Stress Resistance Of Students-Defectologists Before And During The Covid-19 Pandemic

Abstract

Stress resistance of future special education teachers (defectologists) is a professionally important quality formed in the process of educational and professional activity. The COVID-19 pandemic has created a long list of new stressors for students-defectologists to deal with. Therefore, the requirements for the stress-resistance of a student-defectologist increase significantly with the advent of the COVID-19. The aim of this study is to investigate the features of student-defectologists’ stress-resistance before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study was carried out in two stages. At the first stage (pre-pandemic), conducted in November 2019, a group of 110 students-defectologists was tested with the use of standardized questionnaires for assessing stress-resistance. At the second stage (in April 2020) the students completed an online survey that measured the COVID-19-related stressors and coping strategies. According to the research made, before the onset of the COVID-19 the most testees had a moderate level of stress-resistance, but its components were developed unevenly: intellectual, volitional, motivational, operational, and cognitive components are developed moderately. The level of development of the emotional and psychophysiological components was reduced. An online survey during the COVID-19 pandemic has shown a large number of stressors for the most testees. 41% of respondents report significant stress levels. Many of them show a psychological disequilibrium. Most of the testees use predominantly constructive coping strategies, but the subjects with higher levels of stress more often use avoidance and maladaptive coping strategies. Correlations show that the increased use of avoidance is associated with the increasing levels of stress.

Keywords: COVID-19, stress, stress resistance, stress-resistance components, student-defectologists

Introduction

The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and the lockdown caused certain changes in the society that led to the considerable changes in the life of every person. The duration and uncertainty of the current situation, due to the special characteristics of the COVID-19, has evoked great fear in many people, jeopardizing the possibility of meeting basic human needs. An analysis of the occurred changes has shown that the situation associated with the coronavirus pandemic has a high stress potential, and the overall scale of the disaster allows us to consider it as a global traumatic stressor (Brunier & Harris, 2020; Enikolopov et al., 2020; Holmes et al., 2020). The cumulative stress effect caused by this situation is a factor of increasing anxiety, fear, melancholy and depression (due to the impossibility of a quick resolving the situation), the appearance or intensification of psychopathological symptoms, etc. (Enikolopov et al., 2020).

Students faced difficulties associated with the management of educational and professional activities during the pandemic (Aristovnik et al., 2020; Gritsenko et al., 2020; Gonzalez et al., 2020). The introduction of the self-isolation regime and the temporary transition to e-learning using distance educational technologies actualized the importance of the competencies associated with the involvement of stress resistance mechanisms in response to the adverse factors (Elmer et al., 2020; Kamarianos et al., 2020; Kaparounaki et al., 2020; Khattar et al., 2020). So, the subject of our research is the development and transformation of the stress resistance mechanisms. The students-defectologists have become our testees as for them it is a basic competence and an important integral characteristic of the personality that determines an effective preparation, both for future professional, pedagogical activities, and the ability to respond to any negative impact on a daily basis without any special harmful consequences for physical, mental and social well-being.

Problem Statement

Numerous foreign studies are fair to say that teaching people with special educational needs is one of the most stressful professions (Baranov, 2002; O'Brien et al., 2019; Rustamova, 2015; Zhang et al., 2020). Psycho-emotional stress in the activities of special education (SPED) teachers (or teachers-defectologists) is associated with emotional and moral overloads caused by working with people with disabilities, and it specifies particular requirements for the level of psychological stability of the students who have chosen this profession (Ivanova & Makarova, 2015). A number of studies have shown that even beginning SPED teachers and students are subject to professional stress (Fimian & Blanton, 1986; Klassen & Chui, 2011). Stress negatively affects a special educator's purpose, job satisfaction, and career decisions (Cancio et al., 2018). Therefore, the ability to cope with the life event stressors and stressful demands of the profession is acknowledged in the literature as an important factor in the professional development of practicing and pre-service SPED teachers and students-defectologists (Dev, 2018; Klassen & Chui, 2011; Zhang et al., 2020). The success and effectiveness of training for the professional and pedagogical activity of the future defectologist, the level of his professional health are determined by such an integral characteristic of an individual as stress resistance.

Stress resistance the ability of an individual, a group, an organization, or even an entire population to withstand manifestations of clinical stress, disorders or dysfunctions associated with critical events, terrorism, and even mass disasters (Nucifora et al., 2007). It is a set of personal qualities that allow a person to adapt to the effects of extreme external and internal factors, successfully resolve stressful situations, overcome stress and endure significant intellectual, volitional and emotional stress caused by the peculiarities of his life, especially professional activity, without any special harmful consequences for activities, other people and his health (Kovaleva, 2016).

The scientific literature analysis carried out within the framework of our study has shown that there exist several methodological approaches to the study of stress resistance: the systemic approach and the subject-activity approach (Bokhan, 2008), the deficit model (Cunningham, 2015), the phenomenological approach (Cunningham, 2015; Downing, 2017), the holistic model (Simmons & Nelson, 2007), the competence-based approach (Waltz, 2016) and so on (for a review, see Ragozinskaya et al., 2020).

The most developed models of stress resistance are based on the principles of the systemic approach and the competence-based one.

The systemic approach understands stress resistance as a systemic, dynamic, and multicomponent psychological system. According to Vizitova (2012), teachers' stress resistance is a complex personal characteristic, determined by a practical support for three main components: emotional (neuropsychic balance, emotional balance); behavioral (activity, a strive for self-development and self-knowledge, assertive behavior, tolerance, communicative and interpersonal skills); cognitive (an auto-psychological competence, the ability to set goals and achieve results, develop skills to overcome stressful situations successfully). According to Katunin (2016), stress resistance can be considered as a dynamic structure of a personality, the main components of which are: emotional, accumulated in the process of overcoming difficult situations and manifested in confidence, in a feeling of inspiration and satisfaction from the task; volitional, which is expressed in self-control, self-possession, conscious self-regulation of actions, bringing them in line with the requirements of the situation; this component performs a control and evaluation function of preserving and restoring the appropriate regulation of the activity; intellectual, reflecting mental performance, a settled mode of thinking. The additional components of stress resistance are: motivational, psychophysiological, operational, communicative, and cognitive (Katunin, 2016).

According to the competence-based approach, competencies are defined as behavioral patterns or personality characteristics that affect performance at work, and stress resistance is understood as one of the priority competencies that has to be developed (Waltz, 2016). Stress resistance of a SPED teacher is understood here both as a condition and as a consequence of his competence development. Competence development is considered a preventive strategy of burnout.

All above-mentioned approaches organically complement each other, defining SPED teachers' stress resistance as a complex psychological phenomenon resulting from the interaction of many factors, such as: optimism and positive attitude, initiative, flexibility, social and emotional competence, communication skills, professional skills, self-efficacy, the ability to assess stressors, understanding the underlying causes of stress and its likely consequences, the ability to change behavior that leads to stress, time management, constructive coping strategies, passion for profession and passion for working with children with disabilities (Cunningham, 2015; Downing, 2017; Kebbi, 2018; Waltz, 2016).

Thus, the scientific and theoretical analysis carried out within the framework of our research allows us to state that stress resistance of special education teachers is one of the priority competencies that formed in the process of educational and professional activity. According to the advanced Russian and foreign psychologists, the stress resistance is mainly considered as a systemic, dynamic, and multicomponent psychological system, that allows coping with stressful situations successfully (in professional activities as well). However, the lack of research on stress resistance of students-defectologists does not allow us to substantiate ways, strategies and main directions of overcoming stressful states in the process of the professional development of a future special education teacher. The COVID-19 pandemic has created a long list of new stressors for students-defectologists to deal with. But the ways that allow a future defectologist to mobilize for an adequate assessment of the stressful influences and effective overcoming of stress are still insufficiently studied. These circumstances determined the direction and essence of our empirical stress resistance study of students-defectologists in dynamics: before and during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Research Questions

The study was carried out in two stages. At the first stage (pre-pandemic), conducted in November 2019, the research questions were:

Purpose of the Study

The purpose of this study is to investigate the features of student-defectologists’ stress-resistance before and during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Research Methods

The empirical study carried out on the basis of the Chelyabinsk State University in the 2019-2020 academic years had two stages. At the first stage, conducted in November 2019, 110 students of 1-4 courses enrolled in the Bachelor's program of the special (defectological) education took part in the study. The age of the examined students varies from 18 to 22 years old. All respondents expressed their voluntary informed consent to participate in the study.

At the first stage, as a theoretical basis for the empirical research, we relied on the multicomponent structure of stress resistance (Katunin, 2016), but taking into account the specifics of the professional training of the future teachers-defectologists. We used the following set of psychodiagnostic methodologies: The perceptual assessment of the stress resistance type, The stress sensitivity test, the multilevel personality questionnaire "Adaptability" (MLO-AM); Forecast-2, The subjective control level (USK), the tapping test, Characteristics of emotionality, The method for diagnosing the type of emotional reaction to the impact of environmental stimuli, Coping inventory for stressful situations (CISS), The psychovegetative questionnaire, Diagnostics method of learning motivation in pedagogical university students.

During the second stage of our empirical study, carried out from April, 28 to May, 11, 2020, there were investigated 56 students, which were a part of the first stage sample of participants. The peculiarity of this stage of the study was determined by the social situation associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, which actualized the involvement of the mechanisms of stress resistance of the future teachers-defectologists in response to the influence of a complex of unfavorable factors of the external and internal environment. We used a questionnaire as a core research method. The survey was conducted in a remote format on the condition of voluntary anonymity using a specially designed questionnaire.

The questionnaire consisted of three blocks:

• the first block was aimed at clarifying the subjective assessment of the respondents' stress burden of the COVID-19 pandemic; the respondents were asked to evaluate on a five-point scale the degree of stressfulness of this situation as a whole and its individual components (threat to personal health, threat to the health of relatives and friends, communicative deficit, inability to study and work freely, motor deficit, uncertainty of the situation, etc.);
• the second block was aimed at determining the severity of the general syndrome of psychological stress and its main sub-syndromes; the respondents were asked to rate themselves on a five-point scale according to the severity of various emotional-behavioral, vegetative, cognitive, and socio-psychological manifestations of stress;
• the third block was aimed at assessing the degree of tension in the respondents' defensive system and at determining the “share” of various coping strategies used by respondents to cope with this situation; the respondents were asked to evaluate on a five-point scale the frequency of using various types of coping with this situation.

Based on the results of the survey, all respondents that agreed to take part were interviewed.

For statistical data processing Spearman's rank correlation coefficient was used.

Findings

Conclusion

Thus, as a result of the first stage of the study, it was revealed that the level of stress resistance of the surveyed students is generally satisfactory, however, individual components of stress resistance are developed unevenly: volitional, intellectual, motivational, operational and cognitive components correspond to the average level of development, the level of development of emotional and psychophysiological components is reduced.

The analysis of the second stage of the survey suggests that the majority of respondents assessed the overall situation associated with the COVID-19 pandemic as moderately stressful. At the same time, such aspects of this situation as a threat to the health of relatives and friends, the general uncertainty of the situation and the inability to study freely and do what they like, have a high level of stress for them. Uncertainty of the socio-economic situation in the country, the inability to communicate freely with relatives and friends, colleagues and classmates, a threat to their own health and a lack of physical activity have a moderate level of stress for respondents.

The majority of respondents have mild manifestations of psychological stress syndrome. The main stress sub-syndromes are also mild in most of the surveyed students. The highest indices were found on the scale of cognitive and socio-psychological stress sub-syndromes, but even they do not go below the normal range for the students surveyed.

Most of the respondents use predominantly constructive strategies for coping with stress. At the same time, a larger repertoire of coping strategies in the process of choosing tactics for coping with stress is noted among respondents who assess the situation associated with a pandemic as more stressful and have a higher level of manifestations of psychological stress syndrome.

A correlation analysis of the first and the second stages results of the survey shows that in the COVID-19 pandemic, those students who have such psychological characteristics as a tendency to use mostly the avoidance strategy of coping with life difficulties, maladaptive disorders (including reactions of the asthenic and psychotic type), a mood exclusively for positive stimuli of the environment (an euphoric type of emotional reactions) and a tendency to self-blame in case of failure, an excitable type of the nervous system and expressed sympathicotonia are more subject to stress. Those students who have such psychological characteristics as neuropsychic stability, high adaptive abilities, adequate stress sensitivity, and a tendency to use mostly the constructive emotion-focused coping and problem-focused coping in the stressful situations are less subject to stress and recover more quickly.

Summing up the results of our empirical research, we note that stress resistance is an important psychological quality and a basic competence important for future teachers-defectologists formed in the process of educational and professional activities. The study of the mechanisms of its development and manifestation allows us to formulate the essence of this phenomenon and substantiate the methods and main directions of overcoming stressful conditions in the process of professional and pedagogical development and determine the main ways to prevent the consequences of psychological stress associated with the COVID-19 pandemic.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Olga Stadnik for her help with data collection at the first stage of the study.

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