Teaching personal development in the digital age

Abstract

The discussion about the changes in teaching is shaped by the ideas of what impact digitalization has on the development and socialization of the younger generation. These processes are closely related to personal development training. Personal development training is under ever expanding influence of digitalization, and researchers notice the gap between traditional teaching methods and work models and their poor reproducibility under such conditions. The aim of the study is twofold: to analyze how personal development training tasks are implemented in the current climate of digitalization, and to determine the major tendencies of the changes in personal development training. The methodology of the study is based on the provisions of the following theories: the theory of social education in the context of socialization (A. V. Mudrik), theories of personal development training systems (L. I. Novikova, N. L. Selivanova), and the network approach. Apparently, in the modern post-industrial digital society, a virtual community can become the space for personal development training. There emerge new subjects of personal development training (digital technologies, subcultural communities, network groups, voluntary assistants, volunteers, parents, etc.). This will “require” a change in the professional language and teacher’s professional functions. The intention to enable productive behavior of an individual to solve their own problems should remain an important component of personal development training. In order to do this, the life of an educational organization should be enriched with a variety of social practices that encourage interaction and joint productive activities; an educational organization should develop forms of self- and co-management, and introduce a variety of extracurricular activities. The search for forms of personal development training relevant to the needs of the modern teenager is being reinforced. Moreover, globalization raises the issue of how global and eternal values are compatible with the values of digital culture, i.e. the culture of the virtual augmented world. The authors note that in the current climate of the digital world, the boundaries of personal development training are constantly changing geographically, organizationally, meaningfully. As a result, the task of creating, developing and retaining the personal development training environment acquires significance not only at the content level, but also at the organizational level, including the virtual one.