THE FACILITATIVE APPROACH FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY

Abstrakt

Therefore, the facilitative approach emphasizes that a person contains remarkable resources for self-knowledge, change of one’s self-concept, purposeful behavior, and complete mastery of these resources becomes possible only if a positive microclimate is created in a social group, that the phases will foster the formation of psychological settings.
The using of the word of foreign origin “facilitation” is explained, first of all, by the fact that it has been included into the psychological and pedagogical conceptual paradigm since the second half of the 20th century, and we understand it as providing assistance to the person, to the client.
Materials and methods. The following theoretical methods of the research were used to solve the tasks: categorical, structural and functional methods, the methods of analysis, systematization, modeling, generalization.
The reform of the educational system should be based on the restructuring of the constant personal preferences of a teacher, which are exploited in the processes of his/her interpersonal interaction with pupils. The scientist identifies three basic directions of the teacher-facilitator. The first is “truth” and “openness”; the second instruction is described in terms of “acceptance” and “trust”; and, finally, the third attitude correlates positively with “empathic understanding”.
It was proved that if teacher adhere to those guidelines (or accept them as personally significant), we would have to deal with a special interpersonal (group) process that would lead to significant personal changes in the process of communication of participants.
The process of facilitation at the process of studying cannot be understood in a simplified way. Involvement in the activity and learning consciously are quite different things. The action, if it is imposed by a team of methodologists and teachers is carried out under pressure on a pupil, then it is perceived out of any sense as a so-called “temporary” need.
In Cognitive Psychology the following attributes of the person are: his/her consciousness and activity; attributes of the person’s psyche – subjectivity, activity, adaptability; attributes of the consciousness – experience, knowledge and attitudes; activity attributes – activity, awareness, commitment, motivation and so on.
Consequently, the concept of “facilitation” reflects conscious and purposeful activity as a phenomenon peculiar to the teacher at the first place. Thus, it is possible to distinguish the attributes of facilitation: 1) the activity; 2) the subject of the activity; 3) the functions of the subject; 4) functions of the activity; 5) motives of the activity; 6) the purpose of the activity; 7) ways of performing the activity; 8) the subject of the activity; 9) methods of realization of the activity; 10) means which are relevant to the implementation of the activity; 11) the result of the activity.
Thus, the components of facilitation were identified. The first component of facilitation is authenticity, “naturalness”, sincerity of the person. The more the teacher is “personal” or “subjective” in relationships with the students, the less he/she will try to “fend off” from the pupils, the more degree is that the students will strive for constructive personal change. Authenticity (or “naturalness”) means that the teacher is openly “living” the feelings and attitudes that take place in the moment of cognitive activity and interpersonal interaction.
Another component of facilitation is congruence. If in a case of empathy we are talking about empathy with another person’s emotional state, then in the case of congruence it is about experiencing his/her own feelings, about people’s openness to themselves and to other individuals. Congruence is understood as authenticity, openness, honesty; we consider this quality as necessary and sufficient condition for effective interpersonal contact and mutual relations (also with empathy and unconditional positive acceptance).
Another component of facilitation is empathic understanding. The latter implies that the teacher quite accurately perceives the feelings, personal meanings experienced by the student, and begins to communicate with him/her in terms of a complete understanding. Ideally, the teacher penetrates so deeply into the inner world of the other that he/she can not only grasp the meanings of another person, but also capture them, and in addition, can capture the meanings that are fixed inside the context. Consequently, facilitative interaction is a rather specific, active kind of transition of behavioral patterns into stable sense structures that provide a change in the personality of both the student and the teacher.