Present-Day Problems of Methods of Research in the Field of Pedagogical Psychology

The Marxist pedagogical psychology has not yet properly worked out such methods of research as would allow us reliably to discover psychological laws governing all the concrete kinds of pedagogical processes, which must be examined in all their historical, living concrete forms and their conditioning by social and working relationships of people. The existing form of model laboratory experiment, carried out under simplified conditions, does not sufficiently meet the noetic requirements in tackling all the problems of pedagogical psychology. Its results cannot be applied without reservation to the concrete process of education and teaching in practice. The natural experiment, on the other hand, does not allow us to penetrate deeper towards the essence, the causes of investigated psychological phenomena occurring in the process of education and teaching. We meet with considerable methodological difficulties in the research into psychological factors in the process of education and teaching when using the method of mere observation. It is therefore necessary to work out, in the field of pedagogical psychology, some new, special methods of research, which would be in keeping with the requirements of the Marxist dialectical method and would make it possible to remove the shortcomings of the existing methods of research and would proceed from the dialectico-Marxist conception of the mind. The most urgent tasks of pedagogical psychology include a research into the laws governing the development of abilities, the shaping of new qualities and the formation of a new man of the Communist society in the process of education. A methodological difficulty in tackling this task consists mainly in the fact that the development and the moulding of personality is conditioned by many and various factors and we have not any special, reliable methods to find out how education and concrete living conditions influence the development and the moulding of a personality. It is further necessary to elaborate, as soon as possible, objective methods of research into questions arising from the new programme of the CPSJJ and from the main principle of the socialist school reform: to bring school close to life. To achieve the aim of the psychological diagnosis it is necessary to work out reliable and properly verified objective psychological methods which would enable us to find out the state of mental development, the dynamic moments of development, the asynchronism of development, the maturing of functions, the development of interests, the causes of failures in education, teaching and learning, taking into account personality structures of children, adolescents as well as adults.