Risks For Individualization In The Context Of Socio-Psychological Safety Of Schools

Abstract

Transformation of the sociocultural environment has a direct impact on the educational environment. It also provokes risks connected with the socio-psychological safety of the modern educational space. Within the framework of the considered problem is an insufficient study of the ratio of external to internal determinants of socio-psychological safety of the educational environment. It is important to consider the role of risks for individualization in the context of assessing the socio-psychological safety of schools. The theoretical part of the study is based on the principles of system-structural methodology. Individualization is defined as one of the core processes (along with formation, modernization and integration) within the author’s procedural-morphological model of the educational environment. This process implements the function of activating the personality in the educational space. The carrier of this process is a social block. The main risk of individualization is social apathy. The empirical part of the study is based on the cross-section method. Statistical methods: nonlinear correlation analysis, multiple regression analysis. The study comprised a sample of 186,000 students of middle schools aged from 13 till 16 years. The empirical data was analysed in relation to 45 territorial units of the Republic of Tatarstan. The procedural morphological model of the educational environment has conceptual viability and allows considering risks for individualization as problems of individual activation with insufficient sustainability of the social block of the educational environment.

Keywords: Socio-psychological safetyeducational environmentriskindividualization

Introduction

The current development of science and technology determines the need for an integrated approach to assessing the phenomena of modern reality. This provision is also true for the analysis of the educational environment. Trends in the development of society lead to the inclusion of the educational environment in the micro, meso and macro levels of the society. This determines the diversity and multilevel of the educational environment, its integration into and dependence on the sociocultural system. The level approach in considering the educational environment is consistent with the notion of “inbuilt” in Gibson’s environmental approach theory ( Gibson, 1988).

Russian methodologist Shchedrovitsky ( 1996) shows that the problem of studying complex systems lies in their inclusion in even more complex systems that encompass them, on the one hand, and on the other - in the content of heterogeneous subsystems and elements.

At the same time, the isolation (cutting, limiting) of the educational environment system is always artificial, as it determines the need to abstract from the links including this system into another, more general, and to consider these links already as external to the system itself. Then the question of what constitutes the core of the educational environment, and what refers to its contextual factors, is updated. Despite the wide spread of the concept of educational environment, as noted by Panov ( 2004), the definition of the concept still requires methodological analysis, theoretical clarification and practical research. The study of the educational environment can be carried out from the perspective of Environmental Psychology, which applies an interdisciplinary approach and operates on the concepts of “environment” space, “behavior”. The subject of environmental psychology is the study of the connections between human behavior and its material environment, a scientific study of human relationships with the environment of one’s surroundings, the relationship between environment variables and different characteristics of the human psyche ( Yasvin, 2001). Gibson designates the concept of “opportunity” as a unit of analysis of the educational environment. According to Gibson ( 1988), opportunity is a category linking and defining, on the one hand, a subject, and, on the other hand, a characteristic of the environment. It is also productive to consider the educational environment in the context of the psychology of environmental influences, the subject of which is the influence on human psyche of the environment of different patterns (both spatial and social). At the same time, as Panov ( 2004) notes, the psychology of the environment abroad, as well as ecological-psychological research in the Russian science, is characterized by extreme conceptual diversity. Theoretical analysis has shown that the category of interaction is the most acceptable for the purposes of analysis of the educational environment. This category is central in many works devoted to the educational environment. The educational environment, like any environment, is characterized by the specificity of mutual relationships between the individual and the environment. The personality and educational environment, in this case, are components of a single system. Coordination of components of this system is based on the search for dynamic equilibrium of two polar processes - development and adaptation ( Gilemkhanova, 2017). The development and adaptation categories have been considered as the main polar characteristics of interaction. As a result of the allocation of intermediate categories using the cross-attribution method, the core processes of the educational environment were obtained: individualization, formation, modernization and integration (Figure 1 ).

Figure 1: Specification of sociocultural risks for the educational environment
Specification of sociocultural risks for the educational environment
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Problems of the educational environment are related to contradictions between morphological (process medium) and procedural structures of the educational environment. In a generalized form, the risk of the educational environment is defined as a mismatch of the morphological structure with the procedural structure within the polystructural system of the educational environment.

Based on the above, the complex of socio-cultural risks of the educational environment can be considered as a tool for analysing the quality of the educational environment. The quality of the educational environment is the effective implementation of core processes in the educational environment, possible when the “process carrier” corresponds to the process, that is, in the absence of contradictions in the system. The safety of the educational environment is the consistency of components of the polystructural system of the educational environment ensured by the conformity of the morphological structure with the procedural structure through a combination of psycho-pedagogical, socio-economic, geographical and ecological conditions of the educational process.

Based on the model, 4 risk groups can be identified:

  • Risks of autonomy

  • Formation risks

  • Modernization risks

  • Integration risks.

The identified risks are partly consistent with the position of the Russian researchers who identify five groups of risks existing in the educational space of the school: risks arising in the organization and implementation of the educational and cognitive process; risks associated with participants in the educational process; family risks; environmental risks associated with adverse environmental conditions; information risks ( Prokhorov & Athaniev, 2017). At the same time, the classification of risks of the educational environment, based on a procedural and morphological model, is more representative of the position of the modern polysystem approach.

For each subject of the educational process, the educational medium is specific because it is not represented by constant parameters of the space external to the subject but is a continuum of subjective and objective. The effectiveness of the educational environment is thus determined by both the characteristics of the environment and the characteristics of the person and is determined by the measure of complementarity of these two components of a single system. The individualization of the educational environment is determined by the active role of the subject. Subjectivity acts as a criterion of individualization of educational environment and causes satisfaction of interaction subject. The risks of the social block are due to the absence or non-adoption of the subject position and are expressed in social passivity, inertia, apathy, dominance of the adaptation process over the development process with social and psychological adaptation in the educational environment. This risk is also highlighted by a number of Russian scientists as one of the key parameters that form a psychologically unsafe environment ( Kazantseva, Majuga, & Zagitov, 2013). The risk is considered at the level of the styles of pedagogical interaction of teachers when there is suppression of personality, impossibility of self-expression and self-determination of the student, transformation of him/her from the subject of his/her own activity into the object of external influence and manipulation.

Problem Statement

The problem of research consists in insufficient study of the ratio of external and internal determinants of socio-psychological safety of educational environment.

Research Questions

What is the role of risks for individualization in the context of assessing the socio-psychological safety of the school’s educational environment.

Purpose of the Study

To determine the relationship between problems of the social block, which cause risks for individualization, and the proportion of students, who belong to risk group by tendency to addictive behaviour as one of the indicators of socio-psychological safety of the educational environment.

Research Methods

The theoretical part of the study is based on the principles of system-structural methodology. The empirical part of the study is implemented using the cross-section method. Statistical methods: nonlinear correlation analysis, multiple regression analysis. The sample of the study - 186,000 students of general education organizations between the ages of 13 and 16, whose empirical data were analysed in relation to 45 studied territorial units with autonomous educational characteristics.

The proportion of students at risk acts as an indicator of the socio-psychological safety of the educational environment: characterizes students with a high risk of disturbed socio-psychological adaptation, on the one hand, and is an integrative characteristic of the disruption of the processes of individualization, on the other hand. The proportion of students at risk reflects the arithmetic average quantitative result for each municipal district or urban district resulting from the processing of socio-psychological monitoring data. Socio-psychological monitoring was carried out using the Methodological Complex on Identification of Probabilistic Predictors of Possible Involvement of Students in Drug Consumption (Yu.P. Zinchenko and Staff of Psychological Faculty of Moscow State University named after M.V. Lomonosov). The methodological complex provides the identification of a general category of students at risk by addictive behaviour, as well as a category of students at risk with different behaviour strategies. The students of risk group recognizing problems of control of emotions were included by us in the analysis along with the general category of students of risk group.

Findings

The risks of individualization in the educational environment were considered as the characteristic of the problems in the social block. An important empirical fact is the lack of interrelation of a share of students of risk group with a share of students in large families, young families, families having disabled students, families sponsored by social safety authorities (Table 1 ). An important empirical result is the relationship between unemployment and the proportion of students at risk (Table 2 ). It should be noted that there is no statistically reliable link between the proportion of students at risk and the proportion of students with health problems.

Table 1 -
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Table 2 -
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Table 3 analyses the relationship between the rating of municipal districts by the proportion of students of the risk group and the ratings of districts by efficiency in the field of education and additional education of students. It has been established that the development of the system of additional education in educational organizations of the district is positively connected with well-being in the field of prevention of addictive behaviour of students (Table 3 ).

Table 3 -
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The use of multiple regression analysis in the analysis of the influence of the social block on the spread of the proportion of students at risk by addictive behaviour revealed that the most significant parameters of the educational environment affecting its safety are second-shift education and the number of students who have very successfully passed the USE. Such parameters of the educational environment as the share of students who successfully and unsuccessfully passed the USE, training in the second shift, the effectiveness of the delivery of the USE explain 24% of the variance of the share of students of the risk group by addictive behaviour (Table 4 ).

Table 4 -
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Conclusion

The procedural morphological model of the educational environment has conceptual viability and allows considering risks for individualization as problems of individual activation with insufficient sustainability of the social block of the educational environment. The study of the individual characteristics of the student’s personality in connection with the level of safety of the school’s educational environment will be a prospect of further scientific research.

Acknowledgments

The work is performed according to the Russian Government Program of Competitive Growth of Kazan Federal University. The research is executed with financial support of the Russian Federal Property Fund, project No. 17-29-02092 ofi-m.

References

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About this article

Publication Date

23 January 2020

eBook ISBN

978-1-80296-077-8

Publisher

European Publisher

Volume

78

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Edition Number

1st Edition

Pages

1-838

Subjects

Teacher, teacher training, teaching skills, teaching techniques

Cite this article as:

Gilemkhanova*, E. N. (2020). Risks For Individualization In The Context Of Socio-Psychological Safety Of Schools. In R. Valeeva (Ed.), Teacher Education- IFTE 2019, vol 78. European Proceedings of Social and Behavioural Sciences (pp. 621-628). European Publisher. https://doi.org/10.15405/epsbs.2020.01.68