STUDENT ACADEMIC WORK IN LIGHT OF VALUE RELATIONS¹

L. S. Kopysov

(Recommended by the scientific seminar of the Department of Scientific Communism)

The ability to evaluate the various aspects of a phenomenon or process is one of the qualities of human labor activity, for every person not only cognizes in activity, but also, in a definite way, evaluates particular phenomena and facts. He carries out this evaluation from the standpoint of his understanding and his need, conditioned by a certain level of social development, by material and ethical norms and ideals, and by aesthetic taste.

A socially conditioned personal need is nothing other than the understanding of a definite necessity of an object or phenomenon. Therefore a person evaluates their various aspects from the standpoint of satisfying his diverse needs. “Understanding the necessity of a phenomenon,” writes V. I. Lenin, “naturally evokes an entirely different attitude toward it, the ability to evaluate its various aspects”². Consequently, in carrying out his activity, a person, as a subject, in one way or another enters into definite relations connected with the “ability to evaluate,” i.e., value relations with the object. He evaluates processes, phenomena, objects, or ideals either on the basis of a synthesis of their value properties, or on the basis of one dominant property possessing a definite value. Evaluation is a specific form of reflection of reality. As V. A. Vasilenko rightly notes, it “must present the object in its relation to our requirements and needs, in its being for us”³.

¹ Second article. For the first article, “Evaluation and Value Orientations,” see: Social Questions of the Development of Science and Higher Education. Proceedings of TPI, vol. 220, published by TSU, Tomsk, 1970.

² V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, vol. 2, p. 223.

³ V. A. Vasilenko, Value and Evaluation. Abstract, p. 13, Kiev, 1964.

As V. P. Tugarinov also emphasizes this same idea, only an object of evaluation whose properties are found to be positive, necessary, and useful may be recognized as a value as a result of evaluation.^4 These properties themselves are nothing other than their social aspect, satisfying a person in his “social activity.”^5

The act of evaluation is preceded by an evaluative judgment. An evaluative judgment is a particular type of logical judgment connected with cognition. In the course of an evaluative judgment, the subject, expressing his definite relation to the object, correlates its properties with his own interests and needs. And if it contains properties that satisfy him, the object is recognized as a value.

Thus, the value approach makes it possible to determine the significance of various phenomena of reality, laws, actions, and facts both for the individual himself and for the collective and society as a whole. It develops a definite relation of the person and society toward them, makes it possible to orient oneself in social reality, and allows one to determine the character of personal relations. The value approach is realized in the entire practice of the individual’s life activity, including academic work.

The student’s academic work, as the principal type of his activity, is, in a certain sense, a manifestation of practice in the assimilation of knowledge, abilities, and skills, i.e., the practice of “academic production.” In the practice of “academic production,” the evaluating subjects are primarily the teacher, the student, and the student collective.

In our literature, insufficient attention is given to the question of evaluating many aspects of the educational process, especially from the side of the student himself as the subject being taught. At the same time, such evaluation is of great importance in analyzing the qualitative side of instruction and upbringing.

In the process of academic work, the student comes to know and evaluates one or another object of cognition and everything connected with it. In the process of an evaluative relation, the student, in evaluating, measures, compares, and determines the degree of quality of a given phenomenon, object, idea, or state. The objective aspect of the degree of quality of the object of evaluation is embedded in the object itself, while the subjective aspect of this quality depends on the student’s need, maturity, and ability to recognize the objective character of its quality. Consequently, the character of evaluation is influenced by a certain degree (measure) of the quality of the object being evaluated, a certain need and ability of the evaluating student, as well as the conditions under which the object is subjected to evaluation.

Every object subject to evaluation may be evaluated from different sides and with different approaches. From this point of view, academic work, as an object of evaluation, may be broken down into an entire series of objects that are likewise within the sphere of the student’s activity and consciousness and are subject to his comprehensive evaluation. The evaluative relation in academic work includes evaluation of the work itself as a process as a whole, and of one’s attitude toward it; evaluation of particular links of the educational process; evaluation of the specific knowledge, skills, and abilities that the student acquires or must acquire—

^4 V. P. Tugarinov, Problems of Value in Marxist Philosophy, p. 9. Moscow, 1965.
^5 O. G. Drobnitskii, The World of Animated Objects, p. 325, Moscow, 1967.

to acquire, an assessment of one’s specialty obtained through this specific academic work, an assessment of the teacher’s work as the organizing and guiding aspect of the educational process, an assessment of the students with whom the given particular student or teacher comes into contact, and so on.

A value judgment, and evaluation itself, is carried out from intellectual, political, ideological, practical, scientific, pedagogical, moral-ethical, aesthetic, and other positions. And in each concrete case, evaluation is determined from the standpoint of what need in the student’s spiritual development is expressed and satisfied by one or another object of his attention, and what feelings it evokes in him. The result of evaluation is influenced simultaneously by both thoughts and feelings. “Evaluation,” writes M. S. Kagan, “is the result of the combined action of thought and feeling, and not of the reasoning intellect alone.”¹ And although this remark was made with respect to evaluation in art, it has a certain bearing on other types of activity as well, in particular on academic work.

Assessing, for example, concrete knowledge from the standpoint of reasonableness, the student determines its significance in solving the life tasks before him, and the extent to which, in the future, it will play a positive role in his activity. At the same time, the information that carries knowledge, the character of the knowledge, contains not only a rational aspect but also certain elements capable of affecting the feelings of the perceiving subject (the student). Indeed, the rational aspect is also capable of evoking emotions. In the act of value judgment, the character of the evaluation may also be influenced by the way in which specific knowledge is conveyed, which facilitates the establishment of a connection with the knowledge the student already possesses or with the life prospects before him, including the prospect of further deepening this knowledge. In the method, the way of conveying knowledge, properties of two kinds are concealed. Some of them leave an imprint on the qualitative aspect of knowledge and, consequently, on its corresponding evaluation. Others carry value properties that make it possible to evaluate the method itself. Of great importance in the evaluation of knowledge is also the degree of the student’s capacity both to perceive and to evaluate the incoming information.

It follows from this that the character of the evaluation of knowledge is marked by the rational and sensory aspect of knowledge, the method of conveying it, and the student’s capacity for perception and evaluation.

Having developed an orientation toward a particular profession, the student evaluates various links of academic work in different ways. Alongside the evaluation of deep and substantive lectures that reveal the theoretical foundations of science, students value practical classes and industrial practice. A student of a technical higher educational institution, for example, highly values that practice which gives him the opportunity to apply his knowledge in the best possible way and to acquire definite practical experience, i.e., practice that fully coincides with his curriculum and production profile. Thus, of the 502 questionnaires from a study of the social activity of young specialists, graduates of TPI in 1965–1969, conducted by the depart-

...of the Department of Scientific Communism of TPI in 1969–1970,^7) to the question “What specific proposals would you like to make for improving the training of engineers and their use in production?” 106 people expressed, to one degree or another, their dissatisfaction with practice.

An interview conducted by the author with 37 students of the AVTF of TPI in 1969 on the question of their attitude toward industrial practice after the fourth year—which took place in research institutes, at enterprises, and also in the department—showed that 28 people were satisfied or partially satisfied, while 9 people evaluated their practice negatively.

Or, for example, seminar sessions in the social sciences. Only those of them are of value to the student—and, consequently, are evaluated positively—which give him the opportunity each time to deepen his knowledge. Of course, the quality of seminar sessions also depends on the degree of labor activity of the student himself in studying Marxist-Leninist theory. And this activity can be manifested in full force only when the student becomes aware of the coincidence of his activity with those orientations that were developed in him in the preceding period of life activity and that are formed in him during the period of study at the higher educational institution.

Every student independently evaluates what is felt, studied, and perceived in his work. But in this independence there are, as a rule, many common features that are inherent in many students and that allow them to evaluate more or less alike. Thus, the common features of the perceived object, the common criterion, and the approach of the perceivers (students) make it possible to develop the most general (agreed-upon, identical) evaluation. The character of the general evaluation is affected by the state of reciprocity, cohesion, and organization of the collective (the study group, the study stream, etc.), as well as by its particular orientation in social reality.

In the formation of the student’s evaluation of concrete knowledge, information, or a particular link of the educational process, a certain role belongs to the teacher. In this connection, the student evaluates the “productivity” and emotionality of the teacher’s labor in various situations of educational work. In a lecture he evaluates above all the qualitative aspect of the teacher’s work. He evaluates how deeply and accessibly the teacher reveals the problems put forward by him or the questions posed, their socially useful significance and significance for the student as a member of society, as a future specialist. Also evaluated is how this or that material is conveyed by him, his transmitting mastery; the appearance and manner of the teacher are evaluated, as is his attitude toward students in general and toward each student in particular.

The activity of the student as an object of instruction is evaluated, as a rule, by the teacher, and to a certain extent also by the collective in which he carries out educational labor. The teacher evaluates, in essence, not only the knowledge and skills that the student expounded or displayed in the course of his examination, i.e., the result of labor, but also his activity, manifested in assimilating this knowledge, the ability that he acquired as a result of educational-labor

^7) See: Research materials. Archive of the Department of Scientific Communism of TPI, Tomsk, 1970. The author studied this question on the basis of an analysis of the answers of young specialists who had completed the full-time division.

operations over a definite period and within definite limits provided for by the curriculum.

What is also evaluated in the student is the result of educational influence exerted by various means, and especially by the instructor; his firmness, conviction, and ideological and political maturity are evaluated. In the course of evaluating academic work and the student’s personal qualities, the conditions and circumstances in which he has carried out one or another piece of work also have a great influence on the evaluation.

Academic work, as a purposeful process, presupposes its own definite “productivity,” which is expressed both in the quality of the work performed and in how economically, in terms of time, a given result is achieved. Hence arises the question of evaluating the result of labor in accordance with the time expended.

It is by no means a matter of indifference not only to the instructor or to the student collective, but also to society as a whole whether the student has reported on his work on time, submitted a project, a test paper, a report, and so on. As a rule, we still pay too little attention to this. Students’ works receive the same evaluation if they are of the same quality, but the circumstance is not taken into account that one of them submitted his work later than the appointed deadline. Given equal abilities among students, work performed well but at an earlier date should also be evaluated more highly. And, moreover, what is being valued here is not only the work, but also the person who is able to work quickly, carefully, and well. It is necessary to educate the student in such a way that he is able to value time and to appreciate the importance of timeliness in labor and of accuracy in work.

Further, every socially useful activity takes place in society, and therefore it is evaluated not only by the one who carries it out (self-evaluation), but also by those in whose communication it proceeds. The student works within a collective (lecture, seminar, practical class) and individually (extracurricular independent work). In the first case, his work is evaluated both by the instructor or the supervisor of the practical training and by the collective within which it is carried out. Here it should be noted that public recognition, public evaluation (in this case on the part of the instructor and the student collective), is the highest evaluation of the student’s labor, and, on the part of the students, of the instructor’s labor. The point is that public recognition of the results and state of an individual’s activity—evaluation—can affect him himself in his further activity, or the quality and state of the work that he performs.

A correct evaluation of the student’s work and labor ennobles him to the level of understanding the significance of academic labor and of the efforts he has expended, and instills confidence for further active activity.

Of great importance in this respect is also the degree of the student’s upbringing, his ability to evaluate objectively and correctly his own abilities in the chosen specialty, his belonging to one or another link of the educational process, to one or another kind of work, as well as the ability to evaluate his level of knowledge and practice, to evaluate his actions. The character of evaluation and self-evaluation depends also on a certain degree of stability of the student’s interest, his orientation.

Acquiring certain knowledge, abilities, and skills that determine the essence of preparation for professional activity constitutes the student’s most stable interest in academic work, his value orientation.

Value orientation, as defined by A. G. Zdravomyslov, V. P. Rozhin, and V. A. Yadov, is “a relatively stable, socially conditioned, selective attitude of a person toward the totality of material and spiritual social goods and ideals, which are regarded as objects, goals, or means for satisfying the needs of the individual’s life activity”². V. V. Vodzinskaya defines orientation as a “stable system of fixed attitudes” of the individual³. But a system of attitudes, or a particular attitude, testifies to a stable line of behavior that has taken shape in the consciousness and psyche of the individual. Orientation, moreover, expresses a certain desire, a striving conditioned by social reality. “If in the concept of ‘attitude,’” notes Z. I. Fainburg, “the social is included in the personality only indirectly, then in the concept of ‘social value orientation’ it is included directly”⁴. From this point of view we shall also consider the student’s academic work and line of behavior.

Since the student comes to the higher educational institution with the aim of preparing himself for a particular professional activity, of obtaining a specialty on the basis of higher education, as a consequence he is subjectively and objectively included in the educational process. Therefore one of the student’s most important life orientations is orientation toward academic work. It is precisely academic work at the higher educational institution that will give him the opportunity to achieve this goal. In realizing orientation in academic work, the student displays a certain attitude, a certain disposition—for example, toward the level of complexity of a lecture, so that the lecture is businesslike and reflects the latest scientific achievements. Thus, in ascertaining the attitude toward lectures in the social sciences at Tomsk Polytechnic Institute⁵, 80.8% of the students surveyed (about 2,000 persons were surveyed in all), who were taking philosophy, political economy, and scientific communism, noted the complexity of the lecture material of the majority of instructors; 95.2% of the students noted that contemporary scientific achievements are used in the lectures. At the same time, 88.3% of the students noted that the lectures are interesting, and 89.7% stated that they are satisfied with the lectures. The remaining students, for various reasons, expressed their dissatisfaction. A similar disposition was expressed by 88–100% of the students of Tartu State University⁶.

M. Kh. Titma provides interesting data on value orientation toward the profession in a comparison of students of Tartu State University and American

students⁷. Orienting themselves toward a profession, of all its value properties Soviet students (TSU) singled out as the most important: constant self-improvement and development of one’s outlook, the possibility of using personal abilities, creating and being original. American students, however, recognized as the most important properties of a profession: using abilities and inclinations, ensuring a stable future without bad passions and anxieties, and the opportunity to earn a great deal of money.

As a result, as M. Kh. Titma notes, among our graduates the creative development of the student’s personality is dominant, while among American youth orientations toward values connected with anxiety about the future and uncertainty about it come to the fore.

In the value orientation toward study, the student encounters, owing to certain situations and life circumstances, a whole series of other socially conditioned value orientations, which he must, to one degree or another, combine with the basic orientation toward study.

Alongside study of the disciplines determined by the curriculum, the student has a special interest in acquiring other knowledge as well, for example, connected with an orientation toward assimilating the values of culture and art. Further, the student may have a definite orientation toward socio-political activity, toward scientific-creative activity, toward the family, and orientations connected with physical culture and sport, everyday life, and so forth. All these are social orientations. And if one considers the many-sided development of the student’s personality, then in their totality they constitute the most general social orientation, as a result of the realization of which the process of socialization of the student’s personality takes place⁸.

The interaction of the noted and other value orientations, and their relationship to the orientation toward study, affects the state of effectiveness of the educational process in the higher educational institution in general, and the state of the student’s academic work in particular. In turn, a certain organization of the educational process, as well as the organization and self-organization of academic work, may have a positive or negative effect on the realization of students’ life plans and interests, on their coordination with allowance for the implementation of the main strategy—the acquisition of a specialty of higher qualification. In those cases where this main strategy proves to be connected with other orientations taken together or with any one of them, arising from one or another life situation, the student is unable to carry out his main strategy either in general, or in the given period, or, finally, in the given higher educational institution.

With a change in interests and inclinations, as a rule, the student’s reorientation takes place, which sometimes leads to a change of the specialty with which the student has become disappointed, or to a change of higher educational institution. Thus, data from a study conducted in Rostov higher educational institutions (RSU, RIMI, RGPI) show that, of 1,812 students surveyed, every ninth expressed dissatisfaction with his specialty and a desire to change it⁹. Analysis of statistical data on attrition

students at the Tomsk Polytechnic Institute over the period from the 1962/63 to the 1967/68 academic years shows that, for only three reasons of reorientation, a large number of students were screened out over 6 years¹⁰ (Table 1).

Table 1

And although the figures indicated are small in relation to the total number of students in each year and in each course, nevertheless they testify to the process of reorientation.

The realization of certain social orientations depends on the student’s social activity and self-organization, as well as on the social conditions in which he can carry out his activity. One such condition is the availability of sufficient free time.

As is known, the time budget of the individual is, to one degree or another, predetermined by society and its relations. In setting the task of the all-round development of the individual, it is necessary to take into account that, in addition to the specialty and the range of subjects whose study is defined by the curriculum, the student is also called by another world, a world with a richness and variety that arouse interest. This is confirmed by studies conducted by Z. I. Fainburg at the Perm Polytechnic Institute¹¹. Studying orientation toward a profession and the relationship between the assessment of one or another type of student activity and the real practice of carrying out their orientations, Fainburg notes that, for example, of 622 respondents, 86–95% positively assess the role of public work, while only 47.8% of students actually engage in it; 84.4% of respondents positively assess participation in amateur artistic activities, while 29.8% of students take part directly. The results of a standardized interview conducted by the author with 106 fourth-year students of the AVTF of TPI in 1968 testify to the same thing. In their orientation toward reading fiction, 62 students referred to a lack of time, and 31 of them specifically indicated that for this purpose they additionally needed another 217 hours, i.e., on average 7 hours per week for each. Fifty-five students referred to a lack of time for serious engagement in scientific work, and 25 of them specifically indicated that for this purpose they lacked another 119 hours, i.e., 6 hours per week for each. Among those surveyed, 47 persons engage in self-education in addition to the curriculum; moreover, 37 persons would also like to engage in it, but have no time.

The examples cited indicate that the reasons for the discrepancy between students’ orientations and real practice are quite varied, but one of them is a lack of time.

Along with the question of realizing value orientations in the educational process, the question of forming value orientations in the student is also of great importance; in this, the implementation of a scientifically grounded program of educational work at the higher educational institution can play a substantial role.

Thus, the development among students of value relations connected with an understanding of the essence and social conditioning of value orientations, and the cultivation of the ability to make correct evaluative judgments, will increase responsibility in the self-organization and performance of academic work. On the other hand, an in-depth study of the student’s personality, his needs, interests, and abilities, and the creation of more favorable conditions for the realization of value orientations, can have a beneficial effect on his many-sided development.

1. M. S. Kagan. Cognition and Evaluation in Art. In: Problems of Value in Philosophy. P. 104, Moscow, “Nauka,” 1966. ↩

2. A. G. Zdravomyslov, V. P. Rozhin, V. A. Yadov. Man and His Work. P. 257, Mysl Publishing House, 1967. ↩

3. V. V. Vodzinskaya. Concepts of attitude, relation, and value orientation in sociological research. Filosofskie nauki, 1968, No. 2, p. 50. ↩

4. Z. I. Fainburg. Value orientations of the personality in certain social groups of socialist society. In: The Personality and Its Value Orientations. Information Bulletin 40, p. 64, Moscow, 1969. ↩

5. Materials of a survey conducted by the sociological group attached to the departments of social sciences of TPI. Tomsk, 1967. ↩

6. Kozmets. How students evaluate forms of academic work, how they themselves study. Questions of Higher School Pedagogy. Tartu State University, Tartu, 1967. ↩

7. M. Kh. Titma. The Applicant Today, the Student Tomorrow. Collection of articles “Questions of Higher-School Pedagogy.” TSU, Tartu, 1967. ↩

8. See: I. F. Livshits. On the content of the social orientation of the personality. Reports of the Third Scientific Conference of the Departments of Social Sciences, dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the birth of V. I. Lenin. TSU Press, Tomsk, 1970. ↩

9. See: B. Rubin, Yu. Kolesnikov. The Student Through the Eyes of a Sociologist. P. 79, Rostov State University, Rostov-on-Don, 1968. ↩

10. This table was compiled by the author on the basis of records from the academic department on student attrition for the 1962/63–1967/68 academic years. ↩

11. Z. I. Fainburg. Why did you choose this specialty? Vestnik vysshei shkoly, 1966, No. 4. ↩