Actualising creative potential of adolescents and young people by means of extra-curricular activities: the network resource

The article presents the results of the expert study aimed at the identification of the psychological and educational opportunities for network resource program "The Formula of Creativity: the initiative, research, development, co-operation". This program has been developed and successfully implemented for several years at municipal autonomous educational institution Students Creative Activity Center "The White Lake" in Tomsk (Russia). The authors provide the empirical evidence demonstrating the effectiveness of type of educational environment vector modelling method included into the expert examination procedures of educational environment and adapted for institutions of supplementary education. The basic conceptual principles of the network educational program ideology are reported. We were able to identify a triggering factor of actualization and development of participants’ creative potential. We describe the general results of the experts’ evaluation of psychological and pedagogical attributes of educational environment within the program. It is shown that the most developed indicators of educational environment are those that characterize the network program, among them are coherence (consistency), the intensity (degree of saturation), generalization (degree of coordination). The complication of the network resource within the program is discussed as the most important condition for ensuring the creation of open educational environment. We extended the meaning of the basic psycho-educational mechanism of the effectiveness of the program such as the process of generating motives that build the participants’ meanings allowing the adolescents and young people to make their choices of areas for self-realization of creative potentials. We found out the "problem areas" within the educational environment of network program, identified the opportunities and deficits of the network resource and show the trends of the changes influencing the positive dynamics of the discovered diminished parameters.