General concepts of higher school didactics

At the same time, didactics is designed to answer the questions: Who to teach, what to teach, and where to teach? This definition of didactics was developed relatively long ago. This definition of didactics needs significant clarification due to the fact that the amount of knowledge needed for a person grows quickly and dramatically. It is important for every student to instill the ability to independently replenish his knowledge, to navigate in the rapid flow of scientific and technical information. The most important and ongoing task of the school - to achieve from students a deep and lasting acquisition of scientific knowledge, to develop the ability and skills to apply them in practice, to form a materialistic worldview and moral and aesthetic culture. It is necessary to organize the learning process so that students have a good grasp of the studied material, i.e. the content of education. All this requires teachers to think deeply about the theoretical foundations of education and to develop appropriate methodological skills.

The educational process should be conducted so that students acquire more knowledge independently, forming in the course of learning psychological, theoretical and practical readiness to self-education. The study of the learning process, the content of education in school is engaged not only in didactics, but also methods of teaching individual learning processes.

Didactics is a part of pedagogical science, which reveals the theoretical foundations of learning and education in the most general form. In didactics formulated and expressed these foundations in the form of patterns and principles of learning, objectives and content of education, forms and methods of teaching and learning, stimulation and control for almost all learning systems. These most general provisions are, therefore, also relevant to industrial-economic learning.

Historically, along with the term «pedagogy» for a long time the term "didactics" was used in the same meaning. It was first introduced into scientific turnover by the German educator W. Rathke (1571-1635), who called his lecture course "A brief account of didactics, or the art of teaching Ratichius. The great Czech educator Jan Amos Comenius (1592-1670), who published his famous work "Great Didactics" in Amsterdam in 1657, used this concept in the same meaning.[1] Didactics (from Greek "didaktikos" – teaching and "didasko" – learning) – part of pedagogy, which develops the problems of learning and education.

At the beginning of the 19th century the German educator Johann Friedrich Herbart (1776-1841) gave to didactics the status of a coherent and consistent theory of formative education. Since the times of Ratius, the main tasks of didactics have remained unchanged: developing the problems of what to teach and how to teach, while modern science intensively researches the problems of when, where, whom, and why to teach. Significant contributions to the development of world didactics were made by I. G. Pestalozzi (1746-1827), A. Disterweg (1790-1816), K. D. Ushinsky (1824-1870), D. Dewey (1859-1952), H. Kerschensteiner (1854-1932), W. Lay (1862-1926), etc.

P.F. Kapterev, N.K. Krupskaya, S.T. Shatsky, P.P. Blonsky, A.K. Gastev, A.P. Pinkevich, M.M. Pistrank, etc. had a great influence on the development of national didactics in the late 19th-early 20th centuries. P. N. Gruzdev, Sh. I. Ganelin, E. Ya. Golant, L. V. Zankov, B. P. Yesipov, M. A. Danilov, M. N. Skatkin, and others worked especially fruitfully in domestic didactics of the Soviet period. A significant contribution to the scientific substantiation of teaching, the definition of the object and subject of didactics, identifying its links with non-pedagogical sciences, development of the methodology of didactic research, teaching methods, and a number of other topical problems of didactics. In this context, it is noteworthy that the authors have contributed to the development of the methodology of didactic research and teaching methods.

Pedagogical science makes different judgments about the subject of didactics as a science. Some people define «learning as a means of education and upbringing» as the subject of didactics; others define the regularities and principles of learning, its goals, scientific foundations of the content of education, methods, forms, and means of learning; others define the interaction of teaching and learning in their unity; some believe that the subject of general didactics is not only the process of teaching-learning, but also the conditions necessary for its course (content, organization, tools, etc.), as well as various relatively stable results of these conditions. Such a wide range of opinions of scholars-didacticisms in determining the subject of didactics can be explained by the fact that the learning process in the real pedagogical reality can be both systematic, planned, purposeful nature, and random, spontaneous.

The learning process is characterized by bilateralism. On the one hand, it is the teacher (teacher), who presents the program material and directs this process, and on the other hand - the students for whom this process takes the nature of learning, mastering the material studied. It is clear that the course of this process is inconceivable without the active interaction between students and trainees. This feature of learning is considered crucial to the disclosure of its essence.

In the learning process really is a close interaction between a teacher and students, but the basis and the essence of this interaction is the organization of learning and cognitive activity of the last, its activation and stimulation, which in the definition given does not mention. But it is very important. If there is interaction, but the desire of students to master knowledge is absent. In this case, learning, of course, does not take place.

An important component of learning is the performance of homework by students, but it is hardly possible to talk about their interaction with the teacher. All this shows that the essential characteristic of learning is not so much the interaction between the teacher and students as such, but rather the skillful organization and stimulation of learning and cognitive activity of the latter, in whatever forms it may take. In this case it would be more correct to consider that learning is a purposeful pedagogical process of organizing and stimulating the active learning and cognitive activity of students to master scientific knowledge, abilities and skills, develop creative abilities, world outlook and morals.

The process of learning also has a pedagogical aspect. Pedagogical science believes that the relationship between education and learning is an objective law, as well as the relationship between learning and development. However, upbringing in the learning process is complicated by the influence of external factors (environment, microenvironment, etc.), which makes upbringing a more complex process. The content of education is the primary educative factor in education, although not all subjects have the same educational potential. Humanistic and aesthetic disciplines have a higher potential. Teaching music, literature, history, psychology, art culture has more possibilities for personal formation due to the subject content of these disciplines.

Principles and Objectives of Didactics

The most important part of didactics are the principles of education. These are the main guidelines that reflect the regularities of the pedagogical process and orient the teacher to the effective organization of training, the optimal use of forms, methods and means of teaching students, the expedient selection of the content of classes.

General didactic principles of education are as follows:

• The focus of training – determined by a comprehensive solution to the problems of education, education in the spirit of socialist consciousness and all-round development of the individual;
• A close relationship with life, characterized by the outlet for the practice of socialist construction;
• Systematicity, consistency, continuity – provided by a thoughtful interrelation and dependence of subjects, the logic of their succession one after another and next to others, increasing the level of problems in the content of disciplines as you move from one system of education to another, from one type of institution to another;
• Accessibility of training is determined by the level of cognitive abilities of the students, the need to organize the learning process of students in the «zone of their closest mental development», when the level of training is tangibly high, but for the students is achievable;
• Visualization of learning is ensured by including different types of information perception, memory, types of thinking, etc. into the learning activity;
• Optimal combination of verbal, visual, practical, reproductive and problem-based teaching methods depends on learning conditions, the level of training of students and the pedagogical skill of the teacher.
• Rational combination of frontal group and individual forms of learning – achieved by skillful alternation of collective educational work (at once with the entire group of students) and the direct impact on one of the students;
• Consciousness, activity, independence of learning – achieved by increasing the responsibility of students for the results of their studies and their liberation in the process of cognitive, work and play activities;
• Durability, consciousness and effectiveness of knowledge and skills – provided by a creative attitude to the educational process on the part of both the teacher and trainees.

It is not advisable to consider these principles, their totality, as a set of laws, as a catechism. They should be treated creatively, flexibly, and not as templates. And this is primarily because the principles are always historically specific, they must be read in a specific social context, must reflect as fully as possible the real social needs of society.

Didactic teaching aids

The notion of learning tools is used in didactics to denote one of the components of teacher and student activities along with other components (image of the final product, object of transformation, means and technology of activity). Means of learning is a material or ideal object, which is «placed» between the teacher and students and used to assimilate knowledge, the formation of experience of cognitive and practical activity. Learning tools have a significant impact on the quality of knowledge of students, their mental development and professional formation.

Objects that perform the function of teaching tools can be classified on various grounds: by their properties, the subjects of activity, the impact on the quality of knowledge and the development of various abilities, their effectiveness in the learning process (in terms of reducing the number of errors in solving problems).

According to the subject of activity, teaching aids can be divided into teaching aids and teaching aids.

Means of teaching are essential for the implementation of information and controlling function of the teacher. They help to excite and maintain the cognitive interests of students, improve the visibility of the teaching material, make it more accessible, provide more accurate information about the phenomenon under study, intensify independent work and allow you to lead it at an individual pace. They can be divided into means of explaining new material, means of consolidation and repetition and means of control. In the use of any type of means it is necessary to observe the measure and proportions determined by the laws of learning, the law of interiorization. The absence or insufficient number of visual aids reduces the quality of knowledge by reducing cognitive interest and difficulties in understanding and imaginative perception of the material. A large number of demonstrations creates an entertaining mood of students. Optimum should be considered 4-5 demonstrations per lesson, counting the means for independent work of students and means of control.

The material means necessary for the assimilation of the entire academic discipline constitute a system derived from the system of the academic subject. The system of teaching aids is built according to the teaching principle:

• Equipment must fully meet the pedagogical requirements for other elements of the educational process: to visually reproduce the essential in the phenomenon, to be easily perceived, observable, have an aesthetic appearance, etc.
• All devices which have a common purpose should correspond to each other and to the demonstration facilities
• The number and types of teaching aids should fully meet the material needs of the curriculum in the system, but without excesses,
• Teaching aids should be appropriate to the actual working conditions and needs of the local population.

Visual aids perform the following functions: familiarization with the phenomena and processes that cannot be reproduced at school; familiarization with the appearance of the object in its present form and in historical development; visual representation of the comparison or measurement of the characteristics of the phenomenon or processes; stages of operation, manufacturing or design of the product; visual representation of the device of the object and the principle of its operation, management, safety engineering; familiarization with the history of science and the prospects of its development.

Visual aids are classified into three groups:

• Volumetric aids (models, collections, devices, apparatuses, etc.);
• Printed aids (pictures, posters, portraits, charts, tables, etc.);
• Projection materials (movies, videos, slides, etc.).

Conclusion

Consequently, in order to implement the educational function of learning, it is not enough for the teacher to know about the objective nature of the relationship of learning and education. To have a formative impact on students in learning, the teacher must, first, analyze and select teaching material in terms of its educational potential, secondly, so build the process of learning and communication to stimulate a personal perception of learning information by students, to cause their active evaluative attitude to what they learn, to form their interests, needs, humanistic orientation. To implement the educational function, the learning process must be specially analyzed and developed by the teacher in all its components.

Bearing a developing character, if specifically aimed at the goal of personal development, which should be implemented in the selection of educational content, and in the didactic organization of the educational process.

Ultimately, the result of students' comprehension of the studied material is its understanding, awareness of the causes and consequences of cognized subjects, phenomena, processes and the formation of concepts.

But the result of comprehension of the studied material is not only its understanding. During its process students develop the ability to compare and analyze the studied phenomena, to distinguish their essential and non-essential features, as well as the ability to reason, to hypothesize and theoretical generalizations, i.e. there is mental development. In addition, they develop personal qualities such as curiosity, cognitive independence, forming world outlook and moral and aesthetic views and beliefs.