Abstract:

Cognitive interest is the most important personality trait acquired during school years. It can serve as an "indicator" of the overall development of students. In the conditions of modern general education school, there is an urgent need not only to form the cognitive interest of students in certain subjects, in particular, in chemistry, but also to develop it at different levels of education – both in the class-time system and in the system of extracurricular work.

In this paper, formation is understood as a directed process, as a result of which students acquire an initial level of cognitive interest in chemistry, while development is a process that contributes to its further strengthening and deepening. The article discusses in detail the following consecutive stages of the formation of cognitive interest: lack of interest → curiosity → inquisitiveness → cognitive interest itself → design and research interest. They correspond to the following stages of the formation of cognitive interest:
(a) excitement (a sense of being captured and fascinated);
(b) passion (a more serious immersion in the study of chemistry, but not yet love for it);
(c) development (desire to study chemical objects);
(d) deepening (the need for knowledge of chemical objects).

The article identifies four main components of cognitive interest (volitional, motivational, intellectual and emotional) and analyzes the relationship between them.

The formation of the ability to regulate volition and action based on conscious motives is the main task in the education of the individual. Today, society is still interested in a scientifically-based system of personality formation, capable of self-education and the formation of volitional qualities that are relevant in this period of social time.

The problem of learning motivation is one of the central problems in pedagogy and pedagogical psychology. Under the motive of educational activity, we understand all the factors that determine its manifestation – needs, goals, attitudes, a sense of duty, etc. Motivation to study chemistry consists of three components – the value of chemical education, performance in chemistry, and achievement of specific goals.

The formation of students' cognitive interest is directly related to their intellectual activity, which, in our opinion, is primarily realized in independent work, including through the experience of creativity. The best form of organizing the educational process for the implementation of the program for the formation of creative abilities of schoolchildren is extracurricular work, in which classes are not limited to the rigid time frame of the educational schedule.

The emotional sphere plays a leading role in shaping the personality of a teenager and his status in a group of peers. Emotions are an undeniable component of cognitive interest. And extracurricular activities have a particularly strong emotional impact.

To assess the strength of the connection between the main components of cognitive interest for more than 400 students of various schools in the Tver region (Russia), the multiple concordance coefficient was used. The results obtained using modern methods of mathematical statistics demonstrate an average (w = 0.6) level of correlation between the components. The data obtained indicate that cognitive interest as an integral concept includes not only these four main components, but also some others that have yet to be identified and studied in the future.

Keywords:

Cognitive interest in chemistry, volition, motivation, intellect, emotion, statistical analysis.