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ADAPTATION OF STUDENTS UNDER THE CONDITIONS OF CONTINUOUS EDUCATION
E. V. Leonova
The problem of students' adaptation in the new educational environment during transition to a new level of education is considered. The concept of personal competence as the psychological readiness of a student to learn at the next educational level is introduced. Non-formal education resources which ensure the continuity of formal education are revealed.
Key words: formal, non-formal, informal education, adaptation, disadaptation, personal competence, pupils, students.
From the perspective of the subject-activity approach, we understand continuous education as the students' development that lasts throughout their lives in the process of acquiring expertise, knowledge and skills and shaping competences in various kinds of training, professional, social and public activities. The core of secondary and tertiary students' education is formal education (the vertical element of continuous education), this being a sequence of educational stages (levels). The periods of students' transition to the next educational stage of the vertical element of continuous education are periods of increased risk of interruption of the continuity of the educational process. In spite of the continuity of educational programs, there is a certain intermittency of the vertical element of secondary and tertiary students' continuous education, and upon the transition to a new educational level, educatees find themselves in a new educational environment. This situation engenders the problem of adaptation.
The adaptation of the continuous education of students is the process of a student’s active interaction with the educational environment of a secondary/tertiary school, resulting in: (a) the student's learning of the education program (the information component of adaptation); (b) the establishment of adequate interpersonal relationships with other participants in the educational process (the regulative component of adaptation); (c) emotional well-being (the affective component of adaptation).
The continuity of the vertical element of education is ensured both by the creation of external conditions (continuity of educational programs, absence of gaps in individual stages of education, creation of regional continuous education facilities, remote education programs) and the internal factor of educational continuity: a student’s psychological readiness to continue their studies at the next educational stage, which ensures the success of the adaptation and efficiency of education, even if the external conditions for educational continuity are insufficient. As a rule, the above transition periods coincide in time with age-related crises of student development (according to a number of authors, they accelerate the age-related crises). A certain "development task" directly connected with qualitative changes in personality development is solved during any critical period. The tasks of development (R. Havigurst, P. Heimans) are the skills, knowledge, functions and mindsets which an individual must acquire before a certain moment in his or her
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life, in the process of physical maturing, under the influence of social expectation and with the help of personal efforts. A successful and timely solution of the development task makes a person happy, and finds the solution of the development tasks set in subsequent age periods [5]. A failure to solve development tasks brings about a feeling of unhappiness, social condemnation and complications in solving future development tasks. In this case, during the school education period, tasks are set by the social environment represented by parents, teachers and peers. In time, as a person develops, this function is increasingly shouldered by the person themselves, to his or her value orientations and needs. Any development tasks that were not solved at the present education stage bring about hardships at the following stage of continuous education.
The study performed by us was devoted to determining the psychological factors of adaptation process disturbances. 1st, 5th and 10th form secondary students, and first-year tertiary students took part in the study, and the total number of pollees is 316 [2]. The hypothesis tested in the process of the study is that a well-shaped personal competence of learners is an integral characteristic of their personality. This is an internal factor of education continuity, and a reduction in the risk of secondary and tertiary students' disadaptation at a new educational environment within the process of raising themselves to a new educational level. The structure of such a characteristic comprises: (a) the individual-psychological component (personality traits, intellectual and creative abilities underlying a secondary school student's readiness and ability for learning and selfdevelopment); (b) the motivation and axiological component (formed learning and knowledge motivation, axiological mindsets); (c) the activity component (learning skills, formed ability to perform universal learning actions); (d) the communicative component (skills of interpersonal interaction in the educational process).
The study resulted in determining general and age-related psychological factors of abnormalities in the adaptation process of first-form, fifth-form, tenth-form secondary school students, and first-year tertiary school students in a new educational environment. It was established with the help of regression analysis that the psychological factors determined by us, and as components of personal competence, are relevant for all the age groups of learners, and as a whole they are the adaptation recourse of students' personalities. The analysis of the significance of the impact of the disadaptation of psychological factors on some criteria of adaptation has demonstrated that the dominant psychological factor of adaptation in first-form secondary school students is formed by communication abilities. The ability to interact with the teacher and classmates in a constructive manner is the consequence of changes in the contemporary preschool age children, and an increase in the time allotted for educational activities which accounts for playing and communication. The dominant psychological factor which impacts on the adaptation by all criteria in fifth-form secondary school students is the individual psychological component of personal competence. Predominantly, this means the qualities belonging to the emotional and cognitive spheres. Thus, the degree of development of intellectual abilities exerts a positive impact on the informational-communicative criterion of adaptation, and a negative impact on the emotional attractiveness of teenagers. The main psychological factor of tenth-form secondary school students' disadaptation is the motivational and axiological one.
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Primarily, this is a failure to give meaning to one's life, and an absence of active interest in life and life goals, as well as a lack of confidence in the ability to influence the course of one's life. Our analysis of regression models of first-year tertiary school students did not result in determining the predominant group of psychological factors exerting influence on all adaptation criteria: the success of the adaptation process of this category of educatees is influenced by psychological factors pertaining to all the components of personal competence.
Learners' personal competence as an essential prerequisite of the realization of the "vertical element" of continuous education is formed in conjunction with the formal, non-formal and informal education, comprising the "horizontal element" of continuous education. The horizontal element of educatees' continuous education at each educational stage is essentially an educational environment, which combines formal, non-formal and informal education. We have established that the level of personal competence development for each age category of learners depends on the structure of the horizontal element of continuous education at previous educational levels. The level of development of personal competence components in the secondary and tertiary school students studying in supplementary education groups, is higher than that of their peers, who do not have such experience. Recent studies performed by foreign scientists also bear evidence of the positive impact of supplementary education on the results of secondary school students' principal education. For example, B.Gibbs, L. Erickson, M. Dufur and A. Miles proved that academic progress of teenagers, as well as their desire and potential for continuing their education at college, directly depends on a teenager's participation in a sports team, musical group, or something similar. Thus, teenagers' academic progress depends to a greater extent not on the nature of the hobby groups attended by them but on the intellectual level of the students attending those groups [4].
In compliance with the Concept of Development of the Supplementary Education System, "the key socio-cultural role of supplementary education is that the motivation of the internal activity of juvenile subculture self-development becomes a task of society as a whole, and not of separate organizational and managerial institutions [1, p.2]. According to the Concept, supplementary education is a socio-cultural practice of developing the rising generations' motivation for learning, creativity, labor and sports, "the systemic integrator of open variable education, ensuring the competitiveness of a person, society and sate" [Ibid]. The development of learners' individualities in the context of non-formal and informal education is determined by the personal orientation of those forms of continuous education. This is due to the learners' interest in the individualization of education, and the absence of rigid requirements for the education process schedule. This allows direct education towards the creative development of children and youth. The creative development of learners creates a favorable emotional environment, the feeling of enjoyment aroused by development, which encourages intellectual and personal advancement. As A. Kaspi [3] states - the situation of transition creates opportunities both for success and for failure, and for changes and stability. Therefore, if during the period of adaptation in a new educational environment, adult participants in the educational process encourage the positive activity of learners in their overcoming of the difficulties of adaptation process, and ensure
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success and support it in every way, the adaptation period becomes a period of mastering new skills on the basis of existing ones - a period of personal development.
Therefore, it is necessary to use the potential of the horizontal element in order to ensure the continuity of the vertical element, giving preference to those types of productive creative activity which a child wishes to pursue. The emotional well-being characteristic of the secondary and tertiary school students who have adapted successfully to a new stage of continuous education is caused to a large extent by the fact that those learners have a favorite pastime, and enough time for creative activities. Creative activity relieves emotional stress and increased anxiety during the period of adaptation to new conditions of learning, gives positive motivation, and directs a person to creative self-realization.
Bibliography
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4. Gibbs B. G., Erickson L. D., Dufur M. J., Miles A. Extracurricular associations and college enrollment. Social Science Research, 2014; DOI: 10.1016/j.ssresearch.2014.08.013
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Translated from Russian by Znanije Central Translastions Bureas
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