsev by A.V. Anishchenkova, based on the material of adult test subjects (see A.V. Anishchenkova, “Sotsial'naia priroda voobrazheniia v ramkakh mezhlichnostnogo obshcheniia,” Vestnik RGGU: Psikhologiia. 2010, no. 17).

^12. V.T. Kudriavtsev, “Produktivnaia sila detskoi fantazii: logiko-psikhologicheskii etiud,” Vestnik MARO, 1998, no. 5.

^13. Il'enkov, Filosofiia i kul'tura. This premise is not at odds with the logic of the understanding of development under Vygotsky's cultural-historical theory. What is “interiorization?” The acquisition of an ability to act, while volitionally gathering and concentrating in one's individual effort the “power” of imagined commonality (or “imagined community,” in Benedict Anderson's terminology). In some sense the interpsychic function that is divided, according to Vygotsky, between people does not simply go inside, but precisely “into the image,” into the image of the imagination (Il'enkov). The successive “multi-ocularity” of culture is transformed into a simultaneous, individually distinctive “view of things,” which may be experienced as insight. It might be productive to compare this approach with the concepts of Vygotsky's contemporaries, G.H. Mead on the “Generalized Other” and C. Cooley on the role of the imagination in constructing an image of the “Looking-Glass Self” and their further development in the field of symbolic interactionism.

^14. V.T. Kudriavtsev, “Voobrazhienie rebenka: priroda i razvitie,” Psikhologiskii zhurnal, 2001, nos. 5/6; V.T. Kudriavtvsev, “Fenomen detskoi kreativnosti,” Doshkol'noe vospitanie, 2006, no. 5; V.T. Kudriavtsev, “Igra i razvitie voobrazhieniia: vzgliad s pozitsii kul'turno-istoricheskoi psikhologii,” Sovremennoe obrazovanie: Teoriia i praktika, 2011, no. 1.