Personality development in preschool age: Fairy-tale therapy as children’s philosophical enquiry

Abstract

The development of a spiritual-and-moral personality is a key priority in Russia’s education today. Specifically, the Decree of Russia’s President of 9 November 2022 approved the state policy for the preservation and strengthening of Russian traditional spiritual-and-moral values that highlights the values education. The Federal Educational Program (FEP) for preschool education defines spiritual-and-moral education as the process of development of preschool children’s values-and-semantic sphere. According to the FEP, cognitive education and spiritualand-moral education play an important role in the development of a child’s personality. If a child is well developed intellectually but is limited in the understanding of issues of lofty sentiments, this indicates a deformation of his personality development. In preschool age, we can speak about a harmonious development of personality when a child strives to learn spiritual and moral values (i.e., strives for philosophical enquiry). Fairy tales are instrumental in this respect. The study seeks to identify the interdisciplinary basis for the personality development of preschool children through the connection between children’s philosophical enquiry and fairy-tale therapy. We found that the ideas of children’s philosophy and those of fairy-tale therapy are closely related to the personality development of preschool children. We identified the main components of children’s philosophy: intellectual (verbal-logical thinking), social (interpersonal relationships) and existential (reflection). Similar components were identified in fairy-tale therapy: identifying a problematic situation and discussing it, thinking about the characters’ actions, and emotional reflection. To illustrate the connection between children’s philosophical enquiry and fairy-tale therapy, we analysed the summary of the fairy tale The Magic Swan Geese from the partial program Smart Games in Kind Fairy Tales by teacher-psychologist S.V. Makushkina. Moral qualities are an integral part of the traditional values of Russia. Our study of the connection between fairy-tale therapy and children’s philosophical enquiry reminds the pedagogical community that it is important not only to convey knowledge, but also to lay the foundation for the development of a harmonious personality.