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Philosophy and psychology of personality self-development: foundation for meaningful education

In the process of self-conscious evolution, humankind came to understand that a human being is not merely a once-created “product”, but “an unfinished, uncompleted being in and with a likewise unfinished reality” (Freire, 2004, p.84). This historical movement of “becoming” in order “to be” engages people as being aware of their incompletion and striving to improve, thus to enrich their human existence... (M.Heidegger, S. Kierkegaard, M. Buber). Personality and identity have been of great interest for world philosophers from ancient to modern times. The major reason for this is a constant rebirth of belief in human beings’ moral power and spirit at numerous social epochs of crisis, and hope for world survival. Human self-strengthening nature and human aspiration for meaning in life have become a highly spiritual unity, because people have always desired to build their lives on the basis of spiritual and moral interpersonal relations (spiritual relations stand here for human relations, characterized by openness to people and to the world: Kovbasyuk, 2000).

The idea of man becoming the author of him/her self has been deeply discussed in

Russian philosophy of the “silver age”. The value of individuality and her/his ability of self - creation were emphasized by Rozanov (1990), who described creativity as a purely human phenomenon. “A person creates, i.e., brings something new to the world by the exceptional and unique nature she/he possesses” (Rozanov, Ibid, p.134). The belief that each person acquires a unique identity is fundamental in meaningful education, which supports the exceptional character of each individual to create and recreate self and realty. As William Glasser (1975) states: “The single basic need that people have is ...identity: the belief that we are someone in distinction to others, and that the someone is important and worthwhile” (p.31).

Contemplating the nature of moral self-perfection, Soloviev (1996) stressed that a person does not exist separately from other people, “…according to the moral foundations of life, we hold the process of human perfection as a collective process, which a collective person goes through, since the process of self-formation takes place in a family, among people, in mankind” (p.64). This assertion emphasizes the importance of two critical issues: one holds that it is not only the individual efforts of people toward self-perfection, that are valuable, but also the general efforts of all people to perfect themselves and society, i.e., he sees a person as the author of general social moral self-development. The other emphasizes the importance of human-world relationship, which is affirmed by Freire (2004): “since people do not exist apart from the world, apart from reality, the movement of becoming must begin with the human-world relationship” (p.85). Thus, from an axiological point of view, the problem of human-world relationship is humankind’s central problem, as the pursuit of full humanity cannot be carried out in isolation, but only in cooperation between people. In the context of meaningful education, cooperation is regarded as a major characteristic of dialogical learning/teaching and value-orientation to the world, and becomes both a prerequisite and a consequence of such education.

A personality is constantly changing her/his life in order to meet various unexpected challenges of reality, so she/he cannot help being in need of expedient self-formation and this is the only way for a personality “to overcome her/his limits” (Berdyaev, 1999). Internal movement of a personality toward her/his perfection is her/his determination of personal freedom. This philosophy suggests a very important idea of viewing a person from the point of “philosophy of values” (Berdyaev, 1999), which is contrary to the “philosophy of benefit”/“social need”. The “philosophy of values” holds that personality is the highest value in the world and should be free to choose a degree of social interaction/ ways of service rather than meet the needs of society.

Every epoch brings its own characteristics to understanding this issue. Moreover, every philosophical school includes its own specific interpretation of this phenomenon. The critical

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social theory affirms the priority of “beings for themselves” over “beings for others” (Freire,

2004), which brings into focus the power of utilitarian forces to restrict personal freedom to grow, related to power relationship between teacher and student in authoritarian education. Meaningful education breaks the vertical patterns and fulfils its practice as the practice of partnership between teachers and students, when “they become jointly responsible for a process in which all grow” (Freire, Ibid, p.80).

Contemporary Russian philosophers increasingly understand that individual life is an individual human creation, and acknowledge that pressure of external circumstances, which once would make a person “cave in”, would instead meet his/her internal resistance, or in other words, his/her meanings, will, and spirit. Thus, they emphasize the primacy of personality, her/his internal activity to self-develop and self-create as well as individual consciousness in the system of social self-movement (Bueva, 2004, Volkov, 2000, Yakovez, 1997 and others). Although socialization and enculturation of a personality are not neglected and are in fact recognized as crucial factors of individual development, modern Russian philosophy prioritizes the active nature of personality in constructing her/his life strategy. “A person being a demiurge, a creator of his/her own present and future life, has to take into account the laws of the surrounding world … and to use these laws in order to achieve his/her goals” (Yakovez, 1997, p.45). The combination of the two pre-conditions, socialization and active nature of personality, constitutes the new understanding of the concept of human nature in the sense of its ability to fully “unfold” itself in order to fulfil the inborn mission of self-creation.

Our view is that at some point during/in personality development external social circumstances do play a strong role in determining individual behaviour and life strategy. This awakens and even strengthens some personal qualities of an individual, and thus advances her/him to movement and development. But the growing role of human internal force is becoming crucial when we speak of personality as a self-growth of the human being. This idea of personality development is viewed at the crossroad of two axes of determinants, namely the influence of external forces of the society and internal forces of a human being. This concept makes it possible to understand that humans are capable of growing from a weak adaptive existence to a strong purposeful and self-building life, which characterizes a personality. This concept also makes it clearer that education, as a social institution, can either support individuals in personal growth, or suppress it. Meaningful education seeks to foster students’ purposeful self-creation in order for them to become responsible and globally aware personalities, capable of transforming selves and the world to a more humane place to live. Its relationship to global learning is evident: it heightens self and global awareness of students, develops multiple thinking perspectives as well as value-orientation to the world.

Creating conditions for students’ personal growth, we, as educators, need to address psychological tools of personality selfdevelopment and develop related educational approaches. We will focus on the following three, which are viewed by the following authors as a basis for underpinning values of meaningful education: interactive character of human nature (Rubinstein, 1957, Myasishev, 1989), reflection (Zvenigorodskaya, 2001, King, 1993), and human subjective power (Leontiev, 1975; Zinchenko, 2004).

Interactive character of human nature preconditions the dialogic nature of personality self-development. The related theory (Bakhtin, 1990) confirms that dialogic interaction of an individual with her/himself and with other people constitutes the main factor of personal selfcreation. Dialogue is viewed by Freire as “an existential necessity” (Freire, 2004), as it enhances self-esteem and self-worth. It entails partnership of students and teachers. “Through dialogue, the teacher-of-the students, and the students-of-the teacher cease to exist and a new term emerges: teacher-student with students-teachers” (Freire, Ibid, p.80). True dialogic interaction cannot exist without hope and love, humility and faiththe values which constitute the main fabric of human life and become its core. “The human heart is woven of human

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relations to other people; what she/he is worthy of is fully determined by what human relations she/he aspires to and what human relations to other people she/he is capable to establish” (Rubenstein, 1957, p.167). Consequently, what relations students and teachers aspire to establish in the classroom will determine their value orientations/hierarchy, as these relationships are internalized by people (Vygotsky, 1989) and then determine their behavioural patterns and attitudes toward the rest of the world.

Meaningful dialogue entails reflection “to develop power to perceive critically the way they exist in the world with which and in which they find themselves; they come to see the world not as static reality, but as a reality in process, in transformation” (Freire, Ibid, p.81).

Although the dialectical relations of people and the world exist independently of how these relations are perceived, we agree with Freire that the form of action people adopt is to a large extent a function of how they perceive themselves in the world. In such a way, the reflective experience becomes one of the major driving forces in transforming self and the world; it enhances self-awareness and world-awareness and motivates people to act accordingly. In a meaningful classroom we need to achieve such a level of reflection, when students become more action-oriented, liberated, productive and socially responsible. In order to become such, they need to be engaged in meaningful activities, relevant to their life experiences and provided conditions for personal discoveries (Zvenigorodskaya, 2001).

Human subjective power is recognized (Leontiev, 1975; Zinchenko, 2004) as one of the major driving forces in the process of personality self-development, although this process is not recognized as absolutely intentional by nature. According to Leontiev’s psychological theory of individual development, personality self-creation can be viewed as the process of human nature unfolding its potential, initially under the strong influence of such external factors, as heredity, environment, and education/nurturing. Self-creation progresses with individual self-transformation and is conditioned by subjective power and self-creating activity. Self-creating human activity will/can only come from an individual her/himself and has to be supported by meaningful education in order for a personality to reach the fullness of her/his life. As a process, personality self-development is never ending and can be described as ”constant inner revision” (Kulikova, 2003) with transformation of one’s values towards universal moral norms, such as faith and hope, freedom and responsibility, etc... It is human desire to overcome selfinsufficiency that leads a personality to the point when he/she makes a conscious decision to become better than the one existing. Thus, she/he becomes the subject of her/his own life, capable of consciously constructing her/his life strategy.

As educators, we should consider that like every transformation in general, personal transformation entails not linear progress, but some points of regression and even stagnation as we progress. In fact, students should learn to welcome confusion and chaos as a transitory state between their prior convictions and new personal perspectives when they experience meaningful and transformative self-development. It can also be viewed as a reversible process of quantitative and qualitative transformations of psychological attributes and states which add to one another in timely reformations. (Maralov, 1993).

To conclude, the theories focus on innate human capacity for self-growth and reveal psychological tools of personality self-development, such as dialogic/interactive nature of human relations, human subjective power/activity in self-creation, and reflective experience, so that we can relate them to a general curriculum about meaningful education.

The following characteristics of meaningful education can demonstrate that it serves a resource of global learning and that global learning experiences can be fully integrated in it:

1.It upgrades thinking, critical thinking, in particular.

2.It is experiential and increases relevance to participants’ personal life experiences.

3.It entails dialogic approach, which engages students and teachers negotiating meanings and solving problems as partners.