Vol 18, No 1 (2021)

The research considers the problem of regulatory resources of the personal life plans in uncertain and unpredictable situations on the material of the COVID-19 pandemic spread in the world and in Russia. The study was conducted during a lockdown in Russia, in an online format, with the help of the Tilda Publishing block website builder and the Google Forms survey administration software. The study sample included 165 respondents aged 16 to 56 years. The Self-regulation Profile Questionnaire - SRPQM 2020 , The Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale, CES-D , and the authors’ questionnaire which includes a number of questions related to personal life plans and professional/educational curriculum were used for diagnose. The study results demonstrated that the higher conscious self-regulation development is associated with the higher person's clarity and understanding of the future plans, the more stable career path (including professional and educational goals), and the less actual depressive symptoms. And vice versa: the low level of the conscious self-regulation development correlates with the difficulties with considering the life plans, the fickleness of professional and educational goals, being affected by external factors, and with the pronounced actual manifestations of depression. The data obtained contribute to the development of ideas about the conscious self-regulation phenomenon and human regulatory resources ensuring stability of the personal life plans in situations of uncertainty and serving as a buffer that softens the impact of external stress factors and neutralizes their possible negative consequences.

Researchers of the “new generation” (born in 2000-2017), also called “Z”, “Net Generation”, “iGen”, demonstrate the manifestation of similar features in different countries: an obsession with smartphones, the predominance of online contacts, dependence on parents, a tendency to depression, social liberality. However, numerous Russian and international studies mainly compare representatives of different generations, and less attention is paid to the problem of uniformity of psychological characteristics within one generation. The aim of the present empirical study was to find uniformity/heterogeneity in the psychological characteristics of representatives of the “new” Russian generation ( N = 434, Russians, 228 - girls, 206 - boys,) in two groups: university students (128 girls, 120 boys aged 19-20 years) and high school students (100 girls, 86 boys aged 16-17 years). To determine the characteristics of representatives of the generation, we used the questionnaire by Twenge; The Brief Measure of Big-Five Personality Traits (TIPI-RU), The Questionnaire for Measuring Values through Fears (by Pischik), The Questionnaire for Measuring Beliefs in Conspiracies (by Pischik, & Mutalimova), The Social Axioms Questionnaire (by Bond & Leung), questionnaire “Motivation for Help” (by Nartova-Bochaver). As a result, it was found that in both groups of the “new generation”, the most pronounced personality traits were shown: agreeableness, conscientiousness and openness; and belief in a conspiracy: political, secret organizations, globalism. At the same time, in the group of high school students the openness to experience, awareness of values, belief in globalism are more expressed. In the group of university students there is a high value for the Others, but the belief in a secret organizations and the conscious commitment of catastrophization are prevailing. Thus, in both groups of representatives of the “new generation”, most of the studied psychological characteristics showed similarity of values, but it is impossible to speak about their complete uniformity, which is confirmed by the differences in factor structures. The practical significance of the study lies in the application of the obtained data in preventive, advisory, educational activities in working with youth.

The relevance of the study is determined by the role of the adaptation processes of first-year students to the university environment, which is the most important (preliminary) stage for: (a) their successful overcoming of various learning difficulties; (b) comfortable and constructive interaction with teachers and other students; and (c) search and application of adaptive behavior strategies due to new living conditions. The development of proactive coping is a key factor in the students’ efficient learning activity because it represents a “platform” for their personal growth. The aim of the study is to determine the possibilities of diagnostics and development of reactive and proactive coping behavior in first-year students. The study involved 272 first-year students at Pacific National University (including 136 students of an experimental group who sought help from the University Psychology Center in 2019 and 136 first-year volunteer students as a control group). The following methods were used for diagnostics: Proactive Coping Inventory (PCI) , adapted by E.P. Belinskaya et al., Ways of Coping Questionnaire by R. Lazarus, adapted by T.L. Kryukova et al., Hardiness Survey by Salvatore Maddi adapted by D.A. Leontyev and E.I. Rasskazova, Time Perspective Inventory (TPI) by Ph.Ge. Zimbardo, adapted by A. Syrtsova et al. and Reflexivity Diagnostics Method by A.V. Karpov. As a result, the first-year students showed low levels of developed reactive and proactive coping, high levels of social and emotional support as well as escape-avoidance, average levels of strategic planning and search for informational support, and a reduced level of reflective, predictive resource. It is shown that the search for social, emotional and informational support is the basis for constructing adaptive behavior strategies. It is confirmed that self-control and the category of the future are moderating for all types of proactive coping. The conducted cluster analysis made it possible to identify three profiles, which differ in the levels and content of reactive and proactive behavior (non-adaptive, reactive and active with a tendency to proactive). Repeated measurements show that individual and group forms of psychological intervention cause changes in the indicators of reactive-proactive coping behavior, which can be regarded as a positive dynamics in the development of behavior in students of the experimental group. Finally, a conclusion was formulated about the possibilities of using various forms of psychological support (individual counseling, trainings, and self-help groups) in optimizing the first-year students’ proactive coping behavior.

To overcome the crisis of the modern school institution, it is necessary to qualitatively rethink its foundations and to design fundamentally new approaches to implementing the educational program. The theoretical and methodological bases of the concept of a new type of school as a development practice, based on the provisions of Russian cultural-historical psychology and the activity approach are presented. The purpose of the work is to consider in the modern context the key theoretical provisions of Russian psychology and to formulate the methodological principles arising from them, which set the conditions for organizing the educational process, thus ensuring the transition from theory to practice. The key concepts of the school model are ‘development’, ‘agency’ and ‘collaboration’: ‘infinite development’ is formulated as the supreme goal and value of the school, the development of the position of agency is considered as the main productive process, and collaboration is the main professional principle. Eight basic principles are formulated as follows: intent - implementation - reflection as a methodological scheme for organizing school processes, the principle of multidimensional development, the principle of equal importance of school activities, the principle of congruence, the principle of organizing the educational space as a space for growing up, the principle of fellowship of practices and the development-oriented approach to evaluation. Thus, the article presents the authors’ view of the school as a scientifically grounded anthropological practice. The implementation of the concept, which has already begun in Russia, is an experiment that will make it possible to verify these theoretical and methodological provisions.

Modern requirements for Russian higher education in general and the system of training highly qualified personnel in particular arise from the necessity to improve the quality and efficiency in order to ensure the country’s international competitiveness in important areas of life. The research is aimed at filling the need for a detailed analysis of algorithms, frameworks and principles of organizing the process of training highly qualified personnel in graduate school, using information and communication technologies (ICT). The comparative nature of the work, which analyzes Russian and international experiences in this field, allows to obtain data that have not previously been systematized in the present context. The study is based on scientific and pedagogical publications of Russian and international authors. The purpose of the study is to consider the theoretical, methodological and organizational aspects of training graduate students, using ICTs in the selection of the analyzed material. The comparative analysis makes it possible to identify and systematize the specifics of informatization in training scientific and pedagogical personnel, the current implicit state of which complicates its interpretation in terms of the educational process organization and management. As a result, we can identify the following eight characteristics of the system of training highly qualified personnel in postgraduate studies using ICTs: theoretical and methodological foundations, characteristics of electronic learning systems, conditions for effective application and input data for their design, requirements for scientific supervisors and students, factors that update this type of training and a list of basic terms and concepts. The described characteristics can be used as a theoretical basis for further research, for example, in order to determine the actual parameters of designing the environment for students in graduate school as a means of scientific and pedagogical training of highly qualified personnel. The given descriptions of technologies in the context of the peculiarities of the impact of informatization on the implementation of the educational process, together with references to sources, allow to use the materials of the article as data for its planning and organization. The results of the research can be useful for specialists in designing, organizing, implementing and supporting the educational process in higher education using ICT tools: research supervisors, graduate students, managers and designers of educational programs.

The specifics of professional burnout of teachers engaged, in addition to their direct pedagogical activities, in the administration of their educational organizations are studied. The relevance of the raised research problem is determined by the significant socio-economic and political changes taking place in the modern education system: its intensive modernization and the introduction of innovative technologies in education have an impact not only on the content side of the educational process but also on its organization. The implementation of these innovations falls on the shoulders of the administrative and managerial personnel of schools, demanding huge emotional, intellectual and mental costs from the latter. The purpose of this study was to identify the characteristics of professional burnout and its symptoms in administrative and managerial personnel of educational organizations in relation to the severity of their psychological defenses and personality motivational profile. The sample was composed of 75 teachers (54 women, 21 men) in the position of school deputy director for studies and educational work. Their administrative work experience in an educational organization ranged from 1 to 23 years, the average age was 37.5 years. The study used a set of valid and reliable psychodiagnostic methods, including The Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) Questionnaire by Ch. Maslach and S.E. Jackson (adapted by N.E. Vodopyanova), The Life Style Index (LSI) by R. Plutchik, H. Kellerman and H.R. Conte (adapted by E.S. Romanov and L.R. Grebenshchikov) and Diagnosis of the Motivational Structure of Personality by V. Milman. The correlation analysis revealed that among teachers who additionally occupy in an educational institution, professional burnout is interconnected with the manifestation of psychological defenses of suppression, projection and intellectualization. Also, a relationship was established between professional burnout and a decrease in motivation for communication, general activity, creative activity and social usefulness of activities. The revealed specifics of professional activity and burnout of school deputy directors as well as the characteristics of their strategies for overcoming crisis situations in professional activity under conditions of changes and uncertainties open up opportunities for us to develop and implement programs on preventing professional burnout in this category of teachers and providing psychological support for their professional activities.

Digitalization is one of the key distinctive features of modern environment and social life. Nowadays more and more functions are transferred to the artificial mind. How effective is the replacement of human activity with computer activity? In the given article, this problem is solved by an example of integration of digital technologies into translation activities. It this paper, emphasis is placed on the quality of machine translation (MT) output of legal texts in the language pair English - Slovak. It studies a Criminal Code formulated in the Slovak language which was translated by a human translator into English and consequently via machine translation system Google Translate (GT) back into Slovak. The back-translation - translation of a translated text back into its original language - as a quality assessment tool to detect discrepancies, mistranslations and inevitable differences between the source text and the target text was used. The quality of MT output was evaluated according to Multidimensional Quality Metrics (MQM) standards with the focus on the dimension of ‘Fluency’. The multiple comparisons were applied to determine which issues (errors) in ‘Fluency’ dimension differ from the others. A statistically significant difference is noticed between ‘Agreement’ and other issues, as well as between ‘Ambiguity’ and other issues. The errors in ‘Agreement’ are related to the differences between the languages: English is considered mostly an analytic language, Slovak represents a synthetic language. The issues in the ‘Ambiguity’ dimension correlate with the type of the text being examined, since legal texts are characterized by relatively complicated wording and numerous terms; moreover, accuracy and unambiguity need to be preserved. Generally, the MT output is able to provide users with basic information about the text. On the other hand, most of the segments need revision and/or correction; in such cases, human intervention and post-editing is necessary.

Controlling characters in a virtual reality (VR) environment can lead to the interiorization of their body dimensions by the recipients. The possible preservation of these distortions in their psyche will indicate a high degree of psychological impact of a VR on a person and the potential danger of developing depersonalization of the recipients and their dependence on such stimulation. The study of the stability of these distortions is necessary in the context of ensuring the safety of the impact of VR environments on the human psyche. The main focus of the study is on the perception distortions of human body dimensions, as they are sensed by people immersed in a VR environment, and their dynamics depending on the number of immersions. The impact of the virtual reality environment was simulated using the Freedom Locomotion VR application. One virtual reality immersion session took 15 minutes. To obtain psychometric indicators of the subjects’ perception of their own body dimensions, the technique Measurements according to M. Feldenkrais was used. All the participants (N = 45, three experimental groups) underwent a mandatory preliminary measurement using this technique (several hours before exposure) and a final measurement (one day after the last exposure). At the same time, the results of preliminary measurements were taken as indicators of the subjects’ habitual perception of their own body dimensions and were considered in each data processing as a comparison group. Free movement in a VR environment leads to distortions in the subjects’ perception of their own body dimensions. In all the experimental groups, there was a tendency to exaggerate body dimensions immediately after immersions, which indicates the qualitative similarity of these distortions. The effect of repetitive immersion in a VR environment on the perception of body dimensions is that it increases awareness in perceiving body parts that are least active at the time of immersion. Controlling an anthropomorphic character in a VR leads to an increase in the subjective significance of the recipient’s own body perception and an increased concentration of attention on the parameters least involved in immersion. The results of the study show that an increased level of awareness in perceiving their own bodies is characteristic of the subjects who have experience of repetitive immersions in a VR environment in the guise of an anthropomorphic character. Controlling a bodily projection in a VR headset does not cause its long-term interiorization, but has a positive effect on the formation of personal corporeality.