Ensuring Teachers’ Professional Position In The Provision Of Psychological And Pedagogical Support

Abstract

The article deals with the problem of teachers’ professional position as a factor in the provision of psychological and pedagogical support. The relevance of the problem presented in the article is due to the importance of the quality of the interaction between a student and a teacher, which is determined by the teacher’s professional position. The issues of relations between the subjects of psychological and pedagogical support, that determine the teacher’s professional position, expressed in his professional interest in the actualization of students’ inner self, their empathic perception of the world, the organization of social and educational work based on of cooperation and dialogism, are considered to be important. A task that a present-day school faces nowadays is to solve the problem of deep changes in the structure of relations between the teacher and the student, which are based on interaction and partnership. Interaction is a relation to oneself, and it acquires individual characteristics concerning another person. A significant aspect of the problem under study is the relationship between the teacher and the child which is one of the factors affecting the provision of psychological and pedagogical support. Theoretical knowledge on the problem of children’s social competence and desire to demonstrate his professional position in interaction, make the teacher plan his work and create the best conditions for the development of students’ social competence. The purpose of the research is the study of the teacher’s professional position as a determining factor of psychological and pedagogical support.

Keywords: Professional position, readiness, interaction, psychological and pedagogical support

Introduction

Nowadays situation in school education requires the teacher to change his activities, where he must see himself and continue himself. Such a position allows the teacher to ask himself questions, to try to find an inner meaning in everything that is happening outside, in everything surrounding him, "to plunge into the endless atmosphere of eternal questions", because it reveals the world as if these questions were addressed to him directly.

A teacher as a professional should be fully conscious of different things: he should understand his values, his characteristics, and individuality and see the way all this affects the students (Abramenko et al., 2018). A professional position directly depends on personal values and life goals. Another thing is that to meet his true desires, a teacher must overcome traditional conservatism typical of the traditional system, the burden of the stereotypical education of the past. In this regard, one of the important issues of the modern school is the question of today's teacher’s awareness of a new social reality. Even though at present the majority of schools employ a generation of teachers, whose thinking was formed in the era of the planning and administrative system, it is appropriate to cite Korczak’s observations about the teacher’s inclination to blame himself (less often), his children (more often) and his working conditions (always) alternately (Abramenko, 2012). According to Abulkhanova-Slavskaya, it is almost impossible to change this situation in a social way. It can be changed only in those people and only to a certain extent that his consciousness can be positively adjusted and expanded (as cited in Abramenko, 2012).

Studies conducted by several authors emphasize that professional activity of a teacher providing psychological and pedagogical support is based on universal principles, where respect for the child's personality in combination with reasonable demands and education are based on positive cooperation together with the idea of joint development activities of children and adults, subjectivity as a promoting factor of the development of children’s abilities, compliance of the educational process with the schoolchildren’s age characteristics and individual approach acquire special importance (Romanova et al., 2018). In the research works made by N.N. Mikhailova, child support in education essentially denotes the subject of the teacher's activity and the child's ability to become the subject of the situation, the area where his interests are located (as cited in Abramenko, 2012).

Any person can find strength and opportunities to change and "to revive him". It all depends on the combination of social and individual conditions. The process of switching introversion to the personalization process: establishing his personal style of relationships and interactions with both his peers and adults, whereby the child acquires self-confidence and his significance for others and he becomes ready for an adequate attitude to the assessments of others thus contributing to his identity formation (Schipanova, 2015). One teacher alone has no sociocultural significance: as a professional, a "structural element" in the "person-to-person" system, he "lives" only in the context of interaction (Khokhlova, 2003). The teacher should create an interactive space that is as close as possible to the real-life socialization process. Particular attention should be paid to such personal parameters of subjects of interaction as the ability to manage the development of a specific socio-cultural situation (Arutjunova et al., 2018). Hence, a comprehensive analysis of such a parameter as the teacher’s professional position is necessary because it determines the quality of the created interaction space and its "authenticity" because the social matrix of human behavior is formed only within the framework of such interaction.

It should be noted that a teacher’s professional position is a key factor of effective provision of psychological and pedagogical support in the conditions of social and educational work with children at risk.

Problem Statement

The teacher’s professional position is an integral personal formation, which is a system of positive relations of the teacher to himself, to other people, to his professional activity, manifested through politeness, tact, and internal culture in the course of pedagogical interaction.

The teacher promotes the child's personality development, taking into account his characteristics. A student is a central figure in the pedagogical process, whereas teachers and other people, connected with educational activities, only help the development of the child’s personality, and, taking into account his natural characteristics, inclinations, and abilities, contribute to his age-related development. From this point of view, the teacher’s activities can be attributed to a special type of attitude towards a child, assisting in the development and consistent use of the principles of dialogue.

An adolescent exists in two cultures: in the world of adults and in the world of children, which results in the severity of emotional instability and tension, shyness and aggressiveness, maximalism, risk-taking, and self-testing; the genesis of moral consciousness as a process of transformation and internal organization of relevant norms and rules (Golovanova & Dermanova, 2018).

Not only does the teacher influence students, but they also influence the teacher in return. Thus, in the process of joint activities, the teacher and students enter into certain types of interpersonal interaction (Novichikhina et al., 2020).

Here we can talk about its synergistic nature, about self-organizing processes of pedagogical communication, including such elements as normative (set) and personal (unformalized) psychological contact, providing child support in moments of risks and difficulties, and coordinating individual actions of all the subjects of interaction in an integral system of psychological and pedagogical activities to achieve the intended goals.

Research Questions

Consideration for the teacher’s professional position as the basis for building relationships between the subjects of psychological and pedagogical support makes it necessary to study the teachers’ readiness to take this position. K. M. Durai-Novakova demonstrates the teacher’s professional readiness as a system of individual integrated variables such as individual properties; qualities; knowledge, and skills (experience) (as cited in Abramenko, 2012). The components, which were chosen as the basis for assessment, were supposed to be criteria for analysis (Abramenko, 2012), including generally accepted criteria of readiness for professional activity on different levels such as motivational- axiological, reflexive, organizational and communicative ones.

Here we can talk about its synergistic nature, about self-organizing processes of pedagogical communication, including such elements as normative (set) and personal (unformalized) psychological contact, providing child support in moments of risks and difficulties, coordinating individual actions of all subjects of interaction in an integral system of psychological and pedagogical activities to achieve the intended goals (Seviaryn et al., 2019). The organizational criterion implies the teachers’ ability to realize pedagogical management of social and educational activities; organization of adolescents’ activities aimed at fulfilling the given tasks; the provision of psychological and pedagogical support and the use of new educational technologies; adolescents’ involvement in the activities, the encouragement of their creativity and initiative; the organization of their behavior and the implementation of creative and rational time management. Communicative criteria include the ability to establish pedagogically appropriate relationships with students, their parents, colleagues, a position of cooperation, readiness to solve real problems together while finding constructive ways to resolve conflict situations. Reflection is an important criterion for teachers' readiness to provide psychological and pedagogical support (Abramenko et al., 2018).

The path to professionalism is possible based on a developed ability to reflect, moreover, it depends on a sufficiently high level of its formation. Reflection is not just the ability for self-analysis; it is an assessment, search, development, personal work, and identification of one’s capabilities and search of further self-development ways (Schrufer et al., 2020). It is the reflection that helps to consider the perceived advantages and disadvantages of one's personality emotionally, to realize self-determination in various circumstances adequately, and to program one's changes independently (Romanova et al., 2018).

By examining one’s professional position, giving self-report to personal actions and behavior, analyzing motivation, and correlating goals with the results of the activities, the teacher can model his further self-development steps on his "own scale" and correlate them with social expectations.

Purpose of the Study

The purpose of the given work is to diagnose the teachers’ readiness to provide psychological and pedagogical support.

Research Methods

The survey sampling was made up of 62 teachers.

The subject of the study was the teacher’s professional position as a factor in providing psychological and pedagogical support.

We used a questionnaire to study teachers' satisfaction with their work, developed by E.N. Stepanov, and an easy questionnaire to determine the motives that prompted to provide psychological and pedagogical support. The teachers’ value orientations were studied using the value survey by M. Rockeach. The assessment of the level of sociability was studied according to the test of V.F. Ryakhovsky (as cited in Abramenko, 2012).

To determine the level of reflexivity, we used A.V. Karpov’s and V.V. Ponomarev’s research methods (Abramenko, 2012). To generalize the criteria on different levels such as motivational- axiological, reflexive, organizational, and communicative the questionnaire "teacher's ability to self-development" was conducted.

Findings

The teacher’s professional position as the basis for building relationships between the subjects of psychological and pedagogical support makes it necessary to study the teachers’ readiness to take this position.

Let us turn to the results of the diagnostic criteria of teachers' readiness to provide psychological and pedagogical support. To determine the teacher’s professional position as a factor of effective provision of psychological and pedagogical support, it was important to determine whether teachers were satisfied with their work.

The overall teachers’ satisfaction with the state of the educational process and their position in it was 77.7%. The organization of work satisfied them by 80.5%, the possibility of professional and other personal qualities realization satisfied them by 55.9%, a positive attitude towards colleagues and administration - 68.6%, positive relations with adolescents and parents – 75.6%, satisfaction with the provision of conditions for the teacher's activity made it 59.6%. Satisfaction with their work had a positive effect on the favorable relations of teachers with adolescents, and this ensures better academic performance and the desire of teachers to provide psychological and pedagogical support.

The study of value orientations showed the following results. Respondents determined the significance (rank) of each of the 18 proposed significant values. Analyzing the data, we stated the following fact (although this was not the purpose of this study): teachers with solid experience ranged the values of "health" (1st rank), "happy family life" (2nd rank), "material well-being" (3rd rank), "favorite work" (4th rank), "knowledge" (5th rank). Young teachers’ values were as follows "health" (1st rank), "material prosperity" (2nd rank), recognition (3rd rank), knowledge (4 th rank), "favorite work" (5th rank).

The results of the level of sociability allowed us to conclude that teachers had all the necessary communicative skills, self-attitude, and evaluation of the interlocutor in determining his strengths and weaknesses and understanding his problems for the successful provision of psychological and pedagogical support, to create a friendly atmosphere and to determine his position.

To determine the level of reflexivity, 60 teachers were interviewed, as a result, 35 people (58%) had high results on the test (more than 7 answers), which indicated that the teachers were inclined to analyze their activities, as well as students’ activities, were able to reveal the causes and consequences of their actions. They tended to analyze their professional activities scrupulously and predict all possible consequences of their activity. They were able to put themselves in the student’s place, anticipate his behavior and naturally help him in a difficult situation. 15 teachers (25%) had average results (5-6 answers), which indicated that they did not always know how to analyze their activities correctly, they found it difficult to identify the causes of their actions and the consequences accordingly. They sometimes had difficulty predicting possible consequences. 10 teachers (17%) had low results on the test (less than 4 answers), and this indicated that teachers were less likely to think about what was happening at the present moment, about the causes of other people's behavior and their actions and consequences.

To summarize the criteria of the professional position, the questionnaire "Teacher's ability for self-development" was conducted. 48 teachers took part in the survey. The results of the survey showed that 22 teachers had the ability for active self-development, while the rest of the teachers had an average desire for active self-development.

Based on the obtained data, we determined the further task of the study that was to create the teachers’ understanding of their knowledge limitations for the provision of psychological and pedagogical support. All this could cause a great need for self-education, the need to replenish the missing knowledge. To do this, we put the teachers in conditions of voluntary individual analysis of their knowledge and skills. The ranking of teachers' value judgments about the quality of their knowledge and skills was primarily aimed at self-examination and self-assessment of their knowledge for readiness to provide psychological and pedagogical support.

The study of teachers' self-assessment of professional readiness showed the following results. Teachers evaluated their knowledge of different subjects in the following way:

• theory and practice of psychological and pedagogical support (50% of teachers were poorly proficient),
• typology of social competence (82% of teachers were poorly proficient),
• differentiated approach (82% of teachers experienced problems when working with children of the designated types of social competence),
• 87.5% of teachers were interested in the teenagers’ problems,
• analysis of activities and their results (26.3% of teachers did not have enough knowledge).
• Most of all teachers evaluated the knowledge of psychological and pedagogical features of adolescence (90%).

The presented data showed that teachers had a high level of activity; there was also a desire to put theoretical material into practice.

Conclusion

The results of the study give grounds to assert that teachers’ readiness to provide psychological and pedagogical support means that they have confidence in their independence, in a choice of decisions and modes of behavior. A certain motivational attitude, interest, and belief in the importance and necessity of psychological and pedagogical knowledge and skills, which will encourage the teacher to provide his students psychological and pedagogical support, are typical of a large group of teachers.

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