The Psychology of Labor Education: Some Major Issues

Soviet psychologists have done a good deal of research on some of the problematic aspects of the labor education of our young people. E. A. Klimov, K, K. Platonov, V. V. Chebysheva, and others have done general studies of career choice among school students. The following projects also warrant special mention: on the circumstances that foster a positive attitude toward work in instructional workshops and student production teams (L. V. Blagonadyozhina, M. A. Khomutova, F. I. Ivash-chenko, and others); on the role work activity plays in shaping a child's personality and helping to develop his moral and volitional qualities and his overall activity level (T. I. Agafonov, V. E. Gurin, V. I. Selivanov, D. I. Fel'dshtein, and others); on the motives that underlie work activity and career choice in school students (K. E. Drozdova, V. I. Zhukovskaya, and others); on the psychological mechanisms that are relevant to constructive career guidance for students in the upper grades (N. I. Krylov, I. V. Mikhailov, and others); on the development of a technical mind-set in school students (E. A. Faraponova et al.) In addition, researchers in the Psychology Faculty of the Gorky Pedagogical Institute in Minsk are currently involved in a program to investigate the influence the school student's self-appraisal and expectations of productive work exert upon his personality development. Yet, for all this, as the press has frequently pointed out, the scope and spirit of research on psychological aspects of labor education are still far from satisfactory in the light of contemporary needs. Psychologists are too often absent when attempts are made to set the content and form of labor education onto a rigorously scientific foundation and to ascertain the most educationally valid types of work for a child of a given age. The psychological underpinnings of career guidance have also received an inadequate share of scholarly attention.