THE DYNAMICS OF VALUE ORIENTATIONS OF STUDENTS OF THE FACULTY OF PSYCHOLOGY IN THE PROCESS OF THEIR PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
ПОД- СЕКЦИЯ 6. Педагогическая психология.
Angelina Sidorova,
Undergraduate student The Bashkir State Pedagogical University name after M. Akmullah
THE DYNAMICS OF VALUE ORIENTATIONS OF STUDENTS OF THE FACULTY OF PSYCHOLOGY IN THE PROCESS OF THEIR PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
In September, 2003 at the conference of Ministers of Education of the European countries the Russian Federation joined the Bologna Declaration aimed at forming the common European space of higher education. This fact resulted in the changes that are taking place within the system of higher education of our country. Besides, there are certain changes as far as requirements to a student’s personality are concerned.
Generally, higher professional education faces new challenges that require the training of competent and competitive professionals. They should be ready to perform professional tasks and get focused on continuous professional development.
Professional education represents the sphere that makes possible to develop students into future specialists. As the time available for professional self-determination during the period of getting higher education is rather short, students nowadays are required to be more self-dependent and mobile and they also should get aware of their priority values.
A system of personal values is an important index of a University graduate as far as his\her being ready for professional activities is concerned. As a rule, an individual’s dominant values are reflected in his consciousness in the form of value orientations and serve as an important factor of the social regulation of people’s interaction and the individual’s behavior.
Under a professional value orientation we understand those orientations that make up a basis for an individual to choose, acquire and later, in the course of time, make this or that professional activity. Professional values are characterized to be aware of, have a certain degree of significance, and represent a certain sign.
The presence of value orientations psychologically characterizes an individual to be a mature personality, it expresses the content of a person’s attitude to the social reality and as such the system of value orientations determines the motivation of his/her behavior affecting all aspects of his\her activities. As a part of the structure of a personality, value orientations characterize his\her inner readiness for some kind of activities aimed at the satisfaction of needs and interests. They indicate the direction of a person’s behavior, determines his\her position and, accordingly, the direction and content of professional self-realization and professional development of the individual.
The analysis of the system of personal values shows that they do no keep invariable. On the contrary, they constantly develop and get supplemented, including the process of getting higher professional education. In the course of studies at the University a student not only masters a certain amount of knowledge and achieves certain competences and skills, but also his\her personal development takes place, life position is fixed, such qualities as being communicative, empathetic, tactful, humane, critical, etc. are developed. Simaltaneously, the strategy of professional self-development is formed. This strategy is based on the solving of value contradictions. We think that the solution of value contradictions represents an internal tool of the process of value orientations’ dynamics.
The professional development is inseparable from personal progress. The basis of both the factors is the principle of self-development, which determines a person's ability to transform his\her own life activities into the subject of practical transformation. In the process of professional development the dynamics of "external" and "internal" professional values takes place. The dynamics manifests itself in the change of a degree of subjective significance of "external" and "internal" values at different stages of professional development. Such explicit attributes of the profession of a psychologist as his\her image, patterns of behavior, work environment are important for first- and second-year students. Later on, when studying special professional subjects, doing practical work on the subject, due to developing professional skills, "internal" professional values become more important. At this stage students may have value conflicts between a set of personal values already developed, on the one hand, and professional ones, just being formed, on the other hand. This or that way to resolve this contradiction will determine, what model of professional development will be in effect, whether a student will become a professional psychologist or formally deal with his\her professional duties.
Most authors (E. Zeer, E. Klimov, A. Markova, G.Allport, N. Pryazhnikov, M. Rokeach, E. Fantalova, etc.) consider the period of studies to be the most important one for an individual as this is the time for his/her personal development in the format of the professional and personal self-determination. Ways of forming a value orientation are found in the process of education. For instance, according to some scientific research, it is possible to rule the dynamics of realizing a value orientation through the use of discussions. The dynamics of a value orientation can come in effect within a discussion if an individual expresses his\her own value relation to the own senses. Besides, it presupposes specific cognitive activities aimed at the understanding and translating the senses into the level of the values accepted by the individual. We are also in the opinion that the use of training classes makes it possible to form the highest level of the system of a personality’s value orientation. This kind of psychological training is aimed at creating conditions to realize one’s psychological defense mechanisms used in the process of interpersonal interaction which restrict the personal growth and, hence, restrict the possibility to expand the boundaries of inner freedom.
We also believe that the democratic and creative environment of high school creates necessary conditions for the development of a professional personality and forming the higher autonomous level of the value system.
