Psycho-Pedagogical Follow-up of Children in ECCE

Summary from the Special Event "Psycho-Pedagogical Follow-up of Children in ECCE" at the UNESCO I World Conference on Early Childhood Care and Education

The film “Experience of implementation of psychological and educational follow-up program for children with abnormal development” was shown as the agenda for further discussion.

Ludmila Ph. Obukhova, moderator of the Special Event: “Speaking about a child, we will keep in mind not an abstractive “abnormal” child but certain children with different types of development – from developmental delays stemming from organic brain impairment to giftedness and talent. We will focus on psychological age, not biological or passport ones… I want to emphasize that we should prepare specialists for working with children with different types of development…”

Ludmila Ph. Obukhova announced the Russian conference “In transition to adulthood” (2011) devoted to the problems of teenagers. She also expressed the hope to organize the conference for UNESCO specialists in 2013. “…I suppose that it will be called “At the root of development" and will deal with the early stages of ontogenesis. I am glad to take the opportunity to invite specialists from all the UNESCO countries”.

Another moderator, Svetlana Arutyunyan shared the experience of psychological and educational follow-up of children in Armenia.

Then the Russian psychologists told about the work in preschool facilities for different children.

Natalya Shumakova presented the recent developments in the sphere of support of gifted children. For more information you can refer to the article Shcheblanova E., Shumakova N. Gifted Education in Russia: A Special Programme at a Moscow School // ECHA News. – Vol. 1, #1. – May, 2007.

Nina G. Salmina described the developmental programs for preschoolers, developed under her guidance.   

Galina Loginova focused on several aspects of psychological diagnostics of children with “atypical” development.

“Working with children with minimal or partial dysfunctions, many psychologists search for new forms of work using innovative approaches based on the principles of eclectics, teamwork, and therapeutic effectiveness. On the one hand, it gives us the hope for diversity in the approaches of psychological follow-up for such children; on the other hand, orientation for diversity may lead to loss of efficiency.

Nowadays Russian parents are also inclined to eclectic approaches: they search for psychologists, tutors and the other specialists, including non-traditional ones. Thus parents do not have clear understanding if their child’s development is going on the normal path or not. They question, how to treat individual varieties in their child’s development: to regard them as a potential problem to take for granted.

Development of generalized efficiency criteria of psychological follow-up that may be applied to correctional, therapeutic and diagnostic interventions has become a topical goal. For example, the efficiency of short-term diagnostic counseling (one meeting with a family) may be accessed in three dimensions:

• Reduction of the problems (their frequency, seriousness, reasons and consequences)
• Fulfillment of a task of development (changes underlying external problems, e.g. a step in development of a child’s leading activity (D.B. Elkonin), new psychological formations, changes in the social situation of development (L.S. Vygotsky) etc).
• Subjective well-being of a child and the whole family.

The main goal for a practitioner is to create a coherent holistic picture of the problem, the child’s tasks of development as well as subjective emotional experience of the people who applied for the consultation”.