Cognitive support for the development of education

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Research Centre for Industrial Problems of Development of NAS of Ukraine

National Aerospace University named by M.Ye. Zhukovskyi "Kharkiv Aviation Institute"

Cognitive support for the development of education

Doronina M.S.,

Doronin A.V.

Introduction

Modern tendencies in civilizational development determine the growing importance of education in the life of society in general and of every individual in particular. Human life and activity at a new civilization level are accelerated by knowledge. In the context of globalization of the world economy, from the standpoint of science, the competitiveness of each country will be defined as a sphere that produces new knowledge. Variability is viewed not as exception, it is rather becoming a characteristic of everyday life of human and society. Therefore, in Ukraine, the State together with all educational institutions should focus educational processes on the permanent development of the potential of citizens, their ability to live and function in a dynamic environment both psychologically and professionally. It is therefore necessary to change the methodological foundations of the orientedness of the educational process. In addition to developing the creative assimilation of basic knowledge and its use in practical activities, it is necessary to provide technologies for realizing the need to learn permanently, throughout life, to develop skills and the pertinent intentions toward doing so.

Ukraine is facing extremely important tasks in aligning its education system with modern requirements caused by civilizational transformations. The future of the State, the nation, and every citizen depends on solving the mentioned problems.

Presentation of the main material

Today, knowledge is recognized as a decisive factor in economic development, an instrument for innovation, competition and economic success, using which it is possible to create a competitive economy that allows to ensure the modern level of well-being of society [1, p. 44].

The practical implementation of knowledge depends on the level of development of education, its orientation towards the expanded reproduction of the potential of the learner. The context of the concept of «education» is gradually changing. First, from a time-limited process, it turns into a permanent process that lasts throughout a person's life. Secondly, the roles and nature of interaction between teacher and learner undergo a fundamental change. Thirdly, technologies for developing human knowledge during the working period of life are advancing rapidly.

Today, the competitive advantages of successful corporations are not so much the existing knowledge of their staff as their ability to agnize the emergence of new problems in their work, generate new knowledge to overcome them, and quickly use this knowledge into practice.

Recently, education in Ukraine has been focused on the problems of transition from training specialists for the information economy to preparing them for the knowledge economy. However, given the development of positive trends in society, one better be getting ready for the cognitive model.

Wikipedia presents the purpose of cognitive theory as the use of mental processes to clarify the patterns of other processes related to identifying problems, comprehending their causes, and finding solutions.

It is necessary to distinguish between the essence, content and purpose of two processes:

a) production of knowledge and

b) the ability to know how this production is carried out.

Knowledge of how to produce knowledge is gradually shaping the space of the cognitive economy. While the factor of production in the knowledge economy is human capital, the factor of production in the cognitive economy is the ability of a person to capitalize a set of specific cognitive knowledges and competencies.

The increasing complexity of human life requires the development of knowledge and education necessary to ensure it. In the context of civilization development, this process can be considered permanent. In education, there is an established tendency to increase its disciplinary provision. Thus, education in the earliest universities at the beginning of the thirteenth century was built on seven disciplines, in 1950 there was 54 disciplines. In 2000, the number of disciplines reached 8.000 titles. The development of education and the use of its results have contributed to a consistent change in the models of human society. In 2008, experts of the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union in the document «On the establishment of the European Qualifications Framework for Lifelong Learning» emphasized that the peculiarity of the modern development of education in the world is the transition of society to a cognitive model. It ensures the development of a person's ability to generate unique ideas, new discoveries, and use them in various fields of activity.

In 1949, an organization of intergovernmental and interparliamentary cooperation was created, uniting more than 40 countries. In the field of education, this organization identified the need to focus on developing mutual understanding between the peoples of Europe. «Unity in diversity» - the slogan under which the organization is building democracy on the European continent along with a strategy of education and upbringing of a new person at the present stage. Ukraine joined the Council of Europe in 1995, thus adopting its conceptual standards.

The Fig. 1 shows the evolution of society models and its impact on changes in the working conditions of enterprises. In view of the information presented in the Fig. 1, education in Ukraine, along with managerial, communicative and other variants of the competence of highly qualified specialists, should pay the major attention to the formation of cognitive competence of learners, which will become a reliable resource for the formation of cognitive society in Ukraine.

Methodological support for solving this problem can be provided by cognitology, a relatively new theory of learning. Although this theory has already been defined as a special scientific direction, there are still many opportunities of supplementing it with new ideas. The main concept that makes it possible to develop scientifically based recommendations for ensuring the competitiveness of an organization based on the intellectualization of its capital is the concept of «cognitive competence».

Fig. 1. Evolution of models of society

A gradual reform of the model of society also implies a gradual reform of educational competence in the learning process. The efficiency of cognitive society in general and its economic component in particular is ensured by knowledge, on the basis of which the resource provision of intellectual capital develops. Currently, a specialist is forced to take responsibility for decision-making in the context of continuous changes, to control disordered situations that increasingly absorb his work and life. Taken alone, this problem is almost impossible to solve. For such work, to assemble creative teams becomes a necessity. The effectiveness of their activities is ensured by the diverse, qualitative competence of team members, the development of their logical, emotional and practical intelligence. Making quick and balanced decisions in the face of instability of business processes can be ensured by a high level of cognitive competence.

Preparing a specialist capable of active reaction in a dynamic socioeconomic environment requires the formation of his cognitive competence. Special attention should be paid to employees of management systems. As already noted, education in Ukraine should focus not only on the managerial, communicative and other options for the competence of highly qualified specialists, but also on their cognitive competence. It is bound to become the driving force of the cognitive society, the development of which is ensured by the implementation of the idea of «lifelong learning» through scientific research.

Proponents of cognitology believe that the essence of the development of human cognitive processes lies in the gradual active and purposeful search for knowledge with its subsequent acquisition. At the first stage of development of the cognitive process one deals with the sensory (empirical) cognition. Its forms are: sensation, perception, and representation. The second stage of cognition is rational or theoretical. It is sometimes called classical logical cognition. Forms of logical knowledge are: concept, judgment, inference. Such knowledge is transmitted through learning - purposeful interaction between the persons of teacher and learner. In addition to the acquisition of knowledge, this interaction forms the skills and abilities of the learner. The qualitative implementation of the first two stages of cognition creates the basis for the development of the third stage - the ability to comprehend, diagnose and develop directly the cognition process as such. It is based on cognitive science. Cognitive theory significantly complements previous theories of learning, although it contrasts with the theory of instrumental learning (neobehaviorism) [2, p. 104].

The differences between the two competing educational technologies are given in the Tаbl. 1.

Table 1

A comparison of two learning theories

At the current stage of development of cognitology, the problems of closer defining the essence and content of the concepts and categories, upon basis of which its two terminology systems are formed, are still relevant. The first terminology system systematizes the conceptual support of the content of science, the second - the corresponding educational process, which ensures the effectiveness of interaction between teachers and learners. The formation of terminology systems is based on the generalization of many approaches to the content of certain concepts and the choice of options that can reflect the most essential goals and ways of transmitting information to those who have already realized the need to form and use their cognitive competence.

The following is a description of the main concepts used in this section. The first concept is «learning». Although the views of different scholars on the definition of this concept do not coincide, they all agree that learning is a joint activity of a teacher and learners. In this case, the activities of learners are called learning, and the activity of the teacher is called teaching. Learning is an organic unity of teacher and learner activities. This is the process of organizing and managing the learners' assimilation of a system of knowledge about society, nature, humanity and the development on this basis of their cognitive abilities, scientific worldview, and positive human qualities.

For constructiveness of cognitive support for the development of education, it is necessary to clarify the essence and content of such concepts as «cognition», «cognitive competence», «metacognitive mechanism», «cognitive style».

As for the concept of «cognition», at the cognitive level of «general», the dictionary of philosophy defines it as knowledge, realization, and the term «cognitive» - as such that is associated with cognition, or realization. At the cognitive level of «special»,

the concept of «cognition» is considered as a process of perception and reflection in the human mind of the surrounding world, the main function of which is to obtain knowledge through individual mental processes of information processing. It is assumed that when a person acquires knowledge, both hemispheres of the person's brain - i. e., the left and the right - are involved.

A generalization of the literature in this direction gave grounds to offer such a variant of the definition of concepts related to cognitive processes. «Cognition» is the unique ability of a person to receive and process information from the outside world, find meaning in it and formulate this meaning; transmit information to another person; respond constructively to cognitive dissonance; be proactive in learning. «Cognitive competence» is the unique ability of a person to take information from the outside world, find meaning in it and formulate this meaning; transmit information to another person; respond constructively to cognitive dissonance. «Cognitive competence» is the ability to acquire unique knowledge due to the creative potential of the individual, which ensures readiness for self-education, self-organization, and supports the individual's need for constant professional development. This level of competence development guarantees its holder a high probability of a successful outcome in the activity. The criterion for assessing cognitive competence is the degree of operativeness in obtaining effective relevant knowledge.

At present, it is advisable to take into account the fact that emotions belong to the global resources of the development of knowledge and their rapid materialization. In Ukraine, education and science have long been based on dialectical materialism as a philosophical foundation. However, perpetual changes in the environment and functions of human life support require a revision of one's worldview. Philosophers and psychologists have

long ago defined that there's a need to combine technologies for cognition from two worlds: the Western and the Eastern. These two technologies of cognition are oriented towards using the power of different hemispheres of the human brain. The left hemisphere is able to effectively build analytical, cause-and- effect models of the world, while the right hemisphere perceives the world holistically and vividly using intuition technologies. In a rapidly changing world, the role of intuition increases. Numerous studies have shown that decisions made in difficult situations intuitively are 90% successful, while decisions made on the basis of rational technologies are only 50% successful. Only the enrichment of curricula developed for the training of specialists working directly with a person, disciplines of the humanitarian cycle related to the individual's spiritual world, will ensure their technological efficiency and high performance.

The Scientific School of V. N. Karazin University of Kharkiv has chosen trialectics as a methodological instrument for studying the spiritual world. A representative of this school, Professor O. Zadorozhna, points out that the postulates and dogmas of the dominant mechanistic-materialist and traditional social science, whose main method is dialectics, are no longer sufficient for the integrity of the worldview in the context of the global crisis and for overcoming it. Reality as an integrity is presented as the interaction and mutual influence of matter and spirit, where the problems of spirituality, consciousness, and semantic comprehending set the defining vector and outline the field of post-nonclassical-dimensional studies [3, p. 9].

Academician G. Zadorozhnyi substantiates the essence and relevance of the use of trialectics. In his opinion, they consist in the idea that all real phenomena and processes of reality are interconnected, interpenetrating, and are realized in an invisible, essential unity, which is not paid attention to by dialectics. In trialectics, the fundamental principle of the pervasiveness of reality thanks to the human spirit, which not only unites/bonds/penetrates everything, but also directs everything to unity/harmony as the fundamental quality of the world. The format of dialectics does not find a place and role for the human spirit, which radically distorts reality itself. The spirit is a living, life-creating "all-pervasive glue", without comprehension of which life is dialectically torn, impoverished, dehumanized, and turns into an inevitable catastrophe [4, p. 12].

One of the important elements of cognitive science is the concept of «construct». This is a category of thinking, a classification and evaluation standard created by a person, with the help of which a person interprets his or her own life experience. Psychological dictionaries define it as a kind of filter of information obtained from objective reality, which, thanks to a person's cognitive style, is transformed into the person's subjective image of the world. This image of the world can evolve, and a person has the opportunity to change his or her own system of constructs.

Analyzing such an experience, a person uses three types of constructs [2, p. 108]. educational creative citizen civilizational transformation

1. The anticipatory construct. Its purpose is to standardize the elements of analysis so that they are contained exclusively within the range of this construct. This way of thinking does not allow a person to interpret a new problem situation in a new context.

2. The constellatory construct. The composition of its elements is constant. That is, it unambiguously fixes the belonging of the phenomenon observed by a person to a certain construct. This way of thinking limits a person's ability to choose alternative solutions to a problem.

3. The construct of assumption. It allows a person to be open to new experiences and adopt alternative views. It is considered as flexible thinking. The presence of this way of thinking in a person's intellect ensures the effectiveness of the search for non-obvious problems in a situation.

The efficiency and expediency of using a particular construct depends on the level of intellectualization of labor and its nature. The intellectualization of labor can be low, medium and high. According to the nature of labor, it is assumed to be divided into routine, adaptive, and creative. In conditions of a low level of intellectualization of labor with its routine nature, it is advisable to focus on the anticipatory construct that involves stereotyped thinking. In conditions of an average level of intellectualization of labor with its adaptive nature, it will be justified to use employees with a constellatory construct. This construct focuses on systematic thinking. In conditions of combining a high level of intellectualization of labor with its creative nature, it is advisable to involve employees whose consciousness is prone to the construct of assumption. This construct focuses on global thinking.

Regarding the concept of «cognitive style», it is usually defined as the individual psychological characteristics of cognitive processes, the tendency to use certain ways of interacting with information [5, p. 36].

Practice has shown that it is advisable to use the ideas of socionics to diagnose cognitive style. First, the basic foundations of this science were created by psychologists and social psychologists. Secondly, socionics provides practical recommendations for improving the interaction of people based on the analysis of the energy-information exchange between a person and the surrounding world. Evidence of the influence of cognitive styles of socionic types on the efficiency of information exchange in communication and on the nature of behavior in specific work collectives is provided by A. Doronin [6].

Wikipedia defines the concept of «educational process» as a process of acquiring and improving knowledge, skills, values, and beliefs. It is implemented, firstly, through various forms of cognitive activity, such as perception, attention, memory, imagination, and thinking. Secondly, through various forms of learning, such as study, instruction, training, research, and practical experience.

The educational process as a whole characterizes the system of organization of educational activities represented by the curriculum of an educational institution. The main constructive element of education is a lesson. This is part of the educational process, which is influenced by changes taking place in society, market demand trends for the training of future specialists, the State-controlled standards, educational programs, curricula in subjects, innovations in the education system, and the individual trajectory of the development of the learner's personality.

On the basis of this interpretation of the concept of «educational process», it becomes obvious that it is necessary to supplement learning activities with educational ones focused on the use of emotions and on the use of opportunities for obtaining knowledge through the generalization of solutions to similar practical situations. Knowledge is contained in scientific and moral, legal, and philosophical ideas. They can be reflected through concepts, philosophical generalization, or scientific law. For art, knowledge takes the form of an artistic image. Currently, scientists point out that presence of artistic and imaginative thinking is a necessary prerequisite for any creativity and, in particular, scientific creativity. In their opinion, emotions inherent in artistic and figurative thinking are closely intertwined with thinking, activate it and at the same time perform the function of heuristics, the ability to generate new unique knowledge. It is known, for example, that the great Leonardo da Vinci valued art as the highest rank of science, and considered science as the path to art. The author of the physical theory of relativity, Albert Einstein believed that Dostoevsky gave him more than the famous mathematician Gauss. Consequently, the claims of science to be the only or most perfect way to obtain knowledge are unjustified [7].

An important component of the educational process is scientific practice. Its task is, firstly, to consolidate and deepen the knowledge gained in the learning process. Secondly, to ensure the formation and development of cognitive competence, skills of independent research work. An extremely important task of scientific practice is to develop the ability to formulate the content of problematic tasks of practical activity, analyze the results and draw conclusions.

R. Ackoff once defined the following sequence of human mastery of a situation: information - knowledge - understanding. Each component of this sequence answers different questions related to the situation. Information answers the question «what?», knowledge answers the question «how?», understanding answers the question «why?». To answer the third question, a person must understand not only the logic, patterns of a phenomenon or a process, but also learn to perceive them holistically, using intuition. It is this synthesis of logic and intuition in the perception of the situation under study that ensures the desired result.

Regarding scientific disciplines, scientific schools are usually formed around certain paradigms. This situation sometimes demonstrates contradictions in the way scientists perceive the problem of the subject area of science. At the same time, the natural sciences have more opportunities to develop linearly, to focus on a limited number of paradigms, on the chain of knowledge of the subject area determined by each of them. In the humanities, which study phenomena and processes that change rapidly and depend on unpredictable human actions, such a chain has a limited life cycle. Life, meanwhile, has shown that under certain conditions, effective mechanisms for organizing and practicing knowledge in the humanities can be obtained by starting not with theory but with practice, summarizing positive experience [8].

The Tаbl. 2 shows the characteristics of two varieties of scientific practice. The first one is implemented in an educational institution and aims to form the learner's knowledge of technology and the ability to identify the patterns of scientific substantiation of the search for problems concerning the subject of research. The second one is intended to test the ability of a specialist to use the knowledge acquired in the educational process in the workplace.

Table 2

The characteristics of research practices

Expounded below are some of the results of the formation and development of research skills on the example of practical training of masters in the specialty «Management of staff development».

Radical changes in society's requirements for education ambiguously affect the options for the formation of human cognitive competence. Practice has shown the expediency of focusing on the following sequence of its development.

Learning competence. It is aimed at mastering the content and essence of the concepts and categories of disciplines presented in the curriculum, as well as technologies for memorizing information. Its result is the mastery of the special vocabulary of each academic discipline and its cognitive technologies. The criterion for assessing such competence is the ability to compile cognitive maps of complex concepts, mental maps of a system of concepts on a particular topic of the discipline. The functions of the teacher in the process of its formation are to reduce the emotional intensity of the educational process, to demonstrate the comparative visualization of concepts, which testifies to the uniqueness of the vision of the problem by each learner.

Educational and cognitive competence. It is aimed at the permanent coordination of the efforts of both the learner and the teacher in solving educational problems, the intensification of the cognitive activity of the learner. The analysis of this competence implies, firstly, the learner's mastery of ways of obtaining knowledge from textbooks, educational and methodological literature; secondly, the learner's mastery of methods of notetaking. The evaluation criterion is the ability to compare variants of defining concepts, develop one's own version of the terminology system, and state the existence of different scientific schools of the discipline. The function of the teacher is to help determine the context in which the definition reflects the content of the message, to identify scientific areas that use the same (or different) interpretations of concepts.

Intellectual and cognitive competence. It is aimed at taking into account the originality of the learner's intellect (logical, emotional, practical). The result is the learners' readiness to realize their own mental potential. The evaluation criterion is the first attempts to independently acquire knowledge from the supplementary reading list. The function of the teacher is to form the learners' confidence in the ability to independently acquire knowledge in their own way.

Research competence. It is aimed at the formation of prerequisites for the implementation of the learner's research competence in the subject area of the discipline. The result is mastering the methodology of gradual acquisition of knowledge through the study of various situations that become complicated. The evaluation criterion is the practical mastery by the learners' of the main stages of research in the scientific field, the ability to learn to acquire new knowledge. The function of the teacher is to accompany the learners on the principles of partnership in their search for ways to solve a non-standard problem, to activate their desires and confidence.

Research competence in the subject area of the discipline. It is aimed at forming the learner's abilities to develop and supplement knowledge. The result is the ability to formulate a problem, hypotheses, build a terminology system using various disciplines, a program of research of the problem. The evaluation criterion is obtaining scientific results that correspond to the qualification level of a master or candidate of sciences. The function of the teacher is to delegate individual stages of the research to the learners themselves, to accompany the work of the creative project group.

Cognitive competence. It is aimed at forming the ability to combine logical and intuitive sources of knowledge, to create one's own picture of the world. The result is a comprehending of the essence of scientific practice, the use of the socio-cultural paradigm in the study of unique professional problems. The evaluation criterion is a developed version of an in-depth study of the problem and the organization of a collective solution to a unique interdisciplinary working problem of practice. The function of the teacher is the realization of the powers of a coach and partner, the development of the practice of verbalization of unique results. In addition, the teacher should teach learners to combine individual solutions to problems in a collective version, to develop a collective picture of the world of a problem situation.

Conclusions

The processes and phenomena of the socioeconomic system have become significantly more complicated, requiring radical changes in the research methodology. The models of society are developing rapidly, and education is transforming from a process limited by time to a permanent process that lasts throughout a person's life. When forming new foundations of economic science and practice, it is necessary to respond in a timely manner to changes in the content and structure of its subject area, focusing on enriching the resources for the development of cognitive competence of personnel engaged in mental activity. The technologies of the research potential of scientists must be enriched with the achievements of the humanities, and the ideas they receive on the basis of intuition need to be tested. Education is fundamentally changing, the nature of the interaction between the teacher and the learner, the technologies for the development of human knowledge throughout the working life of a person are changing. The effectiveness of combining the efforts of scholars working on the problems of establishing a cognitive society in Ukraine depends, too, on the terminological support of the relevant discussions.

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