Methods Of Student Psychological Culture Development – Future Specialists In The University

Abstract

The article considers the concept of «psychological culture»; the structure of psychological culture, which includes a cognitive component that determines a person’s perception of himself, other people, psychological patterns of behaviour and activity; emotional-evaluative component, including the relationship of a person to himself and attitude to the world; the process-activity (technological) component that determines how a person interacts with the environment and himself; the value-semantic component that determines the significance of the actions performed, the selected methods of behaviour and activity and communicative component that determines the possibility of interpersonal human interaction; the stages of the formation of psychological culture and the methods of development of the psychological culture of future specialists in the educational space of the university are specified. The article describes the results of a study of student participation in the work of the psychological club on the development of the communicative component of the psychological culture of future specialists in the educational space of the university. The students of the experimental group participated in a program for the development of psychological culture in the form of a psychological club. The selection of the content of the club work was carried out according to the components of psychological culture: cognitive, process-activity, emotional-evaluative, value-semantic and communicative components. The forms of work of the psychological club included themed club hours; thematic events (evening of poetry and music, meetings with interesting people), thematic meetings, thematic field classes (nature, museum); psychological training and workshops.

Keywords: Psychological culturepsychological clubpsychological trainingstructural components of psychological cultureuniversity educational space

Introduction

The pace of socio-economic development of society today with simultaneously present political tension in the world and social contradictions within the state increase the requirements for the modern person. More than ever, the Russian society needs a «high-level, spiritually rich and creatively active person» (Bodalev, 1995, p. 27). This problem is most acute for researchers in the field of the humanities, designed to establish patterns of personality development. In the scientific search, problems related to the identification of internal (psychological) and external (sociocultural) conditions determining the development of a person’s ability to live fully, interact and work in the context of the pace of his economic development set by the world community continue to be acute. In our opinion, this is one of the factors that prompted us to consider his psychological culture as a psychological condition for the development of a person who meets the requirements of a socio-cultural environment.

The very concept of “psychological culture” indicates its psychological and cultural components and can be interpreted in the context of different areas of scientific thought: philosophical and cultural, socio-psychological and psychological-pedagogical. For a long period of time, the term “psychological culture” was used as an explanatory term in psychology, indicating the need to introduce such rules of communication and human interaction with the environment that could present, reproduce and broadcast patterns of cultural behaviour. The explanatory nature of this term is very clearly presented in the works of Bodaleva. Today, psychological science deals with the developed conceptual directions in the study of the psychological culture of man. A great contribution to the development of concepts of psychological culture was made by such Russian scientists as Egorova (2015); Kolmogorova (2002); Lifintseva (2000); Semikin (2002); Selezneva (2006). The Kolmagorova’s systematic approach to identifying the characteristics of the psychological culture of children of different school age and creating the psychological and pedagogical conditions for its formation throughout the school year has become unique in the country in understanding the essence of the very phenomenon of the psychological culture of a person and the conditions for his development (Kolmogorova, 2002). The methods for diagnosing psychological culture developed by this author have served and continue to serve as the necessary methodological assistance that enables a school educational institution to carry out focused work with schoolchildren. Defining the term of psychological culture, based on the definition of human culture, Kolmogorova introduces the concept of «general psychological culture» and presents it as an integral part of the basic culture and «systemic characteristics of a person that allows him determining himself in society and self-actualize in life effectively» (Kolmogorova, 2002). Further concepts of psychological culture were built around professional and mainly educational activities. The psychological culture of a specialist was comprehended on the example of the teacher’s professional development as “professional psychological culture” (Lifintseva, 2000, p. 28), on the example of the head of an educational institution (Selezneva, 2006). Its role and meaning were comprehended in the context of human education, its educational opportunities (Semikin, 2002), in the context of social psychology (Egorova, 2015).

By psychological culture we will understand a complex systemic formation that defines a person’s mental activity by becoming a subject of self-development, coordinating its activity with natural, sociocultural, spiritual and moral (value-semantic) foundations of life and providing it with reliability, security, and the stability of its psychosomatic functioning systems in ordinary and complex life situations (Egorova, 2015).

The structure of psychological culture includes a systemic unity of the following components: a cognitive component that determines a person’s perception of himself, other people, psychological patterns of behaviour and activity; emotional-evaluative component, including the relationship of a person to himself and attitude to the world, the level of functioning of which determines the level of development of reflective abilities, reflective human behaviour; process-activity (technological), determining the ways of human interaction with the environment and himself. A special role is given to the value-semantic system-forming component, which determines the significance of the actions taken, the selected methods of behaviour and activity, which implies their correlation with the humanistic and environmental principles of community in the world of people, nature and their natural and social essence, which gives cultural activities the quality of a person’s mental activity (Egorova, 2015).In our opinion, an important role in the structure of psychological culture is played by the communicative component, which allows all structural components of psychological culture to manifest itself in the interpersonal interaction of a person.

The sphere of a person’s relationship with the world is represented by:

  • his attitude to himself, which is determined by interest, autosympathy, the need for self-knowledge, the position of “I”, self-esteem;

  • his attitude towards another person, which is found in empathy, compassion, love, the desire to understand the other, selfless help and support. It is important to emphasize that this attitude is built not only on one's subjective emotional experience of interest, admiring but on a reflective assessment of another person’s attitude to himself. It is experienced as the position of “We,” not “I” and “THEY,” which characterizes a higher level of consciousness;

  • his attitude to social values, namely: careful and value attitude to work, one's professional duty, the work that one serves, attitude to culture (national and world cultural heritage), country;

  • his attitude towards nature, determined by the ecocentric type of man’s relationship with nature, which does not allow the consumer position to appear when it interacts with the natural environment since objects of this environment acquire equal value, which means that a person recognizes nature’s right to the realization of one’s tribal essence, one’s ways of being (Panov, 2016).

The development of psychological culture occurs in interaction with the natural and socio-cultural environment, as well as in the process of self-knowledge, self-development and self-realization by a person of his "generic" natural essence as the main resources and sources of potential opportunities for self-development. The process of conscious development of psychological culture begins with a person turning to himself as an object of cognition, which allows him identifying and using his potential opportunities to become the subject of his activity in appropriating the psychological culture, its patterns of behaviour, communication and activity.

Addressing the works of Panov and his followers made it possible to see the stages of the formation of human subjectivity, which was used by Egorova to the description of the process of formation of the psychological culture of man. In our study, we rely on the following stages in the formation of the student’s psychological culture:

At the first stage – psychological culture in the form of behaviors, communication, new learning activities, solving one’s psychological problems, is assimilated as imitation and unconscious reproduction. These examples of attitude towards other people, to oneself, which are represented in the surrounding socio-cultural environment (family, school, production), are the stage of the spontaneous, spontaneous and, therefore, unconscious (non-reflective) internalization of psychological knowledge.

The second stage begins when a person begins to feel the need to change himself and look for ways of this self-change. It begins with the moment of the occurrence of the contradiction (problem) and the person’s vision of his limitations and the insufficiency of ways of psychological interaction with others and with himself. Such problems can be conflicts with other people, illnesses, and many other psychological problems. At this stage, personal self-determination takes place, accompanied by the emergence of needs and motives for self-change, self-correction of one’s behaviour, activity, attitude towards oneself and other people.

The third stage is the stage of purposeful internalization of psychological culture. At this stage, a person finds that part of the socio-cultural environment that allows him working on himself purposefully (seminars, circles, courses, psychological clubs, communication).

Having received a positive result of the appropriation of samples of psychological culture in the form of a personality neoplasm (a method of action and behaviour, altered emotional state, altered perception, altered attitude to oneself and other effects of its formation), many subjects in the process of their interactions with other people have a desire to convey this experience to others. This is the stage of the exteriorization of psychological culture.

The stage of the exteriorization of psychological culture, as a result of targeted formative influences, is widely represented in the psychological and pedagogical literature of the past and present decades (Gabdreev, 2012; Lezhneva, 2012; Romanov, 2012).

For the development of psychological culture in the educational space of the university there are a large number of methods. It is great if the university’s educational programs include psychological disciplines: «Psychology», «Social Psychology», «Pedagogy and Psychology». Then it is possible to develop a psychological culture in educational activities. For this, there are active teaching methods: psychological training, business and role-playing games, psycho-gymnastic exercises, problem-based training.

A colossal potential is hidden in the outside educational activities of the university. Psychological laboratories, psychological student clubs, psychological training can be attributed to the most effective methods of developing psychological culture outside the educational activities of a university.

Problem Statement

The main problem of the study at hand is a significant contradiction between the urgent need of society, the practice of education and university training in the formation of the psychological culture of a future specialist, on the one hand, and the insufficient scientific, theoretical and experimental psychological development of ways, methods and means of solving this tasks, the lack of a holistic and harmonious concept of the development of the psychological culture of a specialist in a university.

Research Questions

The subject of the research is the methods of development of the psychological culture of future specialists in the educational space of the university.

Purpose of the Study

The purpose of the article is the study and testing of effective methods for the development of the psychological culture of future specialists in the educational space of the university.

Research Methods

To achieve this goal, we conducted a study of the impact of participation in a psychological club on the communicative component of the psychological culture of students enrolled in the speciality “State and Municipal Administration” of the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration in 2019. The study involved 300 students: 150 made up the control group (CG), 150 – the experimental group (EG).

The study consisted of three stages. At the summative and control stages, we diagnosed the communicative qualities of students in the EG and the CG. To diagnose the level of development of communicative qualities of students in the EG and CG, we used the following methods: “The scale of acceptance of others” by Fey, “The scale of hostility” by Cook – Medley, “The scale of benevolence and trust” by Campbell-Rosenberg and the “Scale of manipulative attitude” by Bant (Labunskaya et al., 2001).

At the formative stage, students of the experimental group (EG) participated in the work of the psychological club. The selection of the content of club work was carried out according to the components of psychological culture. The cognitive component was provided using thematic scientific psychological material; process-activity – using practice and exercises aimed at mastering and reproducing effective ways of interacting with oneself, with others, with natural and cultural objects; emotional-evaluative component – by the use of reflective assessment (oral, written) of all activities and practical tasks. The value-semantic component was ensured by the awareness of the applied methods of action and interaction, the comprehension of their psychological mechanisms, and most importantly, the awareness of the meaning and value of the acquired practical material (methods of arbitrary regulation of one’s states and behaviour, new ways of resolving internal problems and contradictions and others). The forms of work of the psychological club included themed club hours; thematic events (evening of poetry and music, meetings with interesting people), thematic meetings, thematic field classes (nature, museum); training and workshops with invited trainers.

Technologically, the content aimed at assigning new ways of behaviour and interaction by students was built in blocks reflecting the form of the emerging system of relations: “I and I”, “I and others”, “I am culture and nature”. The developing influence of these systems was ensured by a set of methods that generate the subjective activity of the personality and create the conditions for the transformation of individual interaction subjects into a “collective subject of activity” (the methodological foundations for constructing such technology are presented in the works of Panov). This is the difference between our psychotechnology of working with students and others used in club work. The system of methods was a condition for:

a) the subject's experiences of himself in himself, the discovery of the possibilities of controlling his psyche, the disclosure of the psychological mechanisms of the conscious regulation of his states, behaviour and practical actions, the awareness of his achievements;

b) living a state of unity with another person, with objects of nature and experiencing their worth;

c) appeal to spiritual and cultural values, cultural patterns of behaviour and activities, projecting them onto oneself, one’s relationships, into one’s future professional activity;

d) going through all stages of the formation of the psychological culture of the personality, where the subject of perception transforms himself into a subject-translator of psychologically cultural ways of interacting with himself and others.

As a rule, a club meeting included: a) an information block; b) a block of practices, games or game tasks; c) a reflexive block, which included a discussion of the problem that has arisen, an expression of one’s position.

Of particular importance in the work of the psychological club was given to training forms of work. For example, the goal of the psychological training “Effective Communication” was the development of basic professional skills for effective communication: the ability to establish contacts, the ability to listen and hear a communication partner, the ability to understand and, if necessary, adjust the emotional state of a communication partner, the ability to argue one’s point of view, one’s professional position, skills of confident and decent behaviour in various professional situations (Sorokoumova, 2018).

Findings

The results of the summative assessment showed that students with an average level of acceptance of others, with a low level of hostility, with an average level in terms of aggressiveness and suspicion, with an average level of goodwill and confidence and with an average level of the tendency to manipulative behaviour predominate in the experimental sample. The results of the diagnostic study demonstrate the need for special purposeful work to develop the communicative qualities of students – future managers for whom communicative qualities are professionally important.

Table 01 shows indicators of the severity of acceptance of others, the goodwill and manipulativeness of EG students after participating in the work of a psychological club in comparison with the indicators of these same students before participating. The data are presented in the form of average indicators and the percentage distribution of students according to the severity levels of the studied qualities.

Table 1 -
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As we can see from table 1 , after participating in the work of the psychological club, the percentage of students with a high level of “Accepting Others” quality increased from 15.5% to 75.5%. Secondary diagnostics did not reveal a low level of severity of this quality. The percentage of students with high indicators of “Goodwill” increased from 15.5 to 77.5%. Individuals with a low level of this quality were also not detected by secondary diagnostics. The given data convincingly speak about the influence of participation in the work of a psychological club on the formation of acceptance, goodwill and trust.

Table 02 shows indicators of the level of negative relations (hostility, aggressiveness, suspicion and manipulativeness) of students of the EG after participating in the work of a psychological club in comparison with the indicators of these same students before participating in the program.

Table 2 -
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Diagnostic results after participating in a psychological club show that there are no students left with a high level of manifestation of aggressiveness, hostility, suspicion and manipulativeness. Most students, according to testing, show low levels of these negative psychological qualities. The data on the manipulative scale indicate a significant decrease in the tendencies for manipulative communication. After participating in the work of the psychological club, there are no students with a high level of manipulativeness. Most subjects have significantly low rates.

In general, experimental data indicate the effective influence of the work of a psychological club not only on the development of communicative skills: the ability to make contact, the ability to listen and hear, the ability to understand and, if necessary, adjust the emotional state of a communication partner, the ability to argue one’s position, confidently worthy behaviour in various situations but also on the development of communicative qualities of a person: acceptance of others, goodwill, decrease in indicators of hostility, aggression, suspicion and manipulative. We believe that it is necessary to introduce a variety of methods into the educational process, which will allow more efficient development of all structural components of psychological culture, first of all, communicative abilities of students and the development of communicative qualities.

Conclusion

The development of psychological culture occurs in interaction with the natural and socio-cultural environment, as well as in the process of self-knowledge, self-development and self-realization by a person of a "generic" natural essence as the main resources and sources of potential opportunities for self-development. The process of conscious development of psychological culture begins with a person turning to himself as an object of cognition. In this process, a special role is given to the education system, directing human activity, energy to cultural (spiritual and moral) values.

For the development of psychological culture in the educational space of the university: in the educational and non-educational activities there are a large number of methods. The most effective methods for the development of psychological culture outside the educational activities of the university include the work of psychological student clubs. The study showed the high efficiency of this method and the fundamental possibility of developing the psychological culture of students – future specialists in the educational space of the university.

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27 February 2021

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National interest, national identity, national security, public organizations, linguocultural identity, linguistic worldview

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Egorova, Т. Е., Sorokoumova, G. V., Serebrovskaya, N. E., Voloshina, K. A., & Semenov, D. V. (2021). Methods Of Student Psychological Culture Development – Future Specialists In The University. In I. Savchenko (Ed.), National Interest, National Identity and National Security, vol 102. European Proceedings of Social and Behavioural Sciences (pp. 958-966). European Publisher. https://doi.org/10.15405/epsbs.2021.02.02.119