On the New General Psychology of Education

Abstract

This is an analysis of general psychological education for future teachers in the context of the need to implement the second generation Federal State Learning Standard of General Education. The author believes that delivering the theory of general psychology plays little role in building psychological competence of teachers; he suggests developing a modern general psychology of education. Cultural and historical psychology serves a precursor for this in Russian science. The author draws most of the attention to “Lectures on General Psychology” by V. Davydov, whose approach is unique in that he analyzes inherently human behavior based first of all on historical experience of reative learning and transformation of reality by people. V. Davydov gives a precise definition of learning through the original activity approach. Learning is not confined to acquiring knowledge and skills; it s also a labor, a collective activity that includes an object and instruments, apart from the subject. That’s why general psychology of education should not only analyze forms of interaction between subjects of learning, but also describe psychological nature of a) tools of learning as a collective labor, and b) the process of building content of education. The new general psychology of education is regarded by the author as a phenomenology of developing a human view of the world in conditions of consistent teaching and education. To illustrate his point, the author analyzes the nature of school students’ need for theoretical knowledge by integrating the ideas of developmental teaching and Maslow’s “ideal college”. The paper promotes the idea of preserving the “inertia of students’ thoughts and feelings about theoretical objects” as a strategic mission of a developmental teacher.