VALUES AS THE MAIN COMPONENTS OF THE PRESCHOOLER’S PERSONALITY STRUCTURE

VALUES AS THE MAIN COMPONENTS OF THE PRESCHOOLER’S PERSONALITY STRUCTURE

The problem of values occupies an important place in the structure of modern psychological knowledge, since values are the main components of the personality structure that determine its will, spirituality, orientation, activity, and are reflected in personal attitudes through the attitude of the individual to society, to nature, to himself as a part of the world.
Keywords: personality values, inner world of a personality.

Kobylchenko V. V.
Doctor of Psychology, Senior Researcher,
Chief Researcher of the Department of Education of Children with Visual Impairments,
Mykola Yarmachenko Institute of Special Pedagogy and Psychology of the National Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of Ukraine, Kyiv, Ukraine

Omelchenko I. M.
Doctor of Psychology, Professor,
Leading Researcher of the Department of Psychological and Pedagogical
of psychological and pedagogical support of children with special needs,
Mykola Yarmachenko Institute of Special Pedagogy and Psychology, National Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of Ukraine, Kyiv, Ukraine

10.34142//2708-4809.SIUTY.2022.170

In psychological science, a person’s life values and system of views are those internal intrapersonal variables that give rise to a sense of comprehension of existence, the value of what happened in the past, is present and will happen in the future. Thus, values are the main components of the personality structure that determine his or her will, spirituality, orientation, activity, and activity, which are reflected in personal attitudes, properties, and qualities through the person’s attitude to society, to nature, and to oneself as a part of the world. Thus, the understanding of values is based on the general principles of psychology: development, interaction, activity, activity, etc.

In psychological and pedagogical research, values are defined as a need-based formation (Boryshevskyi, 1974; Ihnatenko, Kosareva, Krytska, Popluzhnyi, 1997; Maslow, 1982); as a moral category (Bekh, 2015; Sukhomlynska, 1997); a way of connecting consciousness and being, man and the world (Lomako, 2014).

In the views of V. Frankl (1990), values and meanings are considered in the same plane, in the context of personal development of a person, since being a person means being turned to the meaning that requires realization and to the values that require realization.

The philosophical interpretation of values reveals their dichotomous nature: values appear as a certain standard, generalized ideals, or as subjective categories, personal attitudes. The first interpretation is close to the cultural approach, as it sees values as the quintessence of cultural heritage, national treasures. The second aspect is closer to the psychological understanding, since the system of personal attitudes is the subject of psychology.

It should be noted that within the psychological field of research, the problem of values is one of the fundamental ones, since the system of value attitudes of a person determines the behavior of a person throughout his or her life, i.e. is a component of the need-motivational sphere of a person.

The scientific basis for the study of the psychological aspect of values is created by the works of psychologists B. Ananiev (1977), I. Bech (2015), L. Vygotsky (1984), D. Leontiev (1998), S. Rubinstein (1997), and others.

Values are associated with various personal formations: ideas and beliefs; social attitudes, relationships and interests; needs and motives. According to G. Allport (1937), values are contained in the higher motives of the personality – the motives of development. The structure of personality, therefore, can be represented as a system of personal values, interests and intentions that are “centered” around the higher motives of the individual. These motives give rise to a system of goals aimed at the future, the realization of which requires the disclosure and formation of new human capabilities.

Values are internalized in the process of socialization and act as the main regulatory mechanisms of human social behavior. However, they do not act directly, but are realized in a certain system of human values, which forms the most important component of the overall structure of the personality.

Internalization in its most general form is understood as a way of appropriating and using social experience by a person and is considered in psychology as a leading mechanism of socialization. According to L. Vygotsky (1984), in the process of internalization, a child appropriates culture through interaction with an adult, as a result of which the interpersonal function turns into an intrapsychic function and becomes the inner content of the psyche.

Each person perceives the world around him or her through the prism of his or her own values, which have a socio-cultural origin. There are two levels of values: global (goodness, beauty, freedom) and “grounded” values close to everyday life (family, well-being, children, etc.). For each person, the problem of correlating the values of culture and society with his or her own values is relevant. H. Tajfel (1982) introduced the concept of a person’s “value field” into scientific circulation, which refers to an individual set of values that are significant for a particular subject.

A person may not be fully aware of his or her value orientations, but even if they remain unconscious, they determine the entire system of his or her attitudes toward the world.

The inclusion of social values in the inner world of a person occurs in the process of socialization, but under certain conditions the importance of values increases. This happens when the established system of values undergoes changes. While the values are stable, new information is selected and interpreted in such a way as to “confirm” and “support” the established system of values of the individual. At the same time, new information is often not used to transform already formed ideas.

A person simply rejects it in order to avoid contradictions in their own attitudes (Festinger, 2000). However, at certain stages of development, primarily during periods of age-related crises, there is a need to revise the established system of values, which contributes to changes in the child’s internal picture of the world. In case of successful adaptation, the old value system is modified.

G. Mead (1934) identified forms of symbolic interaction that ensure the child’s entry into society, and he considered role learning to be the main mechanism of socialization, since it is in the role that the generalized social experience, norms, values and symbols of a particular society are contained, which form a person’s self-awareness and inner world.

We believe that values structure an individual’s psyche, from needs to ideals. Thus, the subjective values of the individual are a certain separate psychological phenomenon, which is especially intensively formed in the preschool period of personality development [1, p. 517-527].

Since values represent the inner world of a personality and are a characteristic of the sphere of consciousness and an integral feature of the child’s growing capabilities in building the qualities of conscious life, an important task of modern psychological and pedagogical science is to study the prerequisites, factors, trends and patterns of formation of value orientations in preschool age, to identify ways to optimize the value searches of preschoolers [3, p. 212-223].

This determines the relevance of forming preschoolers’ value attitudes to the world around them, the need to develop a system of psychological and pedagogical methods and tools. In this case, a great responsibility is assigned to adults who have to protect their pupils from the destructive influence of negative moral experience, to form moral stability, will. In communication with an adult, a child should receive the necessary “reinforcement” of moral and value orientations. Therefore, the most important component of the formation of a system of values is the positive moral experience of the child, overcoming negative trends in the actual functioning of moral norms, and the way to acquire it is through the spiritually rich, open to children personality of the adult.

List of references

1. Vadym Kobylchenko. Some look at the formation of the system of personal values in kindergarten through the prism of the axiological approach – theoretical aspect of the problem. Annales Universitatis Mariae Curie-Sklodowska, sectio N – Educatio Nova. 2020. VOL. V. Р. 517-527.
2. Kobylchenko V. V., Omelchenko I. M. Special psychology: textbook. Kyiv : VC “Academy”, 2020. 224 p.
3. Formation of value orientations of preschool children in the modern socio-cultural environment. Actual problems of psychology : collection of scientific papers of the H. S. Kostiuk Institute of Psychology of the National Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of Ukraine / edited by S. D. Maksymenko. Kyiv : Silver Wave, 2012. VOL. IV. Psychology of preschooler development. Issue 8. P. 212–223.