Children's failures: how to deal with them correctly. Research work on the topic: “The Problem of School Failures Why does a child study poorly? Total regression

1. Introduction
2. Chapter I. Reasons for failure in studies
3. Chapter II. Didactic means of struggle in studies
   • Pedagogical diagnostics
   • Educational therapy
   • Indirect assistance (pedagogical prevention)
4. Conclusion
5. Bibliography

Text of work

Introduction.

The process of forming cognitive interests is a complex and lengthy process; it requires a holistic approach to the individual, taking into account educational opportunities, the reasons for the lag, the attitude towards learning, towards the teacher, the presence or absence of cognitive interests in the personality structure. It is even more difficult to form the cognitive interest of low-achieving students. Taking into account what is common and unique in the personality of adolescents, it is necessary to vary the stimulus of cognitive interest, updating any group or individual stimuli, taking into account the reasons for the lag of schoolchildren.

The purpose of this work is an attempt to consider the approaches of researchers and, taking into account our own experience, on the issue of ways to form students’ need for mastering knowledge and motives for learning. Particular attention is focused on the issue of developing cognitive interests among low-achieving students.

The objectives are:

1. Identifying the causes of educational lag.
2. Determining criteria for failure in history lessons.
3. Ways to overcome academic failure.
4. Stimulation of cognitive interests in low-achieving students.

A lot of work has been devoted to the issue of ways to overcome academic failure. This problem has been studied both in domestic literature and abroad (J. Bruner, W. Glasser). Among our researchers we can name: Zakharova A.B., Bondarenko S.M., Kalmykova Z.I., Markova A.K. and others. They all unanimously note the enormous role of the teacher in developing children’s cognitive interests as a means of overcoming academic failure.

Chapter I. Reasons for failure in studies.

Underachievement is the most acute problem in modern schools, caused by reasons, including social ones.

The reasons for school failure can be very varied and complex. These include facts such as lack of interest in studies, bad behavior at school, laziness, etc., which are called factors relatively dependent on students; poor educational atmosphere in the family, long-term illness, various shortcomings in the educational work of the school, i.e. factors relatively independent of the students.

The complex nature of the reasons for a student’s failure in school is unanimously noted by all the authors who have so far analyzed them. However, not everyone has come to a consensus regarding which of the various conditions, usually closely related to each other, play a dominant role and, ultimately, predetermine the school success of students. However, researchers tend to see the main reason for failure in the poor socio-economic living conditions of students. Others believed that the root of evil should be sought rather in defects in the biopsychic “preparedness” of students. Finally, still others saw the main reason in the imperfect functioning of the school.

Ch. Kupisevich, summarizing the findings of the researchers, characterized these groups of reasons:

1. Socio-economic – financial insecurity of the family, general unfavorable situation in the family, alcoholism, pedagogical illiteracy of parents. The general state of society also affects children, but the main thing is the shortcomings of family life.
2. The causes of a biopsychic nature are hereditary characteristics, abilities, and character traits. It should be remembered that inclinations are inherited from parents, and abilities, hobbies, and character develop during life on the basis of inclinations. Science has proven that all babies born healthy have approximately the same opportunities for development, which depends on the social, family environment and upbringing.
3. Pedagogical reasons. Pedagogical neglect is most often the result of mistakes and low levels of school work. Education and the work of a teacher are a decisive factor in the development of a student. Gross mistakes of a teacher lead to psychogenies, didactogenies - mental trauma received during the learning process and sometimes requiring special psychotherapeutic intervention. Didactogeny is a rough defect in the work of a teacher.

Research also shows more specific reasons for academic failure:

• a rigid, unified education system, the content of education is the same for everyone, and does not satisfy the needs of children;
• uniformity, stereotyping in teaching methods and forms, verbalism, intellectualism, underestimation of emotions in teaching;
• inability to set learning goals and lack of effective monitoring of results;
• neglect of student development, practicality, coaching, focus on cramming.

Conclusion: didactic, psychological, methodological incompetence of the teacher leads to failure in studies. But didactic reasons for school failures usually appear along with other reasons and mutually determine each other.

In addition, some researchers tend to assess the impact of the same set of causes differently depending, for example, on the age of the students.

Because The presented work is of large volume, then the continuation of the work (Chapter II, Conclusion and References) is presented in

“This is a terrible danger - idleness at the desk;

idleness for six hours every day, idleness for months and years.

It corrupts."

V.A. Sukhomlinsky

Each of us dreams of achieving some heights in life, of becoming successful as an individual, and in general, of becoming successful. What is success? In my opinion, success is a combination of elements, such as public recognition, a good family, etc. If you try to build a logical chain of achieving success in life, in particular getting an interesting and prestigious job, it may look like this: - To get a profession you need to enroll and study successfully at university. - For admission you need knowledge and the ability to apply it.

And good knowledge can be obtained if you study hard and successfully at school. It would seem that a simple chain is obtained. But only a few follow this chain. What about the rest? Why do they study poorly? What is this connected with? Because they don't want to learn or can't? Or maybe something else matters?

The problem of academic failure worries everyone: both adults and children. Obviously, there is not a single mentally healthy child in the world who would like to study poorly. When dreams of successful school years are dashed by the first “f”, the child first loses the desire to study, and then he simply skips classes or becomes a “difficult” student, which most often leads to new negative manifestations in behavior. Underachieving students begin to look for people around whom they will not feel insignificant. So they end up in yard companies, joining the army of hooligans and drug addicts.

What is underachievement?

Failure to achieve - this is a lag in learning, in which, in the allotted time, the student does not master at a satisfactory level the knowledge provided for by the curriculum, as well as the whole range of problems that a child may develop in connection with systematic learning (both in a group and individually).

To find a way to overcome academic failure, you need to know the reasons that give rise to it. There are two groups of reasons for academic failure: external and internal

To external reasons

Social, i.e., a decrease in the value of education in society, the instability of the existing educational system.

2. Imperfect organization of the educational process locally(uninteresting lessons, lack of an individual approach, overload of students, undeveloped methods of educational activities, gaps in knowledge

3. External influence– streets, families, etc.

To external reasons

The main internal reason for academic failure today is health defects in schoolchildren caused by a sharp deterioration in the level of material well-being of families. Medical institutions note that every fourth child has serious health problems from the moment of birth. This must be taken into account when organizing the educational process, because a person suffering from certain ailments is not able to withstand colossal educational loads.

Low intelligence development, which should also be timely reflected in the compilation of programs and the creation of new textbooks. The educational material should be feasible for most students.

Internal reasons include lack of motivation to study: the child has an incorrectly formed attitude towards education, he does not understand its social significance and does not strive to be successful in educational activities.

And finally the problem poor development of the volitional sphere in students.

K.D. Ushinsky: “Teaching based only on interest does not allow the student’s will to strengthen, since not everything in learning is interesting, and a lot will have to be taken by willpower.”

The main signs of student failure can be considered:

gaps in factual knowledge and skills specific to a given subject that do not allow one to characterize the essential elements of the concepts, laws, theories being studied, as well as to carry out the necessary practical actions;

gaps in the skills of educational and cognitive activity, which reduce the pace of work so much that the student cannot master the required amount of knowledge, skills and abilities in the allotted time;

insufficient level of development and cultivation of personal qualities, which does not allow the student to demonstrate independence, perseverance, organization and other qualities necessary for successful learning;

the student cannot reproduce the definitions of concepts, formulas, proofs, and cannot, while presenting a system of concepts, depart from the finished text; does not understand the text based on the studied system of concepts. These signs appear when students ask relevant questions.

difficulties of a teenager, manifested in the form of educational lag, emotional instability.

Among the main ways to detect student delays are:

observing students’ reactions to difficulties in work, successes and failures;

the teacher’s questions and his demands to formulate this or that position;

educational independent work in the classroom. When conducting them, the teacher receives material for judging both the results of the activity and the course of its progress. He watches the students’ work, listens and answers their questions, and sometimes helps.

The school's psychological service provides great assistance in identifying motivated children and developing students' creative abilities. Psychological support is provided as follows:

testing students to identify existing knowledge, skills (monitoring);

diagnostics of achievement motivation and creative potential in students;

diagnostics of individual abilities of students; testing self-assessment of your abilities.

The world school has accumulated only two approaches to solving this problem. The first is the transfer of unlucky students to the next grade, where training is carried out according to programs with low requirements. The second is re-studying the course for the previous year, that is, repeating a year, which, as has long been shown, does not justify itself either in the economic, psychological, or pedagogical sense. Therefore, it is very important to promptly identify the causes of academic failure and eliminate them. If in the lower grades a child has not developed the skills and desire to learn, then every year learning difficulties will grow like a snowball.

Contrary to popular belief, school failure is not always explained by low mental abilities or reluctance to learn. In pedagogical practice, in the absence of correct differentiation of the causes of failure, a meager and imperfect set of means is used for lagging students: these are either additional classes using traditional teaching methods, or various forms of disciplinary pressure on the student. These means, as a rule, turn out to be not only ineffective, but also harmful, since they do not eliminate the real causes of academic failure. And these reasons may be different; Underachievement may be based on several interrelated reasons, which in turn give rise to secondary violations in educational activities

The failure of schoolchildren is naturally related to their individual characteristics and the conditions in which their development takes place. The study of the composition of academic failure and the justification of means of preventing it require the use of two terms: “underachievement” and “lag”.

A lag is a failure to fulfill requirements (or one of them), which occurs at one of the intermediate stages within that segment of the educational process that serves as a time frame for determining academic performance. The word “backlog” denotes both the process of accumulating non-fulfillment of requirements and each individual case of such non-fulfillment, i.e., one of the moments of this process.

Failure and lag are interconnected. Failure as a product synthesizes individual lags; it is the result of the lag process, i.e. diverse backlogs, if they are not overcome, grow, intertwine with each other, and ultimately form underachievement.

Knowing the reasons for student failure helps the teacher eliminate some of them when preparing for the lesson. It is incomparably easier to prevent students from falling behind than to later deal with problems in their knowledge.

One of the most common internal causes of academic failure - insufficient development of thinking and other cognitive processes in schoolchildren, unpreparedness of these children for intense intellectual work in the learning process (lag in mental development from their peers).

For approximately every fifth underachieving student, this is the main reason for poor knowledge, and it can sometimes be very difficult to eliminate it. However, with the proper individual approach from many of them, the school curriculum is quite accessible.

This category should include children with slow mental development. What to hide: you have to work with such children in a regular classroom. But these children are excitable and easily wounded. They get tired quickly. Therefore, it is necessary to create such a microclimate in the class so that both they and their comrades do not feel a big difference in their mental development, to exclude any humiliation and contempt for them.

Other subjective The reason why some of our students fail is the low level of academic skills of schoolchildren ( inattention in class, failure to fully understand the material presented). Thus, if we conditionally divide all those lagging behind into systematically and occasionally underachieving, it turns out that for every second occasionally underachieving student, it is the lack of necessary academic skills and disorganization that are the main reason for failing.

In the work to prevent the failure of such students, special attention is paid to developing habits for academic work. The focused work of all teachers, the coordination of their individual work plans for specific students and, of course, the help of parents are especially important here.

Another common reason for academic failure- the student’s reluctance to learn due to the lack of sufficiently strong positive incentives for the learning process itself. This reluctance to learn can arise for various reasons. They all boil down mainly to learning difficulties. For example, a student does not know how, cannot force himself to study. Sometimes, reluctance to learn is generated objective difficulty of the subject for the student.

Notations, punishments, complaints to parents often only complicate the situation..

A student's reluctance to learn may be caused by lack of interest in the student only in this subject. A student may be capable, it is easy for him to study, if he wanted, he could do well, but he is indifferent to this particular subject. So another unsuccessful person appears. Here you should look for and find an approach that would rediscover for a given student all the advantages of the subject being studied.

Sometimes there are students for whom the teaching has lost almost all meaning. But this category of underachievers is not hopeless. If the teacher constantly scolds and shames them in front of the whole class, often calls their parents to punish him, then the results will be minimal. It is better to attract such children to help in the subject room, involve them in extracurricular work, etc. In a word, we need a well-thought-out system of measures in the fight first for interest in the subject, and then for the performance of this student.

A large number of absences due to illness.

For some underachievers, the main reason for difficulties in learning is poor health.

Such students quickly get tired and do not perceive the educational material well. From the teacher's table, all children seem, as a rule, to be healthy, if you do not pay special attention to this issue. You need to know such children.

A common cause of persistent underachievement is indiscipline of individual students, their number fluctuates widely depending on age, reaching a maximum in the 8th-9th grades. But, experience of working with such students shows that if you find feasible and interesting work for them, both in class and outside of class, then they gradually improve.

Among the subjective reasons for academic failure are the sometimes encountered personal hostility of the student to the teacher. Persistent dislike and disrespect for the teacher greatly interfere with the mobilization of the student’s efforts, giving rise to poor performance. Any insincerity only worsens the relationship, sincerity and understanding of the teacher will ultimately generate sincerity and rapport on the part of any student.

Let's consider the objective reasons for academic failure.

Among them, the most common is poor quality work of the subject teacher due to poor knowledge of the subject and methods of teaching it. Of course, the majority of teachers are workaholics. But there is another teacher. With a well-prepared teacher, many low-performing students could do well, but they are classified as lazy or incapable.

The next objective reason for academic failure is considered to be lack of ability among schoolchildren in this subject. Among them there are diligent, hardworking people who successfully study in many subjects, but fail, for example, in mathematics or physics.

It makes no sense to constantly give such students bad grades. They work hard even without intimidation or punishment. For such students, a strictly individual step-by-step program is advisable, providing feasible, gradually more complex work in order to bring them to the usual requirements.

The reason for academic failure is sometimes dysfunctional family. Unfortunately, there are still families where there are no normal conditions for the student to work or relax

Underachievement may be related with the problem of the “street”. Rest and outdoor games are necessary. However, there are often so many temptations, and so little parental control and student diligence, that careless students spend most of their time after school in the company of street friends.

Let us note another common reason - the so-called preventive two. Sometimes a teacher gives a bad grade for a student’s refusal to answer. From the outside, this approach seems objective. But when such “twos” accumulate, they, as a rule, develop in the student’s personal plan into a new quality - a state of uncertainty, indifference to assessment. After all, sooner or later, such students, having paid off their debts, will receive a “C” for the quarter. But they simply can’t get “four” anymore, although many of them deserve it.

Requirements for a teacher working with problem children

create a favorable psychological climate in the classroom

don't get irritated, be patient and persistent

when demanding, take into account the student’s real capabilities

each student receives an individual approach; measured pace and volume of work

take into account the zones of proximal development, gradually increase and complicate the load

teach feasible techniques for regulating behavior

diagnostics on all issues of studying personality development and its productivity is the key to successful learning

As a result - a parable.

An old man sits by the side of the road and looks at the road. He sees a man walking, and a little boy can barely keep up with him. The man stopped and ordered the child to bring water to the old man and give him a piece of bread from the store.

– What are you doing here, old man? - asked a passerby.

– Waiting for you! - answered the old man. - They entrusted you with this child to raise, right?

– Right! – the man was surprised.

– So take wisdom with you:If you want to plant a tree for a person, plant a fruit tree.If you want to give a person a horse, give the best horse.But if they entrusted you with a child to raise, then return him winged.

– How can I do this, old man, if I myself don’t know how to fly? – the man was surprised.

– Then don't take the boy into your upbringing! - said the old man and directed his gaze to the sky.

Years have passed.

The old man sits in the same place and looks at the sky.

He sees a boy flying, and behind him is his teacher.

They knelt down in front of the old man and bowed to him.

– Old man, remember, you told me to return the boy with wings. I found a way... See how his wings have grown! - the teacher said proudly and circled his pupil’s wings with affection.

But the old man touched the teacher’s wings, caressed them and whispered:

– I'm more pleased with your feathers...

One may not notice the purpose of destructive behavior, such as avoiding failure, because students who base their behavior on this principle do not offend us and do not bring chaos into the activities of the class. On the contrary, they try to be invisible and not violate school rules and requirements. The problem is that they rarely interact with teachers and classmates. Usually they remain isolated in the classroom, during class, during breaks, and in the cafeteria. Often students who are afraid of failure simply do not do anything asked by the teacher, quietly hoping that he will not notice this. In the presentation, I tried to give some characteristics of failure avoidance behavior and tips for teachers on how to cooperate with such students.

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Avoiding failure. Support as a professionally important skill for a teacher

Purpose of the seminar: 1. Show participants the differences between the supportive strategy of relating to a child and the “red pencil” assessment strategy. 2. Show different types of support, their strengths and limitations.

Unlike all other types of “bad behavior,” this one rarely occurs in an active form. The problem for the teacher is not what the student does, but rather what the student does not do. The only type of active behavior of this kind is a seizure in a situation of complete despair. Outwardly, it resembles an ordinary attack of anger: elementary school students scream, cry and kick, high school students slam the desk lid or mutter curses. However, the goals of the two types of seizures are different. The guys have fits of anger, which are designed to force the teacher to recognize the strength and power of the student. And an attack in a situation of despair is an explosion to let off steam and hide from obvious or possible failure. Students with such attacks are ready to do anything: scream, shed streams of tears - if only this emotional explosion distracts them from the failure that is obvious to them. Active behavior

Passive form of behavior Postponing until later. Some students use this method to avoid failure. “I could if I wanted to put in enough effort” is their credo. Most people use this excuse from time to time. The students we are talking about do this all the time. So, having received 3 points for an essay, they say: “If I had not written it late at night, the score would have been higher.” Or: “If I had prepared for the exams, not just one day, but at least three days, like everyone else, I would have gotten an A, not a B.” What lies behind these phrases? Probably something along the lines of, “I’m actually a good student and I can get excellent grades if I want to work harder.” But despite working hard every day, the student gets a “3” on the exam, what then is left for him to decide: “If this is the best I can achieve, I’m probably not as capable as I thought.” to yourself."

When a teacher encounters behavior that aims to avoid failure, he can more accurately identify it if he learns to be aware of his emotions; their immediate motives and impulses. Teacher's reaction

The first significant sign is emerging emotions. When faced with behavior aimed at avoiding failure, the teacher clearly realizes his professional failure. It consists of sadness or even melancholy and one’s helplessness, because it seems impossible to help such a student, and this is sad, and the teacher feels defeated, because his attempts fail. Because the failure-avoidant student's behavior does not disrupt the class and is not aggressive toward us, we do not experience the personal resentment that accompanies other types of behavior problems.

The second significant sign is an impulsive action that you want to do immediately when faced with such behavior. The first impulse is the desire to justify and explain it with some kind of diagnosis, for which you want to immediately show the child to a doctor or psychologist. Another impulse is to leave the student alone, to give in, since our attempts are not effective.

Students react to teacher intervention with dependent behavior. Because they feel that they cannot keep up like everyone else, they expect special help from us teachers, but do absolutely nothing themselves. Such students do not even try to fulfill our requirements. At the same time, they are ready for any service to us, if it does not concern teaching on the subject. Student reactions to teacher intervention

The nature of behavior aimed at avoiding failure Relationships of the “red pencil” type. Unreasonably high expectations. Perfectionism (demanding perfection from oneself) Emphasis on competition.

For perfectionist students (a minority of this type), the strength of failure-avoiding behavior is that for them, being successful means achieving only significant, high results, even in one thing, but being unsurpassed. “It’s better than nothing,” they say. A slight correction of their behavior can correct the delusion of these young ambitious people. In the other, most of the students, we cannot find any strengths in their behavior. They are just very insecure. Their self-esteem is catastrophically low, and they need support from friends and teachers. Such children need immediate specific help. Behavioral Strengths

Principles of Prevention You should always keep in mind that when dealing with children who constantly demonstrate behavior aimed at avoiding failure, you should: 1. Support any attempts by the student to change the attitude “I can’t” to “I can.” 2. Help such children overcome barriers that isolate them from the class, draw them into productive relationships with other students.

Characteristics of Failure Avoidance Behavior Active Temper Temper: The student loses control when the pressure of responsibility becomes too strong. Passive form Postponing for later. Failure to follow through. Temporary disability. Official diagnoses. Teacher's reaction: Feeling of professional helplessness. Actions: justify yourself and explain the student’s behavior (with the help of a specialist). Student response Dependent behavior. The student continues to do nothing.

Characteristics of behavior aimed at avoiding failure Nature of behavior 1. Attitude of the “red pencil” type. 2. Unreasonable expectations of parents and teachers. 3. The student’s belief that only perfectionism is suitable for him. 4. Emphasis on competition in the classroom. Strengths Students want success: to do everything perfectly, better than everyone else. For most students there are no strengths. Principles of prevention 1. Help the student change the attitude “I can’t” to “I can.” 2. Help overcome social isolation by including the student in relationships with other people.

Measures of emergency pedagogical influence in behavior aimed at avoiding failure The basic needs of such children are not satisfied in an acceptable way; they do not feel that they belong to what is happening at school, that is: they do not feel that they are competent in the activities of learning; they do not feel needed - they are not competent in joint activities, are not confident in themselves when communicating with peers.

Strategies for pedagogical influence: 1. changing methods of explaining educational material, 2. adjusting requirements - teaching only one thing at a time, 3. teaching these kinds of children the ability to talk positively about themselves and what they do, 4. forming attitudes to mistakes as a normal and necessary phenomenon, 5. developing students’ faith in success, 6. concentrating students’ attention on successes already achieved in the past, 7. helping students “materialize” their achievements.

Changing methods of explaining educational material 1. Attractiveness. Children love bright, colorful and interesting materials. 2. Clarity. Children want to deal with materials that seem to tell them how to use them. 3. Self-control. Children realize that mistakes are forgivable and normal when learning new things if the material allows only them to know how many mistakes they have made. 4. Reusability. Children learn hands-on skills until they achieve mastery. And then the same material can be used again so that children experience the joy of error-free and easy execution.

Correction of requirements Training in only one thing at a time. Students who are afraid of failure are very easily intimidated by, for example, the amount of new material or its complexity. Teach them in small steps, using the most detailed algorithms that allow you to perform actions that are extremely simple, but error-free. The child should receive feedback on every step he takes. Any, even small, success should be noticeable, and every small mistake should be easily corrected, then the final result will be error-free.

Teaching children the ability to talk positively about themselves and what they do Poster with “spell-mottos” You can hang posters in your classroom in front of your students with the following “spells” (internal mottos): “I can do this!” “Try it - and there will definitely be results!” “When I tell myself that I can, I really can!” “I can become what I want to be.” Look for two pluses for every minus. Introduce a rule: when you hear a student speak negatively about himself and his studies, say out loud at least two positive statements about his work. This technique helps students pay attention to the words they say to themselves. It also helps transform a negative self-image into a positive one.

Forming an attitude towards mistakes as a normal and necessary phenomenon. The fear of making a mistake is what “pushes” students into the framework of behavior that avoids failures. They interpret every mistake, no matter how big or small, as proof that they can't do anything right at all. We must teach them to view mistakes as a necessary part of the learning process. This can be achieved using the following techniques: Talk about possible, typical mistakes. Show the value of a mistake as an attempt to complete a task. (A negative result is also a result.)

Focusing Students' Attention on Past Successes Every student has in his or her experience the experience of success, although it may be buried somewhere very deep. Finding such examples of experiences of success in students who fear failure is very important. This memory can become the foundation for new achievements. Use techniques such as: Analyzing past success. Repeating and consolidating past success.

Building belief in success Notice any improvements. Announce any student contribution to the overall activity. Reveal to students their strengths. Show faith in students. Acknowledge the difficulty of your assignments.

Thank you for your attention. Wish you luck! Completed by: Social teacher MBOU Secondary School No. 10 “Peresvet” Zibareva Lyudmila Nikolaevna

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Avoiding failure as the goal of “bad” behavior

One may not notice the purpose of destructive behavior, such as avoiding failure, because students who base their behavior on this principle do not offend us and do not bring chaos into the activities of the class. On the contrary, they try to be invisible and not violate school rules and requirements. The problem is that they rarely interact with teachers and classmates. Usually they remain isolated in the classroom, during class, during breaks, and in the cafeteria. Often students who are afraid of failure simply do not do anything asked by the teacher, quietly hoping that he will not notice this.

General characteristics of behavior

Recognizing failure avoidance as the hidden purpose of behavior disorder is not easy. Here are typical examples of these “silent saboteurs.”

Misha sits on the back desk in the corner and does not solve the problem after the teacher’s explanation, he simply closed the textbook and looks out the window. If you ask him: “What’s wrong? Why don’t you do what everyone else is doing?” Misha will most likely, avoiding eye contact, vaguely shrug his shoulders and slide even lower from the seat, as if trying to hide under the desk. Mathematics teacher Oleg Petrovich is perplexed: Misha never answers questions during the lesson or approving remarks during recess. And although the psychological examination data says that Misha has aptitude for mathematics, the results of his work in the classroom do not confirm this. Oleg Petrovich sometimes tries to help Misha, but in the class, besides Misha, there are 30 more students, noisy and restless, and, besides, he needs to teach a lesson, but Misha does not disrupt the lesson, sometimes you can’t even notice him, and it seems that This is what he dreams of.

Students like Misha are less troublesome than those whose goal is attention, power, or revenge. They do not violate school rules and requirements. The only problem is that they rarely come into contact with teachers and classmates. They usually remain isolated in the classroom, as well as during recess, in the cafeteria, and in the gym.

A special type of student like Misha should not be confused with those students who temporarily choose avoidance as a defense in order to make sense of their failure or regroup. Avoidance becomes a problem when a student consistently engages in this type of defense over a period of time in a manner that does not clearly contribute to the student's academic performance and social development.

Active behavior

Unlike all other types of “bad behavior,” this one rarely occurs in an active form. The problem for the teacher is not what the student does, but rather what the student does not do.

The only type of active behavior of this kind is a seizure in a situation of complete despair. Outwardly, it resembles an ordinary attack of anger: elementary school students scream, cry and kick, high school students slam the desk lid or mutter curses. However, the goals of the two types of seizures are different. The guys have fits of anger, which are designed to force the teacher to recognize the strength and power of the student. And an attack in a situation of despair is an explosion to let off steam and hide from obvious or possible failure. Students with such attacks are ready to do anything: scream, shed streams of tears - if only this emotional explosion distracts them from the failure that is obvious to them.

Passive behavior

Procrastination for later. Some students use this method to avoid failure. “I could if I wanted to put in enough effort” is their credo. Most people use this excuse from time to time. The students we are talking about do this all the time. So, having received 3 points for an essay, they say: “If I had not written it late at night, the score would have been higher.” Or: “If I had prepared for the exams, not just one day, but at least three days, like everyone else, I would have gotten an A, not a B.”

What lies behind these phrases? Probably something along the lines of, “I’m actually a good student and I can get excellent grades if I want to work harder.” But despite working hard every day, the student gets a “3” on the exam, what then is left for him to decide: “If this is the best I can achieve, I’m probably not as capable as I thought.” to yourself."

When a similar experience is repeated several times, he may be afraid to take risks and try again. It’s better to feel and be known as capable but careless (or unable to manage your time) than as diligent but stupid.

Failure to follow through. Failure to complete started projects and intentions is another type of passive behavior aimed at avoiding failure. An undertaking that will never be completed cannot be evaluated, including a low rating. Is not it?

One of my friends said: “I always laugh, remembering how I solved the problem of my wardrobe in my youth. My wardrobe was filled with half-made dresses and blouses. I was not a very capable dressmaker, but I believed that a woman with taste should not waste money on clothes from stores. I told myself, "Actually, I'm okay with this. And when I finish these things, everything will be fine." If I finished my sewing, I would have to see my complete failure too clearly. But... unfinished work allowed me to maintain an inner conviction of my competence.”

Temporary loss of ability to perform a required action. Some students avoid failure by developing and cherishing their temporary disability in every possible way. Suppose a student who does well in academic subjects is completely incapable of physical exercise. As soon as the time comes to go to physical education, he has attacks of headache or toothache, stomach cramps - everything that may be a reason not to go to class. And everything goes away instantly when physical education ends.

Justification by official medical diagnoses. Any official medical diagnoses (chronic diseases, sensory organ defects, etc.) are an excellent defense against feeling inadequate, especially if treatment is accompanied by drug therapy. These are all great excuses for avoiding trying to do something.

The best diagnostic specialists cannot distinguish a real defect from an apparent one. This is not a simulation, but an unconscious defense that the patients themselves believe in. Even an objective test often does not allow the teacher to say with certainty: the student cannot or the student does not want to. Moreover, such students themselves really do not know this. It often happens that having a small defect, a student uses it, inflating it to enormous sizes. By trying to look more unsuccessful than he really is, he can convince the teacher of this and avoid failure.

Some students do need special help with their learning. Diagnoses increase their confidence in their inadequacy. Therefore, no matter what methods and specially adapted teaching methods are selected for them, they should hear from you: “You can!”, “You can do it!” When they feel constantly supported, their self-esteem increases and the need for defensive behavior aimed at avoiding failure disappears. At the same time, failure due to organic disorders often sharply decreases.

Reaction of a teacher confronted with such behavior

When a teacher encounters behavior that aims to avoid failure, he can more accurately identify it if he learns to be aware

• your emotions;
• their immediate motives and impulses.

The first significant sign is emerging emotions. When faced with behavior aimed at avoiding failure, the teacher clearly realizes his professional failure. It consists of sadness or even melancholy and one’s helplessness, because it seems impossible to help such a student, and this is sad, and the teacher feels defeated, because his attempts fail.

Because the failure-avoidant student's behavior does not disrupt the class and is not aggressive toward us, we do not experience the personal resentment that accompanies other types of behavior problems.

The second significant sign is an impulsive action that you want to do immediately when faced with such behavior. The first impulse is the desire to justify and explain it with some kind of diagnosis, for which you want to immediately show the child to a doctor or psychologist. Another impulse is to leave the student alone, to give in, since our attempts are not effective.

Student reactions to teacher intervention

Students react to teacher intervention with dependent behavior. Because they feel that they cannot keep up like everyone else, they expect special help from us teachers, but do absolutely nothing themselves. Such students do not even try to fulfill our requirements. At the same time, they are ready for any service to us, if it does not concern teaching on the subject.

The nature of behavior aimed at avoiding failure

Red Pencil Relationships. The “red pencil” style means that the adult is mainly engaged in pointing out the child’s mistakes and failures, without paying attention to his successes and achievements. This style is useless because students themselves know perfectly well that they make mistakes, and even know how many mistakes they made in a particular case. It's not surprising that some students decide to simply not do the work. There is a misconception that if you point out your mistakes to a student, they will be motivated not to repeat them. In fact (and this has been proven by modern psychology) the opposite happens. In order for students to be motivated to change their erroneous behavior, their attention must be directed to what they are doing well in this area.

Unreasonably high expectations.When parents or teachers are unreasonably demanding of a child and expect success and achievement, behavior aimed at avoiding failure can soon be expected. Students who realize that they cannot achieve a goal simply stop trying. It is more convenient for them to be considered lazy, “not giving a damn” - because they don’t try - than to be considered “stupid” or “losers”, trying to work and not achieving what they want. They see peers and siblings who achieve success easily, and when they compare themselves to them, they stop putting in the effort. We tell them that trying in the future may become more successful, but they only believe that just trying is not enough, you need a result, certainly a result, as adults instilled in them. Stopping trying is less painful for their ego than being disappointed in a hard-won result.

Perfectionism (demanding perfection from yourself). Such students may not accept that making mistakes is a normal part of the learning process. For them, this is a tragedy that should be avoided at all costs. What a pity that so many bright, capable students do not try, do not try themselves in something new, because they believe that only an excellent result is suitable for them. Where such a high result is not immediately guaranteed, they have nothing to do.

Emphasis on competition.Emphasis on competition is another reason for failure-avoidant behavior. If you give each student a choice: whether to be a winner or a loser, then it is obvious that some of them will choose not to play at all. Some teachers love to organize competitions when teaching their subject. They are confident that achievement motivation will make the child work harder and help him not to lose in life situations in the future. Such teachers, however, fail to understand the important difference between classroom competition and the competition a person enters into as an adult. When a person competes in the workplace, “making a career,” he competes with other people in an area that he has chosen, which is meaningful to him and in which he feels competent. If I am preparing a textbook for publication, then it is obvious that, with the help of my talent in the market for similar materials, I hope to receive a high rating and in some way be better than other authors. But I’m unlikely to take part in a tailoring competition.

Students, unfortunately, cannot choose. All day long throughout their ten years of schooling, they are compared with other students on their abilities in mathematics, language, drawing, and science. And no one gives them the right to say: “I know my capabilities in English well and my attitude towards it, so I don’t even want to start a competition in this subject.” No, they are forced for their own benefit. As a result, the behavior is retreating, “sabotaging” - they “withdraw into themselves” and stop all attempts to at least slightly improve their own results.

Behavioral Strengths

For perfectionist students (a minority of this type), the strength of failure-avoiding behavior is that for them, being successful means achieving only significant, high results, even in one thing, but being unsurpassed. “It’s better than nothing,” they say. A slight correction of their behavior can correct the delusion of these young ambitious people.

In the other, most of the students, we cannot find any strengths in their behavior. They are just very insecure. Their self-esteem is catastrophically low, and they need support from friends and teachers. Such children need immediate specific help.

Principles of prevention

Always keep in mind that when dealing with children who consistently exhibit failure-avoidance behavior, you should:

• 1. Support any attempts by the student to change the “I can’t” attitude to “I can.”
• 2. Help such children overcome barriers that isolate them from the class, draw them into productive relationships with other students.

Table Characteristics of behavior aimed at avoiding failure

Dear colleagues, I have prepared several tablets for you, I hope they will help you.

Now let's return to the principles of prevention;

Emergency pedagogical measures for behavior aimed at avoiding failure

So: unsuccessful students do not feel they belong to what is happening at school, that is:

1. do not feel that they are competent in the activities of teaching,
2. do not feel needed - are not capable of joint activities,
3. lack self-confidence when communicating with peers.

Our first step is to help them realize that they are competent in the activity of learning - the leading activity of schoolchildren.

Instructional strategies that help students feel successful in their learning can be grouped as follows:

• 1. changing methods of explaining educational material,
• 2. correction of requirements - teaching only one thing at a time,
• 3. teaching these kinds of children the ability to talk positively about themselves and what they do,
• 4. formation of an attitude towards errors as a normal and necessary phenomenon,
• 5. developing students’ belief in success,
• 6. concentration of students’ attention on the successes already achieved in the past,
• 7. helping students “materialize” their achievements.

The first three techniques are appropriate and effective when working with children who avoid failure; the last three are universal and can be used in working with everyone, since absolutely all children need support as a motivating force for learning.

Strategy 1. Changing the methods of explaining educational material

Use of tangible material. Back in the 1930s, Maria Montessori drew attention to the fact that underachieving children differ from their successful peers precisely in that they do not learn abstract material. However, they can be taught if the material being taught satisfies the following requirements:

• 1. Attractiveness. Children love bright, colorful and interesting materials.
• 2. Clarity. Children want to deal with materials that seem to tell them how to use them.
• 3. Self-control. Children realize that mistakes are forgivable and normal when learning new things if the material allows only them to know how many mistakes they have made.
• 4. Reusability. Children learn hands-on skills until they achieve mastery. And then the same material can be used again so that children experience the joy of error-free and easy execution.

The principles of selection of educational material by M. Montessori are still relevant today. Especially if they are embodied in computer programs. Of course, computer programs do not allow you to touch the material, but they are attractive, understandable, and allow you to exercise self-control and reuse the skill. So students who don't even want to pick up a pen in class can sit in front of a computer for hours and learn basic skills.

The computer, of course, cannot replace you, the teacher. But if basic knowledge and skills have not been acquired, it is better to let the student entrust the process of “leveling” and “pulling up” not to you, but to the computer.

Introduction of additional teaching methods. For this:

• prepare special programs for teaching those who are lagging behind, other than for the whole class,
• establish the reasons for the delay using special diagnostics: the level of intellectual development of the child may be normal or even high, or maybe not,
• allow and support work in pairs: a high-achieving student and a poor student; student tutoring is a very good way to educate both students - both the “strong” and the “weak”,
• talk with the parents of an underperforming student - maybe it makes sense for them to seek help from tutors or place the child in a correction class.

Strategy 2. Correction of requirements - teaching only one thing at a time

Students who are afraid of failure are very easily intimidated by, for example, the amount of new material or its complexity. Teach them in small steps, using the most detailed algorithms that allow you to perform actions that are extremely simple, but error-free. The child should receive feedback on every step he takes. Any, even small, success should be noticeable, and every small mistake should be easily corrected, then the final result will be error-free.

In domestic educational psychology there is a direction of research that meets these requirements. This is the theory of the gradual formation of mental actions, created by P.Ya. Galperin, N.F. Talyzina and their students. Specific formative techniques for children of different ages, perhaps, only today can be appreciated. Among the most well-known are methods of teaching careful writing, classification and other elementary logical techniques, concepts of measure and number, memorizing poems, recognizing visual objects by essential features, etc.

Strategy 3: Teaching children to speak positively about themselves and what they do

Poster with “spell-mottos”. It is clear that children who consistently exhibit failure-avoidance behavior tell themselves, “I can’t do this,” “It’s too hard,” “I’ll never do it right.” Help students change their inner speech. “You can do it if you think you can!” - says the wise teacher to his student. “Repeat this every day, especially in relation to what you are doing poorly.”

You can hang posters in your classroom in front of your students with the following “spells” (internal mottos):

“I can do this!”

“Try it - and there will definitely be results!”

“When I tell myself that I can, I really can!”

“I can become what I want to be.”

Look for two pluses for every minus. Introduce a rule: when you hear a student speak negatively about himself and his studies, say out loud at least two positive statements about his work. This technique helps students pay attention to the words they say to themselves. It also helps transform a negative self-image into a positive one. At first, students feel some awkwardness when they hear good things about themselves, but... “you quickly get used to good things.” One condition: the teacher’s remarks must be extremely specific.

Declaration "I can" It’s as if a broken record is playing in the head of a child who avoids failure. As soon as he receives a task to solve, it automatically turns on: “You can’t, nothing will work,” she repeats. To “change the record,” ask the student to quietly repeat the following two phrases: “I can solve this fraction problem,” “I am smart enough to answer all of these questions.”

Ask him to repeat this before a difficult task or when you see signs of growing insecurity. Place the card with the text of the spell on his desk along with the task card.

Strategy 4. Forming an attitude towards errors as normal and necessary occurrences

Strategy 6. Focusing students' attention on past successes

The fear of making a mistake is what pushes students into failure-avoiding behavior. They interpret every mistake, no matter how big or small, as proof that they can't do anything right at all. We must teach them to view mistakes as a necessary part of the learning process. This can be achieved by the following methods:

• Tell us about possible, typical mistakes.
• Show the value of a mistake as an attempt to complete a task. (A negative result is also a result.)
• Minimize the consequences of mistakes made.

Every student has in his or her experience the experience of success, although it may be buried somewhere very deep. Finding such examples of experiences of success in students who fear failure is very important. This memory can become the foundation for new achievements. Use techniques such as:

• Analysis of past success.
• Repeating and consolidating past success.

Strategy 5. Forming faith in success

Help students believe in success. They must believe that they are able not only to solve a problem in the subject, but also to change themselves and raise their intellectual level. To do this, use the following techniques:

• Notice any improvements.
• Announce any student contribution to the overall activity
• Show students their strengths.
• Show faith in students.
• Acknowledge the difficulty of your assignments.

“If something cannot be seen or touched, then it does not exist,” many children think. 1 Unfortunately, these intangibles include their own development and growth through the learning process. For students who need "tangible" feedback, use the following ideas:

• Stickers or notes like “I can!”
• Albums of achievements.
• Stories about yourself yesterday, today, tomorrow.

If students heard and saw recognition of their achievements as much as they were told of their mistakes, they would not constantly resort to behavior based on fear of failure. Success in any area - no matter that this area seems insignificant to us - must be noticed. By receiving recognition for their achievement from others, especially from teachers and the class teacher, students with fears begin to feel that they can successfully interact with the teacher and contribute to the classroom community. Techniques to help recognize student achievements:

• Applause.
• Presentation of awards and medals.
• Exhibitions of achievements.
• Self-approval.

Table Measures of emergency pedagogical intervention when interacting with students avoiding failure

Strategies	Technicians
Changing methods of explanation	Use of tangible material. Introduction of additional teaching methods
Correction of requirements	Learning one thing at a time.
Learning the ability to talk positively about yourself and your activities	Posters with “spell-mottos”. Statement of two “pluses” for every “minus” of the student. Declaration "I can"
Forming an attitude towards errors as normal and necessary phenomena	Stories about typical mistakes. Demonstrating respect for mistakes. Minimizing the consequences of mistakes made.
Forming faith in success	Highlight any improvements. Expression of gratitude for any contribution to the overall activity. The ability to see the strengths of your students and tell them about it. Demonstrating faith in your students. Acknowledging the difficulty of your assignments. talking with sarcasm we insist that we are right, we read morals, we put students in a corner, feign indignation imitate students we command, we demand, we press, Our mistakes when dealing with a tense situation: raise our voices we say a phrase like: “I’m still the teacher here,” we leave the last word for ourselves, we use postures and gestures that “press”: clenched jaws and clasped hands, talking “through clenched teeth”, talking with sarcasm we evaluate the student’s character, act with superiority, use physical strength, we involve other people who are not involved in the conflict, we insist that we are right, we read morals, we put students in a corner, making excuses, defending ourselves or “giving a bribe”, we formulate generalizations like: “You are all the same,” feign indignation we find fault, we harass someone by nagging, imitate students compare one student with another, we command, we demand, we press, We encourage the student by actually rewarding him for “bad” behavior. The psychological syndrome of chronic failure develops at the end of preschool or primary school age. The interpersonal developmental situation in this syndrome is characterized by a discrepancy between the expectations of adults and the child’s achievements. The risk of its occurrence appears when systematic classes begin with a child, the results of which do not satisfy the parents and/or teacher. As a rule, in early and middle preschool age, adults do not show increased interest in how successfully the child copes with certain tasks. The attitude towards him, his assessment as “good” or “bad” is determined by completely different criteria - whether he behaves well, whether he obeys his parents and teacher, etc. During the period of preparation for school or a little later, at the beginning of school, the attitude of adults to the successes and failures of the child changes. A “good” child is, first of all, a child who knows a lot, studies successfully, and solves problems with ease. Parents often have a sharply negative attitude towards the difficulties and failures that are almost inevitable at the beginning of schooling. Children in need of correctional assistance (due to a sensory defect or mental retardation) often find themselves in a similar situation already at the age of three. The same effect is possible with high expectations from parents who are concerned about the child’s achievements from early childhood, begin to teach him to read and write at the age of three, and are dissatisfied with his insufficiently rapid progress. The reaction of the social environment, specific to chronic failure, is a constant negative assessment, comments, dissatisfaction from parents and teachers. As a result, the child develops and maintains a high level of anxiety. His self-confidence decreases and his self-esteem decreases. The position of a junior student with chronic failure is the idea of ​​himself as a hopelessly bad student. These are the main features of the psychological profile in this syndrome. The natural consequences of a high level of anxiety are unproductive waste of time on unimportant details, distraction from work by reasoning about “how bad it will be if I fail again, if I get a bad grade again,” refusal of tasks that already seem too difficult for the child. The constant fear of making a mistake distracts the child’s attention from the meaning of the tasks he performs; he fixates on random trifles, losing sight of the main thing. Fears force him to check his work repeatedly, which leads to additional unnecessary waste of time and effort. Failure to know effective methods of checking also makes it pointless, since it still does not help to find and correct the error. Trying to do the best job possible (perfectionism) ends up making things worse. Low performance (an inevitable consequence of a constant state of anxiety) is a central feature of activity in the presence of chronic failure. This creates a vicious circle: anxiety, disrupting the child’s activities, leads to failure and negative evaluations from others. Failure breeds anxiety, helping to perpetuate failure. The further you go, the more difficult it becomes to break this circle, which is why failure becomes “chronic”. The more responsible work a child does, the more worried he becomes. If the level of anxiety is already elevated, then its additional increase (excitement) further reduces work results. Because of this, important tests and exams are performed not better, but worse than everyday tasks. A dependence arises that surprises many parents and teachers: as motivation increases, achievement decreases. In addition to increased anxiety, there is another condition without which chronic failure does not occur. This is a fairly high degree of socialization of the child, an attitude of diligence, obedience, and uncritical fulfillment of the demands of adults. If there is no such attitude, then he is more or less indifferent to the discrepancy between his achievements and the expectations of adults. Of course, such a child’s anxiety level may also increase, but for different reasons. Parents themselves often talk about whether a child has a performance mindset, telling them how long he sits at lessons (although he may be constantly distracted from the tasks at hand). A psychological examination reveals the child’s emphasis on strictly fulfilling the examiner’s requirements, as well as a desire to avoid unusual and ambiguous tasks that are assessed by the child as particularly difficult. Anya B. is 9 years old. She is in third grade and for the second year now she has been known as a “B student,” but for some reason both her parents and her teacher have put up with this for some reason. Now the teacher's patience has run out. She said that Anya should either be kept in the second year or transferred to a facility for the mentally retarded. A psychological examination showed that Anya has a low, but normal level of mental development for her age. The stock of knowledge is somewhat below the norm, but not so much as to make it impossible to study in a public school. Increased fatigue, decreased. This is probably a consequence of overload: the girl’s father says that she has a lot of extra classes - this, in his opinion, is the only way to teach her what the school curriculum requires. Anya’s main psychological feature is a very high level of anxiety and restlessness. She is always afraid of making a mistake. Because of this, sometimes she completely refuses to complete tasks that she is quite capable of. Sometimes, having nevertheless taken up a task, she pays so much attention to the little things that she no longer has the strength or time left for the main thing. When drawing, she uses an eraser more than a pencil. This doesn’t make much sense, since the new line she draws is usually no better than the erased one, but she spends twice or three times as much time on each drawing as necessary. The primary reasons that ultimately lead to chronic failure can be different. The most common prerequisite is the child’s insufficient preparation for school, which leads to difficulties from the first days of school. For example, underdevelopment of fine motor skills (the ability to control fine movements of the fingers and hand) immediately causes failures in learning to write. The lack of formation of voluntary attention leads to difficulties in organizing all the work in the lesson; the child does not remember, “ignores” the teacher’s assignments and instructions. Often the cause of the first failures is a learning disability (mental retardation) or a discrepancy between the teaching methods used and the child’s capabilities. In the future, chronic failure develops on this basis, and, even if the delay has already been compensated, educational achievements do not increase: now they are supported by an increased level of anxiety. In cases of particularly severe mental retardation, and especially in cases of mental retardation, chronic failure syndrome does not arise: in these cases, the child’s criticality is reduced, and he simply does not notice his own failures and lagging behind other children. In some cases, the “weak link” that triggers the vicious circle is parents’ inflated expectations. The normal, average school achievements of a child who was considered a “prodigy” are perceived by parents (and therefore by himself) as failures. Real achievements are not noticed or are not valued highly enough. As a result, a mechanism begins to work, leading to an increase in anxiety and, as a result, to real failure. It is possible that an increased level of anxiety is initially formed not because of school failures, but under the influence of family conflicts or an incorrect parenting style. The general lack of self-confidence caused by this and the tendency to react in panic to any difficulties are carried over later into school life. Then the already described syndrome of chronic failure develops, and even with the normalization of family relationships, anxiety does not disappear: now it is supported by school failure. Regardless of the initial cause, development according to the type of chronic failure proceeds approximately the same. Ultimately, in all cases there is a combination of low achievements, sharply increased anxiety, self-doubt and low assessment of the child by others (parents, teachers). All these disorders are reversible, but until they are overcome, academic success, of course, continues to decline. Often parents, trying to overcome the difficulties their child has encountered, organize daily additional classes (as we saw in Anya’s example). This increases asthenization and, consequently, increases the overall disadvantage of the situation and further inhibits development. For a psychologist, the most important indicator indicating the presence of chronic failure is “anxious” disorganization of activity (that is, disturbances in planning and self-control caused by an increased level of anxiety). “Alarming” disorganization should be distinguished from the initial lack of formation of the organization of actions. One of the characteristic indicators that disorganization is caused precisely by increased anxiety is a deterioration in results when motivation increases. The “anxious” disintegration of activity (as opposed to the initially low level of its organization) is indicated by numerous symptoms of anxiety, both observed in behavior and manifested in tests. If anxiety is high, but there are no pronounced disturbances in the organization of activities, then we can only talk about the threat of chronic failure, that the child is in a high-risk zone, and not about an existing psychological syndrome. Chronic failure is a neurotic psychological syndrome. During its development, neurotic symptoms are often added to the primary psychological symptoms: tics, obsessive movements and thoughts, enuresis, sleep disturbances, etc. Sometimes (but, of course, not always) the appearance of neurotic symptoms paradoxically helps to overcome the original syndrome. Parents, concerned about their child's illness, stop paying as much attention as before to his school failures. This change in the reaction of the social environment opens the vicious circle that supported chronic failure. From the “underperforming” category, the child falls into the “sick” category. Another frequent consequence of long-term chronic failure is a drop in educational motivation and the emergence of a negative attitude towards school and learning. In this case, the child’s initial high socialization by the end of primary school age may be replaced by an antisocial attitude. For many children, constant failure over time leads to the emergence of a pessimistic approach to reality and the development of a depressive state. Signs of depression are characteristic of chronic failure that began long ago. As a rule, they appear towards the end of primary school and mark the formation of a new psychological syndrome - total regression. This syndrome is described in detail below. Why does a child study poorly? Total regression During adolescence, children with chronic failure often make a transition from the position of a bad student to the self-awareness of a hopelessly unsuccessful person. This marks the formation of a new psychological syndrome - total regression. Among the features of the psychological profile, the depressive mood background begins to play a central role. The activity is characterized by a refusal of any manifestations of activity, of communication with both adults and peers. In response, the social environment “turns away” from the teenager, which deepens depression and strengthens the idea of ​​one’s worthlessness. Alexey P. is 17 years old. He is the only child in the family and lives with his parents. Over the past year, Alexey has not been studying or working. He spends almost all his time at home listening to “hard rock”. In the past, he read a lot, but he stopped this activity a long time ago. He has no friends, and he hardly communicates with his parents. At the same time, he often turns to them with certain demands: to buy him a more modern tape recorder, more fashionable clothes, etc. (regarding the purchase of clothes, the parents express bewilderment: why does he need them if he doesn’t go anywhere?). Parents find it difficult to determine exactly when the manifestations that bother them appeared. According to them, he "was always a poor student, but was a good, obedient boy." As a teenager, he began skipping school, which was the cause of his first truly serious family conflicts. At first, his parents were afraid that he “had fallen into bad company,” but they soon realized that he had no company—neither “bad” nor good—(although he had had several friends before). Alexey was threatened with expulsion from school for absenteeism, but a year ago, without waiting for expulsion, he himself finally stopped studying. A psychological examination revealed that Alexey had pronounced depressive tendencies. The young man perceives life as meaningless and has no plans for the future. He is very self-centered, unable to change his point of view and understand the position of other people (in particular, his own parents). Self-esteem is reduced. Alexey assesses his prospects very low. Total regression is one of the most severe psychological syndromes of adolescence and youth. It is typical not only of a stop in development, but also of a loss of previous achievements (which explains its name). This is clearly seen in the example given: so, if in the past Alexey showed a high interest in reading, now this interest is absent; Previously existing contacts with peers were also lost. Total regression is a neuroticizing and psychopathizing psychological syndrome, with an even more pronounced neuroticizing effect than that of chronic failure. Often it develops against the background of an existing neurosis. Withdrawal into illness, which in case of chronic failure sometimes leads to a reduction of the original psychological syndrome, does not perform a similar function in case of total regression. On the contrary, it can lead to a deepening of the condition, further reducing the teenager’s activity. This syndrome is also fraught with serious disturbances in the formation of personality. Recommendations for parents in case of chronic failure of a child The main thing that adults should do with such a “diagnosis” is to provide the child with a sense of success. To do this, when assessing his work, you need to be guided by several simple rules. The main thing is to under no circumstances compare his very mediocre results with the standard (the requirements of the school curriculum, adult models, the achievements of more successful classmates). The child should be compared only with himself and praised for only one thing: for improving his own results. If in yesterday’s test he correctly completed only one example out of ten, and in today’s test - two, then this should be noted as a real success, which should be highly appreciated by adults and without any condescension or irony. If today’s result is lower than yesterday’s, then you just need to express firm confidence that tomorrow’s will be higher. It is very important to find at least some area in which the child can be successful and realize himself. This area must be given high value in his eyes. Whatever he is successful in: in sports, in purely everyday household chores, in computer games or in drawing, this should become the subject of keen and close interest of his parents. Under no circumstances should a child be blamed for failure in school work. On the contrary, it should be emphasized that once he has learned to do something well, he will gradually learn everything else. Sometimes adults think that the child has no ability for anything at all. However, in reality this almost never happens. Maybe he's a good runner? Then we need to send him to the athletics section (and not say that he doesn’t have time for this because he doesn’t have time to do his homework). Perhaps he knows how to carefully work with small parts? Then he should enroll in an aircraft modeling club. A child suffering from chronic failure should not just be praised more and scolded less (which is obvious), but praised precisely when he does something (and not when he sits passively, not disturbing others). Parents and teachers need to recover from impatience: the wait for academic success will take a long time, since a decrease in anxiety cannot happen in one week. And even then the “tail” of accumulated gaps in knowledge will make itself felt for a long time. School should remain for a very long time an area of ​​gentle assessment that reduces anxiety (which in itself leads to some improvement in results). One should be prepared for the fact that school matters may remain outside the sphere of children's self-affirmation, therefore the painfulness of the school situation should be reduced by any means. First of all, it is necessary to reduce the value of school grades (but not knowledge!). In particularly serious cases, one has to devalue a number of other school requirements and values ​​(for example, turn a blind eye to the fact that homework is not fully completed). Thanks to these measures, the child’s school anxiety gradually decreases, and since he continues to work in class, some achievements accumulate. It is important that parents do not show their child their concern about his educational failures. So that, while being sincerely interested in his school life, they shift the emphasis of their interests to the relationships of children in the class, preparation for holidays, class duties, excursions and trips, but do not fixate on the area of ​​failure - school grades. The area of ​​activity in which the child is successful and can assert himself and regain lost faith in himself should be emphasized as extremely significant, highly valued and of keen interest to them. Such a revision of traditional school values ​​makes it possible to prevent the most serious result of chronic failure - a child’s sharply negative attitude towards learning, which by adolescence can turn a chronically unsuccessful child into a complete hooligan. At the same time, another frequent consequence of chronic failure does not arise - total regression, leading to deep passivity and indifference. In general, the more parents and teachers fixate a child on school, the worse it is for his school success. In the end, let's return to the question posed by Anya's parents: does it make sense to leave a child with chronic failure for the second year or transfer him to a auxiliary school? The answer to this question is, of course, negative. The girl’s abilities are quite sufficient to master the educational material. You just need to make the classes more lively and interesting and stop constantly scolding her, causing in her approximately the same state that occurs in a rabbit when he sees a boa constrictor. Then she will certainly be able to reach the “C” level, which is already quite good. Leaving her for the second year will only further reduce her self-confidence (although there is almost nowhere to lower it), and will further deepen her chronic lack of success. Moreover, Anya should not be sent to a school for the mentally retarded (or for children with developmental delays). These schools are not intended for children with severely increased anxiety, but for those with a reduced level of mental development. For some children, learning disabilities lead to chronic failure. In this case, a special school will be useful and, perhaps, transfer to such a school will be enough to overcome the difficulties that have arisen. But Anya has a different reason for her difficulties, which means that different measures must be taken. With this psychological syndrome, there is little that can be done with “home remedies”. It is extremely advisable to refer the child to psychotherapy. Most often, with this syndrome, family relationships as a whole are so seriously disrupted that family psychotherapy is sometimes needed. If a child has severe depressive symptoms, a consultation with a psychiatrist is necessary. In any case, you need to try to convince the parents to treat the teenager as tolerantly and kindly as possible, understanding that his condition is not normal from a psychological (and possibly medical) point of view. 13.10.2013 15:54:20, Elka45 My child does not have total academic failure. There is failure in mathematics. A particular bottleneck is oral counting. Reasons: he slows down, forgets the first action when doing the second, etc.. As a result - 2 and 3 for the oral score, 4 for the rest of the work, in the end a solid 3 in the quarter. And the child turns out to be a C student. He is very worried about this. I studied on my own almost to the point of insanity, last year I hired a tutor, but there was practically no result. What do you recommend on how to help him? To use presentation previews, create a Google account and log in to it: https://accounts.google.com Slide captions: Preview: School failure The disciple is not a vessel to be filled, but a torch to be lit. K.D.Ushinsky Recently, in our educational institution, the problem of school failure has increased - the discrepancy between a student’s educational achievements and the requirements of the school curriculum. The number of underachieving schoolchildren (the results of educational activities, which are much lower than the requirements of the curriculum) exceeds 30% of the total number of students. From 15 to 40% of primary school students experience various difficulties in the process of schooling. Understanding the reasons for school failure, finding ways to overcome it, and teaching children to learn is the goal of every educational institution. The task of the teaching staff: create an atmosphere at school that is conducive to the development of the personality of each student; to form in students a sense of self-esteem, self-respect, significance, and uniqueness of their personality. The importance of the school period in a person’s life cannot be overestimated. Many of an adult's problems can be better understood by looking back to his school years. The point is not whether a person studied successfully or not, but how comfortable he felt at school, how his relationships with teachers and classmates developed. It is under the influence of these circumstances that certain personal qualities are formed. The main indicator of a student's success is grades. It is precisely the goal of getting a “good” grade at any cost that teachers and parents encourage students to achieve. Reasons for school failure Neuropsychological(individual characteristics of the anatomical maturation of the child’s brain): The requirements of the educational process are ahead of the age-related readiness to perform the tasks assigned to the child; Conditions of the social environment in which the child grows up and which interferes with the normal period of development (intrafamily relationships, poor living conditions). Psychological and pedagogical(child’s age, didactic and methodological teaching system): The age of the child starting systematic schooling; Didactic and methodological system of education (traditional or according to developmental curricula, focused on “tomorrow” in the mental development of the child). Psychological(psychological readiness for schooling, intelligence, temperament): The discrepancy between the requirements imposed by the educational process on the level of implementation of the student’s cognitive activity and the real level of his mental development (attention, memory, thinking); Psychological readiness (motivation, intelligence, will, nature of social development); Temperament (sanguine, choleric, phlegmatic, melancholic). As a result of many years of work, the teaching staff of the school came to the conclusion that education should be consistent with the level of development of the child, and education in developmental programs raises the mental development of students to a higher level. The influence of temperament on academic success Sanguine type of temperament Features of temperament: liveliness, mobility, quick response to external events, relatively easy experience of failures and troubles. : convince of the need to bring the work started to the end, for a deeper assimilation of the material, pay attention to interesting aspects of the task, encourage, talk about work prospects, develop a sense of responsibility, self-demandingness, and perseverance in work. As positive aspects, sanguine students have energy, quick reactions, ingenuity, and speed of transition from one type of activity to another. They are cheerful and are leaders by nature. Disadvantages include superficiality in working with educational material and therefore superficiality in its assimilation, restlessness, insufficient endurance, instability and insufficient depth of feelings, lack of persistent cognitive and professional interests, “scatteredness” and diversity of interests. Choleric type of temperament Features of temperament: speed, impetuosity, the ability to devote oneself to a task with exceptional passion, but are not balanced, prone to violent emotional outbursts, sudden changes in mood. Recommendations for working with students: create a calm, balanced atmosphere in the social environment, prevent the appearance of affects (switch attention from the object that caused negative emotions to some “neutral” object). Choleric students are characterized by hot temper, harshness, lack of restraint, intolerance to comments addressed to them, and high self-esteem. The fast pace of writing has a negative impact on its quality (poor handwriting, missing letters); haste when reading leads to underreading of words or to their incorrect reading and, as a consequence, to poor understanding of what was read, errors when performing computational operations. The reason for the difficulties is the natural high speed of nervous processes. Phlegmatic temperament type Features of temperament: slowness, equanimity, stability of aspirations, constancy of mood, weak external expression of the state of mind. Recommendations for working with students: develop composure, organization, and the ability not to waste personal time on “building up.” It is useful to seat such a student with a more active classmate. Sukhomlinsky called phlegmatic students “silent slow-witted people.” He wrote: “The teacher wants the student to answer the question quickly, he doesn’t care much about how the child thinks, take out the answer and get a mark. Little does he know that it is impossible to speed up the flow of a slow but mighty river. Let it flow in accordance with its nature, its waters will definitely reach the intended milestone, but don’t rush, please, don’t be nervous, don’t whip the mighty river with a birch vine – nothing will help.” Such children need more time to complete cognitive tasks, practical exercises, and prepare an oral answer at the board. They accept that they move and speak slower than other children and make no attempt to act at a fast pace. Melancholic type of temperament Features of temperament: slight vulnerability, mental fatigue, increased accuracy, diligence, tendency to deeply experience even minor failures. Melancholic students quickly develop mental fatigue. Weakness of nervous processes also means reduced resistance to the influence of failures. They have an inhibitory, disorganizing effect on such children. On the contrary, systematic encouragement, instilling faith in one’s own strengths, and the discovery of untapped reserves gives such a student the opportunity to demonstrate the advantages of his temperament (increased accuracy, diligence, thoroughness), which leads to academic success. Types of underachieving schoolchildren Type I characterized by low quality of mental activity and a positive attitude towards learning Characteristic signs: use habitual template ways of working even when new problems cannot be solved with their help. The pace of the class is beyond their ability, so they do everything hastily and carelessly. Failure in learning is not a source of moral distress for them. The main disadvantage is pronounced mental passivity. To achieve good results, they can cheat, eavesdrop, or deceive. They obey the requirements of the class team and establish good relationships with them. Develop mental activity. Conduct educational work. Type II characterized by a high quality of mental activity and a negative attitude towards learning Characteristic signs: self-organization in the process of work, success in learning depends on whether they like the subject or not. They avoid active mental work in class and when preparing homework in subjects that require great mental effort and tension. They compensate for their failure in learning by conflicts with classmates, protests, and demonstrative involvement in extraneous activities in class. Carry out educational work aimed at changing the properties of their personality, to form a new attitude towards school and learning. III type characterized by low quality of mental activity and a careless or negative attitude towards learning with partial or complete loss of the student’s position Characteristic signs: experience significant difficulties in mastering knowledge, do not master teaching techniques, and are careless about learning and the results of their activities. In the process of cognitive activity, they do not go beyond the boundaries of firmly acquired everyday concepts. Being inferior in mental development to their classmates, they are burdened by their stay at school. They strive to subordinate the unstable part of students to their influence, to use their services during non-school and academic hours. Their school interests are related to physical education and labor lessons. Outside of school, they are interested in wandering the street, gambling, sitting in the hallway, and more. Formation of cognitive needs. Overcoming negative inclinations (to form the correct attitude towards work and educational work in particular through socially useful activities in a team). The teaching staff of the school has developed a psychological and pedagogical approach to low-performing students: providing measured adult assistance when schoolchildren perform intellectual tasks; offer feasible tasks to complete independently; be sure to encourage the correct completion of tasks; provide individual and differentiated approaches to learning; fill knowledge gaps; during the survey, do not rush to answer, give the opportunity to think about it, familiarize yourself with visual aids; when explaining new material, take into account the nature of the students’ cognitive activity, the pace of their assimilation, and make more widespread use of visual teaching aids; contact them more often with questions and involve them in discussions. Did you like the article? 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