Situation and Vector Analysis of Cognitive and Personality Development of Students in the Process of Overcoming Learning Difficulties

Abstract

During reflective-activity approach counseling sessions with students aimed at helping them overcome difficulties, there often occurs a phenomena of ‘explosive dynamics’ when significant qualitative changes happen, both in the cognitive and personality spheres. The multi-dimensional model of the zone of proximal development proposed in the reflective-activity approach makes it possible to theoretically substantiate and describe the mechanism of cognitive and personality development in the process of overcoming learning difficulties. While working out the parameters for analyzing the dynamics of cognitive and personality development of students, the following three main tasks had to be solved: 1) how to analyse the process of joint work of the student and the counselor to reconstruct the structural-dynamic picture of qualitative cognitive and personality changes from the session transcript (speech production); 2) how to show the dynamics of learning through the subject matter of the tasks, the dynamics of cognitive and personality lines of development; 3) how to capture the connection between psychotherapeutic and pedagogical help and positive qualitative cognitive and personality changes. We thus developed a method based on the principles and methods of speech production analysis in creative task solving which is considered an equivalent of learning difficulties. The paper discusses an example of the analysis of counselor-student interaction based on the developed method. which illustrates the ‘reflection’ dynamics that occurs during one session.