CC BY
14PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCES
EMOTIONAL STABILITY AS A FACTOR OF PEDAGOGUE'S EFFECTIVE
PERFORMANCE
Khabarova Y.A.
Master's student of department ofpedagogy and psychology ofprofessional activity
Ishchenko T.N.
Cand. ofped. sciences, docent, Head of Department Reshetnev Siberian State University of Science and Technology
Russian Federation Krasnoyarsk
Abstract
What determines the effectiveness of pedagogue's performance? Why is a pedagogue's emotional stability a factor of his effective performance? This article researches and substantiates answers to these as well as other questions.
Keywords: emotions, emotional stability, determinants of pedagogue's emotional stability, effectiveness of a pedagogue's performance.
The pace of socio-political life is building up, the number of situations of uncertainty is increasing, the requirements for professional activity are changing, more frequent cases of manifestation of anxiety-depressive disorders, professional burnout, chronic fatigue syndromes, and many other factors are becoming regular attributes of a person's life, which contributes to increasing of the level of his psychoemotional tension. Clinical and subclinical phenomena related to energetic imbalance and the lack of psychological strengths, that are mercilessly dulling the urge to create, are manifesting in a person's professional activity. All this negatively influences the person's health (physical, mental, spiritual) and his professional activity. Life's hardships, stress, conflicts, the pace of life's speeding up, and increase in intellectual labor's intensity are raising the demands for personal resources, particularly emotional stability, which requires a search for ways to optimize the state of a person's mind. What determines a the effectiveness of a pedagogue's performance? Why is a pedagogue's emotional stability a factor of his effective performance? Let's conduct a research in order to find answers to these problematic questions.
Throughout our history, emotions have been treated as one of central forces determining a person's deeds. The first philosophers to point out the regulatory function of emotions in their philosophical treatises were Aristotle, B. Spinoza, R. Descartes. According to Aristotle, emotions are a motivational basis which serves as an incentive, as well as a connecting link in the process of discovery of more complex objects [1]. Thus, throughout history, the functions of emotions have been pointed out, amongst which are the regulatory and the incentive functions. Relative to professional activity, especially pedagogical, these functions direct the subject's behavior, motivate them, serving as an incentive to perform a certain action.
P. K. Anokhin, physiologist and the author of the theory of functional systems, insisted on the physiological context in defining emotions. He believed that: «Emotions are physiological states of the organism, that have a pronounced subjective connotation and cover all kinds of a person's feelings and experiences,
ranging from deeply traumatizing sufferings to the highest degrees of joy and social life perception». The scholar also highlighted their subjective connotation, as opposed to S. L. Rubinstein, a psychologist who connected emotions to the state of the subject. In his works Rubinstein, distinguishing between emotions and perception, and determining the essence of emotions, assumed that emotions are the state of a subject, whereas perception reflects the contents of an object.
Some scholars connect emotions with experience, for example, M. S. Lebedinsky and V. N. Myasishchev write about emotions: «Emotions are one of the most important aspects of psychological processes, which characterizes a person's experiencing of reality. Emotions are an integral expression of an altered tone of the neuropsychological activity, which influences all aspects of a person's mind and body» [2]. G. A. Fortuna-tov defines emotions only as specific forms of experiencing feelings. P. A. Rudik, while defining emotions, identifies experiencing and attitude: «Emotions are psychic processes, which comprise of experiencing, the attitude of a person towards those or other phenomena of the social realm...» [2].
According to R. S. Nemov, emotions are «elemen-tary experiences, that arise from influence by general state of the organism and the course of the process of current needs gratification.
According to the results of the analysis of the definition of emotion, one can draw a conclusion that in the majority of cases emotions are defined as a person's current experiencing of his disposition towards something (both current situation/event at the moment, and in the future, towards other people, towards himself etc.), and at the same time, having a subjective connotation, emotions express the subjects state, his disposition towards different events of the social realm, which is essential in the context of our research.
Three constituents of a healthy personality, which include physical, mental (emotional), and intellectual (spiritual) determine the context of investigating of the role of emotions in professional activity. In modern conditions of development of society, the social, physical and psychological (including emotional) security
of a person is becoming more and more demanded. The problem of psychological stability first gained fame thanks to works of L.S. Vygotsky's apprentice L. I. Bozhovich, as a reflection of the process of formation of motives of behavior, social in origin and moral in content[3]. Her research shows persuasively the interrelation between emotional stability and the dual nature of motives of behavior. Although the concept of «emotional stability» is the result of researching of humans in extreme situations, some scholars researched personal emotional stability in the field of psychology of sports, engineering psychology and pedagogical psychology.
However, up to the present, there is still no uniform opinion concerning the definition of the term «emotional stability». For example, V. L. Marishchuk and V. I. Evdokimov include in the concept of emotional stability the following: interaction between emotionally-volitional qualities of personality, the degree of volitional control over strong enough emotions, capacity to maintain high working capacity in conditions of emotional influence.
K. K. Platonov extends the definition of emotional stability. Emotional stability is the ability to manage one's emotions, to maintain high working capacity, to carry out difficult or dangerous tasks without tension, in spite of emotional influence, subdividing emotional stability into emotionally-volitional, emotionally-mo-torial, and emotionally-sensory. This definition of emotional stability reveals its connection to the ability to manage and working capacity. In the context of our research, these constituents influence the effectiveness of pedagogical performance, revealing potential capacities of a pedagogue, opening up his abilities to control and regulate himself [4].
Y. Reykovsky determines the key directions of researches of emotional stability: physiological (which is studying the dependence of emotional stability on the properties of the nervous system), structural (which is studying regulatory structures of personality) and the search for a special mechanism in the form of self-control. The latter influences not only the emotional state of a pedagogue, but also the development of his capacity to control himself, which means increase in effectiveness of pedagogical performance [5].
O.A. Chernikova distinguishes in emotional stability the following: a) relative stability of the optimal level of intensity of emotional reactions; b) stability of qualitative characteristics of emotional states, that is, the stable focus of emotional experiences on positive solving of impending tasks [4]. According to O.A. Si-rotin, emotional stability is characterized by combination of emotional, intellectual, volitional, and moral components, which ensures a person's success in solving of difficult and responsible tasks under strong emotiogenic influence without any negative impact on his well-being and further working capacity. A high level of emotional stability is essential to nervous and physical endurance of a person [4]. This context reflects a didactic constituent in the characteristic of emotional stability of a pedagogue. If a pedagogue actualizes the combination of emotional, intellectual, volitional, and
moral components for achieving the goals of development of students, and of solving of didactic tasks, he thereby starts realization of didactic system, which is the oneness and interrelation of the components of cognitive, operationally-pragmatist, organizational-methodical, and regulatory-evaluative nature. This in turn influences the effectiveness of pedagogical performance and allows for higher results thereof. Moreover, in conditions of realization of the didactic system, the pedagogue becomes a subject of pedagogical activity, able to form intersubject relations, which reinforces emotional stability in the psycho-didactic aspect and creates prerequisites for situations of success.
So, let's sum up according to the theme of our research: emotional stability is a synthesis of all properties, qualities, and abilities of a pedagogue, with the help of which he can, confidently, independently, efficiently, and without emotional tension carry out his professional activity under emotional influence, maintain self-control and keep the focus of emotional experiences on positive solving of professional tasks.
A pedagogue's labor activity belongs to the group of professions with intersubject structure of mutual relations. Pedagogical activity has its own specifics: increased emotiogenics, a high number of different communicative relations, variety of contacts in communication and interaction, the need to make decisions in conditions of uncertainty, finding constructive ways to end a conflict, the need to combine the tasks of education, upbringing, self-education, self-upbringing, self-development, choosing scientific means of cognition, methods etc. If this is the specificity of a pedagogue's activity, it is necessary to reveal determinants of his emotional stability. The main determinants of emotional stability are: professional competence (emotional stability and professional competence of a pedagogue are interrelated and interdependent, the higher is the level of professional competence, the higher is the level of self-regulation, therefore the higher is the level of emotional stability); communicativeness (based on the properties of labor activity, the level of emotional stability is directly related to development of skills of pedagogical communication); stress resistance (pedagogical activity is accompanied by large number of stress factors); absence of pronounced professional deformation and emotional burnout (in the course of professional activity, pedagogical deformations are included in the structure of a pedagogue's personality, influencing his emotional stability and altering not only the pedagogue's performance, but also his behavior on the whole).
The results of scientific researches and their analysis confirm that emotional stability in labor activity of a pedagogue is treated as a professionally important personal quality and indicates his professional development [6]. This means that a pedagogue's emotional stability is a factor of effective performance. Moreover, it has to be noted that emotional stability formation in stressful conditions turns out to be difficult, since the resources of mind are focused on development on stress resistance. Emotional stability is a personal quality, which ensure emotional stableness. A lot of pedagogical technologies, forms, and methods require not just
effective communications, but a special state of a pedagogue's emotional field, emotional response to students' problems, especially this concerns personally-oriented approach, inclusive education, interactive forms of teaching etc. Due to the aforementioned factors, pedagogue's maintenance of emotional stability is crucial to successful solution of professional tasks, application of pedagogical technologies, receiving of quality education, which reaffirms the importance of formation of emotional stability in professional activity. If one understands professionalism as a combination of such changes as pshychophysiological, mental, and personal, which occur in a person in the process of acquisition and prolonged engagement in professional activity, which provide a qualitatively new and more effective level of solution of professional tasks in special conditions, there is no doubt that emotional stability influences the pedagogue's effective performance.
Pedagogical efficiency implies detection of a degree of realization of learning objectives compared to the ones given or probable on condition of neutralization of remaining factors that influence the efficiency of teaching process. That is, the effectiveness of a class is a degree of achieving of the goal of pedagogical activity on hand, taking into account optimality (necessity and sufficiency) spent effort, means, and time. If one is to treat learning activity as a process of acquisition of new knowledge, skills and experience by a person based on active ways of mastering of educational material and in cooperation (of a pedagogue and student, or between students), this activity is approximated to scientific activity and helps the development of personality of a student, and formation of his world view. What determines the effectiveness of pedagogical performance and pedagogue's professionalism? According to Y.I. Rogov's researches, there are three main directions of formation of professionalism:
1) the modification of the entire system of activity, its functions hierarchical structure. In the process of production of work skills development of professional skill takes place, which causes the development of the system of the ways of execution of activity, that is, a personal style of activity is formed;
2) the changes in the subject's personality, which manifest in features (speech, movement, level of emoting, forms of communication), as well as in the formation of corresponding constituents of professional conscience (professional attention, perception, memory, thought, emotionally-volitional field), which is broadly speaking treated as formation of world view;
3) the changes of corresponding components of the subject's mindset towards the object of activity, which manifests itself in the cognitive field — in the level of awareness about the object, the degree of realization of its importance; in the emotional field — in the interest in the object, in tendency and satisfaction by interactions with it, despite all obstacles; in the practical field — in realization of one's actual abilities to influence the object. This results in the subject's mindset to influence the object changing to necessity to interact with it, which is evidence to formation of professional culture [11]. While examining the content of these directions, it is worth noting, that the emotional
field is very important for formation of professionalism, but if one weren't to consider its connections to means of executing activity, to self-awareness, for example, of a pedagogue, one couldn't talk about the success of professional activity in development of a student's personality. However, the effectiveness of professional performance of a pedagogue not only depends on his professionalism, experience, application of progressive educational technologies, but is also conditioned by manifestation of emotionality, emotional stability, ability to regulate oneself, emotional field on the whole, which, in the context of our research allows to draw some conclusions. How does emotional stability of a pedagogue form in stressful conditions? What are the indicators of emotional stability being completely formed?
For example, L. M. Mitina identifies the following as indicators of high level of formation of emotional stability: self-confidence, adequate self-esteem, low levels of anxiety, presence of volitional qualities, satisfaction with activity, individually-typological properties of nervous system, motivation of professional activity, friendly psychological environment, working conditions, knowledge of self-regulation patterns and ability to utilize it, and others.
The analysis of the aforementioned parameters allows to establish links between formation of emotional stability and effectiveness of pedagogical performance. A number of researchers correlate indicators of formed emotional stability of a pedagogue with the portrait of an efficient pedagogue [8, 9]. However, the parameters in the table, according to V.N. Gordienko, are evident only in the case of pedagogues who are satisfied with their professional activity and its productivity, as well as have positive and rapturous comments from students. It is worth noting, that manifestation of professionalism, ranging from dilettantism (insufficient level of professional knowledge, skills and experience) to formation of solid professional stereotypes (hypertro-phied development of professionalism), is interconnected with emotional field of a pedagogue and influences his effectiveness of performance. In the case when a person is unable to overcome professional stereotypes in other social roles, doesn't rebuild their behavior in accordance to changing conditions and expectations of people, professionalism becomes professional deformation of the pedagogue's personality [2].
The opinion, that emotional stability determines effectiveness of pedagogical performance, is also reaffirmed by the fact that emotional stability is required to resist high moral and emotional stress, when it is crucial to maintain high working capacity, besides sufficient effectiveness of performance, the criterion of which is the effectiveness of utilizing of pedagogical technologies. High working capacity in the field of interpersonal interactions is expressed in the ability to reproduce the necessary type of communication for long periods of time, which is impossible without emotional stability and friendly emotional background [10].
With that being said, analysis, synthesis of psychologic and pedagogic literature, generalization of results of researches reaffirm, that emotional stability is
an important factor for pedagogical activity and a necessary condition for its effectiveness. This problem is not researched enough in psychologic and pedagogic studies, and requires further theoretical comprehension, and investigation with the goal to reform the praxis.
References
1. Abolin L.M. Psychological mechanisms of emotional stability of a person. - Kazan: p.o. Kazan. state. u-ty, 2003. - 261 p.
2. Ilyin Y. P. Emotions and feelings. - 2nd ed. -Saint Petersburg: Piter, 2013. - 783 p.
3. Bozhovich, L.I. Problems of formation on personality. - Moscow: NGO «MODEK», 2001. - 352 p.
4. Dolgova V.I., Emotional stability of a person: The monograph / V. I. Dolgova, G. Y. Golyeva. - Moscow: Publishing office «Pero», 2014. - 173p.
5. Sary-Guzel Valery Ruslanovich. Optimization of emotional stability of a student's personality through learning activity: Dis. ...cand. psychol. sciences: 19.00.07 : N. Novgorod, 2002 177 p. RSL DD, 61:0219/412-5 URL: http://www.dslib.net/psixologia-voz-rasta/optimizacij a-j emocionalnoj-ustoj chivosti-lich-nosti-studenta-cherez-uchebnuju.html
6. Antonova Y.A. Emotional stability as a factor of pedagogical activity [Electronic source] / Y.A. Antonova // Saratov University's News. - 2011. - T.11. -Ser. Philosophy. Psychology. Pedagogy. - issue 1. -P.101-104. - URL: https ://cyberleninka.ru/arti-
cle/n/emotsionalnava-ustovchivost-kak-faktor-peda-gogicheskoy-deyatelnosti; http ://nauka-pedago g-ika.com/viewer/335951/a?#?page=1 (date of application 20.04.2018)
7. Mitina L.M. Emotional flexibility of a teacher: psychological maintenance, diagnostics, correction / L. M. Mitina, Y. S. Asmakovets. - Moscow: «Flinta», 2014. - 413 p.
8. Akindinova, I.A. Methods of psychological assistance of specialists with assisting professions in handling of consequences of emotional burnout syndrome // Psychological magazine. - 2001. - Vol. 17. -№ 4. - P. 56-72.
9. Boyko, V.V. Emotional burnout syndrome in professional communication . - Saint Petersburg: Piter. - 1999. - P.99-105.
10. Gordienko, V.N. Psychology of satisfaction with professional pedagogical activity : monograph. -V.N.- Irkutsk: Publishin office: East Siberian academy of education. - 2009. - 135 p.
11. Rogov Y.I. Teacher as onject of psychological research : manual of working with a teacher and pedagogical staff / Y. I. Rogov. - Moscow: Humanit. pub. center VLADOS, 1998. - 496 p.
12. Psychology of emotions. Texts/ Ed. by V. K.
Vilyunas, Y. B. Gippenreiter.-M.: p.o. of Moscow
u-ty, 1984. — 288 p - URL: http://ped-lib.ru/Books/1/0333/1 0333-203.shtml (date of application 20.04.2018)
