Constructing a scale in a pedagogical experiment’ preparation process

«Center and Ground. The leader who is centered and grounded can work with erratic people and critical group situations without harm. Being centered means having the ability to recover one’s balance, even in the midst of action. A cen-tered person is not subject to passing whims or sudden excitements. 
Being grounded means being down to earth, having gravity or weight. 
I know where I stand, and I know what I stand for: that is ground.
The centered and grounded leader has stability and a sense of self.
One who is not stable can easily get carried away by the intensity of leadership and make mistakes of judgement or even become ill» (The Tao of Leadership)

“The typology of operational definitions is offered as an aid in constructing them, in recognizing them, and in understanding why a single state or object may be operationally defined in more than one way. Although the classification of an operational definition into the typology may be somewhat arbitrary. The construction of the operational definition is not” [1, p. 108]. These witty words of Bruce W. Tuckman, one of the most talented researches of communication as a universal problem and universal decision at the same time, may be used as keywords and actions to the so called “preparation process” of constructing a scale of development path to success and efficient embodiment in professional and emotional sphere of existence. When we take into account the most important sphere of human realization in life from all positions estimated from time to time as results of effective human being leadership, we pay attention to using the operational definition best suited to bringing concepts and variables to a concrete state for study and examination the main participants of the process- teachers and students, those who teach and interested to see those taught as educated enough to be happy for completed realization in life. Every action may be described as a test, simple or not, but interesting and urgent until we have been learning and teaching, teaching and learning. All disciplines are connected with each other more, or less, in such a way, all disciplines, as objects and subjects of our research attention deserve to be noticed, respected and observed. Our experiment discovered rational approach to the first stage of it, when we made up decision to use mathematical view to all process planned to be learned and systematized during the experiment in English. The questions may be identified as universal and be productive while dealing with all disciplines, aspects of which have been studied and controlled in the process of pedagogical experiment. It is very interesting, when each of the statements expresses the feeling towards mathematics. The students are to compare this discipline with the others in accordance with their personal vision of the educational problem in unity, connection and interaction. The results discover not only scale, frame and volume of students’ mental abilities in possibilities and opportunities of their mental stock, but their growing interest to integrative learning, to own possibilities of thinking wide and nonstandard, to widening personal educational range motivation. So, the students indicate the extent of agreement between the feeling expressed in each statement and their own personal feeling by circling one of the letter choices. The questions look like these ones:

1. Trying to do well in math class is awfully hard.
2. It scares me to have to take math.
3. I find math to be very interesting.
4. Math makes me feel secure.
5. My mind goes blank and I can’t think when doing math.
6. Math is fascinating and fun.
7. Doing a math problem makes me nervous.
8. Studying math makes me feel uncomfortable and restless.
9. I look forward to going to math class.
10. Math makes me think I am lost in a jungle of numbers and can’t get out.
11. Math is something I am good at.
12. When I hear the word math, I have a sense of dislike.
13. I like studying math better than studying other subjects.
14. I can’t seem to do math very well.
15. I feel a definite positive reaction to math.
16. Studying math is a waste of time.
17. My mind is able to understand math.
18. I am happier to math class than in any other class.
19. Math is my most dreaded subject.
20. I seem to have a head for math [2, p. 201].

A wide range of material intended for speakers of English is in demand. The other special aim of this math-test is to help students become independent and responsible for their own learning, trying to develop their own efforts and habits of study under the witty leading role of their teachers. As far as teachers are concerned, they may use this test as Indicative independence one. In practice it is a great amount of vocabulary as terms of any kind, idioms, professional terminology, poetic ones, dialogue and monologue’ schemes for a real practice of communication, models of special grammatical schemes and instructions for different spheres of communication, writing skills, listening skills and so on.

The pedagogical experiment on the “Constructing a scale” showed good results on all the concrete goals as tasks declared.

Even more important was a great opportunity for a teacher of compare the most important lexical units- antagonists due to the student’ answers. Their first aim was to define for yourself the position in situation of the concrete test- process and as ordinary one for oneself in life situations as a whole. This “Tuckman teacher feedback form (student edition) is to answer the question “My teacher is…” The variants proposed looked like: disorganized – organized; clear – unclear; aggressive – soft-spoken; confident – uncertain; commonplace – clever; creative – ordinary; old-fashioned – modern; likeable – “stuck-up”; exciting – boring; sensitive – rough; lively – lifeless; accepts people – critical; snobby – modest; confused – orderly; strict – lenient; in control – on the run; traditional – original; warm – cold; rude – polite; withdrawn – outgoing; easygoing – demanding; outspoken – shy; unchangeable – flexible; quiet – bubbly; aware – forgetful; “new ideas” – same old think; impatient – patient; uncaring – caring; dependent – independent; unplanned – efficient.

Constructing Rating scales help teachers and students to organize by means of common rational efforts the most productive and interesting educational sphere and the learning-teaching process as well. There is a sample rating scale. Where one can see interesting details of the lesson like these: “Teacher talks most of the time. – Students talk most of the time.”; “Students often ask questions- Students rarely ask questions”; “Teacher makes all the classroom decisions – Teacher helps students make classroom decisions. – No classroom decisions are made”; “Teacher engages in frequent disciplinary action – Teacher rarely disciplines”.

Such approach guarantees clarification and social knowledge in situational real and theoretical practice through participation, writing messages, reports, scientific and artistic work, telephone links, when basic vocabulary may be hard to learn but easy to use. Education for Sustainable Development or all involved in the process of independent establishment of a personality is directly or not oriented only for testing the personality before letting it the sphere and staff to rule, but to direct and estimate the results of its’ work. The series of the role-plays resulted of students’ answers concerning the concept of the theme, structure and real effect of common teacher’s- student’s work. With such approach the students get opportunity of being involved in many communicative forms of penetrating through complicated material with high level of motivation to overcome all difficulties of understanding. Among the others they like this one, having been explained from the all possible positions of emotional, rational, psychological, logical and professional approaches of a personality interested in high competence level of their professional stability in a nearest future. It sounded as: “Don’t give in, and Don’t give up if at first you do not succeed. Try different approaches. It may take time for your point of view to sink in” [3, p. 353]. Competency test exercises, then tests do not pretend to be controlling measure, but inspiring work, highly motivating all those involved in the process of education.

Analyzing and summarizing the results of different role-plays in format of brain-storm, case-method, seminars and conferences, staff-command-training, interviewing-method, etc., we greatly appreciated proposals of researchers and practices on constructing the preparation process of rational teaching , taking into account a specific way of organization the very process, a special scheme of the activity, a multilevel plans of conducting this stage of experiment. The growth of language- skills rating, marked by the students as their own “step to good level”, proved the rightness of the “Scale method” among the others not less productive and interesting. The students recognized practically that “Fortuna comprobat hominis consilium” (Успех подтверждает правильность планов).