THE DEVELOPMENT OF PUPILS' CREATIVE ACTIVITY IN PRIMARY EDUCATION BY MEANS OF PROBLEM-BASED TASKS

The article examines the pedagogical and psychological mechanisms through which problem-based tasks develop the creative activity of pupils at the stage of primary education. The author proceeds from the thesis that creative activity is not a spontaneous manifestation of individual endowment but an integrative quality of personality formed within a specially organised structure of instruction, and that the decisive condition of its formation is the systematic placement of the child in a situation of intellectual difficulty which cannot be resolved by the reproduction of an already assimilated algorithm. Relying upon the comparative-analytical, structural-functional and systemic methods, the study reconstructs the theoretical foundations of problem-based instruction in the works of J. Dewey, L.S. Vygotsky, J. Bruner and M.I. Makhmutov, and correlates them with the contemporary psychology of divergent thinking and with the componential conception of creative motivation. Particular attention is devoted to the category of the problem situation, to the levels of problem-based instruction, and to the measure of pedagogical guidance, the violation of which converts a productive difficulty either into a routine exercise or into an experience of helplessness. The concluding propositions substantiate the didactic, motivational and organisational conditions under which problem-based tasks may be introduced into the practice of primary schooling in Uzbekistan.