Zadania rozwojowe młodzieży i edukacyjne warunki ich wypełniania w środowiskach zróżnicowanych kulturowo i gospodarczo : studium pedagogiczne

Abstract

A book weaves in a tendency to integrate various human sciences that has been more visible in the last few years. The book attempts to return to the formation of coherent pedagogical concepts as well as highlight “borderland” of education. The author focuses on scientific theories with various provenances such as Erikson’s theory of psychosocial development, Havighurst’s concept of developmental tasks, Lewowicki’s theory of identity behaviours, and the sociological theory of conflicts. On the basis of these theories the author creates an offer to introduce categories of developmental tasks in the description, the optimal implementation and design of pedagogical activities. Implementation of developmental tasks plus their categories in facing and solving educational difficulties characteristic for the field of individual identity formation is the test to discover some alternative to the contemporary ways of questioning and building educational answers. Here, juxtaposition of the educational network of terms, various ways of viewing social and mental reality, acceptance of learning attitude that recognises the inseparability of such processes as assimilation and transgression determining development, enables the author to explain the present educational problems. The first theoretical part of the book presents the category of developmental tasks, which similarly to the category of identity, links endogenous and exogenous factors of development and may be the fruitful field for the research analysis. It depicts the pedagogical implications of development and developmental tasks, Erikson’s concept as the alternative view to the most popular contemporary perception of development and education in pedagogy as well as empirical tests of its implementation in this context. Furthermore, following the theory of conflict, the book presents concepts of function and aims and includes the tasks of society and education, highlighting the social and cultural conditions as indicators of developmental and educational tasks. The second empirical part of the book presents the methodological problems of this research. It includes a diagnosis for the performance of developmental tasks by adolescents, the symptoms of developmental crisis and conflicts in school education plus the diagnosis for the implementation of educational tasks. This part incorporates determinants for completing developmental tasks, social situations of progress and in their context the pedagogical value of developmental crisis and conflict. It reveals deficiency in the implementation of educational tasks as well as cultural, social and economical conditions of completing developmental and educational tasks, presenting the relationship between social and economical conditions both in education and development of identity. On the basis of general pedagogy and developmental perspective, it refers to the dialectical relations among the sphere of needs and social forms of compulsion turning to the view that a final meeting of the identity need takes place through effort of living. It is the effort of becoming in the course of completing the beyond-individual tasks pointing out to the neglected and abandoned areas of school education. The work had the nature of monograph, which was the test on the implementation of empirical study that had aimed to investigate the individual, educational and social dimensions of developmental processes in the formation of identity. The rich empirical material (1232 observations with 119 variables each plus 98 narrative interviews) was gathered during the investigation of the secondary school youth in three spheres of the central and borderland Poland, which differentiated from each other as far as cultural and social-economical development were concerned. The material gathered is the enormous source of information on the Polish contemporary young people. Its extraordinary value has been achieved through a departure from the fragmentary descriptions and from the characteristic of youth living in one and selected background. On the contrary, it presents a cross-sectional description of the whole young generation that enables a reader to make comparisons and generalisations. Moreover, exploiting here the approach based on the social psychology of development, the work highlights the nature of relationship between the formation of identity and the changing — developing social, cultural and economical context. On the one hand, it is the context where man lives and acts that influence each individual. On the other hand, this context is formed and modified by man. In the frame of the conflict category’s introduction and implementation as well as its perception through the prism of developmental tasks and social conditions of education, it makes pedagogues sensitive to the natural state of tensions. These tensions refer to three types of pressures such as mental, biological and social ones felt as the internal and external conflict. The content of the book is, undoubtedly, the open source for other questions, which may evoke new research and challenges.