CC BY
8DOI: 10.12731/2070-7568-2014-5-8 UDC 37:159.9
SOCIAL SUPPORT AS A MEDIATOR OF PSYCHOLOGICAL HEATH IN INCLUSIVE EDUCATION
Silantieva T.A.
The article examines data on socio-psychological adaptation of students with disabilities in inclusive education. The sample included students with chronic diseases and healthy students educated on the faculty of information technology and socio-pedagogical College in Moscow State University of Psychology and Pedagogical. The study was conducted from 2009 to 2013. Based on the obtained data were calculated averages of social support and resilience, expressing the level of socially-pedagogical adaptation of students. The conclusion says about the convergence of indicators of socio-psychological adaptation of healthy students and students with disabilities in inclusive education. Author make a conclusion about a transition representation of social support from inter- to intra-psychical stage.
Keywords: inclusive education, social support, disabled students, psychological health, hardiness, longitude study.
Background
The authors are concerned with concepts that explain the regulari-
ties of interaction of personality and social environment in psychology are: V.Behterev, A.Asmolov, L.S.Vygotsky, N.I. Sardzeveladze, G.M. Andreeva, B. Parigin, C.Osgud, E. Durghaim, G. Ollport, Ch. Kuli, G. Zimmel. In many concepts social behavior is usually considered from the point of view of its possible prediction and control. In the social theories analyzes the behavior of society, not the individual in society. We can see the other position of the theory of cultural-historical psychology. The main thesis of cultural-historical psychology is that the human psyche is formed in social relations.
As Parygin [12] noted, a person not only is the product of a specific socio-historical and social conditions, but also the subject of shaping their social situation. Personality not only allotted a place in the system of social relations, but she is, or rather, establishes a certain relationship to social institutions, norms, and values around people.
The selection of behavioral model is based on the determination of the level of activity of the individual in relation to the social environment, as expressed in social inclusion. The concept of "social inclusion" is defined as the ability to active participation in society and to control the way of life. The concept of "social inclusion" is connected not only with the adequate distribution of resources, but also with participation in the definition of the life prospects of the individual and collective" [15].
L.S. Vygotsky defines education as "orderly, reasonable, deliberate, conscious influence and intervention" [17, 71]. But Vygotsky emphasizes that the social environment performs incentive for the child and his abilities function. Social environment significantly exceed the capacity of the child when a child growing up, therefore,
considered that the child is exposed to the environment. The definition of the social situation of development [16] implies that the child also takes an active position and the adult helps him in the formulation and implementation tasks. We can assumed that the notion of the zone proximal development [17] is replaced by personal social network . This calls for an ability to use social environment as a cultural tool for the development of new higher mental functions. A person finds himself "dropped out" from the past of the social situation In a crisis situation, but not yet included in the new. He seems to find himself "in nowhere". And in this changing social situation and the development challenges it gets a "neutral social identity" -uncertainty measures own subjectivity. Franz Tutsin acknowledges the existence of a intermediate substance between the outer and inner worlds and calls her a transitional state in which there are external and internal structure. This state is necessary for self-knowledge and to establish a secure contact with the outside world [4].
Dmitry Leontiev indicates trends in ontogenesis increasing its mediation "social communities and their values as one of the lines of development of the semantic sphere of personality: first, the values of the closest family environment, then small reference groups, then large professional, ethnic, religious, class and other communities and, finally, universal" [9, 286]. The main vector of the development of personality is the expansion of social values and opportunities of operating them together with the implementation of a person's values.
In the process of social identity is replaced by the dimension of a subjectivity of the individual. Aleksandr Asmolov distinguishes ego-personalization, at which significant other are included in the
livelihoods of the child and bring in his contribution, passing its own personality characteristics, and alter-personality "in which the person, being the entity acquires the ability to contribute to a social community or wide - culture" [3, 533].
One of the most important factors of the physical and social health is social support. People receiving effective social support from family, friends, significant for people and social communities have better health, easier to cope with stress, more resistant to disease. T. A. Wills, it was found that the help of family and friends has the most important influence on the co-flowing human behavior [18]. Emotional support of a loved one provides physiological and psychological benefits [2]. But the number of links involved in the support varies depending on the difficulty of the situation in which the person resides. In critical periods, the need for support increases. Patients with breast cancer who could name more than 10 friends, had 4 times more likely to survive than those women who do this have failed [5]. For men, the lack of friendly social relations helps an equally harmful effect on heart disease, and lack of spousal support [11]. In another experiment David Spiegel with Irwin Yalom [14] during the year conducted support groups for terminally ill women. Compared with women struggling with cancer alone, the participants learned how to confront your fear, to express their feelings and sincerely to treat others, they were less prone to anxiety and physical pain. In the long run, these women have lived twice as long, than live with this form of cancer. Many studies conclude about the impact of the lack of social support on mortality risk, the occurrence of physiological and mental diseases and disorders of social functioning. According to Vygotsky, much important
learning by the child occurs through social interaction with a skillful tutor. Vygotsky refers to this as cooperative or collaborative dialogue. The child seeks to understand the actions or instructions provided by the tutor (often the parent or teacher) then internalizes the information, using it to guide or regulate their own performance. The term «Social support» can be used for explaining social interaction with a skillful tutor.
I hypothesized that in a situation of chronic disease over time, social support is transformed from really aid in the subjective view of the availability of assistance. Than social support will be a higter mental function. The process of exteriorization of social support can be explain with the example of parallelogram.
t 2 3 BojpacT
Fig. 1. The parralelorgam of development
Aleksey Leoniev's cross sectional study was done with three age groups: 1) preschoolers and elementary schoolchildren, 2) middle schoolchildren, 3) adults. 2 sets of pictures were assigned to normal and mentally retarded participants . The first set of pictures was to be
remembered with the help of the other set. In the first series of experiments the participants were asked to remember as many as possible of 15 pictures that were given to them. In the second series the same task was accompanied with an instruction to use an additional set of similar but not identical- pictures that might help the subjects to remember those in the first set. The results of this study are presented as a figure with two curves indicating recall rate in the 3 age groups in the situations of «direct» and «mediated" remembering. Quite predictably, both curves on the chart show considerable growth of recall rate with age. However interestingly enough while younger children and adults remembered the items virtually equally well in both experimental conditions of mediated and non mediated remembering. The middle school children demonstrated a tremendous difference in their remembering abilities in the situation of facilitated and aided remembering approaching that of the adult subjects. The figure formed by two curves on the chart starting and ending virtually in the same points and diverging in the middle is described by Vigotsky Luria Leontiev as the parralelorgam of development. In the Leontiev's model the top level corresponds to indirect memory with cards, and the bottom line immediate memory. Can we assume something similar to the coping process? The coping process with for healthy people and people with disabilities is different. A healthy person can cope with differences in any way. We assume that this mechanism of coping for people with disabilities is higher mental function. We assume that as a sign in the formation of higher mental functions of coping is the social situation of care, referred to as "social support". Thus experimenter need to deal with subjective and objective indicator of social support. The social
support web will be an objective indicator and satisfaction of social support will be subjective indicator.
For disabled students whole life is a difficult situation and education too. And development of hardiness is a mark of personality development for all students. Social support is a component of hardiness. Hardiness allow person to be effectively and use adaptive strategies in difficult life situations . The Hardiness questionnaire and the model of hardiness was made by Salvatore Maddi [7].
Main hypothesis. I have decided to test the dependence of the subjectivity of assessing social support in the situation of inclusive education on the number of helping people. Thus, if satisfied with the support does not depend on the amount of support she will be a similar
sign in the formation of higher mental functions.
Additional hypothesize: Indicators of social support and hardiness are changed in inclusive environment. It should be expressed significant differences in the mean values of social support and resilience depending on the course.
Indicators of social support and resilience will have significant correlations with each other, which confirms their mutual influence.
Participants: 231 physically challenged students of Moscow State University of Psychology & Education and 237 their apparently healthy classmates (control sample). They represented two education levels: university (IT department) and social-educational college (age range: 16-25 years).
Instruments: Social Support Questionnaire (SSQ) [13] (include scales- close relations, social network size and satisfaction of support), test of hardiness [7].
Results
We have tested the method for an ANOVA method for testing significance of the differences in indicators of social support and hardiness, the results of which found significant differences (p<0.01) medium first to fourth courses of indicators of resilience (F= 10,303), satisfaction with social support (F=25,866 ) and the size of social support network (F=37,018).
Significant correlation between persistence and satisfaction with social support (0,589), p<0.01 and between viability and size of the support network (-0,439) p<0.01 was find. It confirms our assumption about the different contribution of subjective (satisfaction) and objec-
tive indicators (network size) of social support.
For each course with 1 to 4 after division of data into groups of healthy students and students with disabilities in each course, we have identified subgroups with a high value of the amount of social support networks and low for this, we divided the group by the median measure of the size of the social network. And in each subgroup, we have calculated the average satisfaction with the social support. Private hypothesis at this stage of the analysis was the assumption that senior courses subjective measure of satisfaction with social support will cease to depend on the number of helping people, there will be interiorization of social support.
Also we have calculated the average viability for each course in the group of healthy students and students with disabilities
Disabled students
Course 1 2 3 4
Small
network 27 27 25 30
Big network 31 31 32 29
Healthy
Course 1 2 3 4
Small network 29 28 29 27
Big network 31 31 29 33
Disabled students
Healthy students
Fig. 2, 3. Satisfaction of social support depending on number of helping people changing from 1 to 4 course of education Hardiness
Course 1 2 3 4
Disabled 70 73 68 74
Health 76 80 85 82
Fig. 4. Hardiness from 1 to 4 course
Conclusions
We can see that in the learning process there is a "convergence" of indicators in groups with HIA and healthy students, which speaks about the impact of collaborative learning on the formation of personality indicators, according to the theory of Vygotsky. We see that in both groups, satisfaction with social support ceases to depend on the size of the help of the social network, which indicates the transition representation helps support network in the internal intra-psychic plan. Author can say about interiorization of social support. The convergence graphs of resilience in groups students with disabilities and healthy can be interpreted as a normalization of psychological "health" in the group of students with disabilities, psychological characteristics, they become little distinguishable from healthy students, on the basis of which we can predict their further successful socio-psycho-logical adaptation.
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DATA ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Silantieva Tatyana Andreevna, Researcher Assistant
Institute of Integrated (Inclusive) Education Problems Sretenka st., 29, Moscow, 127051, Russia tanyasilantieva@yandex.ru
