Key words: principles, pedagogical principles, young learners, language teaching, teachers, pupils Annatatsiya

Outcomes to Chapter III
The meaning, scope and applicability of pedagogical principles have always been a serious topic in curriculum theory and in the philosophy of education. Therefore it comes as no surprise that the differentiation between ‘educational principle’ and educational goal or aim or objective is not always clear. Landwehr, as early as 1980, identifies pedagogical principles as the highest general educational aims, because general aims take the form of practical principles. Sosniak states that there is a ‘commingling’ of principles and objectives. He notes that statements of principles, as an alternative to lists of objectives, appear to be growing in popularity in educational programmes. Because the terms principle and objective are sometimes used interchangeably, it seems correct to refer to some educational objectives in order to further clarify the concept of a pedagogical principle. For Sosniak, objectives can be understood in two ways. The first is as pre-defined sets, with much time devoted to the pre-defining. In a ‘naturalistic’ approach to educational planning, on the other hand, they can be regarded as a platform from which one moves forward. The most common use for carefully stated objectives is to satisfy administrative or bureaucratic concerns, while their form can change from long lists to a few consistent principles focusing on the most important goals. Statements of principles can serve educators as a reminder of the values embedded in decisions about objectives (aims) and activities. A pedagogical principle has a pragmatic dimension (praxis), and a normative dimension (to do it right, to do it in such a way that ensures quality).
In philosophy of education, pedagogical principles are discussed as value principles which describe norms and ideals (values) for the learners. They are ‘indispensable’ to educational inquiry. Since the suggestions made by educational philosophers can carry influence for generations, it is vital to rationally justify or critique of educational aims. There are five types of justification: logical, legal, empirical, discursive, and ethical.
Pedagogical Principles within the Process of Ongoing Change: A pedagogical principle is influenced greatly by national, cultural and contextual circumstances. Kubanek-German observes that pedagogical principles are changing within a complex process of enduring educational innovation, itself due to societal change. Change occurs through a democratic dialogue or is enforced. The rationales for pedagogical principles change over time. During periods of innovation, pedagogical principles are refined and adapted based on experience. This occurs through the perception of day-to-day viability and the influence of the market, competition between authorities, research, parents and new societal developments such as ICT.
A pedagogical principle is expressed at different levels, from the very abstract down to the micro context of individual teacher beliefs that form the basis for his/her planned and spontaneous classroom action. Classic writers such as Humboldt, Dewey and Montessori formulated epoch-transcending Western pedagogical principles, some of which mirror a political consensus. For example, a political consensus looks to preserve Europe’s cultural richness, as expressed in The European Charter of Regional and Minority Languages. Language education at the primary level, is developed from the top down in a dialogue with experts and educationalists.
Aligning Pedagogical Principles with Learners: Pedagogical principles should be aligned with the personality of a learner and cognition. From there, one derives and expands didactical concepts, giving teachers a manageable number of points of orientation. The next step involves making methodological changes and consulting psycholinguistic insights to bring the principles closer to the process of instruction and language learning on a day-to-day basis.
Pedagogical Principles and Teachers: During initial teacher training, students become acquainted with principles both in their general courses in education and in seminars on the methodology of foreign language teaching. They discuss implications and learn to plan lessons that apply the principles that underlie language teaching in their country. They also observe model teachers and can come to understand what putting a principle into practice means. Depending on how they are trained, ‘principles’ may be discussed explicitly or in the context of their transformation into aims, methods and psycholinguistic insight. For example a seminar session could deal with motivation and the principle ‘Language learning should motivate children as well as maintain their motivation’. Motivation would be explained from a psychological perspective, recent research might be presented and students would be asked to develop concrete lesson plans for safeguarding young learners’ motivation. It should be noted that teachers are not necessarily fully aware that they apply principles, as the principle has already become a teacher belief, perhaps of a deeply internalised, implicit nature.
Pedagogical Principals and Cognitive Development. Cognitive development has a great influence on Pedagogical Principals and it is the construction of thought proceses, including remembering problem-solving and decision making from childhood through adolescence to adulthood. Cognitive development refers to how a person perceives, thinks and gains understanding of his or her world through the interaction of genetic and learned factors. Among the areas of cognitive development are information processing, intelligence, reasoning, language development and memory These are factors related to helping childre anticipate, intergrate perceptions, and develop concepts. These factors have been the subject of both research and conjure. Jean Piaget and B. Inhelder maintained that the order in which children’s thinking matures is the same for all children, although the pace varies from child to child.
Factors of Cognitive Development: The following are factors of cognitive development which are essential for learning.
a) Stimulation – is necessary for cognitive development. Children who grew up without variety of experiences may be three to five years behind othr children in developing the mental strategies that aid recall.
b) Perception – the detection, organization and interpretation of information both the outside world and the internal environment.
c) Memory - the storage and retrieval of the perceived information.
d) Reasoning - the use of knowledge to make inferences and draw conclusions
e) Reflection – the evaluation of the quality of ideas and solutions.
f) Insight – the recognition of new relationships between two or more segments of knowledge.
g) Physical knowledge –an important factor which influences learning of young learners. It is gained through observing properties of objects within the child’s experience. Th child learns about the physical environment through observation and experimentation.
h) Logicomathematical ability – includes the ability to group or classify or group objects on some common criterion; to arrange objects according to size or quatity and then compare likenesses and differences among objects in the same category and order them according to relative differences; to understand spatial relations interms of direction, distance, and perspective; to understand temporal reltions that allow perception of time sequences and to conceptualize properties of objects.
The role of the teacher.The teacher is called upon to perform several functions in foreign language learning. These are the following:
• Teacher as director and manager
• Teacher as counselor and a language resource
• Teacher as a model
Teacher as director and manager: One of the main concerns of the teacher as a director and manager is to create a warm, stimulating atmosphere in which the students will feel secure and confident. It is very important for learners to feel very much at home with both their teachers and fellow-learners, if they are to be expected to venture out into the deep waters of foreign language learning, to experiment with new and strange sounds, and to role-play in a language which they have barely begun to learn. Apart from assisting in creating the right atmosphere, the teacher should also make decisions on the materials to be used, as well as the activities and games which will best accord with the learners' needs and abilities. In as much as learners do not necessarily share the same cognitive and linguistic abilities, or interests and motivation, it is incumbent on the teacher to choose a wide variety of materials and teaching techniques and strategies in order to respond to the students' interests and capacities. To this end, the teacher is supposed to organize the class, deciding whether a specific role-play or game will be simulated in pairs or in groups. Bearing all this in mind, the teacher may help develop a learner-centred approach to foreign language learning, as he / she takes into account the learners' preferences, tailoring the materials and strategies to their needs.
When pedagogical principles are discussed theoretically, it is impossible to avoidresearch on knowledge. Teachers’ competency lies within three domains: contentknowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, and pedagogical knowledge, classicallydefined by Shulman. Content knowledge or subject matter knowledge isan understanding of the concepts embedded within the domain being taught. Thesignificance of content knowledge is often a priority for subject teachers who workwith older pupils compared to pupils of the primary school level.Pedagogical content knowledge is the ability to convey one’s understandings ofcontent knowledge through multiple models of teaching for student understanding,comprehension, and achievement. It is needed when teaching particular content to students at a particulargrade level. In planning a lesson, teachers predict how students are likely to respondto specific materials, problems, and activities. This ‘cognitive empathy’, as Cerbin and Teachers and Teaching: theory and practice call it, is an approach that fosters the development of pedagogicalcontent knowledge.With general pedagogical knowledge, researchers have examined classroommanagement strategies, the organizing of pupils’ learning (including assessment), andeffective communication techniques and teaching. The abilities to recall and reflect onclassroom events and the ability to foster meaningful classroom environments havebeen the focus. Research on educational goals, values, and purposes also belongs tothis field. Such studies focus on skills and knowledge with little regard for subject-specific nuances. This is something which wewant to focus on in this article.Toward the research questionsAlthough content knowledge is important for successful teaching, it is pedagogicalcontent knowledge and pedagogical knowledge that exert a stronger influence onoverall teaching performance, emphasized by Darling-Hammond. Therefore,we are mainly interested in the pedagogical knowledge which emerges from teachers’pedagogical principles of which nature and complexity were discussed in the previoussections. Pedagogical principles act as filters through which teachers interpret andascribe meaning to their experiences as they interact with pupils and subject matter.Principles can be clarified also by means of experienced obstacles that hinder ‘goodpractice.’ In this respect, the empirical investigation reported in the following sectionsbelongs to the broad tradition of teachers’ pedagogical thinking.Based on the theoretical considerations described above, this article discussesFinnish teachers’ pedagogical principles, which they recalled and distilled from theirteaching experiences as the most important and expressed them in writing. Althoughthe relationship between ideals and actions may be indirect, the underlying assump-tion is that what the teachers wrote here also has significance for their pedagogicalperformance in the classrooms. The descriptions may reflect aims and objectives, aswell as contextual preferences, teaching methods and strategies, even their personalphilosophy toward teaching.
Some teachers focused also on expected skills and attitudes sayingthat they want pupils to become conscientious, to learn to work hard in order toacquire life skills, to develop practical skills, and to encourage their self-expression.These can be partly called ‘learning-to-learn skills’, and partly skills opposite to thecognitive domain of learning.