Peculiarities of primary school students’ cooperation determined by the characteristics of the learning environment

Abstract

The relevance of the study is due to the requirements of the Federal State Educational Standard for Primary General Education which records meta-subject learning outcomes. These results include the mastery of such cooperation skills as setting the goal of a collaborative activity and defi ning the ways to achieve it, role allocation, mutual control, self- and peer-assessment of students’ behavior, and constructive confl ict resolution. The purpose of the study is to determine the characteristics of the learning environment in which students demonstrate a high level of cooperation skills. The study hypothesizes thatstudents demonstrate a higher level of cooperation skills in the environment that provides opportunities for their free activity, independent choice, reliance on their personal interests, independence of judgments and actions, structured and psychologically safe competence, i.e. satisfying the child’s needs for autonomy, and connectedness with others. Participants: 1384 fourth-graders and management teams from 37 secondary schools in 21 regions of the Russian Federation. Methods (tools): to assess cooperation skills we used the monitoring tool “4C” (c ritical thinking, creativity, communication, cooperation) developed at the Center for Psychometrics and Measurements in Education at the HSE Institute of Education, which contains scenario-type tasks in a computer format; to determine the characteristics of the environment we used the vector modeling techniques and the evaluation of quantitative parameters of the educational environment (V. A. Yasvin). Results. The study shows the correlation between the level of students’ cooperation and the environment types identifi ed on the basis of the ‘freedom-dependence’ and ‘activity-passivity’ scales, as well as on the basis of the quantitative parameters of the environment. Conclusions. The study has determined the environment characteristics associated with a high level of cooperation skills in primary school. They include predominance of active and free types of environment, structuring, safety, breadth, and intensity. Practical significance. Management and teaching teams of educational organizations may be recommended to take into account the results obtained when choosing priorities for designing and organizing the environment aimed at personal development.

Keywords

• primary school
• cooperation skills
• learning environment
• creative environment
• environment parameters
• theory of self-determination