Development of informative activity of students as a leading purpose of teaching chemistry

At present, our country witnesses the development of the school system based on system-activity approach. The federal state educational standards of general education (FSES of GE) establish the requirements for organizing the educational process in a comprehensive school, enhancing the importance of the cognitive activity of students in achieving the educational outcomes. Soviet researchers T. Shamova and G. Shchukina have shown a strong correlation among cognitive activity, knowledge and skills of students. Considering cognitive activity as a characteristic of the individual, the researchers identified three levels of its development. The first level is the reproductive and imitative activity. Students who have a certain amount of knowledge can reach the second level of the search and performing activity. The third level is the level of creative activity that can be achieved by the mostly developed students. Russian Methodists-Chemists have developed special techniques and methods of activation of informative activity of students, but the problem of developing the cognitive activity as a personality trait in teaching Chemistry remains unsolved. As cognitive activity is determined by cognitive demand, in accordance with the concept of Maslow there was announced the idea of the possibility of developing the cognitive activity throughout the process of teaching. The developed model of training shows the methods according to the levels of cognitive activity. The model is based on the concept of the psychological needs of Maslow’s theory and it was created stepwise following the cognitive needs updating. According to the model the most valuable for the development of the reproductive and imitative activity are the motives of cognitive activity such as «interesting» and «useful.» The motive of search and executive activity is the success of cognitive activity. The condition of achieving and developing the creative activity is the ability of students to apply successful cognitive strategies. Implementation of the model of cognitive activity development requires a certain block of teachers’ knowledge. In order to help a teacher to development cognitive activity of students we have formulated 7 rules of developing the cognitive activity in teaching Chemistry.