A Co-Existence Approach to Character Building at School

The aim of this article is to present the summary of a multi-year research of the phenomenon called "communion of children and adults based on co-existence" and its role in modern education. This research was carried out by means of modeling and maintaining communions of children and adults based on co-existence (with varied duration, group structure and content of activities) in interactions with schoolchildren and students in which each participant could bring their personality into the common value-based space. Particular attention was focused on the reflective process of the participants and on the in-depth analysis of the experience by the organizers. The author considers it necessary to introduce the term "co-existent communion of children and adults" into pedagogy as a new tendency in the development of the collective character building concept. In terms of character building, co-existence implies an institutionally arranged reality of axiological child-adult interaction, in which children acquire universal human values and meanings and reach a new level of understanding themselves and the world around them. The result of the study is the rules of co-existential approach in education the author formulated. (1) A person's character building and development occurs mostly through interaction and interrelationship with other people. It is vital that both the teacher and the child should be interested in such interaction which reveals common humanistic values and meanings, a shared space for thought and joint activity. (2) The character building process must be designed taking children's interests and aspirations into consideration. The teacher should consider the child's actual present and the current process of teacher-child interaction rather than the pre-determined goals and methods of teaching. (3) Coexistence helps each participant to discover their personal meaning of what is going on around, stimulates self-determination and conscious self-realization in joint activity while offering the feeling of belonging to the communion and revealing the renewed shared meaning, shared values and a common axiological space. A separate result should be highlighted: the co-existence approach to character building is based on the co-existent communion of children and adults. The co-existent communion of children and adults is related to situation-based means of character building. Under certain conditions, the teacher can see the possibility when the communion starts and reveals itself, while the teacher intensifies this communion and strengthens it in the participants' minds by means of reflection. Such interaction creates an educational situation by encouraging and supporting the students' development of new personal meanings as well as understanding of themselves and the world around. Co-existence as an educational situation is some sort of an impulse for deep-set changes in the student's axiological sphere leading to the reflection of one's prior and new understanding experience and its meaning. A co-existent educational situation serves as both the means and goal of character building.

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