Imagination is a cognitive process that "... is formed in the process of creative activity."
As well as thinking, perception, attention, memory and imagination are directly dependent on the emerging and therefore unstable, physiology and psyche of a teenager. Imagination depends on the individual characteristics of the thinking and perception of the adolescent, but mainly its distinctive feature is brightness, “the ability to operate with huge masses of visual images”.
The importance of the process of imagination associated with the creative development of personality is emphasized by many psychologists S.L. Rubinstein and others. He notes: “... the adolescent's imagination comes into close connection with thinking in concepts, it is intellectualized, is included in the system of intellectual activity ...” [2, p. 260].
Learning brings the thinking to the forefront of the child's conscious activity, which means not only the restructuring of consciousness itself, but also the selection of thinking as the dominant cognitive mental process. Thinking begins to determine the work of all other mental processes, which, as a result, “… are intellectualized, are realized and become arbitrary” [2, 418].
It is the achieved degree of development of the thinking of a junior schoolchild that allows adolescents to begin a systematic study of the fundamentals of science. The content and logic of the subjects being studied, the nature of learning from adolescents, require reliance on the ability to independently think, compare, draw conclusions and generalize.
All academic subjects studied by a teenager, above all, stimulate the development of abstract thinking in him. Naturally, the main feature of the adolescent's mental activity is the increasing ability to think abstractly, changing the ratio between concrete and abstract thinking in favor of abstract thinking.
Of course, there should be no simplified interpretation of age-related changes in thinking, according to which the younger student thinks specifically, and in adolescence he moves to abstract thinking. With the transition to adolescence, they change significantly, enriching both abstractly generalizing and figurative components of mental activity (in particular, the ability to specify, illustrate, and uncover the content of the concept in specific images and ideas).
But the general direction of the development of thinking occurs in terms of a gradual transition from the predominance of visual-figurative thinking (among younger students) to the prevalence of abstract thinking in concepts (among older adolescents).
Gradually, under the influence of school education, analytic-synthetic activity develops, adolescents become interested not only in concrete facts, but also in their analysis, the tendency to causal explanation strengthens, students strive to highlight the main, essential material, master the ability to substantiate, prove certain provisions, make broad generalizations.
Adolescents are very attracted by the opportunity to expand and enrich their knowledge, to penetrate into the essence of the phenomena being studied, to establish cause-effect relationships. They experience a great deal of emotional satisfaction with research. They like to think, to make independent discoveries.[4]
Along with cognitive interests, an understanding of the significance of knowledge is of essential importance with a positive attitude of adolescents to learning. For a teenager, it is very important to realize, comprehend the vital importance of knowledge and, above all, their importance, for the development of personality.
This is due to the enhanced development of consciousness and self-consciousness of the modern adolescent, which represent a significant expansion of the realm of awareness and the deepening of knowledge about oneself, about people, and the world around. The development of a child’s self-awareness is reflected in a change in the motivation of the main activities: teaching, communication and labor.
In adolescence motives can be external and internal. The external ones include incentives of this type such as punishment and reward, threat and demand, group pressure, etc.
All of them are external to the immediate purpose of the doctrine, knowledge and skills, in these cases, serve only as a means to achieve other basic goals (to avoid unpleasant, to achieve social or personal success, to satisfy ambition).
The very purpose of learning in such situations can be indifferent or even repulsive. The doctrine is to some extent forced in nature and acts as an obstacle that must be overcome on the way to the main goal.
For this situation is characterized by the presence of opposing forces.
In principle, it is a conflict, therefore it is associated with significant mental stress and requires internal efforts and at times the struggle of the individual with himself. With more acute conflict, there may be a tendency to “get out of situations” (failure to bypass difficulties or neurosis).
Then the student leaves school or breaks down - begins to break the rules, falls into apathy. Such a structure of the learning situation is often found in school practice.
Consequently, the teacher needs to know not only the motives of the teachings, that is, cognitive activity, but also the conditions for their formation.
Studies show that the attitude of adolescents to the teaching is primarily due to the quality of the teacher’s pedagogical activity and his attitude towards students. Scientists have found that many academic subjects interest adolescents because they meet his needs not only to know a lot, but also to be able to be a cultured, comprehensively developed person.
Educators should support adolescents' belief that only an educated person can be a truly useful member of society. Beliefs and interests, merging together, create a heightened emotional tone in adolescents and determine their attitude to learning.
If a teenager does not see the vital value of knowledge, then he may form negative beliefs and a negative attitude to the existing attitude of adolescents to the doctrine has an awareness and experience of their failure to master these or other educational subjects. Failure, as a rule, causes stormy, negative emotions and unwillingness to do difficult things in adolescents, a negative attitude to the school subject is fixed [5, 215].
On the contrary, a favorable situation of teaching for teenagers is a situation of success that ensures their emotional well-being. Emotional well-being largely depends on the evaluation of its learning activities by adults. For the emotional well-being of the adolescent it is very important that the assessment and self-assessment coincide. Only under this condition can they act as motives acting in the same direction and reinforcing each other.
Otherwise, there is an internal and sometimes external conflict.