Development of the imagination of younger students. The development of imagination in younger students Age-related features of the creative imagination of a younger student

Creative imagination in pedagogy and psychology has been studied by many scientists, including S.G. Begunova, P.P. Blonsky, L.S. Vygotsky, G.I. Vergiles, D.I. Govorun, A.A. Denisova, E.V. Ilyenkov, Yu.E. Kalugina, G.V. Kraeva, E.K. Marantsman, A.I. Raeva, A.Z. Rakhimova, N.V. Russian psychologists and teachers - L.I. Aidarova, L.S. Vygotsky, L.V. Zankov, V.V. Davydov, Z.I. Kalmykova, V.A. Krutetsky, D.B. Elkonin determine the importance of educational activity for the formation of the creative imagination of students.

The development of the creative imagination of a younger student is realized in many ways and forms of activity.. We note the most significant ways of forming and developing the creative imagination of a younger student:

construction,

dramatization games

puzzle games,

outdoor games,

artistic activity.

The paper mainly explores various types of play and learning activities that activate the development of the creative imagination of a younger student.

According to L.S. Vygotsky needs to know the psychological mechanism of children's imagination, which is based on the relationship between fantasy and reality. "The creative activity of the imagination is directly dependent on the richness and diversity, the previous experience of a person, because this experience is the material from which the constructions of fantasy are created. The richer the experience of a person, the more material that his imagination has." The task of an adult is to expand the child's experience, which will create conditions for the development of children's creative activity, since imagination is connected with reality itself, and in the process of its perception, ideas about it are accumulated and refined, thereby enriching the memory with images of the existing.

The state of children's creative imagination depends on the following factors:

age,

mental development,

developmental features, i.e. the presence of any violation of psychophysical development,

individual personality traits: stability, awareness and orientation of motives, evaluative structures of the image of "I", features of communication, the degree of self-realization and assessment of one's own activity, character traits and temperament,

development of the process of education and upbringing.

The experience of a child is different from that of an adult. Imagination in a child begins to develop early, it is weaker than that of an adult, but takes up much more space in life. The child has a different relationship to his environment. Related to this are the interests of the child, different from the interests of adults. The child's relationship to the world is simpler, poorer in content than the relationship of an adult to the world, which is more complex, subtle, and diverse. That is, all these factors determine the work of the imagination, its development. The child's imagination is developing. Therefore, the true results of creative imagination belong to a mature fantasy, the imagination of an adult. Consequently, the imagination of a child is poorer in content than that of an adult. But at the same time, the imagination of a child is richer in form than that of an adult, that is, children can do everything out of everything, according to Goethe. Therefore, children live in a more fantastic world than adults.

The basic law of the development of the imagination psychologist T. Ribot presented in three stages:

childhood and adolescence - the dominance of fantasy, games, fairy tales, fiction;

youth - a combination of fiction and activity, "sober prudent reason";

maturity is the subordination of the imagination to the mind to the intellect.

We single out the following skills necessary for the development of creative imagination younger schoolchildren, which form the basis of the ability of productive arbitrary spatial imagination.

classify objects, situations, phenomena on various grounds;

establish causal relationships;

see interconnections and identify new connections between systems;

consider the system in development;

make forward-looking assumptions;

highlight the opposite features of the object;

identify and formulate contradictions;

to separate conflicting properties of objects in space and time;

represent spatial objects;

use different systems of orientation in an imaginary space;

represent an object based on the selected features, which implies:

overcoming the psychological inertia of thinking;

evaluation of the originality of the solution;

narrowing the field of search for a solution;

fantastic transformation of objects, situations, phenomena;

mental transformation of objects in accordance with a given topic.

What are stages of development of the imagination in preschool children?

It is known that up to the age of 3 children's imagination exists, as it were, inside other mental processes that are the foundation of imagination. At the age of 3, the child develops verbal forms of imagination, and imagination becomes an independent mental process. At 4-5 years old, a child learns to plan, structure upcoming actions at the mental level. At the age of 6-7, the imagination is already quite active, meaningful and specific. The first elements of children's creativity appear. Imagination requires an environment that feeds it - this is emotional communication with adults, objective and manipulative activities of various types. From 6-7 years old to 9-10 years old - the child's junior school period. He has permanent responsibilities that are associated with educational and cognitive activities. The new social status of the child, the world of normative relations complicates the child's life conditions, often acting as stressful for him, increasing mental tension, which affects the child's physical health, emotional state, and behavior. The standardization of the child's living conditions at school begins to interfere with his natural development, which was previously taken into account and understood by close people. Basically, the child adapts to the standard conditions of the school, which helps him in his learning activities. The child in school learns special mental actions, actions related to writing, reading, drawing, labor, masters the content of the main forms of social consciousness (science, art, morality), learns new social expectations of society.

School age, like all human ages, begins with a critical stage, or a turning point at the age of 7. In the transition from preschool to school age, the child changes. This transitional state is no longer a preschooler and not yet a schoolboy. The results of many modern studies on this problem boil down to the following: a 7-year-old child is distinguished, first of all, by the loss of childish immediacy. The immediate cause of childish spontaneity is the insufficient differentiation of inner and outer life. The child's experiences, desires and expression of desires, i.e. behavior and activity usually represent an insufficiently differentiated whole in the preschooler. The most significant feature of the crisis of seven years is usually called the beginning of differentiation of the inner and outer sides of the child's personality.

The features that characterize the crisis of 7 years are associated with the weakening of sensual immediacy, the strengthening of the rational aspect of the perception of reality, which now mediates the experience and the act itself, being the opposite of the naive and direct action characteristic of the child. The child begins to realize his experiences, the concepts "I am happy", "I am upset", "I am angry", "I am kind", "I am evil" are born. Childhood experiences acquire meaning, as a result, the child develops new relationships with himself, which became possible due to the process of generalization and complication of experiences. This is the so-called affective generalization, or the logic of feelings, when a school-age child learns to generalize his feelings, which are repeated many times with him. It is interesting to note that the level of our requests to ourselves, to our success, to our position is formed precisely in relation to the crisis of 7 years.

During this period, a differentiation of the internal and external arises in the child, a semantic experience arises for the first time, and an acute struggle of experiences also arises. The internal struggle (contradictions of experiences and the choice of one's own experiences) becomes possible only now.

Children of primary school age are distinguished by emotional impressionability, perception of bright, colorful impressions, hence routine educational work and classes reduce cognitive interest, can give rise to a negative attitude towards the cognitive process, learning. A change in the child's life position upon entering school introduces serious changes in the nature of relations with others, gives rise to experiences previously unknown to him. So, the child's self-esteem causes emotional well-being, high, low, and maybe adequate to reality itself, confident or insecure, as well as anxiety, sadness, sometimes envy, an experience of superiority over others. Inadequate self-esteem, either increased or decreased, causes not only a specific emotional reaction of the child to a change in the surrounding reality, but often a long-term negative emotional well-being.

During communication, the child learns not only the other person, but also himself. It is important to note that in modern pedagogical and social psychology, the theoretical and methodological concepts of the very process of the formation of younger schoolchildren as subjects of interpersonal communication have not yet been developed, since the structure of the foundations of the psychological problems of the individual during this period of the child's development is transformed from an imitative level to a reflexive level of development, along with business communication forms a new extra-situational-personal form of communication, thus, there is a change in the mechanism of development of the subject of communication.

What are the features of the imagination of younger students?

First, we note that the prototypes of the child's imagination are associated with the processes of perception of reality, as well as the child's play activity. In the imagination of a one and a half year old child playing, a chair, for example, turns into an airplane, a pot lid - into the steering of a car, a table covered with a blanket - into a house. And during the period when the child's speech is being formed, in children's games, the imagination develops more fully due to the expansion of life observations that occur involuntarily. But from 3 to 5 years old, arbitrary forms of imagination are already formed, the images of which can be born as a reaction to the external environment, or be activated by the child himself. Here, imaginary images are generated purposefully, with a pre-thought-out scenario and the ultimate goal of the subsequent action. During the school period of the child, the imagination develops rapidly, as there is a process of active acquisition of various knowledge, which is immediately used in practice.

Imagination most clearly manifests itself in the creative process, where it is on a par with thinking. In order for the imagination to develop, objective and subjective conditions are necessary, under which, first of all, a person’s freedom of action, his individuality, initiative, independence are manifested, that is, a nourishing environment is necessary. Since imagination is closely related to memory, thinking, attention, perception, which are necessary to maintain and develop educational activities, in order to obtain a high-quality level of children's education, it is necessary to pay serious attention to the development of children's imagination, which will also expand the cognitive abilities of children. The main problem facing the child and the teacher at school is related to the relationship of imagination and attention, since figurative representations are regulated through the child's voluntary attention, and the problem is also rooted in the assimilation of abstract concepts that are difficult to imagine by the child. Thus, the older preschool and primary school age of children are considered the most favorable for the development of creative imagination and fantasy through games, children's communication, in which reality and fantasy are often mixed, and images of the imagination are experienced as quite real, perceived by others as deceit. Although this deceit, if it is not related to the intentional behavior of the child, is nothing more than fantasizing, inventing stories, and not a lie, which in turn is the norm for children. As a rule, in these cases, adults need to get involved in the children's game, as in a manifestation of fantasy, thereby sympathizing and empathizing with the child, which is possible due to the law of the emotional reality of imagination. At primary school age, the active development of the recreating imagination takes place.

The imagination of children of primary school age can be:

recreating ( creating an image of an object according to its description),

creative(creation of new images that require the selection of material in accordance with the plan).

The main trend that arises in the development of children's imagination is the transition to an increasingly correct and complete reflection of reality, the transition from a simple arbitrary combination of ideas to a logically reasoned combination. At 3-4 years old, a child is satisfied with two sticks laid crosswise to depict a bird; at 7-8 years old, he already needs an outward resemblance to a bird ("to have wings"). And at the age of 11-12, a schoolchild can design a model of a bird with complete resemblance to a real object of imitation ("so that it is just like a real one and can fly"). Here the question arises about the realism of the child's imagination, which in turn is connected with the question of the relation of images to reality in the forms of activity accessible to the child. as in the game, when listening to fairy tales, in visual activity, etc., in which, with the age development of the child, the demands for credibility in a game situation, visual activity, and even in fairy-tale situations increase. As a rule, imitating reality, a child can retreat into the reality of his fantasies only due to ignorance, inability to coherently depict the events of real life. Note that the realism of the imagination of a younger student is clearly visible already in the selection of certain attributes of the game situation. So, for a preschooler, the game allows for the main rule - everything can be everything. And for older preschoolers, the selection of material for the game situation is already beginning, according to the principles of external similarity with the object itself, the most real situation, the maximum proximity of this material to the real object, in order to perform real actions with it and automatically becomes an adult in his own imagination.

Children of primary school age, according to A.G. Ruzskaya, are not devoid of fantasy, which is at odds with reality, which is even more typical for schoolchildren. "Fantasying of this kind still plays a significant role and occupies a certain place in the life of a younger student. But, nevertheless, it is no longer a simple continuation of the fantasizing of a preschooler who himself believes in his fantasy as in reality. A 9-10 year old student already understands "conventionality" of one's fantasizing, its inconsistency with reality. Consequently, concrete knowledge and fantastic images are closely intertwined in the mind of a junior schoolchild. In the process of the evolution of the consciousness of the younger schoolchild, the realism of the child's imagination is activated, intensifying, and the role of images divorced from reality is gradually weakening.

The realism of the imagination means the creation of images that are adequate to reality itself. However, these images can be a direct reproduction of life reflected in the mind, the presence in the imagination of elements reproductive, simple reproduction, repetition of actions, words that children observed in adults, saw in the cinema, reproducing them without changes in school life, in the family. In the process of the evolution of the consciousness of a younger student, the inclusion in them of reproductive elements in the imagination becomes less, and, conversely, begins to manifest itself to a greater extent. creative processing of imagination representations.

It is important to note that according to L.S. Vygotsky, a child of elementary school can imagine much less than an adult, however, trusting the products of his imagination more and controlling them less, and therefore "imagination in the everyday, cultural sense of the word, i.e. something that is real, fictional, in a child, of course, more than in an adult.However, not only the material from which the imagination builds is poorer in a child than in an adult, but also the nature of the combinations that are attached to this material, their quality and variety are significantly inferior to adult combinations. At primary school age, notes V.S. Mukhin, a child in his imagination can already create a variety of situations. Being formed in the game substitutions of some objects for others, the imagination also passes into other types of activity.

With the formation of realism among younger schoolchildren, the division of play and labor is connected, as an activity carried out for the sake of pleasure, and as an activity aimed at achieving an objectively socially significant and evaluated result, which is an important feature of this school age. Imagination develops intensively between the ages of 5 and 15. And if this period of imagination is not specially developed, in the future there will be a rapid decrease in the activity of this function. The impoverishment of the human personality is directly related to a decrease in a person’s ability to imagine, fantasize, thereby reducing the potential for creative thinking, and accordingly, interest in art, science, and any kind of creative activity is extinguished. The psychological basis of creative activity is creative imagination.

Younger students carry out most of their vigorous activity with the help of imagination. Their games are the fruit of the wild work of fantasy, they are enthusiastically engaged in creative activities. The psychological basis of creative activity is creative imagination. Moreover, in the process of learning, younger students are faced with the need to comprehend abstract conceptual material; with a general lack of life experience, working by analogy, the child connects his imagination. The significance of the function of imagination in mental development is enormous, and therefore a powerful research base is required for the development of imagination in order to contribute to a more effective knowledge of reality, self-improvement of the child's personality. In order for fantasy not to grow into empty dreams, it is necessary to help the child to correctly use his imagination in the direction of positive self-development, the activation of the cognitive and educational activities of younger students, the development of abstract thinking, attention, speech, and creative activity. The artistic activity in which the younger student is involved is based on active creative thinking and imagination, which provides the child with a new, unusual view of the world.

So, imagination is the most important mental process, the level of development of which affects the success of mastering the school curriculum by children of primary school age.

One of the most important tasks of psychological and pedagogical work is a comprehensive study of the child's personality. As noted by K.D. Ushinsky: "If pedagogy wants to educate a person in all respects, then she must first recognize him also in all respects."

Famous psychologists L.S. Vygotsky, V.V. Davydov, A.V. Zaporozhets, V.A. Krutetsky, A.K. Markova, A.V. Petrovsky, S.L. Rubinstein, D.B. Elkonin and others identified and scientifically substantiated the psychological characteristics and psychological neoplasms of the main age periods of a child's development, which are formed in line with the leading activity for each specific period. "The development of a neoplasm at a stable age is the starting point for all dynamic changes," noted L.S. Vygotsky. . Consequently, the study of the patterns of emergence and development of the psychological characteristics and qualities of the child's personality within and through leading activity, the establishment of the age continuity of these features serves as the "key" to understanding the patterns of development of all mental processes of the child, including imagination.

According to the periodization of mental development proposed by L.S. Vygotsky, imagination is the central psychological neoplasm of preschool age. The imagination is formed in the game activity, which is the leading one in this age period. In a game situation, the preschooler's imagination gets a wide scope and manifests itself in the most vivid, colorful forms, in connection with which it seems that a small child lives half in the world of his fantasies and that his imagination is stronger, richer, more original than the imagination of an adult. For a long time in psychology there was an assumption put forward by V. Stern and D. Dewey, according to which the imagination is inherent in the child "initially", it is most productive in childhood.

Through the work of the imagination, there is compensation for the still insufficient real the child's ability to overcome life's difficulties, conflicts, solve problems of social interaction.

Features of the gaming activity of younger schoolchildren lie in the fact that the content of educational activity is successfully mastered in it.

The use of the game contributes to the formation of students' psychological premises of theoretical consciousness, changes in the motives of behavior and the discovery of new sources of development of cognitive forces, the formation of which occurs in line with educational activities.

In the process of educational activity of schoolchildren, which starts from living contemplation in the primary grades, the level of development of cognitive processes plays an important role, as psychologists note: attention, memory, perception, observation, imagination, memory, thinking. At the same time, given that all cognitive processes are in a relationship of close connection and interrelation (as elements of a single system), we can say that the active development of any of these functions in educational activity creates favorable prerequisites for the development of imagination. For the full development of the child's creative imagination, it is necessary for him to have a certain stock of ideas about the surrounding reality. However, the enrichment of the child's sensory experience is not the only condition and method for the development of his fantasy, since the specificity of the imagination lies not so much in the accumulation of ideas about the world around, but in the reorganization of these ideas, their change, redesign. In the practice of schooling, the main emphasis, unfortunately, is placed precisely on the factor of the richness of sensory experience, while the specificity of the process of imagination, i.e. the combinatorial nature of his activity is practically not taken into account. From our point of view, for the formation of the imagination, along with the constant enrichment of the child's experience, it is also necessary that development with age is gradually replaced by rational components, obeys the intellect and fades away.

However, L.S. Vygotsky, considering the problem of imagination in the aspect of age, shows the inconsistency of such positions. He claims that all images of the imagination, no matter how bizarre, are based on ideas received in real life. And since the experience of a child is much poorer than that of an adult, the interests are more elementary and simple, it is hardly fair to say that the child's imagination is richer. Just sometimes, not having enough experience, the child explains in his own way what he encounters in life, and these explanations often seem unexpected and original. “The imagination of a child,” wrote K.D. Ushinsky, is both poorer, and weaker, and more monotonous than that of an adult. But the imagination of children is strong, but the soul is weak, and its power over the imagination is negligible. Seemingly rich, fantasy is not at all connected with the power of imagination, but is due to weak control over it; the child, as a result of the instability of interest, cannot control his imagination, the child does not care where his whimsical dream, excited by the variety of external impressions, takes him.

Developing the idea that a child's imagination is more developed than that of adults, some researchers consider imagination as a source of activities inherent in a preschooler. V. S. Mukhina argues that "the development of the imagination is not the cause, but the result of mastering the game, constructive, visual and other activities"

According to the data of psychology, "visible" forms of imagination in children are observed at the age of two years. During this period, the child's imagination is involuntary and the nature of its manifestation is determined by the specific situation in which the child finds himself and the opportunities that he has at the moment. So, imitating the actions of the mother, the child tries, for example, to feed the doll, using their substitutes instead of real objects (a stick instead of a spoon, sand instead of porridge). There is a situation of imaginary feeding, i.e. the child so far only "complements with his imagination" what he perceives. With age, the child's imitative aspirations become more complicated due to the change in the nature of play activity: the child is actively involved in role-playing games, in which he has to be more and more content with a substitute, calling on his imagination to help. The game is a form of creative reflection of reality by the child, since in it, according to A.A. Lublinskaya, "reality and fiction are intertwined in amazing combinations, the desire for an accurate reproduction of reality with the most arbitrary violations of this reality." The plot-role-playing game, which provides for the child to take on a certain role, modeling his behavior with it in various possible situations, using substitute objects that are adequate to the accepted role, acts as a necessary condition for the full formation of the imagination function in preschoolers.

The desire for independent creativity, according to general psychology, appears in children aged 5-6 years. At this age, having already mastered the basic patterns of behavior and activity, the child can relatively freely operate with them, departing from the learned standards, combining them when constructing products of the imagination. However, in general, despite their visibility, expressiveness, emotional richness, the images of the imagination of preschoolers are still insufficiently manageable and controllable.

In the next age period, which begins from the moment the child enters school, the leading activity becomes educational, within its framework, the further development of all mental processes, including imagination, takes place. In children of primary school age, several types of imagination are distinguished. It can be recreative (creating an image of an object according to its description) and creative (creating new images that require the selection of material in accordance with the plan). The creation of images of the imagination is carried out using several methods: Agglutination, that is, the "gluing" of various parts that are not connected in everyday life. An example is the classic character of fairy tales man-beast or man-bird;

Hyperbole. This is a paradoxical increase or decrease in an object or its individual parts. An example is the fairy-tale characters Dwarf Nose, Gulliver or the Boy with a finger.

Schematization. In this case, individual representations merge, the differences are smoothed out. The main similarities are clearly worked out; Typing. Characteristic is the selection of an essential, recurring feature and its embodiment in a specific image. For example, there are professional images of a doctor, an astronaut, a miner, and so on. The basis for creating any images of fantasy is synthesis and analogy. The analogy can be close, immediate and distant, stepped. For example, the appearance of an airplane resembles a soaring bird. This is a close analogy. A spaceship is a distant analogy with a spaceship.

However, creative imagination, according to some psychologists, tends to gradually fade away due to the installation of training on the assimilation of a system of samples, the use of monotonous and stereotypically repetitive actions. At the same time, an analysis of the main psychological neoplasms and the nature of the leading activity of this age period suggests the existence of wide opportunities for the development of creative imagination in the process of educational activity.

In developmental and educational psychology, the main psychological neoplasms of primary school age are considered to be arbitrariness, an internal plan of action, and reflection. The main line of development of the imagination lies in its gradual subordination to conscious intentions, the implementation of certain ideas, which becomes possible at primary school age in connection with the formation of these psychological neoplasms. The arbitrariness of imagination is manifested in the ability of a younger student to consciously set goals for action, to deliberately seek and find effective means and methods for achieving them. In addition, children gradually develop the ability to perform actions, including mental planning.

Thus, the approach to the study of imagination as an opportunity for a child to comprehend his activity allows, on the one hand, to highlight the special significance of this process for mental development, and on the other hand, to transfer the logic of its development to all types and forms of activity in primary school age. Imagination patterns during this period become more complete than those of preschoolers, and the elements of reproduction - simple reproduction are much less, and creative processing of impressions appears to a greater extent. In connection with the assimilation by schoolchildren of information about the objects of the surrounding world and the conditions of their origin, many new combinations of images acquire logical argumentation, which is the most important prerequisite for the development of creative (productive) imagination in younger schoolchildren. The imagination of younger students is closely related to the personality and its development. The personality of the child is constantly formed under the influence of all the circumstances of life. Educational activity at primary school age is the leading, but not the only one in which students are involved. Play activity does not disappear either, it only takes on its own specific forms and has its own specific tasks. The main mental function that provides the game is precisely imagination, fantasy. Imagining game situations and realizing them, the child forms in himself a number of personal properties, such as justice, courage, and the ability to redesign.

In psychology, imagination is considered as a kind of reflective activity of consciousness, the main mechanism of which is the active processing of existing experience. Reflection of the surrounding world is possible only in the process of active interaction of the subject with the object in the process of activity. Scientists note that the human psyche exists and can develop only in activity (L.S. Vygotsky, A.N. Leontiev, A.R. Luria, etc.). The process of formation of mental actions is initially carried out initially on the basis of external actions and then, through gradual processing, they pass into the internal plane, into consciousness. Since the essence of imagination is the mechanisms for constructing experience, which are a kind of mental actions, therefore, a necessary condition for their formation is the inclusion of the subject in active forms of activity. So, the following features of the imagination of younger students should be highlighted: imagination acquires an arbitrary character, suggesting the creation of an idea, its planning and implementation; it becomes a special activity, including fantasy; imagination passes into the inner plane, there is no need for a visual support for creating images; imagination is one of the most important mental processes and the success of mastering the school curriculum largely depends on the level of its development.

Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation

Non-state educational institution of higher professional education

Novosibirsk Humanitarian Institute

Department of Practical Psychology

Course work

by discipline

Research methods in psychology

Completed by a 2nd year student PZ - 11

Ivanova Svetlana Vladimirovna

Checked

Gulyaeva Kapitolina Yurievna

Novosibirsk 2009

Introduction. 3

Chapter 1. Imagination and creativity of the individual. five

1.1 The concept of imagination. five

1.2 The concept of creativity. 10

1.3 Research methods of imagination and creativity. 15

Chapter 2. Features of creative abilities and imagination of younger students. 19

2.1 Mental characteristics of children of primary school age. 19

2.2 Imagination and creativity of younger students. 23

Chapter 3. Experimental study of the characteristics of creative abilities and imagination of younger students. 31

3.1 Organization, methods and methods of research. 31

3.2 Analysis and discussion of the research results. 34

References.. 48

Appendix. fifty

Introduction

The relevance of this course work lies in the fact that research on the problem of studying the features of the development of creative abilities, in particular, imagination, in children of primary school age lies in the fact that in modern sociocultural conditions, when there is a process of continuous reform, a radical change in all public institutions, skills to think in an extraordinary way, to creatively solve the set tasks, to design the intended end result acquire special significance.

A creatively thinking person is able to solve the tasks assigned to him faster and more economically, to overcome difficulties more effectively, to set new goals, to provide himself with greater freedom of choice and action, that is, in the final analysis, to most effectively organize his activities in solving the tasks set for him by society. It is a creative approach to business that is one of the conditions for educating an active life position of a person.

The prerequisites for further creative development and self-development of the individual are laid in childhood. In this regard, increased demands are placed on the initial stages of the formation of a child's personality, especially on the primary school stage, which largely determines its further development.

Problems of creativity have been widely developed in domestic psychology. Currently, researchers are searching for an integral indicator that characterizes a creative person. A great contribution to the development of problems of abilities, creative thinking was made by psychologists like B.M. Teplov, S.L. Rubinstein, B.G. Ananiev, N.S. Leites, V.A. Krutetsky, A.G. Kovalev, K.K. Platonov, A.M. Matyushkin, V.D. Shadrikov, Yu.D. Babaeva, V.N. Druzhinin, I.I. Ilyasov, V.I. Panov, I.V. Kalish, M.A. Cold, N.B. Shumakova, V.S. Yurkevich and others.

An object research - the imagination and creativity of the individual.

Subject research - features of the imagination and creative abilities of children of primary school age.

Target research - to identify the characteristics of the imagination and creative abilities of children of primary school age.

Hypothesis: We assume that primary school students have specific features of imagination and creative abilities compared to preschool children.

Tasks:

Conduct an analytical review of the literature on the research topic,

Expand the concept of imagination and creativity,

To study, on the basis of psychological and pedagogical literature, the main patterns in the development of the imagination and creative abilities of younger students,

Conduct an experimental study of the features of the development of imagination and creative abilities of younger students,

Analyze the obtained diagnostic results, draw conclusions.

Research methods: observation, conversation, experiment, analysis of products of activity (creativity).

Research base. School No. 15 in Novosibirsk (Leninsky district, Nemirovich-Danchenko st., 20/2), students of the 3rd grade in the amount of 15 people; Preschool educational institution No. 136 in Novosibirsk (Leninsky district, Titova st., 24), pupils of the senior group in the amount of 15 people.

Chapter 1

1.1 The concept of imagination

The experimental study of imagination has been a subject of interest for Western psychologists since the 1950s. The function of imagination - the construction and creation of images - has been recognized as the most important human ability. Its role in the creative process was equated with the role of knowledge and judgment. In the 1950s, J. Guilford and his followers developed the theory of creative (creative) intelligence.

The definition of imagination and the identification of the specifics of its development is one of the most difficult problems in psychology. According to A.Ya. Dudetsky (1974), there are about 40 different definitions of imagination, but the question of its essence and difference from other mental processes is still debatable. So, A.V. Brushlinsky (1969) rightly notes the difficulties in defining imagination, the vagueness of the boundaries of this concept. He believes that "Traditional definitions of imagination as the ability to create new images actually reduce this process to creative thinking, to operating with ideas, and concludes that this concept is generally still redundant - at least in modern science."

S.L. Rubinstein emphasized: "Imagination is a special form of the psyche that only a person can have. It is continuously connected with the human ability to change the world, transform reality and create something new."

With a rich imagination, a person can live in different times, which no other living being in the world can afford. The past is fixed in images of memory, and the future is presented in dreams and fantasies. S.L. Rubinstein writes: "Imagination is a departure from past experience, it is a transformation of the given and the generation of new images on this basis."

L.S. Vygotsky believes that “Imagination does not repeat impressions that have been accumulated before, but builds some new rows from previously accumulated impressions. Thus, introducing something new into our impressions and changing these impressions so that as a result a new, previously non-existent , constitutes the basis of that activity which we call imagination.

Imagination is a special form of the human psyche, standing apart from other mental processes and at the same time occupying an intermediate position between perception, thinking and memory. The specificity of this form of mental process lies in the fact that imagination is probably characteristic only of a person and is strangely connected with the activity of the organism, being at the same time the most "mental" of all mental processes and states.

In the textbook "General Psychology" A.G. Maklakov gives the following definition of imagination: “Imagination is the process of transforming ideas that reflect reality, and creating new ideas on this basis.

In the textbook "General Psychology" V.M. Kozubovsky contains the following definition. Imagination is the mental process of a person creating in his mind an image of an object (object, phenomenon) that does not exist in real life. Imagination can be:

The image of the final result of real objective activity;

a picture of one's own behavior in conditions of complete informational uncertainty;

the image of a situation that resolves problems that are relevant to a given person, the real overcoming of which is not possible in the near future.

Imagination is included in the cognitive activity of the subject, which necessarily has its own object. A.N. Leontiev wrote that "The object of activity acts in two ways: firstly - in its independent existence, as subordinating and transforming the activity of the subject, secondarily - as an image of the object, as a product of the mental reflection of its property, which is carried out as a result of the activity of the subject and cannot be realized otherwise" . .

The selection in the subject of its specific properties necessary for solving the problem determines such a characteristic of the image as its partiality, i.e. dependence of perception, ideas, thinking, on what a person needs - on his needs, motives, attitudes, emotions. “It is very important to emphasize here that such “partiality” is itself objectively determined and is expressed not in the adequacy of the image (although it can be expressed in it), but that it allows one to actively penetrate into reality.”

The combination in the imagination of the subject contents of the images of two objects is associated, as a rule, with a change in the forms of representation of reality. Starting from the properties of reality, the imagination cognizes them, reveals their essential characteristics through their transfer to other objects, which fix the work of the productive imagination. This is expressed in metaphor, symbolism, characterizing the imagination.

According to E.V. Ilyenkov, "The essence of imagination lies in the ability to "grasp" the whole before the part, in the ability to build a complete image on the basis of a single hint, the tendency." "A distinctive feature of the imagination is a kind of departure from reality, when a new image is built on the basis of a separate sign of reality, and not just the existing ideas are reconstructed, which is typical for the functioning of the internal plan of action."

Imagination is a necessary element of human creative activity, which is expressed in the construction of the image of the products of labor, and ensures the creation of a program of behavior in cases where the problem situation is also characterized by uncertainty. Depending on the various circumstances that characterize the problem situation, the same task can be solved both with the help of imagination and with the help of thinking.

From this we can conclude that the imagination works at that stage of cognition, when the uncertainty of the situation is very high. Fantasy allows you to "jump" through some stages of thinking and still imagine the final result.

Imagination processes have an analytic-synthetic character. Its main tendency is the transformation of representations (images), which ultimately ensures the creation of a model of a situation that is obviously new, that has not arisen before. Analyzing the mechanism of imagination, it must be emphasized that its essence is the process of transforming ideas, creating new images based on existing ones. Imagination, fantasy is a reflection of reality in new, unexpected, unusual combinations and connections.

So, imagination in psychology is considered as one of the forms of reflective activity of consciousness. Since all cognitive processes are reflective, it is necessary, first of all, to determine the qualitative originality and specificity inherent in the imagination.

Imagination and thinking are intertwined in such a way that it can be difficult to distinguish between them; both of these processes are involved in any creative activity, creativity is always subordinated to the creation of something new, unknown. Operating with existing knowledge in the process of fantasizing implies their mandatory inclusion in the system of new relationships, as a result of which new knowledge may arise. This shows: "... the circle closes... Cognition (thinking) stimulates the imagination (creating a transformation model), which (the model) is then verified and refined by thinking," writes A.D. Dudetsky.

According to L.D. Stolyarenko, several types of imagination can be distinguished, the main ones being passive and active. The passive, in turn, is divided into voluntary (dreaming, dreams) and involuntary (hypnotic state, fantasy in dreams). Active imagination includes artistic, creative, critical, recreative, and anticipatory.

Imagination can be of four main types:

Active imagination - is characterized by the fact that, using it, a person, at his own request, by an effort of will, causes appropriate images in himself.

Active imagination is a sign of a creative type of personality that constantly tests its inner capabilities, its knowledge is not static, but continuously recombines, leads to new results, giving the individual emotional reinforcement for new searches, the creation of new material and spiritual values. Her mental activity is supraconscious, intuitive.

Passive imagination lies in the fact that its images arise spontaneously, in addition to the will and desire of a person. Passive imagination can be unintentional and intentional. Unintentional passive imagination occurs with a weakening of consciousness, psychosis, disorganization of mental activity, in a semi-drowsy and sleepy state. With deliberate passive imagination, a person arbitrarily forms images of escape from reality-dreams.

The unreal world created by the individual is an attempt to replace unfulfilled hopes, make up for heavy losses, and ease mental trauma. This type of imagination indicates a deep intrapersonal conflict.

There is also a distinction between the reproducing, or reproductive, and the transforming, or productive imagination.

The task of reproductive imagination is to reproduce reality as it is, and although there is also an element of fantasy, such imagination is more like perception or memory than creativity. Thus, a direction in art called naturalism, as well as partly realism, can be correlated with reproductive imagination.

Productive imagination is distinguished by the fact that in it reality is consciously constructed by a person, and not just mechanically copied or recreated, although at the same time it is still creatively transformed in the image.

Imagination has a subjective side associated with individual personality characteristics of a person (in particular, with his dominant hemisphere of the brain, type of nervous system, features of thinking, etc.). In this regard, people differ in:

brightness of images (from the phenomena of a clear "vision" of images to the poverty of ideas);

by the depth of processing of images of reality in the imagination (from complete unrecognizability of the imaginary image to primitive differences from the real original);

by the type of the dominant channel of imagination (for example, by the predominance of auditory or visual images of the imagination).

1.2 The concept of creativity

Creativity is the highest mental function and reflects reality. However, with the help of these abilities, a mental departure beyond the limits of the perceived is carried out. With the help of creative abilities, an image of an object that has never existed or does not exist at the moment is formed. At preschool age, the foundations of the child's creative activity are laid, which are manifested in the development of the ability to plan and its implementation in the ability to combine their knowledge and ideas, in a sincere transfer of their feelings.

Currently, there are many approaches to the definition of creativity, as well as concepts related to this definition: creativity, innovative thinking, productive thinking, creative act, creative activity, creative abilities and others (V.M. Bekhterev, N.A. Vetlugina, V. N. Druzhinin, Y. A. Ponomarev, A. Rebera, etc.).

Psychological aspects of creativity, in which thinking is involved, are widely represented in many scientific works (D.B. Bogoyavlenskaya, P.Ya. Galperin, V.V. Davydov, A.V. Zaporozhets, L.V. Zankov, Ya.A. Ponomarev , S.L. Rubinstein) and creative imagination as a result of mental activity, providing a new education (image), implemented in different types of activity (A.V. Brushlinsky, L.S. Vygotsky, O.M. Dyachenko, A.Ya. Dudetsky, A.N. Leontiev, N.V. Rozhdestvenskaya, F.I. Fradkina, D.B. Elkonin, R. Arnheim, K. Koffka, M. Wergheimer).

"Ability" is one of the most general psychological concepts. In domestic psychology, many authors gave him detailed definitions.

In particular, S.L. Rubinstein understood abilities as "... a complex synthetic formation, which includes a whole range of data, without which a person would not be capable of any specific activity, and properties that are developed only in the process of organized activity in a certain way" . Similar statements can be gleaned from other authors.

Ability is a dynamic concept. They are formed, developed and manifested in activity.

B.M. Teplov proposed three essentially empirical signs of abilities, which formed the basis of the definition most often used by specialists:

1) abilities are individual psychological characteristics that distinguish one person from another;

only those features that are relevant to the success of an activity or several activities;

abilities are not reducible to the knowledge, skills and abilities that a person has already developed, although they determine the ease and speed of acquiring these knowledge and skills.

Naturally, the success of an activity is determined by both motivation and personal characteristics, which prompted K.K. Platonov to attribute to abilities any properties of the psyche, to one degree or another determining success in a particular activity. However, B.M. Teplov goes further and points out that, in addition to success in activity, the ability determines the speed and ease of mastering the activity, and this changes the situation with the definition: the speed of learning may depend on motivation, but the feeling of ease in learning (otherwise - "subjective price", experience of difficulty), rather, is inversely proportional to motivational tension.

So, the more a person’s ability is developed, the more successfully he performs the activity, the faster he masters it, and the process of mastering the activity and the activity itself are subjectively easier for him than training or work in the area in which he does not have the ability. The problem arises: what is this mental essence - abilities? One indication of its behavioral and subjective manifestations (and the definition of B.M. Teplov, in fact, is behavioral) is not enough.

In its most general form, the definition of creativity is as follows. V.N. Druzhinin defines creativity as individual characteristics of a person's quality, which determine the success of his performance of various creative activities.

Creativity is an amalgamation of many qualities. And the question of the components of human creativity is still open, although at the moment there are several hypotheses concerning this problem. Many psychologists associate the ability to creative activity, primarily with the peculiarities of thinking. In particular, the famous American psychologist Guilford, who dealt with the problems of human intelligence, found that creative individuals are characterized by the so-called divergent thinking.

People with this type of thinking, when solving a problem, do not concentrate all their efforts on finding the only correct solution, but begin to look for solutions in all possible directions in order to consider as many options as possible. Such people tend to form new combinations of elements that most people know and use only in a certain way, or form links between two elements that at first glance have nothing in common. The divergent way of thinking underlies creative thinking, which is characterized by the following main features:

1. Speed ​​- the ability to express the maximum number of ideas, in this case it is not their quality that matters, but their quantity).

2. Flexibility - the ability to express a wide variety of ideas.

3. Originality - the ability to generate new non-standard ideas; this can manifest itself in answers, decisions that do not coincide with generally accepted ones.

4. Completeness - the ability to improve your "product" or give it a finished look.

Well-known domestic researchers of the problem of creativity A.N. Luk, based on the biographies of prominent scientists, inventors, artists and musicians, highlights the following creative abilities:

1. The ability to see the problem where others do not see it.

The ability to collapse mental operations, replacing several concepts with one and using symbols that are more and more capacious in terms of information.

The ability to apply the skills acquired in solving one problem to solving another.

The ability to perceive reality as a whole, without splitting it into parts.

The ability to easily associate distant concepts.

The ability of memory to produce the right information at the right moment.

Flexibility of thinking.

The ability to choose one of the alternatives for solving a problem before it is tested.

The ability to integrate newly perceived information into existing knowledge systems.

The ability to see things as they are, to distinguish what is observed from what is brought in by interpretation.

Ease of generating ideas.

Creative imagination.

The ability to refine details, to improve the original idea.

Candidates of Psychological Sciences V.T. Kudryavtsev and V. Sinelnikov, based on a wide historical and cultural material (the history of philosophy, social sciences, art, individual areas of practice), identified the following universal creative abilities that have developed in the process of human history.

1. Imagination realism - a figurative grasp of some essential, general trend or pattern of development of an integral object, before a person has a clear idea about it and can enter it into a system of strict logical categories.

2. The ability to see the whole before the parts.

Supra-situational - the transformative nature of creative solutions and the ability to solve a problem not just choose from alternatives imposed from outside, but independently create an alternative.

Experimentation - the ability to consciously and purposefully create conditions in which objects most clearly reveal their essence hidden in ordinary situations, as well as the ability to trace and analyze the features of the "behavior" of objects in these conditions.

1.3 Imagination and creativity research methods

To more accurately determine the level of development of students' creative abilities, it is necessary to analyze and evaluate each independently completed creative task.

S.Yu. Lazareva recommends that the pedagogical assessment of the results of students' creative activity be carried out using the "Fantasy" scale developed by G.S. Altshuller to assess the presence of fantastic ideas and, thus, allowing to assess the level of imagination (the scale was adapted to the junior school question by M.S. Gafitulin,

T.A. Sidorchuk).

The "Fantasy" scale includes five indicators: novelty (estimated on a 4-level scale: copying an object (situation, phenomenon), a slight change in the prototype, obtaining a fundamentally new object (situation, phenomenon)); persuasiveness (convincing is a reasonable idea described by a child with sufficient certainty).

The data of scientific works suggest that research conducted in real life is legitimate if it is aimed at improving the educational environment in which the child is formed, contributing to social practice, at creating pedagogical conditions conducive to the development of creativity in the child.

1. Technique "Verbal fantasy" (speech imagination). The child is invited to come up with a story (story, fairy tale) about some living creature (person, animal) or about something else of the child's choice and present it orally within 5 minutes. Up to one minute is allotted for inventing a theme or plot of a story (story, fairy tale), and after that the child starts the story.

In the course of the story, the child's fantasy is evaluated on the following grounds:

speed of imagination processes;

unusualness, originality of images of the imagination;

richness of imagination;

depth and elaboration (detailing) of images; - impressionability, emotionality of images.

For each of these features, the story is evaluated from 0 to 2 points. 0 points are given when this feature is practically absent in the story. The story receives 1 point if this feature is present, but is relatively weakly expressed. The story earns 2 points when when the corresponding sign is not only present, but also expressed quite strongly.

If within one minute the child did not come up with the plot of the story, then the experimenter himself prompts him to some plot and 0 points are put for the speed of imagination. If the child himself came up with the plot of the story by the end of the allotted time (1 minute), then according to the speed of imagination, he gets a score of 1 point. Finally, if the child managed to come up with the plot of the story very quickly, within the first 30 seconds, or if within one minute he came up with not one, but at least two different plots, then the child is given 2 points on the basis of "speed of imagination processes".

Unusualness, originality of images of the imagination is regarded in the following way.

If the child simply retold what he once heard from someone or saw somewhere, then on this basis he gets 0 points. If the child retells the known, but at the same time introduced something new from himself, then the originality of his imagination is estimated at 1 point. In the event that the child came up with something that he could not see or hear somewhere before, then the originality of his imagination gets a score of 2 points. The richness of the child's fantasy is also manifested in the variety of images he uses. When evaluating this quality of imagination processes, the total number of different living beings, objects, situations and actions, various characteristics and signs attributed to all this in the child's story is recorded. If the total number of the named exceeds ten, then the child receives 2 points for the richness of fantasy. If the total number of parts of the specified type is between 6 and 9, then the child receives 1 point. If there are few signs in the story, but in general not less than five, then the richness of the child's fantasy is estimated at 0 points.

The depth and elaboration of images is determined by how varied the details and characteristics are presented in the story related to the image that plays a key role or occupies a central place in the story. It also gives marks in a three-point system.

The child receives points when the central object of the story is depicted very schematically.

score - if, when describing the central object, its detailing is moderate.

points - if the main image of his story is described in sufficient detail, with many different details characterizing him.

The impressionability or emotionality of images of the imagination is assessed by whether it arouses interest and emotions in the listener.

About points - the images are of little interest, banal, do not impress the listener.

score - the images of the story cause some interest on the part of the listener and some emotional response, but this interest, together with the corresponding reaction, soon fades away.

points - the child used bright, very interesting images, the listener's attention to which, once having arisen, did not fade away later, accompanied by emotional reactions such as surprise, admiration, fear, etc.

Thus, the maximum number of points that a child in this technique can receive for his imagination is 10, and the minimum is 0.

Chapter 2. Features of creative abilities and imagination of younger students

2.1 Mental characteristics of children of primary school age

Primary school age (from 6-7 to 9-10 years old) is determined by an important external circumstance in a child's life - admission to school.

A child who enters school automatically occupies a completely new place in the system of human relations: he has permanent responsibilities associated with educational activities. Close adults, a teacher, even strangers communicate with the child not only as a unique person, but also as a person who has taken upon himself the obligation (whether voluntarily or under duress) to study, like all children at his age. The new social situation of development introduces the child into a strictly normalized world of relations and requires him to organize arbitrariness, responsible for discipline, for the development of performing actions associated with the acquisition of skills in educational activities, as well as for mental development. Thus, the new social situation of schooling toughens the child's living conditions and acts as a stressful one for him. Every child who enters school has increased mental tension. This is reflected not only in physical health, but also in the behavior of the child [Davydov 13., 1973].

Before school, the individual characteristics of the child could not interfere with his natural development, since these characteristics were accepted and taken into account by close people. The school standardizes the conditions of a child's life. The child will have to overcome the trials that have piled on him. In most cases, the child adapts himself to standard conditions. Education becomes the leading activity. In addition to assimilating special mental actions and actions serving writing, reading, drawing, labor, etc., the child, under the guidance of a teacher, begins to master the content of the main forms of human consciousness (science, art, morality, etc.) and learns to act in accordance with traditions and new people's social expectations.

According to the theory of L.S. Vygotsky, school age, like all ages, opens with a critical, or turning point, period, which was described in the literature earlier than others as a crisis of seven years. It has long been noted that in the transition from preschool to school age a child changes very sharply and becomes more difficult to educate than before. This is some kind of transitional stage - no longer a preschooler and not yet a schoolboy [Vygotsky L.S., 1998; p.5].

Recently, a number of studies devoted to this age have appeared. The results of the study can be schematically expressed as follows: a 7-year-old child is distinguished primarily by the loss of childlike spontaneity. The immediate cause of childish immediacy is the lack of differentiation between inner and outer life. The child's experiences, desires and expression of desires, i.e. behavior and activity usually represent an insufficiently differentiated whole in the preschooler. The most significant feature of the crisis of seven years is usually called the beginning of differentiation of the inner and outer sides of the child's personality.

The loss of immediacy means the introduction into our actions of an intellectual moment that wedged between experience and immediate action, which is in direct contrast to the naive and direct action characteristic of the child. This does not mean that the crisis of seven years leads from direct, naive, undifferentiated experience to the extreme pole, but, indeed, in each experience, in each of its manifestations, a certain intellectual moment arises.

At the age of 7, we are dealing with the beginning of the emergence of such a structure of experience, when the child begins to understand what it means "I rejoice", "I am upset", "I am angry", "I am kind", "I am evil", i.e. . he has a meaningful orientation in his own experiences. Just as a three-year-old child discovers his relationship with other people, so a seven-year-old discovers the very fact of his experiences. Thanks to this, some of the features that characterize the crisis of seven years come to the fore.

Experiences acquire meaning (an angry child understands that he is angry), thanks to this, the child develops such new relationships with himself that were impossible before the generalization of experiences. As on a chessboard, when with each move completely new connections between the pieces arise, so here completely new connections between experiences arise when they acquire a certain meaning. Consequently, the whole character of the child's experiences is rebuilt by the age of 7, just as a chessboard is rebuilt when the child has learned to play chess.

By the time of the crisis of seven years, for the first time, a generalization of experiences, or an affective generalization, the logic of feelings, arises. There are deeply retarded children who experience failure at every turn: ordinary children play, an abnormal child tries to join them, but he is refused, he walks down the street and is laughed at. In a word, he loses at every step. In each individual case, he has a reaction to his own insufficiency, and in a minute you look - he is completely satisfied with himself. Thousands of individual failures, but no general feeling of low value, he does not generalize what has happened many times already. A generalization of feelings arises in a child of school age, i.e., if some situation happened to him many times, he develops an affective formation, the nature of which also relates to a single experience, or affect, as a concept relates to a single perception or memory . For example, a child of preschool age does not have real self-esteem, pride. The level of our requests to ourselves, to our success, to our position arises precisely in connection with the crisis of seven years.

A child of preschool age loves himself, but self-love as a generalized attitude towards himself, which remains the same in different situations, but self-esteem as such, but a generalized relationship to others and an understanding of his value in a child of this age is not. Consequently, by the age of 7, a number of complex formations arise, which lead to the fact that the difficulties of behavior change dramatically and radically, they are fundamentally different from the difficulties of preschool age.

Such neoplasms as pride, self-esteem remain, but the symptoms of the crisis (manipulation, antics) are transient. In the crisis of seven years, due to the fact that differentiation of the internal and external arises, that for the first time a meaningful experience arises, an acute struggle of experiences also arises. A child who does not know whether to take bigger or sweeter candies is not in a state of internal struggle, although he hesitates. Internal struggle (contradictions of experiences and choice of one's own experiences) becomes possible only now [Davydov V., 1973].

A characteristic feature of primary school age is emotional impressionability, responsiveness to everything bright, unusual, colorful. Monotonous, boring classes sharply reduce cognitive interest at this age and give rise to a negative attitude towards learning. Going to school makes a big difference in a child's life. A new period begins with new duties, with the systematic activity of teaching. The life position of the child has changed, which makes changes in the nature of his relations with others. The new circumstances of the life of a small schoolboy become the basis for such experiences that he did not have before.

Self-esteem, high or low, gives rise to a certain emotional well-being, causes self-confidence or disbelief in one's own strength, a feeling of anxiety, an experience of superiority over others, a state of sadness, sometimes envy. Self-esteem is not only high or low, but also adequate (corresponding to the true state of affairs) or inadequate. In the course of solving life problems (educational, everyday, gaming), under the influence of achievements and failures in the activities performed, the student may experience inadequate self-esteem - increased or decreased. It causes not only a certain emotional reaction, but often a long-term negatively colored emotional well-being.

Communicating, the child simultaneously reflects in the mind the qualities and properties of a communication partner, and also cognizes himself. However, now in pedagogical and social psychology the methodological foundations of the process of formation of younger schoolchildren as subjects of communication have not been developed. By this age, the basic block of psychological problems of the personality is structured and the mechanism of development of the subject of communication changes from imitative to reflexive [Lioznova E.V., 2002].

An important prerequisite for the development of a younger student as a subject of communication is the emergence in him, along with business communication, of a new extra-situational-personal form of communication. According to M.I. Lisina, this form begins to develop from the age of 6. The subject of such communication is a person [Lisina M.I., 1978]. The child asks the adult about his feelings and emotional states, and also tries to tell him about his relationships with peers, demanding from the adult an emotional response, empathy with his interpersonal problems.

2.2 Imagination and creativity of younger students

The first images of the child's imagination are associated with the processes of perception and his play activity. A one and a half year old child is still not interested in listening to stories (fairy tales) of adults, since he still lacks the experience that generates perception processes. At the same time, one can observe how, in the imagination of a playing child, a suitcase, for example, turns into a train, a silent, indifferent to everything that happens, a doll into a crying little man offended by someone, a pillow into an affectionate friend. During the period of speech formation, the child uses his imagination even more actively in his games, because his life observations are sharply expanded. However, all this happens as if by itself, unintentionally.

Arbitrary forms of imagination "grow up" from 3 to 5 years. Imagination images can appear either as a reaction to an external stimulus (for example, at the request of others), or initiated by the child himself, while imaginary situations are often purposeful, with an ultimate goal and a pre-thought-out scenario.

The school period is characterized by the rapid development of the imagination, due to the intensive process of acquiring versatile knowledge and using it in practice.

Individual features of the imagination are clearly manifested in the process of creativity. In this sphere of human activity, imagination about significance is placed on a par with thinking. It is important that for the development of imagination it is necessary to create conditions for a person under which freedom of action, independence, initiative, and looseness are manifested.

It has been proven that imagination is closely connected with other mental processes (memory, thinking, attention, perception) that serve learning activities. Thus, not paying enough attention to the development of imagination, primary teachers reduce the quality of education.

In general, primary schoolchildren usually do not have any problems associated with the development of children's imagination, so almost all children who play a lot and in a variety of ways in preschool childhood have a well-developed and rich imagination. The main questions that in this area may still arise before the child and the teacher at the beginning of training relate to the connection between imagination and attention, the ability to regulate figurative representations through voluntary attention, as well as the assimilation of abstract concepts that can be imagined and presented to the child, as well as to an adult, hard enough.

Senior preschool and junior school age are qualified as the most favorable, sensitive for the development of creative imagination, fantasies. Games, conversations of children reflect the power of their imagination, one might even say, a riot of fantasy. In their stories and conversations, reality and fantasy are often mixed, and the images of the imagination can, by virtue of the law of the emotional reality of the imagination, be experienced by children as quite real. The experience is so strong that the child feels the need to talk about it. Such fantasies (they are also found in adolescents) are often perceived by others as lies. Parents and teachers often turn to psychological counseling, alarmed by such manifestations of fantasy in children, which they regard as deceit. In such cases, the psychologist usually recommends that you analyze whether the child is pursuing any benefit with his story. If not (and most often it happens so), then we are dealing with fantasizing, inventing stories, and not with lies. This kind of storytelling is normal for kids. In these cases, it is useful for adults to join the children's game, to show that they like these stories, but precisely as manifestations of fantasy, a kind of game. Participating in such a game, sympathizing and empathizing with the child, an adult must clearly designate and show him the line between the game, fantasy and reality.

At primary school age, in addition, there is an active development of the recreative imagination.

In children of primary school age, several types of imagination are distinguished. It can be recreative (creating an image of an object according to its description) and creative (creating new images that require the selection of material in accordance with the plan).

The main trend that occurs in the development of children's imagination is the transition to an increasingly correct and complete reflection of reality, the transition from a simple arbitrary combination of ideas to a logically reasoned combination. If a child of 3-4 years old is satisfied with two sticks laid crosswise for the image of an airplane, then at 7-8 years old he already needs an external resemblance to an airplane ("so that there are wings and a propeller"). A schoolboy at the age of 11-12 often designs a model himself and demands from it an even more complete resemblance to a real aircraft ("so that it would be just like a real one and would fly").

The question of the realism of children's imagination is connected with the question of the relation of the images that arise in children to reality. The realism of the child's imagination is manifested in all forms of activity available to him: in play, in visual activity, when listening to fairy tales, etc. In play, for example, a child's demands for credibility in a play situation increase with age.

Observations show that the child strives to depict well-known events truthfully, as happens in life. In many cases, the change in reality is caused by ignorance, the inability to coherently, consistently portray the events of life. The realism of the younger schoolchild's imagination is especially evident in the selection of game attributes. For a younger preschooler in the game, everything can be everything. Older preschoolers are already selecting material for the game according to the principles of external similarity.

The younger student also makes a strict selection of material suitable for play. This selection is carried out according to the principle of maximum closeness, from the point of view of the child, of this material to real objects, according to the principle of the possibility of performing real actions with it.

The obligatory and main protagonist of the game for schoolchildren in grades 1-2 is a doll. With it, you can perform any necessary "real" actions. She can be fed, dressed, she can express her feelings. It is even better to use a live kitten for this purpose, since you can already really feed it, put it to bed, etc.

The corrections to the situation and images made during the game by children of primary school age give the game and the images themselves imaginary features that bring them closer and closer to reality.

A.G. Ruzskaya notes that children of primary school age are not deprived of fantasizing, which is at odds with reality, which is even more typical for schoolchildren (cases of children's lies, etc.). “Fantasying of this kind still plays a significant role and occupies a certain place in the life of a younger student. Nevertheless, it is no longer a simple continuation of the fantasizing of a preschooler who himself believes in his fantasy as in reality. A 9-10 year old student already understands the “conventionality "his fantasies, his inconsistency with reality."

Concrete knowledge and fascinating fantastic images built on their basis coexist peacefully in the mind of a junior schoolchild. With age, the role of fantasy, divorced from reality, weakens, and the realism of children's imagination increases. However, the realism of a child's imagination, in particular the imagination of a younger schoolchild, must be distinguished from its other feature, close, but fundamentally different.

The realism of the imagination involves the creation of images that do not contradict reality, but are not necessarily a direct reproduction of everything perceived in life.

The imagination of a younger schoolchild is also characterized by another feature: the presence of elements of reproductive, simple reproduction. This feature of children's imagination is expressed in the fact that in their games, for example, they repeat the actions and situations that they observed in adults, play out stories that they experienced, which they saw in the cinema, reproducing the life of the school, family, etc. without changes. The theme of the game is the reproduction of impressions that took place in the lives of children; the storyline of the game is a reproduction of what was seen, experienced, and necessarily in the same sequence in which it took place in life.

However, with age, the elements of reproductive, simple reproduction in the imagination of a younger student become less and less, and more and more creative processing of ideas appears.

According to L.S. Vygotsky, a child of preschool and primary school age can imagine much less than an adult, but he trusts the products of his imagination more and controls them less, and therefore imagination in the everyday, "cultural sense of the word, i.e. something like what is real, imaginary, in a child, of course, more than in an adult.However, not only the material from which the imagination builds is poorer in a child than in an adult, but also the nature of the combinations that are added to this material, their quality and the variety is considerably inferior to the combinations of an adult.Of all the forms of connection with reality that we have listed above, the child's imagination, to the same extent as the adult's imagination, has only the first, namely, the reality of the elements from which it is built.

V.S. Mukhina notes that at primary school age, a child in his imagination can already create a variety of situations. Being formed in the game substitutions of some objects for others, the imagination passes into other types of activity.

In the process of educational activity of schoolchildren, which starts from living contemplation in the primary grades, the level of development of cognitive processes plays an important role, as psychologists note: attention, memory, perception, observation, imagination, memory, thinking. The development and improvement of the imagination will be more effective with purposeful work in this direction, which will entail the expansion of the cognitive capabilities of children.

At primary school age, for the first time, there is a division of play and labor, that is, activities carried out for the sake of pleasure that the child will receive in the process of the activity itself and activities aimed at achieving an objectively significant and socially assessed result. This distinction between play and work, including educational work, is an important feature of school age.

The importance of imagination in primary school age is the highest and necessary human ability. However, it is this ability that needs special care in terms of development. And it develops especially intensively at the age of 5 to 15 years. And if this period of imagination is not specially developed, in the future there will be a rapid decrease in the activity of this function.

Along with a decrease in a person’s ability to fantasize, a person becomes impoverished, the possibilities of creative thinking decrease, interest in art, science, and so on goes out.

Younger students carry out most of their vigorous activity with the help of imagination. Their games are the fruit of the wild work of fantasy, they are enthusiastically engaged in creative activities. The psychological basis of the latter is also creative

imagination. When, in the process of learning, children are faced with the need to comprehend abstract material and they need analogies, support with a general lack of life experience, imagination also comes to the aid of the child. Thus, the significance of the function of imagination in mental development is great.

However, fantasy, like any form of mental reflection, must have a positive direction of development. It should contribute to a better knowledge of the world around self-disclosure and self-improvement of the individual, and not develop into passive daydreaming, replacing real life with dreams. To accomplish this task, it is necessary to help the child use his imagination in the direction of progressive self-development, to enhance the cognitive activity of schoolchildren, in particular the development of theoretical, abstract thinking, attention, speech and creativity in general. Children of primary school age are very fond of doing art. It allows the child to reveal his personality in the most complete free form. All artistic activity is based on active imagination, creative thinking. These features provide the child with a new, unusual view of the world.

Thus, one cannot but agree with the conclusions of psychologists and researchers that imagination is one of the most important mental processes and the level of its development, especially in children of primary school age, largely depends on the success of mastering the school curriculum.

Chapter 3

3.1 Organization, methods and methods of research

The purpose of the experimental study is to reveal in a practical way the features of the development of the imagination and creative abilities of younger schoolchildren in comparison with children of a younger age group, namely, in comparison with children of older preschool age.

IN The study involved younger schoolchildren - students of the 3rd grade of secondary school No. 15 in Novosibirsk, located in the Leninsky district at ul. Nemirovich-Danchenko, 0/2. Children of primary school age in the amount of 15 people. constituted the experimental group.

The control group consisted of a sample of children of senior preschool age of 15 people. - Pupils of preschool educational institution No. 136 in Novosibirsk, located in the Leninsky district at st. Titova, 24.

IN methods: conversation, observation and analysis of products of children's creative activity.

IN The study included the following methods.

Method #1. A technique for studying the features of the imagination based on the Torrens test "Incomplete figures".

The child is shown images of simple geometric shapes (square, triangle, circle) on separate forms and is offered to draw as many drawings as possible on the base of each of the proposed figures, and drawing can be done both inside the outline of the figure and outside it in any convenient for the child turning the sheet of the image of the figure, i.e. You can use each figure in different angles.

The quality of the drawings in terms of their artistry is not taken into account in the analysis, since we are primarily interested in the idea of ​​the composition itself, the variety of emerging associations, the principles for translating ideas, and not the technical finishing of the drawings.

The time of work is not limited, because otherwise the child develops anxiety, uncertainty, and this contradicts the nature of the creative process, the elementary manifestation of which should be modeled during the experiment.

This technique, being, in fact, a "miniature model of the creative act" (E. Torrens), allows you to fully study the features of creative imagination and trace the specifics of this process. From the point of view of E. Torrens, the activity of creative imagination begins with the emergence of sensitivity to gaps, shortcomings, missing elements, disharmony, etc., i.e. in conditions of lack of external information. In this case, the figures for drawing and the corresponding instruction provoke the appearance of such sensitivity and create the possibility for a multivalued solution of the task, since a large number of drawings are performed on the basis of each of the test figures. According to the terminology of E. Torrens, difficulties are identified, conjectures arise or hypotheses are formulated regarding the missing elements, these hypotheses are checked and rechecked, and their possible implementation, which is manifested in the creation of various drawings.

This technique activates the activity of the imagination, revealing one of its main properties - the vision of the whole before the parts. The child perceives the proposed test-figures as parts, details of any integrity and completes, reconstructs them. The possibility of realizing such a reconstructive function of the imagination lies in the very specifics of this mental process. In the first chapter, we already pointed out that the mechanisms of imagination are always based on the processes of dissociation and association, analysis and synthesis of existing ideas. The child, completing the figures to the subject images, performs the operation of synthesis. However, this is possible only through a preliminary analysis of a given figure, singling it out from a number of objects, highlighting its properties, studying its functional features, etc. The productivity of the imagination largely depends on the level of formation of the operations of analysis and synthesis.

Visual activity is typical for children of this age period. In addition, as many psychologists note, it allows, as it were, to bring the processes of imagination from the internal plan to the external, which creates a kind of visual support in case of an insufficient level of formation of the internal mechanisms of the combinatorics of the imagination processes in children. And, finally, the use of pictorial activity makes it possible to obtain extensive practical material (children's drawings) for a versatile objective analysis.

One of the characteristics of creative imagination is the flexibility of using ideas; as a result, all children's work can be divided into creative and non-creative.

The non-creative ones are:

Typical drawings, when the same figure turns into the same image element (circle - the wheel of a car, scooter, bicycle, motorcycle).

Drawings in which different standards turn into the same image element (a circle, a square, a triangle turned into a clock).

Compositions of this kind are regarded as perseverative (repeating), out of their total number, only one composition (as an idea) is taken into account in further analysis.

Creative drawings include drawings in which non-repeating images are created on the basis of given standards. Most psychologists identify as one of the most significant aspects of the imagination, the originality of the images created by it, and therefore, the degree of their originality can be one of the indicators in the analysis of the completed compositions. The parameters of originality (individuality) and non-originality (typicality) are often used in psychology to evaluate the products of the imagination. The presence of a large number of original images in a child indicates the strength, plasticity of his imagination and, on the contrary, the unformed mechanisms of combinatorics of imagination processes lead to the emergence of a large number of stereotypical compositions.

The whole set of children's drawings can be divided into 6 quality levels, the description of which is given in the Appendix.

The technique is designed to study the processes of imagination. It reveals the level of development and content of images of the imagination, as well as the processes of symbolization, the ability to recode the stimulus.

Material: several sheets, paper, colored pencils.

Instruction: "Draw a picture for each word that is written on the back of the sheet. Draw the way you understand and represent this word and so that everyone understands that you have drawn this particular word. Use different colors."

Stimulus material (words): happiness, grief, kindness, illness, deceit, wealth, separation, friendship, fear, love, beauty.

Testing time is not limited.

The interpretation is given in the Appendix.

3.2 Analysis and discussion of the study results

Method #1. A technique for studying the features of imagination based on the test of E. Torrens "Incomplete figures".

Diagnosis data of younger schoolchildren according to the 1st method are given in Table No. 1 of the Appendix (c), diagnostic data of older preschoolers who made up the control group, according to the 1st method are given in Table No. 2 of the Appendix (d).

Percentage distribution of children in the experimental and control groups by levels of imagination development based on the results of the 1st method

Table 1

According to Table 1, a graph has been constructed that clearly reflects the difference in the level of development of imagination and creative abilities of children in two groups:

Picture 1.

Distribution of children of two groups according to the levels of development of imagination and creative abilities according to the results of methodology No. 1

The level is characterized by a less schematic image, the appearance of more details both inside the main contour and outside it.

One third of the children in the control group (33.3%) were referred to the third level of imagination development, which is characterized by the emergence of a "field of things" around the main image, i.e. subject design of the environment, there is a change in the scale

image by using a given test figure as some large part of an integral image, but at the same time, acting as image details, the geometric figure continues to occupy a central position in it.

And, finally, 20% of children of senior preschool age were assigned to the lowest level of imagination development.

As an illustrative example, we present the work of older preschoolers classified as the lowest, 1st level:

Figure 3

These works are characterized by extreme sketchiness, almost complete absence of details; these children depict single objects, the contours of which, as a rule, coincide with the contours of the proposed geometric figures.

Next, let's turn to the results for the experimental group - for the group of younger students. When diagnosing younger schoolchildren, completely different results were obtained. So, not a single junior schoolchild was assigned to the low 1st and 2nd levels. 6 people are assigned to the 3rd level. or 40%. 5 children of primary school age, or 33.3% are assigned to the 4th level of development of creative imagination.

As an illustrative example, we present the work of younger students assigned to the 4th level:

Figure 4

The works of these children are already characterized by the repeated use of a given figure in the construction of a single semantic composition. The test figures in such compositions receive a certain disguise by reducing their scale, changing the spatial position, and complicating the composition. The possibility of repeated use of the test-figure as an external stimulus when creating an image of the imagination indicates the plasticity of the imagination, a higher level of formation of its operational components.

Method #2. Pictogram ("Draw a word").

Diagnosis data of younger schoolchildren by the 2nd method are given in Table No. 3 of Appendix (E), diagnostic data of older preschoolers who made up the control group, by the 2nd method are given in Table No. 4 of Appendix (E).

The distribution of children of two groups according to the nature of mental activity, indicating the level of development of the imagination, is recorded in table 2:

table 2

The percentage distribution of children in the experimental and control groups according to the levels of imagination development according to the results of the 2nd method, according to Table 2, a graph was constructed that clearly reflects the difference in the level of development of imagination and creative abilities of children of the two groups:

Figure 6

Distribution of children of two groups according to the levels of development of imagination and creative abilities according to the results of the 2nd method

According to the results of the 2nd methodology with the children of the control group (older preschoolers), only works performed by 5 children can be classified as creative work, these are the so-called creatives of the "artistic" type (symbols in the table - "C" and "M" ).

6 children of the control group are assigned to the type of "thinker", they are characterized by the predominance of generalization, synthesis in information, a high level of abstract-logical thinking (symbols in the table - "A" and "3").

4 children of the control group were referred to the type of concrete-effective practical thinking (symbols in the table - "K").

According to the results of the 2nd methodology with the children of the experimental group (younger schoolchildren), the works of 9 children can already be attributed to creative work. This is significantly more than the control sample of older preschoolers.

So, according to the results of the 2nd method, 4 younger schoolchildren were classified as creatives of the "artistic" type ("C"): the images made by these children were classified as plot (C) (depicted objects, characters are combined into any situation, plot, or one character in the process of activity).

According to the results of the 2nd method, 5 junior schoolchildren were classified as creatives of the "artistic" type ("M"): images made by these children were classified as metaphorical (M) (images in the form of metaphors, fiction).

4 junior schoolchildren are referred to the type of "thinker", they are characterized by the predominance of generalization, synthesis in information, a high level of abstract-logical thinking (symbols in the table - "A" and "3").

2 junior schoolchildren are referred to the type of concrete-effective practical thinking (symbols in the table - "K").

Conclusions on the results of the study.

So, the features of the imagination and creative abilities of children of primary school age (8-9 years old) in comparison with children of older preschool age are as follows:

children of primary school age reach the 4th level of imagination development: a widely developed subject environment appears in the products of the creative activity of younger schoolchildren, children add more and more new elements to the drawing, organizing a holistic composition according to an imaginary plot;

children of primary school age reach the 5th level of imagination development: in the products of creative activity of younger schoolchildren, the repeated use of a given figure when building a single semantic composition is already characteristic, and the possibility of repeated use of a test-figure as an external stimulus when creating an image of the imagination indicates the plasticity of the imagination , a higher level of formation of its operational components;

young schoolchildren develop creative thinking of an artistic plot type: in the products of the creative activity of younger schoolchildren, depicted objects, characters are combined into any situation, plot, or one character in the process of activity;

creative thinking of an artistic metaphorical type develops in younger schoolchildren: in the products of the creative activity of younger schoolchildren, images appear in the form of metaphors, fiction.

Conclusion

Imagination is a special form of the human psyche, standing apart from other mental processes and at the same time occupying an intermediate position between perception, thinking and memory. The specificity of this form of mental process lies in the fact that imagination is probably characteristic only of a person and is strangely connected with the activity of the organism, being at the same time the most "mental" of all mental processes and states. Imagination is a special form of reflection, which consists in creating new images and ideas by processing existing ideas and concepts.

The development of the imagination goes along the lines of improving the operations of substituting real objects with imaginary ones and recreating the imagination. Imagination, due to the peculiarities of the physiological systems responsible for it, is to a certain extent connected with the regulation of organic processes and movement. Creativity is defined as the individual characteristics of a person's quality, which determine the success of his performance of creative activities of various kinds.

The features of creative abilities and imagination of younger schoolchildren are revealed. The school period is characterized by the rapid development of the imagination, due to the intensive process of acquiring versatile knowledge and using it in practice. Senior preschool and junior school age are qualified as the most favorable, sensitive for the development of creative imagination, fantasies. At primary school age, in addition, there is an active development of the recreative imagination. In children of primary school age, several types of imagination are distinguished.

The study of imagination as a creative process has been carried out. Imagination is a special form of the human psyche, standing apart from other mental processes and at the same time occupying an intermediate position between perception, thinking and memory. The specificity of this form of mental process lies in the fact that imagination is probably characteristic only of a person and is strangely connected with the activity of the organism, being at the same time the most "mental" of all mental processes and states. The latter means that the ideal and mysterious nature of the psyche is not manifested in anything other than imagination. It can be assumed that it was the imagination, the desire to understand and explain it, that drew attention to mental phenomena in antiquity, supported and continues to stimulate it today. Imagination is a special form of reflection, which consists in creating new images and ideas by processing existing ideas and concepts. The development of the imagination goes along the lines of improving the operations of substituting real objects with imaginary ones and recreating imagination. Imagination, due to the peculiarities of the physiological systems responsible for it, is to a certain extent connected with the regulation of organic processes and movement. Creativity is defined as the individual characteristics of a person's quality, which determine the success of his performance of creative activities of various kinds.

The features of creative abilities and imagination of younger schoolchildren are revealed. The school period is characterized by the rapid development of the imagination, due to the intensive process of acquiring versatile knowledge and using it in practice. Senior preschool and junior school age qualify as the most

favorable, sensitive for the development of creative imagination, fantasies. At primary school age, in addition, there is an active development of the recreative imagination. In children of primary school age, several types of imagination are distinguished. It can be recreative (creating an image of an object according to its description) and creative (creating new images that require the selection of material in accordance with the plan). In the process of educational activity of schoolchildren, which starts from living contemplation in the primary grades, the level of development of cognitive processes plays an important role, as psychologists note: attention, memory, perception, observation, imagination, memory, thinking. The development and improvement of the imagination will be more effective with purposeful work in this direction, which will entail the expansion of the cognitive capabilities of children.

Based on the results of the experimental study, listening conclusions were made about the features of the development of imagination and creative abilities of children of primary school age (8-9 years old) in comparison with children of senior preschool age. Firstly, children of primary school age reach the 4th level of imagination development: a widely developed subject environment appears in the products of the creative activity of younger schoolchildren, children add more and more new elements to the drawing, organizing a holistic composition according to an imaginary plot. Secondly, children of primary school age reach the 5th level of imagination development: in the products of creative activity of younger schoolchildren, the repeated use of a given figure when building a single semantic composition is already characteristic, and the possibility of repeated use of a test figure as an external stimulus when creating an image of the imagination, testifies to the plasticity of the imagination, a higher level of formation of its operational components. Thirdly, younger students develop creative thinking of an artistic plot type: in the products of the creative activity of younger students, depicted objects, characters are combined into any situation, plot, or one character in the process of activity. Fourthly, creative thinking of an artistic metaphorical type is developing in younger students: in the products of the creative activity of younger students, images appear in the form of metaphors, artistic fiction.

This course work can be used by teachers as a methodological material for studying the characteristics of children's imagination. If the teacher knows the features of imagination and creative thinking, knows in what period intensive development takes place, then he will be able to influence the correct development of these processes.

Of great importance for the development of creative imagination are circles: artistic, literary, technical. But the work of circles should be organized in such a way that students see the results of their work.

In younger students, the imagination develops more intensively than in preschoolers, and it is important not to miss this moment. It is important to play imaginative games with them, take them to circles and help develop creative thinking.

A creatively thinking person is able to solve the tasks assigned to him faster and more economically, to overcome difficulties more effectively, to set new goals, that is, ultimately, to most effectively organize his activities in solving the tasks set for him by society.

Bibliography

1. Brushlinsky A.V. Imagination and creativity // Scientific creativity M., 1969.

2. Grechko S.A. The development of the imagination of a younger student. // [Electronic resource].

3. Davydov V. Psychological development in primary school age // Age and pedagogical psychology. - M., 1973.

4. Druzhinin V.N. Psychology of general abilities. - M., 2007.

5. Dudetsky A.Ya. Theoretical questions of imagination and creativity. - Smolensk, 1974.

6. Dyachenko O.M. The development of the imagination. - M., 1996.

7. Zavalishina D.N. Psychological structure of abilities // Development and diagnostics of abilities. M: Science. 1991.

8. Zaporozhets A.V. Elkonin D.B., Psychology of preschool children: the development of cognitive processes. - M., 1964.

9. Korshunova L.S. Imagination and its role in cognition. M., 1979.

10. Yu. Kudryavtsev V.T. Child's imagination: nature and development. // Psychological journal. 2001. No. 5.

11. P. Lazareva S.Yu. Development of creative abilities of a child of primary school age. // [Electronic resource].

12. Maklakov A.G. General psychology. - M., 2005.

13. Mironov N.P. Ability and giftedness in primary school age. // Primary School. - 2004 - No. 6. - p.33-42.14. Mukhina V.S. Age-related psychology. - M., 2007.

14. Natadze R.G. Imagination as a factor of behavior Reader in psychology. M., 1987.

15. Nemov R.S. Psychology. Textbook for students. higher ped. textbook establishments. - M.: VLADOS, 2000. Book 1.: "General foundations of psychology". - 688 p.

16. Paksha L.M. The development of the creative imagination of children. Art activities. // Primary School. 2005. No. 12. pp. 40-44.

17. Poluyanov Yu.A. Imagination and ability. - M.: Knowledge, 2003.

18. Psychology. Course of lectures: At 2 pm / Under the general. ed. I.A. Furmanova, L.N. Dichkovskaya, L.A. Weinstein. Mn., 2002. Part 1 20. The development of the creative activity of the schoolchild / Under the editorship of A.M. Matyushkin. - M: Pedagogy, 1991.

Appendix

Appendix No. 1 (a)

Method No. 1 "Research of the features of the imagination based on the test of E. Torrens" Incomplete figures ":

· level - the works are characterized by extreme sketchiness, almost complete absence of details. Children depict single objects, the contours of which, as a rule, coincide with the contours of the proposed geometric shapes.

The level is characterized by a less schematic image, the appearance of a greater number of details both inside the main contour and outside it.

level - characteristic is the appearance around the main image of the "field of things", i.e. object design of the environment (for example, a trapezoid is no longer just a plate, but a vase standing on a table, or a circle is not just an apple, but on a plate). At this level, there is also a change in the scale of the image due to the use of a given test figure as some large detail of an integral image (for example, a circle is no longer a ball or a balloon, but the head of a person, an animal, a car wheel; a square is not a mirror or closet, but the body of the robot, the body of the truck, etc.). At the same time, acting as details of the image, the geometric figure continues to occupy a central position in it.

level - a widely developed subject environment is noted in the works, the children, having turned the test figure into some kind of object, add more and more new elements to the drawing, organizing a holistic composition according to an imaginary plot.

level - the works are characterized by the multiple use of a given figure in the construction of a single semantic composition. The test figures in such compositions receive a certain disguise by reducing their scale, changing the spatial position, and complicating the composition. The possibility of repeated use of the test-figure as an external stimulus when creating an image of the imagination indicates the plasticity of the imagination, a higher level of formation of its operational components.

level - the qualitative difference of this level from the previous ones lies in the nature of the use of the test figure, which no longer acts as the main part of the composition, but is included in its complex integral structure as a small secondary detail. This way of displaying is called "inclusion". At this level, there is the greatest freedom to use external data only as "material", an impetus to imagination and creativity.

The use of the "inclusion" action when creating ideas and products of imagination, providing in the direction of finding the optimal solution, which corresponds to the probabilistic nature of the reflection of reality, which is the specificity of the imagination process.

Appendix No. 1 (b)

Method #2 Pictogram ("Draw the word")

Interpretation

All images are classified into five main types:

abstract (A) - not designed in the image of the line;

sign-symbolic (3) - signs and symbols;

specific (K) - specific items;

plot (C) depicted objects, characters are combined into any situation, plot, or one character in the process of activity;

metaphorical (M) images in the form of metaphors, fiction.

When processing the results of the study, a letter designation is affixed next to each figure. The most commonly used form indicates the nature of mental activity:

A and 3 - the type of "thinker" - generalization, synthesis in information, a high level of abstract-logical thinking;

C and M - creatives of the "artistic" type;

K - concrete-effective practical thinking.

Appendix No. 2 (c)

The results of diagnostics of creative abilities and imagination of younger schoolchildren

Table 1.

The results of the diagnosis of children in the experimental group according to the method No. 1 "Incomplete figures" (junior schoolchildren)

Pupils	figures			Final level of development
	Square	Triangle	A circle
1	3	3	2	3
2	4	3	4	4
3	2	3	3	3
4	3	4	4	4
5	4	4	3	4
6	4	5	5	5
7	2	3	3	3
8	3	3	3	3
9	4	3	4	4
10	3	3	2	3
11	4	3	4	4
12	3	3	2	3
13	4	5	5	5
14	5	4	5	5
15	5	4	5	5

Appendix No. 2 (d)

Table 2.

The results of the diagnosis of children in the experimental group according to the method No. 1 "Incomplete figures" (Senior students)

Pupils	figures			Final level of development
	Square	Triangle	A circle
1	2	2	1	2
2	2	1	2	2
3	1	1	2	1
4	2	3	3	3
5	2	2	2	2
6	2	2	2	2
7	1	1	1	1
8	2	1	2	2
9	3	2	3	3
10	1	2	1	1
11	3	2	3	3
12	2	2	2	2
13	2	2	2	2
14	3	2	3	3
15	3	2	3	3

Appendix No. 2 (e)

The results of the diagnosis of the children of the experimental group according to the method No. 2 "Draw the word" (junior schoolchildren)

Table 3

No. stimulus. mat-la Children

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

Outcome

1

BUT

3

BUT

BUT

BUT

BUT

3

TO

BUT

BUT

BUT

BUT

2

TO

to

to

TO

3

3

TO

BUT

TO

BUT

TO

TO

3

3

3

BUT

3

3

BUT

3

3

TO

3

3

3

4

from

from

m

BUT

FROM

FROM

from

3

FROM

FROM

FROM

FROM

5

3

3

3

BUT

BUT

3

3

3

to

3

TO

3

6

from

from

m

BUT

FROM

FROM

from

3

from

from

FROM

from

7

to

to

to

3

TO

BUT

BUT

to

to

3

TO

to

8

from

from

m

BUT

FROM

FROM

FROM

3

from

from

from

from

9

from

from

m

BUT

FROM

TO

from

3

from

from

from

from

10

m

to

to

M

M

m

BUT

m

m

m

m

m

11

m

m

from

3

BUT

m

M

m

from

m

BUT

m

12

m

to

to

m

M

m

BUT

m

m

m

M

m

13

BUT

3

to

BUT

BUT

BUT

BUT

BUT

to

3

BUT

BUT

14

m

to

to

FROM

M

M

M

m

BUT

m

M

M

15

m

to

to

m

M

m

BUT

m

m

m

M

m

Appendix No. 2 (E)

The results of the diagnosis of children in the control group according to the method No. 2 "Draw the word" (senior students)

Table 4

No. stimulus. mat-la Children	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	Outcome
1	BUT	3	BUT	BUT	BUT	BUT	3	TO	BUT	BUT	BUT	BUT
2	TO	TO	TO	TO	3	3	TO	BUT	TO	BUT	TO	TO
3	3	3	BUT	3	3	BUT	3	3	TO	3	3	3
4	FROM	from	m	BUT	FROM	FROM	from	3	FROM	FROM	FROM	FROM
5	3	3	3	BUT	BUT	3	3	3	TO	3	to	3
6	TO	3	3	TO	3	TO	to	TO	to	TO	to	to
7	TO	to	to	3	TO	BUT	BUT	TO	to	3	to	to
8	3	BUT	3	BUT	3	3	3	3	3	TO	3	3
9	from	FROM	m	BUT	from	TO	FROM	3	from	FROM	from	from
10	BUT	3	3	3	3	BUT	3	3	3	BUT	3	3
11	M	m	from	3	BUT	M	M	m	from	M	BUT	m
12	TO	to	to	BUT	3	TO	TO	to	to	3	TO	to
13	BUT	3	to	BUT	BUT	BUT	BUT	BUT	to	3	BUT	BUT

Department of Education and Science of the Bryansk Region

State budget educational institution

secondary vocational education

Novozybkov Professional Pedagogical College

COURSE WORK

The development of creative imagination in children of primary school age

Pakhodina Anna Alexandrovna

Specialty 44.02.02

Teaching in elementary grades

III course, 31 groups

Scientific adviser:

Pitko Inna Sergeevna

Novozybkov, 2015

Content

Introduction……………………………………………………………………………...3

The concept and types of imagination………………………………………………..…6

Features of creative imagination in children of primary school age……………………………………………………………………………...10

The development of imagination in children of primary school age in the process of creative activity……………………………………………………………..15

Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………….20

List of used literature……………………………………………...22

Introduction

The problem of developing the creative imagination of children is relevant because in recent years society has faced the problem of preserving the intellectual potential of the nation, as well as the problem of developing and creating conditions for gifted people in our country, since this category of people is the main production and creative force of progress.

One of the fundamental principles of modernization of the content of education is its personal orientation, which implies reliance on the subjective experience of students, the actual needs of each student. In this regard, the question arose of organizing active cognitive and creative activity of students, contributing to the accumulation of creative experience of younger students, as a basis, without which the self-realization of the individual at the subsequent stages of lifelong education becomes ineffective.

The main task of primary school is to ensure the development of the child's personality. The sources of the full development of the child are two types of activity. Firstly, any child develops as he masters the past experience of mankind through familiarization with modern culture. At the heart of this process is educational activity, which is aimed at mastering the child with the knowledge and skills necessary for life in society. Secondly, the child in the process of development independently realizes his abilities, thanks to creative activity. Unlike educational, creative activity is not aimed at mastering already known knowledge. It contributes to the manifestation of the child's initiative, self-realization, the embodiment of his own ideas, which are aimed at creating a new one. Teachers, ensuring the implementation of the conditions for the development of creative imagination in teaching students, on the one hand, contribute to its formation, and on the other hand, determine the greater likelihood of preserving creative imagination in the future activities of an adult.

Representatives of many scientific areas and schools that consider the development of a person, his personal, psychological, didactic and other qualities, confirm the productivity of this process in the course of activity and communication, while emphasizing that not any activity has a developing function, but one that affects potential student's abilities, causes his creative cognitive activity. In the psychological literature there are different points of view on the origin and development of the imagination. Proponents of one of the approaches believe that the genesis of creative processes is associated with the maturation of certain structures (J. Piaget, Z. Freud). At the same time, the mechanisms of imagination turned out to be conditioned by characteristics external to this process (the development of the intellect or the development of the child's personality). Another group of researchers believes that the genesis of the imagination depends on the course of the biological maturation of the individual (K. Koffka, R. Arnheim). These authors attributed the components of external and internal factors to the mechanisms of imagination. Representatives of the third approach (T. Ribot, A. Bain) explain the origin and development of imagination by the accumulation of individual experience, while they were considered as transformations of this experience (associations, accumulation of useful habits).

In domestic psychology, research on the development of imagination in preschool children also occupies a significant place. Most authors associate the genesis of imagination with the development of the child’s play activity (A.N. Leontiev, D.B. Elkonin, etc.), as well as with the mastery of preschool children with activities traditionally considered “creative”: constructive, musical, visual , artistic and literary. S.L. Rubinshtein et al. devoted their research to studying the mechanisms of imagination. The basis for determining the characteristics of the creative activity of primary school students are the works of famous Russian teachers and psychologists A.S. Belkina, L.I. Bozhovich, L.S. Vygotsky, V.V. Davydova, V.A. Petrovsky, E.S. Polat and others. As studies by L.S. Vygotsky, V.V. Davydova, E.I. Ignatieva, S.L. Rubinstein, D.B. Elkonina, V.A. Krutetsky and others, imagination is not only a prerequisite for the effective assimilation of new knowledge by children, but is also a condition for the creative transformation of knowledge available to children, promotes self-development of the individual, i.e. to a large extent determines the effectiveness of teaching and educational activities at school.

Thus, the creative imagination of children represents a huge potential for the realization of the reserves of an integrated approach in teaching and upbringing. And great opportunities for the development of creative imagination are represented by the visual activity of children.

The object of research is the features of creative imagination.

The subject is the process of developing the creative imagination of younger students.

The purpose of this course work: to study the features of the development of creative imagination in children of primary school age in the process of visual activity.

Based on the goal, it is necessary to solve the following tasks:

To study and analyze the scientific and methodological literature and practical experience on the problem of imagination and creativity.

To identify the features of the creative imagination of younger students.

To develop a system of classes for the formation of creative abilities of younger students.

The following methods were used: the study of theoretical and scientific-methodical literature on the topic of research.

The concept and types of imagination

Imagination is one of the forms of mental reflection of the world. The most traditional point of view is the definition of imagination as a process (A.V. Petrovsky and M.G. Yaroshevsky, V.G. Kazakova and L.L. Kondratiev and others).

Thus, in psychology, there is a growing interest in the problems of creativity, and through it, in imagination, as the most important component of any form of creative activity.

Imagination in psychology is considered as one of the forms of reflective activity of consciousness. Since all cognitive processes are reflective, it is necessary, first of all, to determine the qualitative originality and specificity inherent in the imagination. According to Russian psychologists, the imagination reflects reality not as an existing reality, but as a possibility, a probability. With the help of imagination, a person seeks to go beyond the existing experience and a given moment in time, i.e. he orients himself in a probabilistic, conjectural environment. This allows you to find not one, but many options for solving any situation, which becomes possible due to the repeated restructuring of existing experience. The process of combining elements of past experience into fundamentally new ones corresponds to the probabilistic nature of reflection and constitutes the qualitative specifics of the reflective activity of the imagination, in contrast to other cognitive processes in which the probabilistic nature of reflection does not act as the main, dominant, but only a particular feature.

According to M.V. Gamezo and I.A. Domashenko: "Imagination is a mental process that consists in creating new images (representations) by processing the material of perceptions and ideas obtained in previous experience." Domestic authors also consider this phenomenon as an ability (V.T. Kudryavtsev, L.S. Vygotsky) and as a specific activity (L.D. Stolyarenko, B.M. Teplov). Taking into account the complex functional structure, L.S. Vygotsky considered the use of the concept of a psychological system adequate. According to E.V. Ilyenkov, the traditional understanding of the imagination reflects only its derivative function. The main one - allows you to see what is, what lies before your eyes, that is, the main function of the imagination is the transformation of an optical phenomenon on the surface of the retina into an image of an external thing. So, imagination is the process of transforming images in memory in order to create new ones that have never been perceived by a person before (see Fig. 1).

The process of imagination is peculiar only to man and is a necessary condition for his labor activity. Imagination is always a certain departure from reality. But in any case, the source of imagination is objective reality.

Rice. 1. Essence and physiological basis of imagination

There are two main types of imagination: passive and active.

In the case of passive imagination, there is a separation from practical activity. Here fantasy creates images that are not realized in life. In this case, a person can intentionally, and sometimes unwittingly, temporarily go into the realm of ideas that are far from reality. Patterns of fantasy, deliberately caused, but not connected with the will aimed at bringing them to life, are called dreams.

Active imagination is imagination associated with the performance of a specific practical activity. So, for example, when starting to make crafts, children form its image, think over what materials it can be made of, how to assemble it.

Depending on the independence and originality of images, imagination can be recreative and creative. Recreating imagination is a representation of something new for a given person, based on a verbal or conditional image of this new (drawing, diagram).

It is very important to create correct ideas about the new to describe it figuratively, to talk about it in such a way as to evoke living images that would concretize the abstract data characterizing this new one. The most important condition for the correct representation of what is described by words is the availability of knowledge on which the images recreated according to the description should be based.

Creative imagination is the creation of new images without relying on a ready-made description or conditional image (drawing, diagram). Creative imagination is the independent creation of new images. Creative imagination allows, bypassing the chain of conclusions, evidence, as if to see something completely new.

Usually, when people talk about imagination, they most often mean creative imagination. It is closely related to creative thinking, but differs from it in that it operates not with the help of concepts and reasoning, but with the help of images. A person does not reason, but mentally sees what he did not see and did not know before, sees vividly, figuratively, in all details.

Many researchers note that in the process of schooling such mental processes as memory, perception, thinking are mainly "trained", and insufficient attention is paid to the development of the imagination. At the same time, given that all cognitive processes are in a relationship of close connection and interdependence (as elements of a single system), we can say that the active development of any of these functions in educational activity creates favorable prerequisites for the development of imagination.

The question of the relationship between imagination and thinking is, perhaps, the pivotal one in the entire psychology of imagination. There are several points of view on this issue, depending on what the emphasis is on - on the similarity of these processes or on their difference.

If the emphasis is on the difference between imagination and thinking, this leads to a denial of the mutual connection of these processes. Imagination in this interpretation is not considered as an exclusively independent process, independent of other psychological functions. This point of view was developed by V.V. Abramov, S.D. Vladychko, T. Ribot, A.I. Rozov.

Imagination mechanisms:

– dissociation - dissection of a complex whole into parts;

– association - the union of dissociated elements.

Having characterized imagination as a mental process, it is necessary to highlight the features of its development in primary school age.

There are conditions conducive to finding a creative solution: observation, ease of combination, sensitivity to the manifestation of problems.

2. Features creative imagination in children of primary school age

In a child, the imagination is formed in the game and at first is inseparable from the perception of objects and the performance of game actions with them. In children of 6-7 years of age, the imagination can already rely on such objects that are not at all similar to the ones being replaced.

Most children do not like very naturalistic toys, preferring symbolic, home-made, imaginative toys. Parents who so love to give their children huge bears and dolls often unwittingly hinder their development. They deprive them of the joy of independent discovery in games. Children, as a rule, like small, inexpressive toys - they are easier to adapt to different games. Large or “just like real” dolls and animals do little to stimulate the imagination. Children develop more intensively and get much more pleasure if the same stick plays the role of a gun, the role of a horse, and many other functions in various games. Thus, in L. Kassil’s book “Konduit and Shvambrania” a vivid description of the attitude of children to toys is given: “Turned lacquered figures represented unlimited possibilities of using them for the most diverse and tempting games ... Both queens were especially comfortable: the blonde and the brunette. Each queen could work for a Christmas tree, a cab driver, a Chinese pagoda, a flower pot on a stand, and a bishop.

Gradually, the need for an external support (even in a symbolic figure) disappears and internalization occurs - a transition to a game action with an object that does not really exist, to a game transformation of an object, to giving it a new meaning and representing actions with it in the mind, without real action. This is the origin of imagination as a special mental process.

In children of primary school age, the imagination has its own characteristics. The younger school age is characterized by the activation of the first recreating imagination, and then the creative one. The main line in its development lies in the subordination of the imagination to conscious intentions, i.e. it becomes arbitrary.

Here it should be noted that for a long time in psychology there was an assumption according to which the imagination is inherent in the child "initially" and is more productive in childhood, and with age it obeys the intellect and fades away. However, L.S. Vygotsky shows the untenability of such positions. All images of the imagination, no matter how bizarre they may seem, are based on ideas and impressions received in real life. And so the experience of a child is poorer than that of an adult. And one can hardly say that the child's imagination is richer. Just sometimes, not having enough experience, the child explains in his own way what he encounters in life, and these explanations often seem unexpected and original.

The younger school age is qualified as the most favorable, sensitive for the development of creative imagination, fantasy. Games, conversations of children reflect the power of their imagination, one might even say, a riot of fantasy. In their stories and conversations, reality and fantasy are often mixed, and the images of the imagination can, by virtue of the law of the emotional reality of the imagination, be experienced by children as quite real.

A feature of the imagination of younger students, manifested in educational activities, is initially based on perception (primary image), and not on representation (secondary image). For example, a teacher offers a task to children in a lesson that requires them to imagine a situation. It can be such a task: “A barge was sailing along the Volga and carried in holds ... kg of watermelons. There was pitching, and ... kg of watermelons burst. How many watermelons are left? Of course, such tasks start the process of imagination, but they need special tools (real objects, graphic images, layouts, diagrams), otherwise the child finds it difficult to advance in arbitrary actions of the imagination. In order to understand what happened in the watermelon holds, it is useful to give a sectional drawing of a barge. According to L.F. Berzfai, a productive imagination must have the following features in order for the child to enter the school environment painlessly: .

− with the help of imagination, he must be able to reproduce the principles of the structure and development of things;

− have the ability to see the whole before its parts, i.e. the ability to create a holistic image of any object;

− the productive imagination of a child is characterized by “above situationality”, i.e. a tendency to constantly go beyond these conditions, to set new goals (which is the basis of the future ability and desire to learn, i.e. the basis of learning motivation);

− mental experimentation with a thing and the ability to include an object in new contexts, and therefore, the ability to find a method or principle of action.

A child's creativity is determined by two factors:

Subjective (development of anatomical and physiological features);

Objective (the impact of the phenomena of the surrounding life).

The most vivid and free manifestation of the imagination of younger students can be observed in the game, in drawing, writing stories and fairy tales. In children's creativity, the manifestations of the imagination are diverse: some recreate reality, others create new fantastic images and situations. When writing stories, children can borrow plots known to them, stanzas of poems, graphic images, sometimes without noticing it at all. However, they often deliberately combine well-known plots, create new images, exaggerating certain aspects and qualities of their characters.

The tireless work of the imagination is an effective way for a child to learn and assimilate the world around him, an opportunity to go beyond personal practical experience, the most important psychological prerequisite for the development of a creative approach to the world.

There are the following stages of creative imagination in children: .

1) preparatory (incitement to create, meeting with the necessary people, etc.);

2) nurturing a plan (in art activity, the child creates a sketch, sketches, selects visual materials);

3) implementation of the idea (creation of a specific work, completion of the work);

4) presentation of the result to the “spectator” (exhibition of works). The last stage for children is of particular importance.

The conditions for the development of the creative imagination of students in the process of educational and cognitive activity, depending on the sides of the activation of cognitive activity (content, organizational, subjective), can be classified as follows (see Table 1). .

Table 1.

Conditions for the development of children's creative imagination in the process of educational and cognitive activity

Content side

Organizational side

Subjective side

Presenting to students a system of tasks and tasks aimed at developing creative imagination.

Didactic material is used, varying for students with different academic performance.

The ability for students to choose the amount of complexity of the form of homework.

The amount of knowledge calculated for each student, taking into account his cognitive abilities, is established, and educational material is selected in connection with this.

Selection and implementation in the learning process of methods that contribute to the actualization of the student's personal experience and the activation of his creative activity.

Working with cognitive strategies.

The study of educational material, the complexity of which is chosen by the student and varied by the teacher.

The inclusion of schoolchildren in the optimally possible individual, group, collective forms of work.

Work with each student, identifying and taking into account inclinations and preferences in the learning process

Democratic style of leadership in the organization of training.

The teacher gives the student the opportunity to choose group or independent work.

The manifestation of both the teacher and students of bright positive emotions.

The orientation of teaching methods to create a situation of success for each student.

Focus on independent search, independent work, independent discoveries of the student

General provisions for understanding the individual approach to learning. First, the recognition of the student in the process of teaching his subjectivity. Secondly, learning is not only teaching, but also learning (a special individual activity of the student, and not a direct projection of teaching). Thirdly, the starting point of learning is not the realization of ultimate goals, but the disclosure of the individual cognitive capabilities of each student and the determination of the pedagogical conditions necessary to satisfy the development of the student. Fourthly, communication between the subjects of learning is understood, first of all, as personal communication. Thus, the formation of a creative personality is one of the important tasks of pedagogical theory and practice at the present stage. Its solution begins already in preschool and at primary school age.

The development of imagination in children of primary school age in the process of creative activity

Modern pedagogy no longer doubts that it is possible to teach creativity. The question, according to I.Ya. Lerner, is only to find the optimal conditions for such learning. Under the creative (creative) abilities of students, we understand "... the comprehensive capabilities of the student in performing activities and actions aimed at creating new educational products for him" .

Through creativity, the child develops thinking. But this teaching is special, it is not the same as they usually teach knowledge and skills. The starting point for the development of the imagination should be directed activity, that is, the inclusion of children's fantasies in specific practical problems. A.A. Volkova states: “Education of creativity is a versatile and complex impact on a child. In the creative activity of adults, the mind (knowledge, thinking, imagination), character (courage, perseverance), feeling (love of beauty, passion for image, thought) take part. We must educate the same aspects of the personality in the child in order to more successfully develop creativity in him. Enriching the child's mind with a variety of ideas, some knowledge - means to provide abundant food for creativity. To teach to look attentively, to be observant means to make ideas clearer, more complete. This will help children to more vividly reproduce what they see in their work.

AND I. Lerner identified the following features of creative activity: .

Independent transfer of knowledge and skills to a new situation; seeing new problems in familiar, standard conditions;

Seeing a new function of a familiar object;

The ability to see an alternative solution;

The ability to combine previously known methods of solving a problem in a new way;

The ability to create original solutions in the presence of already known ones.

Since creative activity involves the promotion of different approaches, solutions, consideration of the subject from different angles, the ability to come up with an original unusual way of solving - all these features of creative activity are inextricably linked with the imagination. Naturally, the child creates a subjectively new, i.e. new for himself, but it is of great social importance, because in the course of it the abilities of the individual are formed.

Recreating imagination is of great importance in the learning process, because without it, it is impossible to perceive and understand the educational material. Teaching promotes the development of this kind of imagination. In addition, the younger schoolchild's imagination is more and more closely connected with his life experience, and it does not remain a fruitless fantasy, but gradually becomes an incentive to activity. The child seeks to translate the thoughts and images that have arisen into real objects.

The most effective means for this is the visual activity of children of primary schoolchildren. In the process of drawing, the child experiences a variety of feelings: he rejoices at the beautiful image that he created himself, upset if something does not work out. But the most important thing: by creating an image, the child acquires various knowledge; his ideas about the environment are clarified and deepened; in the process of work, he begins to comprehend the qualities of objects, memorize their characteristic features and details, master visual skills and abilities, learns to use them consciously.

Even Aristotle noted: "Drawing contributes to the versatile development of the child." Prominent teachers of the past - Ya.A. Comenius, I.G. Pestalozzi, F. Frebel - and many domestic researchers. Their works testify: drawing and other types of artistic activity create the basis for full-fledged meaningful communication between children and with adults; perform a therapeutic function, distracting children from sad, sad events, relieve nervous tension, fears, cause a joyful, high spirits, provide a positive emotional state.

Visual activity is an integral part of human culture. Visual activity develops the ability to observe, analyze; creativity, artistic taste, imagination, aesthetic feelings (the ability to see the beauty of shapes, movements, proportions, colors, color combinations), contributes to the knowledge of the world around, the formation of a harmoniously developed personality, develops the senses and especially visual perception based on the development of thinking. It follows that art lessons are necessary and very important in the system of general education.

In the lessons of fine arts, the result of the work is a drawing. This is only the external result of the students, but it encodes the whole path of development of those mental images that were given by the topic. A drawing is that material form into which thoughts have poured out. And the result depended on how diverse and active they were. Here we understand the great importance of the development of imagination in the lessons of fine arts, as an important factor in solving certain artistic problems. From this we conclude that the imagination in the lessons of fine arts is of an active creative nature.

Any artistic work is inherent in the concept - creativity, because. it (creativity) in the visual arts is associated with the need to create something new, one's own, that did not exist before. This is seen in children's drawings.

When children in the classroom begin to experiment with form and color, they are faced with the need to find a way of depicting in which the objects of their life experience could be reproduced using certain means. The abundance of original solutions that they create is always amazing, especially since children tend to turn to the most elementary topics. For example, when depicting a portrait of a person, children do not strive to be original, and yet the attempt to reproduce on paper everything that they see makes each child discover a new visual formula for an already known subject. In each drawing, one can notice respect for the basic visual concept of a person. This is proved by the fact that any viewer understands that he has an image of a person in front of him, and not of any other object.

At the same time, each drawing is significantly different from the others. The object presents only an insignificant minimum of characteristic structural features, thus appealing to the imagination in the literal sense of the word. In children's drawings, many solutions are offered for depicting individual parts of the human face. Images vary not only of parts of the face, but also of the contour lines of the face itself. Some drawings have many details and differences, others just a few. Round shapes and rectangular shapes, subtle strokes and huge masses, oppositions and overlaps - all are used to reproduce the same object. But a mere enumeration of geometric differences alone does not tell us anything about the individuality of these images, which becomes apparent due to the appearance of the whole drawing. These differences are partly due to the stage of development of the child, partly their individual character, partly they depend on the goals for which the drawing was created. Taken together, the drawings testify to the richness of children's artistic imagination. It follows that the role of creative imagination in the lessons of fine arts is great. And the development of creative imagination is one of the main tasks in the system of aesthetic education, because. drawing is a source of creative activity.

In elementary school, the fine arts teaching program includes the following types of lessons: thematic drawing; drawing from nature; decorative drawing. The development of students' imagination is most facilitated by thematic and decorative drawing.

Decorative drawing mainly develops reproductive imagination, as children usually study various types of folk paintings (Khokhloma, Gzhel, Polkhovo-Maidanskaya painting, etc.) in the classroom and recreate them. But still, there are tasks that require creative imagination (for example, appliqué, drawing an ornament, etc.).

Thematic drawing most of all contributes to the development of creative imagination. In thematic drawing, the child shows both artistic and creative abilities. And here, first of all, it is necessary to define the concept of the topic itself. There are general themes (“eternal themes” - good and evil, relationships between people, motherhood, courage, justice, beauty and ugliness), which have many manifestations and provoke creativity, and specific topics, with a clear indication of the place and action that require precise implementation . They help diagnose creative imagination.

In order to penetrate deeper into the essence of the implementation of the conditions for the development of creative imagination, as well as to strengthen the connection between pedagogical theory and practice, in the next chapter we will conduct an experimental study of the development of creative imagination of younger students and develop classes that contribute to the development of creative imagination of younger students.

Conclusion

The relevance of the problem of developing the creative abilities of younger students is due to the need for a scientifically based solution to the practical problems of primary education, the search for ways to improve the organization of creative activity of students.

Imagination is the process of transforming images in memory in order to create new ones that have never been perceived by a person before.

Types of imagination differ in how deliberate, conscious is the creation of new images by a person. According to this criterion, they are divided into arbitrary, or active, imagination - the process of deliberate construction of images in accordance with a conscious plan, a goal, an intention - it is this type of imagination that needs to be specially developed; and involuntary or passive imagination is the free, uncontrolled emergence of images.

Creative imagination - independent creation of new images. Both recreative and creative imagination are very important for a person and must be developed.

The child's imagination develops gradually, as he acquires real life experience. The richer the experience of the child, the more he saw, heard, experienced, learned, the more impressions about the surrounding reality he accumulated, the richer material his imagination has, the more scope opens up for his imagination and creativity, which is most actively and fully realized in games, writing fairy tales and stories, drawing.

Primary school age is a period of intensive and qualitative transformation of cognitive processes (perception, memory, imagination, etc.): they begin to acquire an indirect character and become conscious and arbitrary.

Without a sufficiently developed imagination, the student's educational work cannot proceed successfully, hence the important pedagogical conclusion: the creation of favorable conditions for the development of imagination in the work of children contributes to the expansion of their real life experience, the accumulation of impressions.

The leading components of the imagination of younger students are past experience, the subject environment, which depend on the internal position of the child, and the internal position from supra-situational becomes extra-situational.

The following conditions contribute to the development of creative imagination:

Involving students in various activities

The use of non-traditional forms of conducting lessons

Creating problem situations

Independent performance of work

The results of our work showed that the use of a developmental program in working with children gives a positive trend in the development of the imagination of younger students.

List of used literature

Berkinblint M. B., Petrovsky A. V. Fantasy and reality. M. : Politizdat, 2004. 26 p.

Borovik O. V. Development of the imagination // Guidelines. M. : OOO TsGL Ron, 2000. 112 p.

Vannik M. E. Creative imagination in the classroom // Teacher. Educational and methodical edition. 2005. No. 5-6. pp. 14-15.

Vannik M. E. Developing creative imagination in children // Our children. 2005. No. 4. S. 20-22.

Vygotsky L. S. Imagination and creativity in childhood. St. Petersburg: SOYUZ, 2005. 14 p.

Gamezo M. V., Domashenko I. Ya. Atlas of Psychology. M. : Pedagogical Society of Russia, 2006. 276 p.

Ermolaeva-Tomina L. B. Psychology of artistic creation // Textbook M .: Academic project, 2003. 34 p.

Ilyenkov E. V. On the imagination // Public education. 2003. No. 3. from. 42.

Kirillova G.D. Initial forms of creative imagination in children // Preschool education. 2006. 15 p.

Komarova T. S. Children's fine art: what should be understood by this? // Preschool education. 2005. No. 2. 14 p.

Comenius Ya. A. Maternal school. Great didactics. Selected pedagogical works. In 2 vols. T. 2 / ed. A.I. Piskunov. M., 2006. 49 p.

Kotova T. N. Creative tasks as a means of developing the creative imagination of schoolchildren in the educational process. Novotroitsk, 2007. 24 p.

Lerner N. Ya. Problems of teaching. Moscow: Knowledge, 2003 49 p.

Nemov R.S. Psychology: Textbook. In 3 vols. Book. 1: General foundations of psychology. Imagination. M. : Vlados, 2001. S. 260-271.

Nikiforova O. N. Cognitive processes and abilities in learning. Representation and imagination. M. : Nauka, 2007. 100 p.

Nikolaenko N. N. Psychology of creativity. St. Petersburg: Rech, 2007. 288 p.

Nikolskaya I. M., R. M. Granovskaya R. M. Psychological protection in children. St. Petersburg: Rech, 2001. 517 p.

Rubinshtein S.A. Fundamentals of General Psychology. St. Petersburg: Piter Publishing House, 2000. 712 p.

Slastenin V. A. Pedagogy: Proc. allowance / ed. V.A. Slastenina, M. : Academy, 2002. 576 p.

Subbotina L. Yu. Development of the imagination of children. // A popular guide for parents and educators. Yaroslavl: Academy of Development, 2001. 24 p.

Khutorskoy A.V. Modern didactics: A textbook for universities. St. Petersburg: Piter, 2001. 544 p.