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Dermendzhieva, S., & Tsankov, N. (2023). Designing a multimodal environment for cognitive and creative activity in pre-school
education – competence of the teacher, International Journal of Cognitive Research in Science, Engineering and Education
(IJCRSEE), 11(2), 351-358.
and creative activity opens up possibilities for overcoming the niteness in denition, linearity in formation
and liminality in the development of a competence through the continuous creation of transversal zones
of cross-sections, generating new such zones and building on the basic ones.
This understanding of competence is analogous to the understanding of the human being
as a system whose "theoretical universal commensurability with all other systems makes of itself an
extremely complex system with multiple functional structures that are actualized under certain internal
and external conditions". Under the conditions of the functioning of the human self, however much it may
be "decomposed" into a "present self," a "dynamic self," a "fantastic self," a "possible self," an "idealized
self," an "imaginable self," or an "ideal self," a person, according to A. Deikov, possesses a particularly
characteristic quality - the quality of being aware of the boundary, of constructing boundaries, of crossing
boundaries" (Dejkov, 2004: 154).
Multimodal as well as digital environments with their plasticity and uidity, with the created
sense of boundlessness and dynamic stability foster opportunities for creating and for crossing and/or
pushing boundaries in personal development, but in the context of professional growth, the formation
and development of competence to design multimodal environments for cognitive and creative activity,
establishes the teacher as a transgressive person who is "expansive and creative, free and responsible,
whose behavior is dened by his/her intentions and the will to achieve them by transgressing the
boundaries of formed types of activities" (Kozielecki, 1987: 210).
This reframing of the understanding of the approach to the development of the teachers' competence
to design multimodal environments for cognitive and creative activity (and it may be necessary for all
transversal competences) is in line with Yana Merdzhanova's vision of the "individual in the XXI century
and the following centuries", who "only by giving autonomy, is autonomous; only by balancing between
metamorphoses, remains constant and stable; only by taking into account changes and following the
direction, changes the Direction; only by living his many biographies, creates his unique biography; only
by being, in this sense, an embryo at each moment of something new, does self-emerge and self-renew
with his/her authentic root forces; ceasing to have a beginning, thus becoming a beginning; there are
always reserves, because the open and included organism "charges" continuously, as it charges the
environment; only by giving, it does continue" (Rasheva-Merdzhanova, 2014: 22). This, according to
Yana Rasheva-Merdzhanova, happens not only when uniting: analytical-and-synthetic/logical-and-
abstract thinking (which is deterministic, cause-effect-bound, hierarchizing and discriminating - dissecting
things); creative (lateral, divergent, networked) thinking (seeing things in different positions and modes,
from different perspectives - as a complex and within its context, but not always with a guarantee of
its metamorphoses and evolution); artistic (associative, metaphorical, analogy-driven) thinking (which
connects through the simultaneous use and classication of things), but also with the perspective of the
genealogical vision, the depth is (dis-)covered; a sight is beheld, a picture taken, not just a snapshot, but
one of a life path of a thing" (Rasheva-Merdzhanova, 2014: 73).
Naturally, this approach also requires a new type of thinking, which Rasheva-Merdzhanova calls
"genealogical", the same being essentially transgressive, and the "genealogical person" she speaks of is
also transgressive, because "s/he has a chance of bringing value the environment by integrating into it,
which is also the result (product) of his/her interdisciplinary competence based on his/her interdisciplinary
genealogical thinking", as "this type of thinking is specically human, it continues to makes sense of all
kinds of technological information and other kinds of logically powerful structures, and by hyperstructuring
the information, but not only by logical mechanisms, but by the value-evaluative of the human complex
critical attitude, the living human intelligence is a structuring, necessary partner of the articial intelligence,
as two complementary halves of the whole, and only then the computer-human system will become a
social system in which the personality is the leading one, and not vice versa - a technical system in which
the machine is the leading one" (Rasheva-Merdzhanova, 2014: 74).
Applying this type of thinking to the teacher's competence to design a multimodal environment
for cognitive and creative activity, it should be seen as: "alive" (unframed), having a vital path (deep
with many levels) that is embossed (growing along a uid dynamic-resistant spiral) and has important
points (base segments/spheres); there are centres (as transgressive zones with dynamic resilience) of
metamorphoses, as starting points and transitions to other levels (emergent spheres), as well as critical
points seen as potential new spheres. In the liminal spheres of the essentially deep structure, multiple
beginnings are synergized as sources rather than starting/primary points, and multiple possible outcomes
as continuations (aspects of transgressiveness - boundary offsets) rather than endpoints. Thus, there
is a continuous dynamic of interdependencies with the environment and with constituent (disappearing
and emerging) components, in which the teacher's competence to design a multimodal environment for
cognitive and creative activity develops as transgressive, being continuously created in the cultivation of