Behavioral patterns, including interpretations of labor, and their transmission through the pedagogy of reading

The results of the study showed that the main behavioral patterns were based on the Christian New Testament ethics and included belief in higher justice, self-sacrifice, relativity of wealth and happiness, as well as condemnation of human vices, such as for example laziness and bragging. Labor was also interpreted within the Christian context and as an integral part of every human life. The teaching method of the pedagogy of reading consisted in the selection of reading materials, their common analysis and group interpretation. The materials were compiled with the appropriate level of complexity, taking into account needs and interests of the target audience.

In terms of practical application of the results of this study, the experience of the pedagogy of reading can be applied in modern pedagogy as, for example, for teaching social groups with integration difficulties, e. g. migrants or individuals with deviant behavior.

The article may be useful to those interested in history of pedagogy, private Sunday schools, education of the illiterate population, the pedagogy of reading, the development of the concept of labor in the late 19th - early 20th century in the Kharkiv province.

Key words: behavioral patterns, reading pedagogy, qualitative content analysis, GTM-coding, Kharkiv province, Khristina Danilovna Alchevskaya.

Результати дослідження показали, що до основних поведінкових паттернів відносилися віра у вищу справедливість, самопожертва, відносність багатства та щастя, засудження людських пороків, таких як лінощі чи хвастощі. Всі поведінкові зразки мали у своїй основі християнську новозавітну етику. Праця також розглядалася у християнському контексті як невід'ємна життєва складова кожної людини. Навчальний метод педагогіки читання полягав у підборі матеріалів для читання, їх спільному аналізі та інтерпретації у групі. При виборі матеріалів зверталася увага, в першу чергу, на належний рівень складності, а також на потреби та інтереси цільової аудиторії.

З точки зору практичного застосування результатів цього дослідження, досвід педагогіки читання може бути використаний в сучасній педагогіці, наприклад, для навчання соціальних груп із інтеграційними труднощами, як-от мігрантів або осіб з девіантною поведінкою.

The abolition of serfdom in the Russian Empire led to the emergence of large masses of former forced laborers who needed to adapt their social habitus to the new economic realities. Technological progress with changes in the modes of production and trade, along with new trends in the cultural sphere, fertilized the soil, making possible further changes, in particular in the field of education. Schools for the people began to appear in the Russian Empire. In the case of adolescents and adults, who often had to work six days a week, schools were established that worked only on Sundays (hence the name `Sunday schools').

Nowadays, our society, being in constant motion, creates social challenges, for the answer to which the historical experience presented by the Sunday schools could be useful. Due to migration processes and educational imbalances between certain social groups, there is already a need to adapt curricula, quickly teach the basics of a new language and contribute to the integration of such groups into the society. This explains the research interest and the relevance of this study which consists in analyzing the historical experience of the reading pedagogy and the behavioral patterns of that time.

In spite of practical interest, historical experience and specific of the pedagogy of reading has not been studied enough. Only some aspects of it have been analyzed. For example, education of illiterate population in the Russian Empire in the second half of the 19th - early 20th century and the subsequent development of an original culture of reading was studied by the Kharkov historian S. K. Bondarenko [Bondarenko]. Y. Y Nikitina, A. S. Dvornichenko, and V Shafranovskiy have been engaged in the research of Sunday schools in general [Hikitina; Dvornichenko; Shafranovskiy]. L. Khmelnytska has analyzed the innovations of Khristina Danilovna Alchevskaya within the people's education [Khmelnytska].

Based on the analysis of the archival materials, the author gives answers to the questions of what patterns of behavior and how were passed on to students, and what interpretation of labor was laid down in the educational materials.

To ensure the most complete understanding of the research issues, the historical background of Sunday schools in the Kharkiv province will be presented at the beginning, followed by the research interest and the research questions. After that, the methodological base and the research methods will be argued. The main section will consist of the answers to the research questions and include a small discussion about the significance of the obtained results for modern pedagogical practice.

Sunday schools in the Kharkiv province in the late 19th - early 20th century. A retrospective look.

According to the testimonies ofthe contemporary V. I. Nedrigailov and the memories of Kh. D. Alchevskaya [Anniversary: 9-11], in 1859, a group of local intelligentsia in the Kharkiv province turned to the assistant trustee of the Kharkiv Educational District with a request to open a Sunday school in the city. They offered themselves as teachers, were willing to make financial donations for the benefit of the school. For political reasons (accusations of political unreliability were brought against some applicants), the opening of the first male Sunday school in the Kharkiv province took place only on September 18, 1860. After that, another men school was opened, and only then the first Sunday school for women was organized. Nothing was required to study at that school, and it was open to everyone. There was no special curriculum either. Each teacher was free to choose how and what to teach. However, the existence of the school was short-lived. Already on June 10, 1862, a decree was issued to close all Sunday schools in the Russian Empire until they were reformed according to the new instructions.

Despite the unfavorable external conditions, it was from this moment that the history of the Sunday schools of Khristina Danilovna Alchevskaya began.

Kh. D. Alchevskaya, 1892 [Anniversary: 24-25]

As of 1869, 10 teachers taught and 50 students studied at the home Sunday school of Alchevskaya [Anniversary: 13].

Senior Group of the Sunday school participants [Anniversary: between 18 & 19]

Over time, Khristina Danilovna achieved the official opening of her school. It took place on March 22, 1870. However, due to external reasons, Alchevskaya could only take a place of a simple teacher there. E. I. Tsvetkova was appointed the main administrator, A. P. Vernadskaya became the trustee [Anniversary: 14]. Only at the very beginning the school was supported by joint donations. Then the financing fell entirely on the shoulders of the Alchevsky family, that built a special house for the school in 1896. It made possible to have two libraries in addition to convenient classrooms, one for students, the other for teachers, as well as a museum of visual aids. Khristina Danilovna became manager, performer and teacher at the same time. Gradually, the number of students at the school reached more than 700, mainly peasant and bourgeois women - artisans, factory workers and servants. Among them were teenagers from 13 to 15 years old and adult women, including 30- and 40-year-olds and older. [Anniversary: 18-19] Later, on the initiative of Alchevskaya, other Sunday schools were opened [Anniversary: 25]. Khristina Danilovna Alchevskaya promoted the activities of her school at the Paris, Chicago and Antwerp exhibitions in 1889 and 1900 [Anniversary: 22-23].

About 80 people participated in it. Among them, in addition to Sunday school teachers, were professors, doctors, and well-known personalities of that time, such as N. N. Beketov, V. Ya. Danilevsky, D. I. Bagaliy, A. N. Krasnov. The «Book of Adults» [«Книга взрослыхъ»] was first published in 1900 and consisted of 500 articles, placed in three sections. It was republished 13 times, and brought twenty-seven and a half thousand rubles in profit. [Anniversary: 20] The book was supposed to be used in class by the second half of the year, when the entire alphabet had already been covered [Annual report: 6]. The book was recommended by the Department of the Scientific Committee of the Ministry of People's Industry for technical and vocational education at Sunday and evening classes for adult workers; approved for libraries of lower technical- and all types of vocational schools; approved for use in in teachers' libraries and in free folk reading rooms and libraries; and allowed by the school council under the Holy Synod for the libraries of parochial school [Book].

Another significant work born of the teaching aspiration ofKhristina Danilovna and her colleagues was the three volumes of the book «What should be read by the people?» [«Что читать народу?»], which were published in the period from 1884 to 1906 and provided the reader with descriptions of several thousands of books, including materials developed intentionally for public reading as well as the best examples of world and domestic literature of that time. As in the case of the «Book of Adults», in creating of «What should be read by the people?» were involved not only the Sunday school teachers, but also well-known professors, scientists, and writers. Alchevskaya herself wrote 1150 articles [Anniversary: 21].

Research interest and research questions

Thus, the Sunday schools of the late 19th - early 20th century in the Kharkiv province were a kind of conglomerate of teaching reading and writing skills, instilling certain patterns of behavior and analyzing the development of students' thoughts under the influence of the texts they read. Later, one could speak of the creation of a characteristic culture of reading, which took its origins from the Sunday schools of that period [Bondarenko].

Scientific interest in the subject of Sunday schools in the field of pedagogy can be divided into the study of the educational process itself, the study of educational materials, as well as the study of the pedagogical approaches of that time and pedagogy of reading as a key one. Pedagogy aimed at shaping the personality of students through reading materials (primarily texts) will be considered in this work as the pedagogy of reading. The author is primarily interested in the basics of behavior and moral imperatives that were brought up in Sunday school students and draws attention to the materials deliberately selected for reading. Wishing to reconstruct the ultimate goal of the pedagogy of reading and being interested in the concept of labor of that time, the author dwells on the following research questions: What were the leitmotifs of the Sunday school discourse? What behavioral ideal was pursued for the workers and peasants? What was the understanding of labor, and what was its place within this behavioral ideal? To answer the questions posed, a special research design was developed with a correspondent theoretical and methodological perspective.

Theoretical and methodological basis of the research. Research methods

The second and third categories of materials contained entries from the diaries of teachers, including verbatim reproduction of the stories by students, their interpretations, as well as questions asked by teachers and expected answers. The collection «What should be read by the people?» represented in fact a practically ready-made material of interpretive patterns of that time. The research task was simplified by the fact that the collection was intended for a general audience and did not contain any allegory or hidden meaning. All this made possible a reconstructive analysis.

Based on the features of the empirical material and on the research questions, it was decided to analyze the volumes of «What should be read by people?» with the help of qualitative content analysis with inductive category building [Mayring 2005, 2002], adapting it to the objectives of this study [Jensen: 265-270; Selvi; Marvasti; Renz et al.]. The implemented analysis tool consisted of three main forms of interpretation [Mayring 2002:115-118]:«summary», «explication»

and «structuring». As the first step, the texts were carefully read and blocks of content were determined. After that, the passages in the text that formed a basis for categories were extracted. The selected text passages (basis for a category) were marked in color and read again. Meaningful expressions were marked in bold and formed a basis for future anchor examples, i.e. concrete passages from the text that could be considered representative of a category and were understood as its prototypes (they were later used to illustrate the categories). The text passages were summarized and finally given a category name. A category was drafted when a passage was found that matched the category definition. A phrase or term from this passage which wording was closest to the data was used to designate the category. Then, all other text passages, that fit the correspondent category, were assigned to it (Mayring calls this procedure «subsumption») [Mayring 2002: 116].

A new inductive category was formulated when another passage in the text was found that did not match the already developed categories, but corresponded to the general category definition. No categories were assigned to the data from the first block, which had a warm-up function and did not contain any information relevant to later sampling. This was also done with all the irrelevant text passages. However, all text passages that had even a minimal reference to the sampling were put into the inductive categorization.

When no more new categories could emerge, a category system was compiled in a table for each text and then revised by checking for redundancies, logic and the level of abstraction. By necessity, the category system was revised again. As a result, a set of categories was created and afterwards interpreted in relation to the research questions [Ibid.].

Then, based on the results obtained from the content analysis of the first part of the materials, the texts and illustrations from the «Book of adults» were coded according to the Grounded Theory. The goal was to gain a more sensitive understanding of the material as it allows breaking and opening the data step by step. The coding process was not only aimed at discovering key categories, but was also based on constant comparison. It strived for the conceptual compactness of inductively generated codes, which ultimately lead to the integration of the entire analysis [Straus; Mey/Mruck: 25; Berg/ Milmeister: 319; Charmaz: 51; Bohm: 477].

The coding process involved three main phases: open coding; axial coding and selective coding [Strauss: 60]. At first, the texts were simply accurately read. Then the open coding started. Small segments of the data, parts of sentences or sometimes single words were taken as units of analysis. After that, questions were asked to the data as proposed by Andreas Bohm and Kathy Charmaz, in order to avoid simple paraphrasing [Bohm: 477; Charmaz: 51]. Particular attention was paid to the in vivo codes [Strauss: 60, 64-65; Bohm: 478].

Finally, when the categories were `clothed' with the relationship networks, the next level started, namely selective coding [Strauss: 61-62; Bohm: 482-483; Berg/Milmeister: 324-326]. The core categories and the categories related to them were defined by asking questions, comparing and developing hypotheses [Bohm: 483; Berg/ Milmeister: 325].

Research results

General characteristics of the reading materials

A large layer, displayed in the first section of the Sunday school reading materials, was made up of revised stories from the Bible. Their presentation form was simplified and cognitively adapted to the target audience, preserving the general chronology and the main content of the New Testament. As a rule, Bible stories were well known to students from previous life experience, and did not require additional mental and emotional efforts connected with the processing of unfamiliar material.

The lexical and grammatical presentation of materials, although distinguished by apparent simplicity and accessibility, did not go beyond literary speech samples.

Information was presented in the form of complete semantic blocks, highlighted by separate titles and united by a common storyline. The sequence of presentation of the earthly life of Jesus Christ and his family clearly reflected the main stages of human life, from birth to death. The Bible part ended with stories about the Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus Christ. The illustrations, made in the form of drawings by an unknown author, emphasized the style of presentation, added figurativeness and complemented, but not distracted from the reading process.

Further reading material also consisted of short stories, but without a common plot connection. Four main genres were almost equally used: (1) parables, fables, and semi-fairy tales; (2) scientific factual, and local lore stories; (3) stories about real events, incidents, originated from the contemporary or historical life of peasants and workers; (4) elements of folk art in the form of proverbs and sayings.

The first cluster of works included allegorical stories with an explicit or implicit moralizing conclusion. Among them were both samples of the universal cultural heritage in the form of parables, as well as similar domestic examples of famous authors - the «fables» of Krylov and Dmitriev - and folklore in the retelling of Sunday school teachers. Moral was often present in the whole story, which represented a positive or negative model of behavior, an example for imitation or censure.

Annunciation and the Nativity of Jesus Christ [Book: 8-9]

Ribbon Polar Lights [Book: 41]

Fundamentals of moral education. New Testament ethics

The forms, in which the reading materials were presented, most effectively conveyed the semantic load and the main message of the texts. Their meaning can be divided into the following main areas: (1) the motive of faith in higher justice; (2) the motive of Christian selfsacrifice; (3) the motive of the relativity of wealth and happiness; (4) the motive of condemning human vices.

The symbol of such a worldview can be a generalized hero of stories - an old man who has a long life behind him, full of losses and hardships, that taught him the philosophy of humility, forgiveness, indifference to material wealth: «Bald, with a white beard, a Grandfather is sitting, a Cup of bread and water stands before him. ... Everything has passed, power has disappeared, The look has dulled; Death laid the Children and grandchildren in the grave. ... The old man needs a little: Bast shoes to weave and to sell - That's all. His only joy is to go to the God's church...» [Nikitin in: Book: 45] «In front of a dilapidated hut, an old man sits gray-haired ... `I toiled for a long time; I endured a lot of grief on my shoulders; The road was not easy, but the Lord helped. He is good ...'» [Pleshcheev in: Book: 65]. The same old man, only in the form of a bishop, for example, in the stories «The Bishop and the Thief» or «Christ is Risen» [Book:59-61,67], personifies forgiveness

In almost every popular science story about foreign countries and nationalities, one can find descriptions of how or with the help of what local residents work. For example, the story about Australians gives an example of cooking [Book: 70], the story «Coffee» gives a detailed description of picking berries on a plantation [Book: 81], and the story «Fire and Cooking» reveals ways to obtain and maintain fire [Book: 115]. Labor, as a rule, is commensurate with human life, reflects the social structure and can be divided accordingly into intra-family or proprietary, hired or lord / factory, as well as collective and solitary labor. For peasants, work is close to nature, normalized by the seasons and daylight hours. The family works together, everyone has their own task: «Working time has stopped. The peasants carried sheaves, And Daria dug potatoes From neighboring lanes by the river. Her mother-in-law right there, Worked; on a full bag A Beautiful Masha, frolic, Sat with a carrot in her hand [Nekrasov in: Book: 70].

Conclusions and significance of the pedagogy of reading of Alchevskaya's Sunday schools for modern practical pedagogy

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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