p Every pedagogical phenomenon is individual and specific in terms of its patterns and its shades. Accordingly, it requires that already established means be applied creatively.

p What defines the uniqueness of pedagogical phenomena? The use of pedagogical methods is required by the logic of the process of interaction between adults and children, and each of these is unique and individual. In working with children educators take into consideration their particular characters and the level of development of relations within the collective.

p A teacher may be said to have command of teaching skills when he applies individual means rationally, mindful of the specific conditions and situations. It is only in the context of actual situations that a method develops a living unique tissue of characters and relations, and interacts with other methods. Thus, a method may be viewed separately only in a conventional sense. A teacher is in full command of his skills when he is able to define and timely note the nature of this interaction.

p In order to consciously develop one’s teaching skills, a teacher must learn to distinguish both general, recurring, traits of children and those that are unique and individual.

p Gilbert Highet, a well-known British pedagogue, argues approximately as follows: if you wish to influence children to a certain degree you must convince them that you know them individually. And the first step in that direction is a knowledge of names and faces... And the best way to know students is to divide them into types. Only experienced teachers succeed in doing this. A beginner first thinks that all students are different. Next he notes that Clark resembles Johnson and that Verney and Lennox react to problems in a nearly identical manner and even write almost similar essays. Then four or five years later the teacher notes another Clark in his class; he resembles the first Clark (but differs in that his hair is red), laughs at the same anecdotes and also writes in large letters. Except that his name is Macdonald and he comes from another place.

p This will continue and with each year the teacher will discover different types of students. And after fifteen years he will already possess an entire gallery of types which either singly or in groups will match 85 per cent of the class. To classify 50 students by types is very difficult and in no case should this be simplified. Some teachers (unfortunately not many) begin this work in their first class. They begin to observe the most general character traits and seek hidden identical traits even among students that appear to be different, they compare them with earlier characteristics and observe their pupils’s progress from grade to grade.

p But even after a teacher has studied the basic types and subtypes he will always meet individuals who would not fit any class. This is both the joy and sorrow of teachers.

p It should be noted that this classification, though definitely interesting, is largely based on subjective intuition.

p Current pedagogical theory and practice make it possible to establish that each educator who wishes to acquire a full command of his skills employs a number of typical approaches. Let us list the most important ones: 

p an ability to corYectly assess those processes which are taking place among children, within each individual child in various pedagogical situations; 

p an ability to analyze the relationship between the objective, means and the result; 

p an ability to organize the lives of children; 

p an ability to demand and trust; 

p an ability to quickly assess the situation and to switch the children’s attention over to some other subject; 

p an ability to play with children; 

p an ability to identify that which is essential among diverse pedagogical facts; 

p an ability to rely on a variety of approaches within a given situation; 

p an ability to accurately convey one’s mood, feelings and thoughts by words, facial expressions and body motions.

p A high level of a teacher’s skills implies an ability to apply not only specialized means but also methods that are based on a teacher’s general level of training in such disciplines as psychology and social psychology, management theory and creativity theory. A teacher’s knowledge of politics, art, sciences also develops through creative activities and self-education and this plays a very important role in his practical work.

p Teachers usually progress gropingly in their profession. Each one asks the same questions: How to establish contact with children and with colleagues? How to win the children’s favour? How to obtain a reliable picture of relations among children in a short period of time? How to make children comply with 51 the teacher’s requests and do this with a will? How can a teacher maintain good form professionally and be reasonable in spending his energies?

p To answer these questions the teacher has to display exceptional effort, persistence, a research-oriented mind, sincerity, directness, and honesty.

p Recurrence is an objective condition for enriching the subjective factor in education and for developing the teacher’s individual creative qualities. Recurrent pedagogical phenomena always serve to fill the store of both positive and negative experience. An analysis of one’s own experience and a critical evaluation of actions plays a particularly important role in the development of one’s teaching skills.

Practice points to the existence of two tendencies in analyzing recurring events in school life. On the one hand, we find a mechanical or “bad” repetition mainly attributable to empirical rationality in analyzing living facts, and on the other, we find repetition viewed from a dialectical position. Both the theory and practice of education largely depend on the way in which the problem of repetition is solved, dialectically or empirically.