LEARNING TASK AS THE HEART OF LEARNING ACTIVITY

Abstract

A learning task introduces a situation that encourages children to search for general ways to solve a wide class of similar practical problems. The formulation and solution of the learning task involves the following actions of educators before they meet their students: 1) to perform a logical analysis of the concepts to be learned highlighting the “germ cells” - key general concepts from which the entire system of concepts describing the subject of study is derived; 2) to find a system of objects and actions with these objects, which would provide the child with a prospect to notice the essential properties of reality depicted by the concept; 3) to construct signs or symbols as the means of acting with this concept in the absence of real objects; 4) to design a situation that can lead children to posing a question, the answer to which will resolve into a new concept. When meeting with students, the teacher seeks after: 1) encouraging children for independent search for ways to solve a new problem, instead of presenting a ready-made pattern for solving such problems; 2) rousing, and then maintaining, children's initiatives aimed at the issue of their research: questions, assumptions, observations; 3) creating conditions for children’s motivation and ability to interact with their classmates so that they understand and develop each other’s suggestions about the ways to solve a new problem. When the teacher succeeds with learning tasks in the elementary school, a learning community emerges, capable and inclined to set and solve new learning tasks on their own initiative. Then later, in the middle school, most students who grew in such a community develop the learning to learn ability and the sustained drive for lifelong learning.