Particularities Of Communication And Interpersonal Relationship In Gymnasium Students

Abstract

The article “Particularities of Communication and Interpersonal Relationship in Gymnasium Students” aims to highlight the problems faced by the teachers in the educational environment, as well as the opinions and suggestions suggested by them. The research aims to analyze this topic, to investigate the incidence of desirable behaviors involved in the communication and relationship of students in the gymnasium, as well as the barriers that intervene in the process of communication and interrelation, preventing communication by expressing their interests and needs in an assertive way, without an aggressive behavior. The article aims to present the educational approaches designed by the teachers in order to develop the capacity of active listening and assertive expression of the educables in different social communication contexts, the alternative solutions managed and adopted by the educables in the conflict situations that degenerate through deviation from the norms and social principles. In this context, the teachers' concerns are to pay special attention to the training and improvement of communication and relationship skills, present as a continuous process of development, necessary for educables in the complex dynamics of active social and professional insertion, but without overlooking the different manner of engaging the students in the educational activity and the flexible character of their behavioral reactions determined by the exercise and self-monitoring of the strategies adopted to ensure the quality of the communication and relationship act.

Keywords: Active listeningassertive communicationinterpersonal relationshipalternative behaviorsstudent

Introduction

In the social dynamics, the educable learns to assume his role in the daily social interaction, develops constructive strategies of approach of communication, but also bases his mechanisms of self-regulation, self-control and overcome the barriers in the communication process. Communication skills are needed for the pre-adolescent in initiating and maintaining interactive communication, because they will leave their mark on the development of relationships within the social group, but later on their effect will build and develop their professional career. Active listening, assertive expression, self-regulation and self-control mechanisms, ability to manage assertive behavior in conflict situations or use of communication skills in diverse social contexts, refrain from feedback and use it in emotional communication and self-disclosure are some of the components of streamlining the process of pre-adolescent communication (Amado & Guittet, 2007; Eccles, Wigfield, Harold, & Blumenfeld, 1993; Neculau, 2004; Walker, 2018; Zlate, 2004). Pre-adolescence is the age of seeking social identity, reconstructing personal autonomy, most often under the pressure of the social group and the family. It is also the stage in which the educable is in a continuous process of exploring personal identity and social life, in terms of substantiating the self-image, a key indicator in the development of the mechanisms of self-regulation and emotional and behavioral self-control through relation to values and social attitudes. In this context, communication becomes for the pre-adolescent an active process by which it initiates and maintains the relations with the others, but it offers the freedom to express the needs and interests that these have, awareness and internalization of the rules of conduct and the rules of governing the new group relations, actively learns and under the empire of new technologies to relate, to assume norms of desirable behavior, and through the gained social autonomy is self-educated in the new spectrum of social influences. The educable is in a continuous search, with ups and downs, with manifestations of assertive behaviors, but also with manifestations of controversial, passive or sometimes aggressive behaviors. It is anchored in the struggle to gain the respect of others, to assume and impose its own identity. He is a "titan", who at any moment rebels against parental or societal authority, is the fearless Parisian of Greek epics, who learns to assume rules, principles and values, to take care of personal problems and / or the others; develops in the process of human communication and interrelation the resolving skills; learns to identify or clarify the major goals and objectives that govern the new period of life and to develop according to them criteria for evaluating others and self-evaluation. In this context, the way of communication has an essential impact in initiating and maintaining social relations, it has the possibility to be active in supporting its needs, interests, in defending fundamental rights, in improving its communication through the proper strategies, but also in improving the emotional expression.

Problem Statement

Under the influence of the new modes of action from the communication of the educables, but also under the influence of the suggestions of activities that make the communication between the pre-adolescents, pre-adolescents-adults more efficient, this intervention was proposed, which is based on the challenges of the action directions in the field of education sciences, on the need to approach of the new constructs in school psychology and educational counseling (Băban, 2011; Boncu & Ceobanu, 2013; Lemeni & Miclea, 2010; Lupu, 2013), but also under the influence of customs that governs the system and the "concerns" (Albu, 2013) of the teaching staff related to the needs and interests of the new generation, to build and manage a "different style of communication and relationship" in a controversial register most often of new technologies, which today represents for pre-adolescents the most functional instrument of communication and interrelation, management of daily activity and free time.

The study also looked at the consequences of failure of communication and interrelation of educables, which have as an effect the conflict, constructive approach strategies for solving it, all aiming at the pre-adolescent cultivation of lasting relationships with others, to generate a quality of individual and social life.

Research Questions

Following the new directions of action drawn by international, but also national research, regarding communication and interpersonal relationships with students in the gymnasium, we proposed that our research should be guided by the question:

To what extent is the capacity for active listening and assertive expression among the educables in the gymnasium developed in order to increase the efficiency of communication within the inter-human relations at the societal level?

Purpose of the Study

The society is under the influence of the policies of globalism, but it also evolves under the financial, political, economic or social influence, and the behaviors and attitudes of the educables are also under the influence of the social pressure or the tendencies that are promoted and encouraged by the new social networks. Beyond the system of values and principles, attitudes promoted in the education system, the Z generation are those who have the ability to manage digital technologies and the online environment, thus building a new language of communication and connection. The new technologies open up to this generation new learning opportunities, relationships, personal development, and also attract worries or concerns from parents and teachers regarding the harmful influences of the new virtual environment related to socio-cognitive and emotional conflicts, motivational regulation, personal efficiency of the educable one in the self-regulation of learning, of the new tendencies and needs that motivate and contribute to a positive change, of the social interaction, which for this generation is more active in the online environment, where it acts and reacts through the system of signs and symbols specific to the communication medium. Thus, through an effective school-family-community partnership, the decisive actors have the task of developing the educables according to the social, fluctuating, rigid expectations, of the social and professional integration. The educables of Z generation, influenced by the fight against terrorism, by the global recession, have made a mutation in the plane of communication and relations, which also attracts new changes in the level of cultural managed contents. In a media society where the media “practices a reading of the world through which moves the center of gravity of things from their origin to its consequence” (Albu, 2013, p.103; Barrico, 2009, p.77) the Z generation of educables aligned with the underlying problem that the society with its complex mechanisms generated and cultivated. In this context, the school institution together with its teaching staff takes over the already publicized Z generation, formed in a specific communication and relationship system, in the educational activity, the teachers educate and train the educables contaminated with media already having a cognitive scheme formed under its influence, a system of communication and relationship already influenced, the abilities of self-evaluation and emotional and behavioral self-regulation are also under the influence of communication networks, but also a system of values and principles based on the tendencies and values promoted by influencers.

Thus, educators under "threat of prejudices and stereotypes, of rethinking the functional strategies of student-teacher, student-student, teacher-parent relationships and the elimination of barriers and blocks of didactic communication and interpersonal relationship" (Cuc, 2019b, p. 48) in order to generate a quality of individual and social life of the educable.

Research Methods

As a starting point for the new directions of action in the society, the teacher becomes the vector of the dynamics of the training and education process, it is necessary to identify according to the individual particularities of the educables, the most creative strategies, to apply techniques and methods of empowerment of the communication and interrelation skills of the students, all managed efficiently in a partnership with the family, in order to support common goals based on the students' development of the capacity of active listening, assertive expression in order to make their communication more efficient in social relations, building positive social relationships.

The purpose of the research was to analyze the main components that contribute to the efficiency of the process of communication and interrelation of the students in the gymnasium.

Findings

Following the data obtained from the interviewees, the results of the research could be delimited, based on which the conclusions of the research were drawn. The purpose proposed in the initiated research was achieved, and the analysis and interpretation of the results, led to the construction of new directions of action in designing an educational program in accordance with the particularities and characteristics of the educables in the secondary school cycle, but also following the problems they face in the view of personal development, in general, but also in order to acquire the communication and relationship skills, in particular, necessary in initiating and maintaining positive social relationships, in order to efficiently manage the conflicts by the students, by increasing their self-confidence, motivating them to change and management of opportunities of social and professional development (Băban, 2011; Boncu & Ceobanu, 2013; Chiș & Oltean, 2019; Chiș, Magdaș, Dulamă, & Moldován, 2019; Dafinoiu & Boncu, 2014; Dulamă & Ilovan, 2016; Dulamă, Ilovan, & Buș, 2016; Dulamă, Ilovan, & Magdaş, 2017; Dulamă, Ilovan, Ciascai, & Maroşi, 2015; Dulamă, Vana, & Ilovan, 2016; Lemeni & Miclea, 2010; Lupu, 2013; Ilovan et al., 2018; Pânișoară, 2011; Pânișoară, 2017; Scridon & Ilovan, 2015; Ursu, Dulamă, & Chiș, 2019). The research objectives were correlated with the general hypothesis, which was confirmed, thus contributing to the coherence and validity of the intervention. In the intervention carried out, the increased availability of the interviewees was also considered to be favorably involved in the educational steps that follow the interpersonal communication and relationship by increasing the efficiency of the interpersonal communication, by designing educational activities that targeted the training needs of the educational beneficiaries: communication and social skills, by developing the skills of active listening, assertive expression, managing conflict situations, managing these skills in diversified communication contexts, increasing the cohesion of the student group, managing emotions, self-control strategies, but they also provided the capitalizing of the educational reality with which the teachers, students and parents are facing. A percentage of 87.5% of the respondents indicated that they are concerned in the educational endeavor to develop the capacity of active listening and assertive expression in order to increase the efficiency of communication in the relational contexts that the students in the gymnasium initiate, while a percentage of 78, 75% of the teachers affirmed the need to be exercised the "educational responsibilities" in the educational process, because it underlines the fact that they face the fears, difficulties and needs of the students in the gymnasium for which they do not identify the most effective and adequate solutions to the social identity of educables in full development. Also, 67.5% of the respondents said that the Romanian reality after the economic crisis raises complex and diversified problems, which undermines the harmonious development of the students in the secondary school cycle: parental migration that attracts negative consequences with costs in the development of the educables at the cognitive, socio- emotional level, ensuring quality of individual and social life, poverty, which leaves its mark on the precarious health of some educables mentally, emotionally, socially, somatically; the still poor infrastructure in the disadvantaged areas, which affects the level of development of families, the school population, by the tendency of isolation of the educable ones, the effect of absenteeism and of the school dropout; but also the psychological effects among pre-adolescents as a result of excessive use of the internet (Albulescu, 2003; Boncu & Ceobanu, 2013; Chiș & Oltean, 2019; Chiș et al., 2019; Cuc, 2013a, 2014, 2017; Ursu et al., 2019), through the excessive use of social networks, online games, and roles , the structure, the tasks that change and responsibilities assumed by children from transnational families make space and time a new way of communicating and relating through advanced technologies, parents and children remaining in “connected relationships” (Pânișoara, Sălăvăstru, & Mitrofan, 2016, p. 151), and the feeling of emotional and social loneliness, abandonment felt by the children left at home is supplemented by the excessive time spent by educables in the social networks without a well-defined purpose, need or interest, it is in fact the definition of a new pattern, the interconnection between the feeling of loneliness and the excess access to the internet, which affects the cognitive functionality of the subjects, implicitly the communication and the interpersonal relationship in the society. The same percentage also highlights the consequences of a deficient communication, which generates the conflicting states in which the pre-adolescents are at school, in the community, leading to difficulties in relation by: lowering the level of cohesion of the group of educables, decreasing self-esteem, feeling of self-confidence, develop behaviors related to maladaptation and social integration; generalized anxiety disorder, social anxiety.

The answers provided by the respondents in the interview based survey and the written questionnaire survey provided data and information on the difficulties encountered by the students in developing the active listening and assertive expression skills needed to make their communication more efficient within the human relations they develop in the school institution, in the family and in the community: a percentage of 78.75% are anchored in identifying creative, flexible strategies, in the educational approach, of working educational alternatives that will contribute to the development of communication and relational skills, to the development of strategies for constructive approach of conflict situations for educables coming from underprivileged environments, aggression from the family, being at risk or in unhealthy interpersonal relationships based on physical and emotional abuse; 58.75% of the interviewees raised the problem of the barriers that the students in the secondary school cycle face in the communication and in the interpersonal relationship, barriers in the communication process with negative impact on the communication through the lack demonstrated by the subject involved regarding the needs, interests and concerns of the interlocutor , by judging in the communication of the interlocutor, thus their answers are only evaluative, they aim to highlight valuable judgments on people with whom they dialogue, which leads to conflicts or to a defensive reaction from the dialogue partner and; also the teachers emphasized that they face in the educational endeavor, as well as in the relationship between students with manipulative and coercive answers, which in time for the interlocutor leads to diminishing the capacity to solve problems, to manage alternative solutions and generate feelings of anxiety (Boros & Visu-Petra, 2010; Byrne, 1996; Cuc, 2019a, 2019b, 2019c); also 58.75% of the teachers highlighted the cognitive barriers that they encounter in communication and relationship in pre-adolescents, based on stereotypes and prejudices related to different people from socio-economically or culturally disadvantaged groups, problems that interviewees found as solutions, their management during the counseling interventions or in the activities set out on the working agenda of the school-family-community partnerships and in the extracurricular activities, followed in approach from a holistic and integrative perspective, sustained according to the need to adapt to the particularities of age and individual, of the mechanisms of emotional self-regulation, of the feedback that the teachers receive from the educational communication, which allow the most efficient regulation of the teacher-educable relationship, thus contributing to the limitation of communication gaps and development of communication skills of the students, active involvement by ensuring a quality of it in the school and social context, regardless of the level of difficulty in communication and relationship established. Also 71.25% of the respondents stressed that the mobile phone is perceived by the pre-adolescents as the best means of communication through the new applications, which eliminates the rigidity, standards, values ​​and principles imposed by the communication face-to-face, which generates a poor management of learning, which also entails fear of school failure, graduation or school abandonment, also poor management of time by giving a large number of hours to online social networking , so that due to lack of supervision of an adult, the child is at risk, social anxiety develops and in some cases the vulnerability to the phenomenon of cyberbullying appears, which culminates with the drastic decision of parents to transfer the student from the school, to put an end to online harassment where he was subjected (Cuc, 2019b, p. 51). As solutions are promoted by interviewees the counseling activities that prevent and develop alternative behaviors, activities based on the principles of inclusive education, promoting strategies for constructive approach to conflicts between educables or educable-educator through authentic and assertive communication, by granting to the dialogue partner an unconditional positive attention and an active listening, an effective assertiveness, tolerance, empathy, adaptability of emotional expression, delegation of responsibility to the educable in solving conflicts as efficiently as possible, in order to increase self-esteem, self-confidence and in generating alternative behaviors and alternative solutions to the conflict situations in which it is involved or mediates at the group level. The survey based on the interview was highlighted by a complex spectrum of information and data obtained that represented an exercise of good practices in order to optimize the activity of continuous training of the teachers, an unresolved problem at the level of the education system, to follow in the bidding programs also a holistic and integrative analysis of the characteristics of the institution of the subject included in the continuous training, but also of the other institutions in which it has worked, which offers an objective x-ray of the path of professional development, of the way in which the standards for the functioning of those institutions, the stereotypes, the existing patterns have made their mark in the construction of the professional profile. The projects of budgetary rectification that have supported the diminution of the budget allocated to education, the lack of financial resources with which the educational institutions are facing, the high participation fees for training courses, the lack of provisions in the school budgets of funds for symposiums, conferences, workshops on the field of professional development of teachers influences the quality of the professional training and the quality of the educational act. The respondents emphasized the need to focus on professional development programs on the applicative side, building good practice guides, meetings with specialists in the fields concerned, to provide them with the latest generation information. Also, the provision by specialists of the continuous training courses through the availability for m-learning, by providing examples of good pedagogical practices in the field of m-learning, as a stand-alone mechanism for the management of face-to-face learning (Boncu & Ceobanu, 2013; Gedik, Hanci- Karademici, Kursun, & Cagiltay, 2012), to offer educables involved in this technology the efficient support in organizing school activity, leisure time, multiple possibilities for organizing learning productivity, developing learning experiences, efficient communication and interrelation management, through the high potential for personalization of mobile technologies which contributes to the structuring of a social identity of the pre-adolescent, his emancipation in asserting his identity in the complex structure of the social group, to the thinking and behavior patterns of the group of belonging (Cuc, 2013b, 2015, 2019a, 2019c; Gonida, Kiosseoglou, & Leondari, 2006), but these programs should also consider strategies for limiting the digital divide phenomenon.

Conclusion

In the context of the new social paradigm, it is necessary that in the education system we approach new strategies in order to improve the communication of the educables and to prevent their defensive reactions that will allow the pre-adolescents to explore the alternatives in the communication and the connection in the diversified and complex social contexts, increasing them school and social decision-making capacity in solving problems. Also this exercise of good practices was approached in order to make the educational intervention of developing the skills and abilities necessary for the pre-adolescents in the social and vocational insertion, more efficient, in limiting the problems of communication and interrelation, by raising awareness and internalizing the social norms, which supports it in building social judgments everyday, in the distinction between normality and abnormality, between normal and deviant social behaviors. In this dynamic of social development, the educable builds a social identity, by orienting himself to the social problem he faces, by spontaneously expressing his ideas, interests or needs, by adopting responsibility in empathic communication; by eliminating pessimism, negative affect, low self-esteem or mental distress, but also by eliminating the labeling, sarcasm or ridiculous tendencies which implies that he assumes a violation of the interlocutor's personal rights. In this efficient functioning of the future professional in the social environment or of the professional community, the educable through the effectively personalized educational interventions develops his abilities of realistic self-evaluation of his own characteristics and of the self-control mechanisms in the construction of his ego and identity, in order to his optimal integration in the interpersonal relations and in the group behavior, and through the social support offered throughout its development, the feeling of belonging to the social group is based, laying the foundations for the quality of interpersonal relationships.

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