PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY OF THE UNIVERSITY EDUCATIONAL ENVIRONMENT AS THE BASIS FOR THE FORMATION OF A PROFESSIONAL

Abstract

Background. Psychological safety of educational organizations ensures the quality of training of professionals of a new formation, resistant to social and organizational changes, able to work in situations of varying degrees of uncertainty. Objective. The research had its purpose to study the dynamics of students’ perception of psychological safety of educational environment in the process of training in higher educational institutions, to reveal the relationship between the students’ level of professional competence and their perception of psychological safety of educational environment, and to develop practical recommendations for the heads of educational organizations based on the obtained results. Sample. The study involved 200 students aged 17 to 22 years of 1–4 courses of the training direction “Pedagogical education”, educating in the profile “Primary education”. Methods. The study implemented the case method, which allows to determine the level of formation of pedagogical competencies (unformed, threshold, and advanced) and the modified questionnaire “Safety Attitudes”, which allows for assessing the psychological safety of educational environment of a university in terms of “atmosphere of teamwork”, “atmosphere of safety”, “satisfaction with studies”, “recognition (understanding) of stress”, “perception of management/leadership (at the faculty, university level)”, “learning conditions”. Correlation analysis was used to identify the relationship between the indicators of psychological safety of educational environment of a university and the level of formation of professional pedagogical competencies. Single-factor analysis of variance was used to determine the reliability of differences in the observed indicators between the students of different courses. Results. The analysis of the data obtained demonstrated that students’ perception of the psychological safety of educational organization changes from year 1 to year 4: significant differences are observed in the indicators “Atmosphere of teamwork”, “Atmosphere of safety”, “Recognition (understanding) of stress”, “Perception of management / leadership at the faculty level”. The study revealed the interrelation between the 4th year students’ level of professional competence and their perception of psychological safety of educational environment on the indicators of “atmosphere of teamwork”, “atmosphere of safety”, “management/leadership at the faculty level”. Conclusion. The results of the study give grounds to consider the psychological safety of educational environment of a university as an important factor in the successful formation of a professional. Increasing the level of psychological safety of an educational organization is based on three actions: measurement, intervention, and prevention. The developed practical recommendations allow an educational organization to carry out psychological diagnostics according to proposed algorithm, to determine the target points in perception of psychological safety of a university environment (according to the scales of the questionnaire), to assist the students in their educational and extracurricular activities, and to implement a set of preventive measures.

Keywords

• psychological safety
• educational environment
• university
• professional
• formation process