Education and self-education in the optics of tutoring approach

Abstract

This article discusses the problem of comprehension of self-education and education in tutoring pedagogy. The matter is that if student's personality and different development trajectories of different personality types are recognized in education, it is difficult to imagine education without self-education. As empirical material, the author cites two cases from his personal experience; analyzes the establishment and development of personality in culture, claiming that the problematic situations are the source of its development. Description is given to the key problematic situations that determine the evolution of a modern individual in phylogenies and ontogenesis. The author distinguishes between spontaneous development, evolution of personality, and conscious work, the goal of which is education or self-education. The article discusses the peculiarities of tutoring perspective on education and self-education, emphasizing that tutoring efforts are aimed at formation of favorable environment for person’s self-development and evolution, rather than designing an individual based on the pedagogical patterns.  At the same time, the tutor strives to create a culturally congruent and humanistic environment. The paper reviews a complicated problem of where a tutor as a pedagogue should lead his student and what does “lead” means in educational practice. The conclusion is made that tutoring approach is quite unusual in the aspect the it does not set particular pedagogical contents and goals, but rather points at the principles that should be jointly implemented by the tutor and his students. The author considers the three hypostases of a person for the tutor to focus on.