The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance.
Socrates
Among the innovative training methods the heuristic training is emphasized, the prototype of which is Socrates’ method of questions and arguments, or, in other words, the “Socratic irony”. It is known that the ancient Greek philosopher brought his students to the true judgment through dialogue. He first asked a general question and got a response, the newly introduced clarifying question, and so on to get the final answer.
Heuristic training is aimed at designing a student’s own sense, purposes and content of education and the process of its organization, diagnosis and awareness. Personal experience of the student becomes a component of its education and training content is created during the process. Heuristic activity is sometimes associated with the creative work.
However, the first concept is broader and has some differences:
- Heuristic activities include creative processes themselves on generating educational products.
- The cognitive processes that are necessary to support creativity are one of the heuristic components.
- During heuristic activity organizational, methodological, psychological and other processes provide creative and cognitive activity.
One main feature of heuristic training is that the study of educational standards and personal student’s creativity interchange. Initially student independently creates an educational product, and after matches it with the cultural and historical achievements of mankind embodied in educational standards. In this case, the standards and methods of self-creative activity of the student are absorbed. The main task of heuristic training is creative self-realization of the student. This is done as follows. Student receives material for the construction, but he is not given the knowledge about it. It creates a product of activity (a hypothesis, writing, crafts), and then with the teacher’s help compares it with historical counterparts in the field. As a result, student rethinks his result and his personal transformation became (change in feelings, knowledge, abilities and experience). The outcome of the student’s activity may be general cultural increment when a student is involved in the cultural and historical processes.
Heuristic educational situation is a key element of training. This situation activates ignorance, its purpose – the appearance of students’ personal ideas, problems, hypotheses, charts, text, etc. Educational outcomes in heuristic training are unpredictable: each student can get completely different results. Heuristic training is based on the open tasks. Almost every element of the subject can be in the form of open task. For example, compose proverb specify the grammar rule, create a society of the future, make a collection of own lessons, identify possible ways to use any item. Control in heuristic training belongs not to the degree of assimilation of prepared knowledge but creative deviations of them.
Thus, the development of personal qualities to be a student, his creative achievements in the studied subjects and the level of learning and advance educational standards pertain to the validation and evaluation.
