THE CONCEPT «CHILDHOOD» IN THE PARADIGM OF MODERN PEDAGOGICAL KNOWLEDGE: SEMANTIC-COGNITIVE AND LINGUISTIC CULTURAL ANALYZES

The article deals with analysis of the term «concept» as one of the most important notions of modernpedagogical science. On the basis of analysis and generalizationof the term «concept», whichpresented in the scientific discussion, it was distinguished invariant signs of this linguistic unit in a pedagogical plane by the author. It should be stressed that the author is proving the expedience to differentiate the terms «concept» and «notion»in pedagogical content concerning to the sociocultural context of scientific discussion. Analyzing the socio-cultural component of the concept of "childhood", the researcher proceeds from the assumptions made about "understanding childhood" in a certain historical period. Among these assumptions, we should note the following: the components of the concept were formed under the influence of the real state of the child in society, the concepts of childhood, which were developed scientifically and ideologically, and were «convenient» for a particular society; understanding of childhood is determined by existing contradictions in society: between the real and desirable social status of the child in the system of social relations; between the bases of social and family upbringing; between the social and psychological limits of the age of the child, etc., understanding of childhood included predictable ways of solving socially important problems related to the development of society, as well as personally significant tasks related to the development of the child; The semantic elements of the concept of «childhood» were determined predominantly by the educational effect of the adult world, fitting into a certain social, cultural and historical context, and shaping its pedagogical paradigm of childhood, understood as a set of attitudes, values-characteristic of members of this society at a certain historical stage and mechanisms of their practical realization in the sphere of pedagogical support of education and upbringing of children. Also the author tries to describe the notional and conceptual loading of the term «childhood» as a discrete unit of human consciousness in the paradigm of modern pedagogical knowledge. This was made possible by the application of complex methodology that combines elements ofsemantic-cognitive and linguistic cultural analyzes.The author comes to the conclusion that theunderstanding of pedagogical terms through the prism of «concepts»allows to find out and use information in not only objective knowledge form, but also in a form, that can be clear and interiorize by the participants of the process of the constructing of a pedagogical reality.