Interdisciplinary Research of the Fairy-tale as a Teaching Resource for Child Development: The Ukrainian Experience

The actuality of the study stems from the imperatives of the new post-non-classical scientific paradigm, which presupposes unification of the scientific and mythological worldviews, when there is a need for theoretical interpretation of mythological ideas of humanity, and at the same time there is a need for using the mythological knowledge and metaphorical forms of their representation in scientific researches. At the same time, the mythological and metaphorical way of comprehending the world enables to bring together scientific ideas, find analogies and associations between different systems of concepts, thus acting as an epistemological access to complex/ambiguous concepts. Under such conditions, the fairy-tale being the metaphorical resource of human development finds actualization in modern psychological and pedagogical sciences, which studies the peculiarities of children’s perception and understanding of fairy-tale content, which is considered as a means of upbringing and education, a special source of the formation of aesthetic feelings. Accordingly, the article outlines the main aspects of the fairy-tale not only as a developmental and upbringing, correctional and therapeutic means of influencing children, but also as a teaching tool that allows conceptualizing the new pedagogical direction associated with the development of teaching fairy-tales and the implementation of the appropriate methodological support for the teaching fairy-tale in the educational process of both preschool and primary education. Some Ukrainian folk fairy-tales are analysed in a scientific and methodical way. The concept of a teaching fairy-tale, providing a new paradigm of preschool education, outlines the fairy-tale as a means of teaching certain mathematical, physical, and philosophical aspects/data of reality. It is shown that the fairy-tale as the embodiment of analytical knowledge in a "folded" synthetic form is realized in the sphere of archetypal ideas of humanity, which can be transformed into scientific and theoretical meanings in the process of developing the child's personality. It is believed that the deeper a child immerses itself in the world of fairy-tales and the more spacious this world is, the more philosophical and scientific meanings, as well as mathematical and physical knowledge the child will be able to perceive, acquire, crystallize and operate with in the future.