Essence and Ways of Humanitarization of Education

Abstract
Insufficient theoretical elaboration of the problem of expanding the humanitarian component of education set a task of conceptual working out of the problem of humanitarization of education. The components of the author's conceptual-theoretical model of the general humanitarian basis of education, which are realized both in the complete educational space of a higher educational institution and when studying concrete subject matters are discussed in the article.

Key words
humanitarization, general humanitarian basis of education, aims of humanitarization, higher professional education.

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Елканова Тамара Михайловна
кандидат физико-математических наук, доцент кафедры физики конденсированного состояния, Северо-Осетинский государственный университет им. К.Л. Хетагурова, г. Владикавказ
tamel@inbox.ru

Сущность и способы гуманитаризации образования

Аннотация
Недостаточная теоретическая разработанность проблемы расширения гуманитарной составляющей образования ставит задачу концептуальной разработки путей гуманитаризации образования. В статье рассмотрены компоненты авторской концептуально-теоретической модели общегуманитарного базиса образования, которые реализуются как в целостном образовательном пространстве высшего учебного заведения, так и при изучении конкретных учебных дисциплин.

Ключевые слова
гуманитаризация, общегуманитарный базис образования, цели гуманитаризации, высшее профессиональное образование.

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The actuality of the reformation of the existing system of education is stipulated by a number of closely connected tendencies including globalization, informatization and intellectualization inseparably connected with it, acceleration of the social and economic development of the world community (“compression of the historic time”). In this situation the relevance of carrying out the problem of humanitarization as the most important component of a new paradigm of education consisting of fundamentality, integrity and orientation at forming of the personality of a specialist who owns not only developed professional competences but policultural outlook and humanitarian literacy, well-formed and stable feeling of responsibility for social and ecological aspects of his or her activity, capable of integral and systematic analysis of the complicated problems of the present-day life of the society and environment has greatly increased. Humanitarization is a world phenomenon in which common global processes are reflected. First of all it is aimed at forming of the holistic, systematic thinking, at the priority of the development of the common cultural components in the contents of education and thus at forming of the personal maturity of students. We believe that the requirement of correlation of the educational vector with the development of the civilization as a whole, requirement of consideration of the civilizational problems of the society are stipulated by the dissipative basis of the educational system that's why the basis of the concept of the humanitarization of education is in the orientation of education at solving the tasks which are in the field of modern civilization and culture.

In the scientific literature humanitarization of education is considered from the psycho-pedagogical, philosophic and sociological point of view but however there have not been entirely formed distinct theoretic-methodological approaches to the analysis of this process in the world pedagogy. Heterogeneity in the definition of the notion "humanitarization of education" and in the approaches to the investigation of the problem of expansion of the humanitarian constituent of education, insufficient theoretical working out of the axiological basis and content of humanitary-orientated system of teaching in the educational systems of different levels set a task of conceptual working out of the problem of humanitarization of education.

Humanitarization of education is a system of measures aimed at the priority of developing of the common cultural components of the contents of education and through them fixing spiritual values common to all mankind in the consciousness of students as well as humanistic attitude to every living thing and first of all to a human being. Then humanitarization of education would mean filling and supplementing of the curriculum with humanitarian contents, that is, it implies including into the teaching process a cycle of humanitarian components which give an opportunity to line the borders of culture, to put the mechanism of interrelation of a student with the socio-cultural phenomena of contemporary life into action. As many scholars state it is humanitarization that is missioned to provide synthesis of technical, humanitarian and natural sciences disciplines based on multileveled integration of the whole complex of the studies and the very essence of humanitarization of education lies in the formation of the style of thinking and activity which are orientated at assimilation, development and use of any knowledge as a means of humanization of life.

We should note that analogous to the Russian term “humanitarization” in the English speaking works of science is the term “humanities” in the meaning “studies intended to provide general knowledge and intellectual skills (rather than occupational or professional skills)” [1]. As pointed out in [2], “the term "humanities" includes, but is not limited to, the study of: languages, modern and classical; linguistics; literature; history; jurisprudence; philosophy; archaeology; comparative religion; ethics; the history, criticism and theory of the arts; those aspects of social sciences which have humanistic content and employ humanities methods; and the study and application of the humanities to the human environment with particular attention to reflecting our diverse heritage, traditions and history and to the relevance of the humanities to the current conditions of national life”. “Humanities” are based on interdisciplinary and integrative approaches to the formation of the contents of education by introducing obligatory and elective courses of humanitarian character [3, 4].

In the world practice humanitarization is mainly carried out by introducing a wide range of obligatory and elective courses of sociocultural and integrative-interdisciplinary character into the educational process. However quite often the scope of suggested courses is conditioned by accidental circumstances, by availability of specialists in this or that field of humanitarian sciences, the percentage of students involved in the suggested humanitarian courses is rather small and the effectiveness of use of study time is low. In our opinion humanitarization as an accent on the predominance of the role of the humanitarian disciplines is unacceptable in substance. We think that the aims and tasks of humanitarization of education lie in the reorientation of the teaching of basic and elective disciplines from objective-impersonal reproduction of knowledge to the pointing out their place and role in the sociocultural context of the epoch on the basis of the investigation of the objects of study in the system "nature-science-technics-society-human". It is necessary to not only give humane forms and methods of teaching but to give historically reflexive character to the very contents of education. At the same time it is important in essence to fix attention not on the humanitarian education but on the humanitarian contents of any professional education.

The problem of humanitarization acquires a character of special priority under the circumstances of reconstruction of the system of education in the world in accordance with the competence approach the result-aimed basis of which, as many scholars believe, is a system of key competences including subsystems of subjective-personal, organizational-active and social-communicative competences. The systematic approach to the higher professional education in the competence-orientated model requires, as we think, promotion of the concept of general humanitarian basis of the modern education by means of the integrative-content approach to the forming of its structure independently of its particular methodological aims and trends of particular courses.

We have developed conceptual-theoretical model of general humanitarian basis of education [5 - 7]. Our model includes the following components:

1. Ethical-axiological component provides elicitation and full using of the ethical and humanistic potential of concrete subject matters.
    
2. History-generalized and correlation-synchronized component aims at enhancing the use of the principle of historicism in teaching with the synchro-correlation relationships and dependencies between the development of all the activities and knowledge of the history of human society; provides a multi-faceted use of the extended concept of historicism in teaching.
    
3. Philosophical-methodological component is determined by the need to include the issues of formation of methodological culture, including methods of cognitive, professional, communicative and axiological activities, in the contents of professional education. It generates ways of thinking and acting, i.e. the procedures of reflexive nature.
    
4. Integrative-applicative component based on our concept of integrative-correlative relations that imply the establishment and use of multilateral relations between both various academic disciplines and between different areas of knowledge and culture. This component aims to provide the formation of a harmonious vision of the world in a variety of relationships and dependencies.
    
5. Interactional-gnostic component of humanitarization of education, providing integration at the level of different ontological ways of cognition of the world, allows to make sense of a system of "human-world" at different levels of its functioning, teaching figurative, visual thinking, with the translation from the objective external language into internal language of figurative conceptual models of reality.
    
6. Antropognostic component implies the introduction of anthropocentric knowledge and the implementation of technology into the educational material.
    
7. Sensitive-reflective component implies that knowledge obtained in the educational process should contribute to the formation of the axiological and aesthetic regulators of informative and professional activities.
    
8. Information-analytical component takes into account the peculiarities of the formation and creative development of the individual in terms of the formation of a new paradigm of informatization of a human society.
    
9. Cognitive-communicative component provides the development of the basic foundations of decoding information of different kinds of verbal and nonverbal communications and interactions in the socio-cultural and professional aspects.
    
10. Creative-developing personal-variable component is expressed in gradual replacement of informative methods of teaching by personal-active and research, implying the use of person-centered and variant pedagogics of teaching, personally oriented elective courses, individualized according to the type of physical and psychological characteristics of the student.
     
11. Regional-ethnic component is intended for new non-traditional approaches to the aims and tasks of the organization of the educational process, taking into account national, cultural and regional characteristics.
     
12. Cultural-infusion component solves the problem of learning the “culture of communication”, it is particularly relevant in view of the fact that the development of modern information technologies and the expansion of international relations inevitably lead to the interaction and interpenetration of previously marginalized cultures.
     
13. Applicative-valeological component is intended to mastering of a system of practical skills, ensuring the preservation and promotion of health, mental well-being, development and improvement of mental and physical abilities and personal features.
     
14. Psychological-adaptive component provides the mastery of methods of psychological self-regulation, the active management of their own psychological state and reactions in the process of physical training.

On the basis of the conceptual-theoretical model of local humanitarian-developing educational environment it is advisable to establish humanitarian-oriented teaching tools and computer programs, the purpose of which is to form a coherent structure of value and meaning systems that determine mentality of a future specialist, through the prism of which there comes the awareness of a rapidly changing world and a human's place in it, the development of value-semantic relation to each issue (global or local, mass or individual), the vision of its inner human meaning and understanding of its positive (or destructive) effects; the development of intellectual and personal qualities such as openness to the new, tolerance, understanding many facets of the world, its ambiguity.
 

Literature

1. Full-Text Online Library. URL: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/humanities [Data obrashcheniya 01.12.2017].

2. Humanities in Engineering. The Humanities in Engineering helps turn a technical education into an expansively human one. URL: http://inside.mines.edu/HB-Humanities [Data obrashcheniya 01.12.2017].

3. Sjursen, H.P., 2007. The New Alliance between Engineering and Humanities Educators. Global J. of Eng. Educ, 11(2): 135-142.

4. Rojter, J., 2013. The Role of Humanities and Social Sciences in Engineering Practice and Engineering Education. URL: http://search.informit.com.au/documentSummary;dn=932132426910217;res=IELENG [Data obrashcheniya 01.12.2017].

5. Belogurov A., Elkanova T.M. Obshchegumanitarnyy bazis sovremennoy sistemy obrazovaniya // Vyssheye obrazovaniye v Rossii.1995. № 4. С. 64-67.

6. Elkanova T.M. Kontseptualno-teoreticheskaya model obshchegumanitarnogo bazisa obrazovaniya // Sovremennyye problemy nauki i obrazovaniya. 2015. № 2-1. URL: http://science-education.ru/ru/article/view?id=18809 [Data obrashcheniya 01.12.2017].

7. Elkanova T.M. Lokalnaya gumanitarno-razvivayushchaya sreda v strukture obshchegumanitarnogo bazisa obrazovaniya // Sovremennyye problemy nauki i obrazovaniya. 2015. № 3. URL: http://science-education.ru/ru/article/view?id=18894 [Data obrashcheniya 01.12.2017].

Рекомендовано к публикации:
Е.В. Пискунова, доктор педагогических наук, член Редакционной Коллегии

Литература