CC BY
2PERSONAL POTENCIAL OF TEACHERS WORKING WITH CHILDREN WITH DISABILITIES
The relevance of the issue under study is due to the problem of rapid professional burnout, accompanied by regression of health and decrease in the resilience of teachers who implement the education of persons with disabilities, since their pedagogical activity is associated with great personal dedication in the absence of a proper number of sources for the development of their personal potential and replenishment of the resource condition. Hence, it becomes important to diagnose and monitor the state and dynamics of elements that make up the potential and, in particular, the resilience of teachers (the need to replenish internal resources, personal effectiveness, teachers' tolerance to uncertainty, responsibility, self-control). The article is aimed at studying the personal potential of teachers who work with students with special educational needs. The article presents the results of studying the personal potential of teachers working with children with developmental disabilities, compares the state of the main constituent elements of the structure of the personal potential of teachers working at different levels of education and with a different contingent of students. The results of the study presented in the article indicate the need to work out strategies and management models focused on the personal development of teachers, providing such an opportunity in principle. This article does not show such strategies, but it allows us to develop this idea and pay close attention to this, since the teachers themselves speak about insufficient attention to their personal, individual improvement. The materials of the article can be useful for psychologists and teachers involved in the psychological and pedagogical process of supporting persons with disabilities in education, for managers of educational organizations and teachers.
Keywords
students with disabilities, personality, teacher, personal potential, special educational needs, upbringing
AUTHOR
Natalia S. Kozhanova,
Candidate of Pedagogical Sciences, Associate Professor, Pedagogical and Special Education Chair Surgut State Pedagogical University, Surgut 10/2, st. 50 years of the VLKSM, Surgut, 628417, Russia nskozhanova@rambler.ru
"The key deficit of the 21st century is personality deficit..."
A.G. Asmolov, 2020
1. Introduction
1.1. The urgency of the problem
A teacher is a constantly evolving personality. This is a person whose personal potential can contribute or not contribute to the development of students' personalities and their personal potentials as well as other subjects of education.
The positive and negative characteristics of the child's personality are socially conditioned in many cases, that is, they are the result of his/her contacts with the adults
raising the child - teachers, parents. In this regard, the psychological problems of the child are the costs of interaction with his/her direct educators. Then it follows that in order to make the educational process effective, teachers must have a sufficiently high level of psychological culture, high emotional intelligence, and also have sufficient psychological and pedagogical competence.
Studying the anthropological pedagogy of A. G. Asmolov, we emphasize one very important idea: "In each of us lives the one who dares, has the courage, the most difficult courage on earth, the courage to be a human being. It is difficult to be a Human." (Asmolov, 2020). It is difficult to be a Human because we have to motivate ourselves to live, knowing definitely that life is finite. To create yourself knowing that life is finite. An amazing inner strength is given to everyone at birth and the task of an adult is to support the inner spark of each child so that it flares up with a flame that motivates him/her throughout whole life! This idea is very well tracked in the modern animated film "Soul" directed by Pete Docter and Kemp Powers.
Each teacher perceives his/her professional mission and function, whatever he/she sees himself/herself in modern realities: a methodologist who transforms the student's thinking; a psychologist - a master of self-consciousness, a tutor - a master of individualization; a coach - a director of partnerships as leading to a goal ... in any of these incarnations, a teacher leads a child into a world where his/her personality is being formed. A teacher is a carrier, a model, an ideal norm, projecting his/her life position onto his student.
A.G. Asmolov put forward an interesting hypothesis about the key feature of human nature, about the existence of the "phenomenology of unpredictability". "People have a special paradoxical code that, in principle, can never be encoded," he writes. "I call the key feature associated with the mystery of human being on planet Earth - the code of unpredictability. You and I are not predictable. And to be convinced of this, let each of you think for a second whether you always know what will happen to you, what you will do in an hour, in a day, in a minute ..." (Asmolov, 2020).
This idea directs our attention to the need to study the potential of each person -the subject of the educational process, to focus on his/her unique personal resources, abilities, the actualization of which leads to development. In this regard, special attention is paid to children with disabilities and special educational needs. Their unpredictability and uniqueness, both in positive and negative (undesirable) contexts, attracts interest from a scientific and practical point of view. A lot of research is aimed at studying their characteristics of thinking, perception of the world and things, the specifics of behavior and response. Of course, special pedagogy clarifies these facts of the originality of this category children in order to forecast, correct, direct, use for the organization of the educational environment. And few people study their capabilities to understand the essence and dignity of the personality of a special child, to a greater extent to identify differences from the norm, focusing on the shortcomings, forgetting about the positive sides of his/her development.
In the context of raising children and students with disabilities, no less interesting is the issue of professionalism and personal potential of a teacher who implements the educational process with this category of students. The more difficult a child is, the higher the level of professional and personal potential of a teacher should be in order to realize the personal development of personality and emphasize the dignity of a growing member of our society, a society of diversity and unique personalities, which appreciates everyone not for status, regalia, benefit, but just for nothing.
The implementation of education, of course, presupposes a constant increase of the teacher's personal potential level in order to use it in unexpected educational situations with children of special categories. Only a teacher who constantly creates himself/herself is able to be flexible and courageous on the way of searching for a "code of understanding"
in the process of raising children. One of the most important tasks in terms of personal and professional development of a teacher working with students with disabilities is the development of such a quality as resilience. Resilience is always the choice of a behavioral strategy in a problem situation, the ability to respond flexibly in situations of undesirable behavior of special children.
1.2. Purpose of the study
Taking into consideration all the above mentioned, we set the goal of the work - to study the personal potential of teachers who work with students with special educational needs.
2. Materials and methods
2.1. Results of the moderation session to collect information
The moderation session held at the Surgut SPU, including the work of focus groups of all participants in education: parents, students, teachers, management of educational organizations, the department of education, showed that the metaphorical image of a modern teacher, like the image of a real teacher created by the participants of public discussion, is unfortunately accompanied by a great personal contribution of the teacher, but the lack of sources of potential development and replenishment of the teacher's resource condition. That is expressed in reality in a quick professional burnout and is accompanied by broken health and vitality decrease. In this regard, the teacher feels the need to focus on his/her own personal development.
The students who made up focus groups also pointed out the need for such development. They noted that an emotionally devastated teacher did not attract their interest in the studied subject, could not ignite a spark, lessons and educational activities were formal and not interesting. Students place an emphasis on the close connection between the teacher's personality and the educational content they learn. The teacher as a motivator, mentor, inspiring, helping to develop personally - this is how students see a new modern teacher. And no matter how much we try to take their attention and the attention of other participants in education from the personal field, the lack of personal potential of the teacher extremely impoverishes his/her professionalism (Dobryakova, 2020; Frumina, 2020). Any development, education, training is based on the development of not only cognitive but primarily personal structures. Now it is already clear that simply "loading" content into the heads of students in a mechanical way (that is, the transfer of knowledge) does not work if it is not accompanied by personal development. Knowledge remains a dead weight, it is not integrated into the picture of the world. And when it comes to parenting issue, it is difficult to imagine the development of the student's personality without taking into account the personality of the educator. Cognition is not self-sufficient, it is only a means, not a goal (Dobryakova, 2020; Frumina, 2020). The main goal of educational and parenting work, in our opinion, is to make visible the learning efforts of the student and through his/her autonomous position to develop the ability to reveal, use and improve their abilities, to compensate for the lack of their own resources by developed personality traits (self-regulation, goal-setting, self-control, etc.), to achieve the set goals, ultimately, to have these goals, motivation and movement towards them.
It is known that in the case of limiting the needs of an individual by conditions and environment, an internal conflict arises as a rule, which contributes to the emergence of emotions that determine negative states of fear and anxiety. Most often, reactions to external and internal obstacles are expressed in the actualization and mobilization of personal
resources: at the unconscious level, this is the activation of psychological defense mechanisms, and at the conscious level, it is self-regulation that determines resilience (Dobryakova, 2020; Frumina, 2020). In a positive version, such an internal contradiction, which arises at the moment of frustration, ensures the formulation of new tasks, allows regulation and change of behavior; in the negative version, the presence of emotional burnout gives rise to a breakdown, negativism, inflexibility, inability to resolve the problem without conflict. But neither the professional standard of a teacher, nor the universal competences specified in the FSES for teacher training impose any teacher's personal potential requirements (Dobryakova, 2020; Leontiev, 2011, 2016; Frumina, 2020).
Goal-setting, motivation, choice, reflexivity, self-regulation, resilience and optimism, tolerance to uncertainty are the constituent elements of the personal potential structure as defined by D.A. Leontyev.
Analysis of the results of the moderation session, which performed the screening function, allowed us to determine the field for further research. One of the directions was the study of the personal potential of teachers, including those working with children with disabilities.
2.2. Research base
The study involved 109 teachers (subject teachers, class supervisors, defectologists) of schools in the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug-Yugra. Among them 19 were teachers of preschool educational organizations, 47 were school teachers, 23 were teachers of educational organizations for students with disabilities, 40 - pedagogues-defectologists. The age ranged from 32 to 47. Gender differences, length of service, level of education were not taken into account in this study.
Today, we are actively studying the components of the personal potential of teachers: the level of personal effectiveness, resilience, reflexivity, tolerance to uncertainty, responsibility for their actions and self-control.
2.3. Research methods
To diagnose the personal effectiveness in the profession of the studied group teachers, the "Questionnaire of professional self-efficacy" was used (T.O. Gordeeva's adaptation of "General self-efficacy" scale by R. Schwarzer, M. Erusalem and V. Romek). This technique made it possible to diagnose the level of personal effectiveness, understood as belief in the effectiveness of one's own professional actions, belief in personal ability to cope with emerging difficulties and problems. This variable is an important component of personal potential and helps to predict the level of the person's activity effectiveness, his/her persistence and productive strategies for overcoming difficulties. The questionnaire is a list of 10 statements, the agreement with which the respondents are asked to assess on a 4-point Likert scale (Leontyev, 2011; Rasskazova, 2016).
To diagnose the resilience of the teachers participating in the study, we used an abbreviated version of the resilience test by S. Muddy (HARDI-Survey) adapted by D. A. Leontyev, E. I. Rasskazova, E. N. Osin. This technique made it possible to diagnose the resource of resilience as a set of attitudes that make it possible to effectively cope with stressful and difficult life situations. The four indicators of the methodology include the general score of resilience (a system of beliefs that prevent stress and health problems in stressful situations) and points on three subscales: engagement (readiness to participate in current events - a person's belief that only by being active, he/she can find the things that are important to him/her in the world), control (readiness to be active in the life events - the confidence that any problem can be dealt with, if you are active, fight and overcome difficulties) and risk taking (attitude towards difficult or new situations, when
the latter are viewed as challenges, as well as an opportunity to gain new experience and learn something) (Leontyev, 2011; Rasskazova, 2016).
To diagnose the reflexivity of teachers, the "Differential test of reflexivity" (DTR) by D.A. Leontyev and E.N. Osin is used. This method is based on the author's theoretical model - a differential approach to reflexivity - and allows you to differentially evaluate reflexive processes presented in three scales respectively: systemic reflection (based on self-distancing and looking at oneself from the outside), introspection (or self-examination, in which the focus of attention becomes somebody's own inner experience), quasi-reflection (or fantasizing directed at an object that has nothing to do with the current life situation, migration into extraneous thoughts). The authors suggest that systemic reflection is the most adaptive of the three described forms of reflection, and it is this reflection that is associated with self-determination. Introspection is as one-sided as areflexia; quasi-reflection, leading to philosophizing speculations and groundless fantasies, is rather a form of psychological defense through avoiding an unpleasant situation, the real resolution of which is not visible. Systemic reflection turns out to be the most voluminous and multifaceted, although its implementation is quite difficult, it is it that allows you to see both the very situation in the interaction of all its aspects, including the pole of the subject and the pole of the object, and alternative possibilities (Leontiev, 2019; Osin, 2019).
To diagnose the personal effectiveness of teachers' tolerance to uncertainty, we used an abbreviated version of D. McLain's "Tolerance to Uncertainty Questionnaire" (MSTAT-II) adapted by D.A. Leontyev, E.N. Osin, E.G. Lukovitskaya. This questionnaire allows you to measure the readiness of the subject to be included in uncertain (new or not having different interpretations) situations and the idea of the ability to successfully act in them. The general uncertainty tolerance scale includes universal statements that can be applied to stimuli and situations of any type. The questionnaire is a list of 13 statements, the agreement with which the respondents are asked to assess on a 7-point Likert scale (Leontyev, 2019).
To diagnose the responsibility of teachers, the "Responsibility Scale" by D.A. Leontyev was used. This scale made it possible to diagnose a form of self-regulation and self-determination that is specific for a mature personality, expressed in the awareness of oneself as the cause of actions and their consequences, and in the awareness and control of one's ability to cause changes (or counteract changes) in the surrounding world and in one's own life. The methodology consists of 16 statements, the agreement with which the respondents are asked to assess on a 5-point Likert scale (Leontiev, 2011; Rasskazova, 2016).
To diagnose teachers' self-control in their lives, a short self-control scale by T.O. Gordeeva, E.N. Osin, D.D. Suchkov, T.Yu. Ivanova, O.A. Sychev, V.V. Bobrov. This scale assesses the ability of research participants to control their behavior and emotions, to deliberately respond to events and interrupt actions caused by unwanted impulses and emotions. The questionnaire is a list of 13 statements, the agreement with which the respondents are asked to assess on a 5-point Likert scale (Bobrov, 2016; Gordeeva, 2016; Osin, 2016).
3. Results and discussion
3.1. Results
The results according to all the methods used in the study were distributed normally in the groups of preschool teachers, school teachers, teachers of educational organizations for students with disabilities, teachers-defectologists, and a control group (the results obtained according to D.A. Leontyev, E.I. Rasskazova (according to the Kolmogorov - Smirnov criterion p> 0.2) were the control group).
All teachers treat their activity as a work and much less often as a vocation or movement in a career plan. For teachers of educational organizations for students with disabilities, scores on the subscales of self-examination and quasi-reflection (escape from reality) are higher than in the control sample. We should pay attention to a completely different pattern of differences between teachers of educational organizations for students with disabilities and defectologists from the control sample and in comparison with the group of teachers and educators of normal children: the subjective well-being of teachers working with children with disabilities is much lower than in the control sample, those indicators that distinguish them are not typical for ordinary teachers, and vice versa.
In general, teachers of normal students are happier than teachers of children with disabilities. This is especially true of the feeling of control over one's own life, interest in life and satisfaction with self-realization, that is, those scales that are characteristic of teachers who do not work in inclusion and special educational organizations and in comparison with the control sample. Teachers of normal children are less likely to perceive their work as a vocation; they tend to have lower involvement and risk-taking, as well as tolerance of uncertainty.
In addition, compared with the group of teachers of ordinary children, teachers of educational organizations for students with disabilities are more resilient in all components and more tolerant of uncertainty (p <0.1).
Teachers of educational organizations for students with disabilities are ready for uncertain and unexpected situations and risks. In stressful situations, they are active and energetic and learn from their own experience. They perceive their life as more interesting and meaningful. Work for them is rather a difficult and long-term labor, a vocation, but not a career. Apparently, the work is associated for this group of subjects with deeper personal dispositions - their attitude to life, the perception of it as meaningful. Teachers and educators of preschool educational organizations who do not work with children with disabilities do not differ from the control sample in terms of meaningfulness of life, resilience and tolerance of uncertainty. They are less likely to experience a sense of flow in their professional activities. Moreover, they are less active, their vitality is lower than in the control sample. These data are in good agreement with the suggestion of D.A. Leontyev that a person may not consider life meaningful, and himself/herself as active and controlling what is happening, but still feel happy (Leontyev, 2011, 2019).
3.2. The prospect and significance of the study
In general, our results confirm the hypothesis that teachers of the general education system and teachers of educational organizations for students with disabilities are characterized by specific features of personal potential, which contribute to effective self-regulation in the conditions of their activities. Subjective well-being is associated with the characteristics of personal potential, as well as the characteristics and meaningfulness of activities. It seems that the data obtained open up the possibility of revising the psychological mechanisms for the implementation of successful activities from the viewpoint of the personal potential concept and its role in self-regulation.
Personal potential is not individual directly measurable variables, but a complexly organized system of interrelated variables (Leontiev, 2019). We can say that a person with a high PP, in different situations in which he finds himself - in sorrow and in joy, in interpersonal relationships and in business activity - will act so that his situation becomes better at every next moment in terms of the desirable criteria that he is guided by (and which can also change).
The results of this study show the need to develop strategies and models for managing educational organizations with a focus on the personal development of teachers, providing them with such an opportunity in principle. This article does not demonstrate such strategies, but it will allow us to develop this idea and pay close attention to this,
since the teachers themselves speak about insufficient attention to their personal, individual improvement.
In our opinion, the data obtained open up the prospect of a new productive understanding of the psychological mechanisms of successful pedagogical activity, in particular with students with disabilities, and the role of motivation in it, as well as personal potential and psychological well-being.
REFERENCES
Asmolov A.G. Donquixotes versus robots: unpredictability as a gift?! / A.G. Asmolov. M. "Contribution to the Future" Sberbank Charitable Foundation, 2020. - 6 p.
Leontiev D.A. Personal potential in a situation of uncertainty and choice // D.A. Leontiev, E.Yu. Mandrikova, E.I. Rasskazova, A.Kh. Fam. - M.: Smysl. - 2011.- 679 p.
Leontiev D.A. Three targets: personal potential - why, what and how? // Educational policy. 2019. No. 3 (79). URL: https://cyberleninka.ru/article/n/tri-misheni-lichnostnyy-potentsial-zachem-chto-i-kak (date of access: 19.10.2021).
Methods for diagnostics of resilience (S. Maddy in the adaptation of D. Leontyev) - URL: http://cTyfleHTyncuxo^ory.p^/psikhologicheskiye-testy/article_post/test-zhiznestoykosti-s-maddi-v-adaptatsii-d-leontyeva - electronic text.
On the approval of the professional standard "Teacher (pedagogical activity in the field of preschool, primary general, basic general, secondary general education) (educator, teacher)": order of the Ministry of Labor and Social Protection of the Russian Federation of October 18, 2013 No. 544n. - URL: http://ivo.garant.ru/#/document/70535556/paragraph/1 0. - electronic text
Approximate adapted educational programs for categories of students with disabilities in accordance with the Federal State Educational Standard of primary general education for students with disabilities. Approximate adapted basic general education program of primary general education for hearing-impaired and deaf students. - URL: http://fgosreestr.ru. - electronic text.
Rasskazova E.I., Leontiev D.A. R-244 Viability and its diagnostics. - M.: Smysl, 2016. - 159 p. ISBN 978-589357-364-0
Self-control as a resource of a person: diagnostics and connections with success, perseverance and well-being T.O. Gordeeva, E.N. Osin, D.D. Suchkov, T.Yu. Ivanova, O. A. Sychev, V.V. Bobrov // Cultural-Historical Psychology 2016. V. 12. No. 2. P. 46-58 doi: 10.17759 / chp.2016120205 ISSN: 1816-5435 (printed).
Universal competences and new literacy: from the slogans of U59 to reality / ed. by M. S. Dobryakova, I. D. Frumin; with the participation of K. A. Barannikov, N. Ziil, J. Moss, I. M. Remorenko, J. Khautamyaki; National research University 'Higher School of Economics". - M.: Publishing house of the Higher School of Economics, 2020. - 472 p. - ISBN 978-5-7598-2177-9 (printed). - ISBN 978-5-7598-2074-1 (e-book).
FSES for students with disabilities. - URL: http://fgos-ovz.herzen.spb.ru / - electronic text.
