Psychological Structure of Future Psychologists’ Professional Competence

Abstract

The empirical study of the psychological structure of future psychologists’ professional competence is presented in the article. The development of professional competence is characterized as a dynamic process which mobilizes the external and internal resources in unpredictable conditions of everyday life. The study involved the students of Vinnytsia Mykhailo Kotsiubynskyi State Pedagogical University, National Pedagogical Dragomanov University and Borys Grinchenko Kyiv University, a total of 546 students. In order to evaluate and measure the components of the structure of professional competence of future psychologists, it is used in view of the definition of this concept and approaches to its study. In order to determine the place, role and significance of each component that may act as a determinant of this process, factor analysis was performed through the main components method with Varimax raw rotation. On the basis of factor analysis, the psychological structure of professional competence has been revealed as including motivational-value, operationalconative, emotional-regulatory, reflexive-cognitive components. The greatest semantic meaning was attributed to a factor called «motivational and value». This factor includes indicators that reflect life and career orientations, strivings for success and self-realization in future profession. The second component, called «operational and conative», includes indicators which reflect desire for changes. The third factor, «emotional and regulatory», reflects the emotional and volitional activity of a student and includes indicators of emotional intellect and self-regulation of a personality in new situations. The fourth component, «reflexive and cognitive», includes intellectual involvement in the process of mastering future professional activities via the interest in knowledge, modeling and planning of one’s activities based on available knowledge and readiness for the acquisition of new knowledge.

Keywords

• professional competence
• future psychologists
• motivational and value
• operational and conative
• emotional and regulative
• reflexive and cognitive components
• psychological structure.