Psychological and pedagogical profile of the alpha generation

Abstract

In recent years, pedagogy has been widely promoting studying of needs, interests, values and capabilities of generation Z – the age group born at the turn of the millennium. The connection of their life with information and communication technologies explained the need of the educational system to reckon with this cohort’s traits for optimizing pedagogical processes. However, since 2010, foreign sociologists have been observing a new generation, the so-called Alpha, whose characteristics are a little different from Z, due to the even greater influence of digitalization; in fact, from birth. These are children who attend kindergartens and primary schools today. In 7 years, they will begin to enter professional training system, but one still has no clear ideas in education about the traits of the new cohort. This article strives to characterizing Alpha’s specifics. For that, we studied relevant literature in Russia and abroad, for several years had been observing two groups of children, and interviewed teachers for confirming or rejecting the characteristics of Alpha identified in empirical studies of previous years. As a result, it was found that, while such qualities as high creativity, leadership abilities, self-confidence, interests in various spheres of human activity are typical for the Alpha children, they are more than Z characterized with increased excitability, irascibility and egocentrism, which may affect the labor market formation in future.