PSYCHO-DIDACTIC FUNDAMENTALS OF THE FORMATION OF THE PUPILS’ SUBJECT GEOGRAPHICAL COMPETENCE

Abstract

The article aims to determine the relationships of the formation of pupils’ subject geographical competence and their intellectual development, self-development and socialization. The article specifies the relevance of the concept of competence-based approach
to geographical education through the claim that it is a competence-based approach that allows to solve the problem of the contradiction between the need to ensure the quality of geographical education and the inability to solve it in a traditional way. The necessity of the implementation of the competence-based approach to teaching geography on the basis of understanding the psychological and didactic foundations for the teaching and learning activities of pupils was proved. It was determined that psycho-didactics integrates didactics, which studies teacher’s activities, and psychology that studies pupil’s activities in the learning process; the object and the purpose of psychodidactics as a science were defined. The article substantiates and discovers the structural components of pupil’s geographic competence, namely, the content (geographical knowledge), the activity-based (geographical skills and expertise), mental (geographical world concept, that is the ability to think in a spatial and a complex way), ideological and value (emotional and value attitude to environment and human activities in it that include the views, beliefs, ideals and values of pupils) and applied (the experience to apply to the results of pupils’ creative activity in the study of geographical objects, processes and phenomena). It is confirmed that the development of pupils’ geographic competence is possible only if the teacher understands the psycho-didactic foundations of pupils’ learning: cognitive interests and characteristics of cognitive processes (sensation and perception, attention, memory, thinking, imagination, speech). The analysis on the impact of cognitive processes for the organization of pupils’ cognitive activity in the process of geographical competence formation is conducted. It is notified that the level of professionalism of geography teachers is defined by its ability to implement all elements of the competence-based approach to training under the psychodidactic principles of the geographical competence formation.