Yermentayeva Ardakh Rizabekovna - Doctor of psychology

Abai Kazakh National Pedagogical University, Institute for Master and PhD programs

ESSENTIAL CHARACTERISTICS OF TEACHERS PEDAGOGICAL COMMUNICATION

The issues of organization and content of preparation of a teacher for pedagogical communication are disclosed in the researches by O.A. Abdullina, N.V. Kuzmina, N.V. Kukharev, A.B. Mudrik, Kh. J. Liymets, L.I. Ruvinskiy, V.A. Slastenin, Kh.T. Sheryazdanova, A.I. Sherbakov and others. These works determine basics and structure of teachers pedagogical communication.

Analysis of pedagogical and psychological research of many scientists proves that preparation of a teacher for pedagogical communication is a two-way process: on the one hand it is acquisition of some new knowledge, skills and experience; and on the other hand it is reconstruction, change and development of the existing psychological attribute of a personality. Both have to be considered in the context of broad relations between a teacher and reality as “teacher’s personality is an active subject of assimilation of both systemic exposures to organizational structure of continuous education and social-cultural, ethnic, culturological and traditional factors of social environment” [1, p. 11]. This very combination of social relations contributes to formation of professionally relevant knowledge and skills of a teacher’s personality determining his professionalism and individuality and via these qualities peculiarities of his cooperation with schoolchildren and wider public.

Pedagogical activity efficiency largely depends on the amount of communication presupposed by organization forms and content [2, p. 14], and the forms of this communication turn into professional and functional and become a leverage [3, p. 83]. At the same time a teacher has to be competent in communication possessing such skills as the ability to establish and support necessary contacts with schoolchildren as well as knowledge and skills providing for effective pedagogical communication process [4, p. 3].

А.А. Bodalev describes communicative core as “all psychological qualities that already exist in this personality and manifest themselves during communication. This self reflects more or less integrated communication experience with various categories of people” [5, p. 66]. Thus a personality communicative core is a limited entity of knowledge, skills and personal qualities relative for pedagogical communication.

Depending on theoretical position of researchers there are different elements of teacher’s communicative core, level of its completeness, role and place for various subject and subjective qualities in pedagogical communication and degree of their influence on the process and character of interaction and interrelations. However in pedagogy and psychology currently there is no integral system of components of teacher’s communication competence that would take into account proportion of evidence level of certain qualities and character of inter relations among them. There are different models of teacher’s formed communicative core. Further we will consider some variants.

L.I. Mnazakanyan and K.M. Levitan truly mention that communication in the process of teacher’s pedagogical activity includes to the fullest extent his professional and individual qualities. The authors prepared their extensive list of the main skills and qualities of teacher’s personality that are required for cooperation process with schoolchildren: high level of knowledge of subject, ability to transfer his knowledge and skills, discipline, general expertise, well-wishing, emotionality, adherence to principles, justice, resoluteness, pedagogical tact, etc. They believe that these qualities as a whole as presence of abilities and skills assisting a teacher in the following:

1) To level difference in social levels of a teacher and a schoolchild;

2) To create a natural speech situation and to be interested it it;

3) To invite a schoolchild for a natural conversation and to stimulate this conversation by speeches representing logical development of conversation. A teacher has to be a kind of person who are able to be interesting partner for conversation;

4) To balance getting higher and lower the schoolchild’s level.

However the authors recognize that the whole set of professional qualities of personality for effective cooperation is necessary but undoable in the fullest extent for a real teacher. These skills, knowledge and qualities can assist in creation of a theoretical model of a teacher who is communication competent and to be guidance for improvement and self-improvement of pedagogical communication.

There is a notion of “teacher’s communicative quality” in numerous psychological-pedagogical works devoted to the problem of pedagogical communication. It means the integral system of knowledge, skills and personal qualities of a teacher that are relevant for communication and is a condition for formation of his communicative core.

Some researchers define potential and actual communication abilities of a teacher as the whole block of communicative qualities for his communication with schoolchildren and wider public. For instance A.N. Utekhina mentions the following qualities as teacher’s pedagogical communication values:

1. Sociability which is a developed and stable striving for contacts with children and wider public and ability to quickly establish those contacts.

2. Emotionality which is a subjective significance of teacher’s personality that represents ability to influence the formation of schoolchildren’s feelings and their behavior.

3. Initiative which is a creative independence of a teacher.

4. Pedagogical tact which is a common sense that dictates correct attitude and approach for schoolchildren in the system of educational relations with them.

5. Tolerance which is teacher’s tolerance to the opinions and behavior of schoolchildren and wider public.

So communicative quality is perceived as teacher’s ability for efficient communication with schoolchildren and wider public. Besides A.V. Mudrik also mentions the respective peculiarity of intellection, fluent speech, sociability, empathy and perception, certain social attitudes (e.g., being interested in the process of communication not only its results); communicative skills – orientation in time, partners, relations, situations – as the qualities of personality that define teacher’s ability for communication process.

While analyzing the literature on pedagogical communication issues we faced the fact that different researchers treat moral-ethic and individual-psychological elements of teacher’s communicative qualities in different ways.

Human values are the corner stone for a number of researches. Their significance have been marked by P.P. Blonskyi, N.K. Krupskaya, A.S. Makarenko, V.A. Sukhomlinsky and others. They considered love for child and respect his personality as the principle for interfacing between a teacher and his schoolchildren.

The same position to characterize the essence of pedagogical communication is adopted by some contemporary researchers. So for instance L.F. Timofeyeva in her research of interface between a teacher and his schoolchildren believes that humanism, justice, sensitivity, kindness, love for children, attention and exactingness are essential and backbone attributes of a teacher’s communicative core. According to V.V. Chechet, good feeling is the most adequate reflection of teacher’s competence in communication and his professionalism. According to the author good feeling consists of such personal attributes as kindness, sensitivity, empathy.

Some researchers believe teacher’s empathetic abilities are the corner stone for the quality of his communicative competence. (R.B. Karamuratova, I.M. Yussupov and others). According to I.D. Bagayeva teacher’s perception abilities and schoolchild’s understanding are of crucial importance in professional communication. Basing on the researches by N.V. Kuzmina and I.D. Bagayeva such abilities represent a two-layer psychological-pedagogical educations: the first one is cognitive, a teacher already has understanding of his schoolchild as he studied him “in every sense”; the second layer is characterized by the emotional part of social perception which is empathy, i.e. a teacher’s ability to pierce into schoolchild’s feelings, to empathize with him and to take his position. Р.B. Karamuratova, I.M. Yussupov and A.V. Bevzova note that communication skills are formed and developed on the basis of his (teacher’s) empathetic qualities. The works by A.A. Bodalev fully analyze empathy (compassion, condolence), ability to decentrate and reflect as necessary leading qualities for a teacher, the most important condition to establish respectful relations with schoolchildren. According to N.N. Tarassevich and I.S. Todorova, empathy and identification, taking schoolchild’s position by a teacher and sutdent’s acceptance are also mechanisms for development of teacher’s pedagogical communication.

Therefore “psychologized” teacher is required to provide for the best pedagogical communication who is capable of “immersing” into another person and find “adequate mechanism and operational communication technics” [6, p. 55].

As another group of researches supposes, the specifics of pedagogical profession itself requires every teacher to possess quite certain complex of communication skills irrespective of his individual qualities. For instance A.A. Leontyev believes that the optimal pedagogical communication can be implemented if a teacher purposefully and consequently develops the following skills:

- Social perception skill or “reading by someone’s face”;

- Ability to understand not only to see, i.e. to adequately model schoolchild’s personality, his psychic state by external indicators;

- Ability to sell his ideas and thought in communication with schoolchildren;

- Ability to psychologically wise speak, i.e. conversation ability;

- Conversation and non-conversation contact ability.

Communication etiquette is the organization centre for all these abilities which provides a teacher with a specific social role and program.

Some works generalize all communication skills required for pedagogical communication and then single out sociability (communicability) as an integral characteristics that mostly determine professional aptitude for teacher’s work.

V.A. Kan-Kalik and N.D. Nikandrov considered sociability as personality a characteristic which has become professionally significant. They point out the following sociability indicators: presence of permanent need in systematic communication with children in various spheres; whole of personal and professional communication indicators; emotional well being at all communication stages and its positive influence onto other elements of pedagogical activity; ability for pedagogical communication; presence of communicative skills.

So a large number of characteristics of communicative core content that determine the basics of pedagogical communication.

At the same time we suppose that not all personal psychological qualities are of the same value, some of them being base and key. We believe that teacher’s moral qualities are of paramount importance for professional pedagogical communication as elements of moral and ethics are more or less present in all individual abilities and pedagogical skills. Since communication is “the point from which morality grows from and out of which moral values and moral consciousness does not exist at all” [7, p. 130], then morality is a constructive element of pedagogical communication, its conceptual core. Only moral norms allow being guided in communication situation and assist in considering schoolchildren’s individual peculiarities in every concrete case to choose the optimal interaction tactics. At the same time the main moral and ethnic quality is respect schoolchild’s personality which determines teacher’s position in interacting communication:

- To accept a schoolchild the way he is;

- Not to allow for humiliation of his personality;

- To treat schoolchild’s position in a tactful and careful manner.

Such relation being implemented and based on unconditional acceptance and openness helps a schoolchild to reveal his abilities and to “open himself”.

Teacher’s pedagogical communication can be considered in subject-object scheme where a teacher is only transferring human culture values and also in subject-subject scheme. For the latter one “not inter-role but inter-personal contact is being established resulting in dialogue which means maximum perception and openness to influence of one participant onto the other. Therefore the psychologically optimal base for positive changes in cognitive, emotional and behavior spheres of every participant is created” [5, p. 66]. Dialogue process and character depends on the teacher’s personality, his ability to organize a dialogue which is technologically described by Ye.A. Usmanova first via “tuning in” communication partner, altruistic concentration on him and then unbiased acceptance of him recognizing principle parity of their positions in terms of personality but not status and their equal value in trust-based dialogue and co-creation” [8, p. 210].

However depending on the actual education complexity pedagogical communication only on subject-subject base does not seem to be possible. Moments of subject-subject relations should be creatively combined with the moments of subject-object relations. At the same time in multilayer and variative pedagogical communication the more often subject-subject scheme is used as determinative the more teacher-schoolchildren’s communication is on the mutually significant level.

LITERATURE

1. Gainutdinov R.Z. Research of some professionally significant features of teachers’ personality // Scientific works of UzSRIPS. – Tashkent, 1988. – p. 6-19.

2. Mudrik A.V. Communication as schoolchildren upbringing factor. – М.: Pedagogica, 1984. – 112 p.

3. Kan-Kalik V.A. Pedagogical communication for a teacher. – М.: Prosveshenie, 1987. – 190 p.

4. Zhukov Yu.M., Petrovskaya L.A., Rastyannikov P.V. Diagnostics and development of communication competence. – M.: MGU, 1991. – 96 p.

5. Bodalev A.A. Psychological conditions for pedagogical communication humanization // Sov. psychology – 1990. - №12. – p.65-71.

6. Zolotnyakova A.S. Psychological culture of a teacher and pedagogical communication efficiency issues // Teacher’s psychology: Report’s thesis – М., 1989. – p. 55-56.

7. Karandashev V.N. Communication psychology basics.– Vologda, 1990. – 84 p.

8. Communication training problems / Edited by Kh.Y. Liymets. – Tallin, 1979. – 107 p.

9. Yermentayeva A.R. Professional-pedagogical trainging methodology and practice. – Ust-Kamenogorsk, - 2003. – 141 p.