Vol 18, No 4 (2021)

The article examines modern ideas about the nature of pedagogical activity, providing a critical analysis of the state of practice and scientific research on the problems of pedagogical education and reconstructing a set of methodological ideas, concepts and schemes related to ideas about the content and forms of pedagogical education. The authors present approaches to solving such problems as the modern understanding of the essence of pedagogical activity and the trends of its transformation in connection with the changed educational space, new functions of the teacher in the digital educational environment; crisis phenomena in pedagogical education and ways to overcome them. In this vein, the authors consider the concept of pedagogical education, substantiating its goals, content options and psychological mechanisms for mastering pedagogical activity. The proposed model of the process of professional socialization of teachers reveals the content, technologies and criteria for their effective professional training, dialectics of psychological, pedagogical and subject components in the structure of professional competence. Consideration is also given to the environment of a pedagogical university as a source of development of pedagogical experience and personal and professional qualities of teachers. The article may be of interest to researchers and organizers in the field of pedagogical education.

The problem of aggression and violence in the educational space is currently quite serious. Illustrative examples of it are numerous publications in the media about acts of aggression exhibited by students against their peers and teachers, about the use of violence by teachers against their students, acute conflicts between the parents of students, sometimes leading to tragic consequences. In this regard, the works devoted to the problem of the psychological safety of the educational environment become very important. The purpose of our research is to identify the factors of psychological safety of the educational environment in the context of the aggressiveness of the participants in educational relations. The study involved 15 292 respondents, including 945 teachers, 6478 parents and 7869 students of grades 7-11 from 34 schools in Ulan-Ude. The following psychodiagnostic techniques were used: Cook - Medley Hostility Scale (CMHS); Questionnaire of Legitimized Aggression by S.N. Enikolopov and N.P. Tsibulsky; Bass - Perry Aggressiveness Questionnaire BPAQ (LA-44) in Russian adaptation by S.N. Enikolopov and N.P. Tsibulsky; questionnaire for students, teachers and parents “Psychological diagnostics of the safety of the educational environment at school” by I.A. Baeva. The empirical data obtained were subjected to correlation and factor analysis. As a result of the study, the following conclusions were formulated: (1) the psychological safety of students is associated with the peculiarities of the relationships between the teachers and students, between the parents of students and the school, between the parents and other students, between the parents and their children in the context of school education; (2) aggressiveness of students is associated with the level of aggression of their teachers and is not closely related to the level of aggression of their parents; (3) there is an inverse relationship between the aggressiveness of students and their sense of security in relationships with their teachers; (4) aggressiveness of teachers is associated with their satisfaction with the school. There are five areas of relationships that need to be taken into account when designing a safe educational environment: (1) the relationship between parents and students at school; (2) the relationships among teachers and accepted rules of conduct at school; (3) the relationships between teachers and students; (4) family satisfaction with school; (5) teachers’ satisfaction with the school.

The review presents the results of studies of the impact of music training on the cognitive development of preschool and junior school children. It is shown that music lessons can contribute to the development of reading, writing, listening and speaking as well as mathematical skills, memory, intelligence, and executive functions. After analyzing a number of relevant studies, the authors came to the following conclusions: (1) the impact of music lessons on the development of the cognitive sphere in children is associated with concomitant factors, such as: parental involvement in music lessons and home musical environment, age when a child begins to take music lessons and their duration, socioeconomic status of the family; and 2) it is systemic music training, which includes singing, playing musical instruments and solfeggio, that can have a beneficial effect on cognitive development. The mechanisms by which music training promote the cognitive development of children were also examined. While a vast body of work confirms the beneficial effects of music training in this regard, there are a number of studies showing no such effects. Special consideration is also given to the reasons why positive research results can be erroneous. In conclusion, the authors give recommendations for designing further research on this topic as well as for organizing music lessons for children of preschool and junior school age.

The necessity of establishing intercultural communication skills in children and young people is growing in the modern world. Expanding, extending the openness and accessibility of the Internet area, where diverse people with varied ideas, interests, and aspirations meet, plays a significant role in this process. Today’s youth are aptly referred to as “digital aborigines,” as they navigate the multicultural internet environment with ease, actively using modern technology that have already become a part of their daily lives. The goal of this study is to investigate the setting of an online multicultural environment from the perspective of Slovak university students, as well as to identify and analyze current problems that university students can see in online discussions about other cultures. A structured interview was used as the primary research approach. The results provide Slovak students’ perspective on the six most common topics that resonate in connection with different cultures on the current Internet: (1) concerns about one’s own safety due to “differences of others;” (2) misinformation on the Internet regarding “the difference of others;” (3) cognitive prejudice; (4) religious prejudices; (5) exaggeration; and (6) influencing audience emotions. This paper holds the view that modern young people should develop not only the ability to navigate in virtual reality, but also make daily personal efforts to overcome personal barriers and develop “intercultural media literacy,” which the authors define as the ability to acquire, in addition to digital competencies, intercultural understanding skills and apply these skills in practice in the process of communication in the Internet environment.

The topic on diagnosing intercultural adaptation and psychological acculturation to a new socio-cultural environment is relevant in connection with the processes of globalization and, in particular, with the growth of academic mobility in education. Research on this problem are especially relevant for Russian science due to the lack of acculturation scales, which are widely represented in Western and international psychology. In 2019, a research team led by Professor A. Ardila developed the Russian-language Acculturation Scale for Russia (ASR), which was validated on a sample of international university students from 71 countries of the world. The aim of the present study was to adapt the ASR for the Chinese students studying in Russian universities. Chinese students are the largest group of international students from far abroad studying at Russian universities, while many of them experience significant difficulties in adapting to a new socio-cultural environment, as well as in learning the Russian language. In total, the study involved 213 Chinese students (59% - female) studying at Russian universities, of which 93 students (58% - female) completed the Russian-language version of the ASR, and 118 students (61% - female) completed the Chinese version of the ASR, which was designed using the back translation. Both ASR versions were psychometrically tested using Cronbach’s α and MacDonald’s ω coefficients, as well as bifactorial analysis. The methods of descriptive statistics and the Wilcoxon W-test were used to compare the Russian-language and Chinese versions of the ASR. The normalization was carried out by means of non-linear percentile normalization (stanines). As a result, a high consistency of the Russian-language and Chinese versions of the ASR and their equivalence with each other were shown. Both versions can be used to assess the level of acculturation of Chinese students to Russia, while the Chinese version is recommended for the Chinese students who have been living in Russia for less than 1-1.5 years and/or have a poor Russian proficiency.

The question of political repression divides society and polarizes public discourse. Understanding political repression through the prism of socio-psychological knowledge is a zone of proximal development for researchers, because the “suicidal nature” of repression, which A.M. Etkind points out, makes it difficult to understand terror, hinders the work of mechanisms that operate in a society that has come into contact with a catastrophe of such magnitude and duration. The study is devoted to the study of social ideas about “repression”, as well as emotional reactions towards repression and the repressed among the descendants of the repressed, i.e., their children and grandchildren. A total of 110 people (61.82% - females) aged 44 to 78 years, 93.63% with higher education, participated in the study. The sample included three groups: the generation of children (21 people, M = 59.52 years; SD = 9.04); the generation of grandchildren (63 people, M = 54.71 years; SD = 7.66); and the control group (26 people, M = 53.65 years; SD = 7.72). A survey in the form of a questionnaire was used, followed by a prototypical analysis of associations, which made it possible to identify the structure of ideas about repression in the three groups. To analyze emotional reactions, a factor analysis of scores on 38 scales was carried out, followed by an analysis on the new variables. The characteristics of the structure of social representations (the core and periphery zones) are consistent with the initial hypothesis that the supposedly traumatic event of repression is perceived as a personal one by the descendants but as a social one by the respondents of the control group. There were no differences in the severity of emotional reactions in relation to the category of “repressions” and “repressed” between the generations. The combined group of descendants significantly differs from the control group in the greater severity of indicators when assessing the category of “repression” by the factors of “Anxiety”, “Depression” and “Grief”, and when assessing the category of “repressed” by the factor of “Grief”. The results of the study of social ideas about the past allow us to talk about the collective memory of repression in two generations of the descendants of the repressed: in the structure of the inner world of generations of descendants, repression is a personal event of family history, colored by sorrowful feelings of varying degrees of intensity and depth.

Research into the psychological aspects of oncological diseases is nowadays relevant and widespread; however, there are very few studies in patients with penile cancer (PC). Therefore, the purpose of this pilot study is to investigate the psychological characteristics and quality of life of patients with PC for further organization of psychological counseling. The study included 17 male patients (mean age 49.0 ± 3.76 years) of the N.N. Blokhin National Medical Research Center of Oncology. The following techniques were used: Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS), Big Five Inventory (BFI), Ways of Coping Questionnaire (WCQ), Purpose in Life Test (PLT), Quality of Life of Cancer Patients (EORTC QLQ-C30). The patients’ overall health status was assessed by D.A. Karnofsky’s scale; a specific psychological structured interview was also conducted. The emotional state of most patients is characterized by low indexes of anxiety and depression. Most of them are purposeful, organized, emotionally stable, unwilling to form trusting relationships. They have high rates of life meaningfulness, a normative level of internality and a decreased “purpose in life” indicator. The patients are not prone to active and conscious overcoming stress compared to healthy men. The indexes of quality of life, as well as the rates of its specific parameters (cognitive, physical and emotional activity) in the studied group of patients exceed the same values in patients with different tumor localizations and are not consistent with the objectively estimated condition. Health-related quality of life is largely determined by the characteristics of patients’ value system, especially in oncological diseases that are related not only to a vital threat, but also to deep personal experiences, including the experience of patients’ male identity.

The article presents the chronology and results of the International Scientific and Practical Conference “Commitment to Mental Health Issues”, which was organized and conducted by the Department of Psychology and Pedagogy of the Philological Faculty of the Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia (Moscow, October 7, 2021). The international forum brought together psychologists, medical workers, teachers and students from various universities in Russia and foreign countries (254 participants in total), who discussed current problems of mental health and digitalization during the pandemic.