The article presents the results of an empirical study of specific characteristics of the success of boys and girls of primary school age in solving convergent problems under the condition of varying motivational attitudes. The study was conducted in the elementary school of the State Budgetary Educational Institution of Moscow “School No. 1561” educational complex in 2016-2018. The study sample includes 239 second-grade students the average age of whom was 8.2 years old. 137 of the study participants were boys and 102 were girls which constitutes 57% and 43% of the sample, respectively. Motivation is assessed via the authors’ modification of N.V. Elfimova’s method “A ladder of motives”, a version of M. Seligman’s Children’s Attributional Style Questionnaire (CASQ) modified by N.A. Baturina and D.A. Tsiring, and the authors’ modification of C. Dweck’s Implicit Theory Scale. The study of the cognitive sphere of the primary school students involves J. Raven’s progressive matrices test, P. Torrance’s test of creative thinking, and E.E. Tunik’s adaptation of J. Johnson’s creativity scale. Within the framework of the experiment, two blocks of convergent tasks are formed: one including non-verbal transitivity tasks (the logical block) and the other containing volumetric and spatial thinking tasks (the spatial block). It is established that the success of primary school students of both sexes in solving convergent tasks is associated not only with the extrinsic motivational attitude constructed through verbal instruction but also with the specific psychological characteristics of the development of the cognitive and motivational spheres in children. The relationship between the success in solving convergent tasks and the psychological characteristics of cognitive development and the motivational sphere differs for boys and girls of primary school age which manifests most intensely in the level of development of the non-verbal component, the leading motivation, and the specifics of the development of the attributional style of explaining success and failure, as well as its particular components.

The article presents a description of the study of the effectiveness of methodological tools aimed at developing metacognitive competence in future elementary school teachers in the classroom on the methodology of teaching mathematics to younger students.The aim of the study is to empirically test the effectiveness of a set of methodological techniques used in the classroom on the methodology of teaching mathematics to future elementary school teachers as a means of developing their metacognitive competencies. The hypothesis of the study is the assumption that one of the effective means of developing metacognitive competencies in future elementary school teachers is special classes for compiling original scenarios of verbal mathematical problems for younger students. A professionally developed verbal composition of a mathematical problem sets the vector of mental activity for the younger student. It requires the developer to build a forecast of the child’s mental actions, determine algorithms and levels of difficulty in obtaining the right solution. The study used methods for testing students’ cognitive characteristics (intelligence) and peer review of their “metacognitive knowledge”, “metacognitive skills”, “metacognitive experience” and “metacognitive strategies”. The methodological solutions implemented in the classroom have shown their effectiveness. For the practice of preparing future primary school teachers, it is important that the well-organized development of compositions of textual mathematical problems for younger students is an effective means of developing their metacognitive competencies.

No abstract

The article presents an analysis of modern research on international educational practices of distance learning from the point of view of psychological support of cognitive and psychosocial development of schoolchildren. There are three stages of the development of these studies: catching up, operational and advanced. In catch-up studies, the authors focus on the analysis of psychological risks arising in the context of global digitalization of education; the negative impact of educational IT products on the cognitive, psychosocial and psychophysical development of a child’s personality is noted. Operational studies are works that are of an ascertaining nature and proceed from the need to adapt digital tools and electronic means to traditional learning in order to increase its effectiveness. The main targets of advanced research are not risks and attempts of psychological adaptation to widespread and newly created digital educational technologies, the main attention of their supporters is paid to understanding the very fact of digital transformation of education. Hybrid forms of educational organization, allowing to comfortably connect virtual and physical spaces, are considered by them as the inevitable perspective of education. The authors of the article see the lack of systematic research, as well as theories and concepts of the mental development of a modern child in the digital world as an obstacle to the progress of research and practical tools for psychological support of schoolchildren in distance education.