Vol 28, No 4 (2024)

Introduction. The well-being of student youth is in the focus of the tasks of state programs of educational and youth policy. The international socio-political situation poses the tasks of actualization and formation of value orientations of the young generation. In modern psychological and pedagogical science, a significant number of studies are devoted to the problem of well-being, its correlates and risks. However, relatively few works are devoted to the topic of correlation between self-esteem as a component of psychological well-being and value orientations. The aim of the research is to study the values of modern Russian students in the context of the specifics of self-esteem.

Materials and Methods. The study involved 2,315 university students from 10 cities of the Russian Federation. Self-esteem was analyzed using the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale in the adaptation of A. A. Zolotareva, and the Schwartz Value Questionnaire (PVQ-R2) was used to study students’ axiological orientations. The correlations between self-esteem and value orientations among students were determined using by correlation analysis using the Spearman method. In order to identify differences between groups with low and high levels of self-esteem (self-esteem), Student’s t-test for independent samples and Mann-Whitney U-criterion was used to test the consistency of the results.

Results. Data analysis has shown that most values, except for “Power – Dominance”, “Power – Resources” and “Face”, have a significant correlation with self-esteem. The majority of these values have a positive correlation, while a negative correlation was found between “Humility”, “Conformity – interpersonal”, and self-esteem. In other words, in most cases, it can be said that the higher a student’s self-esteem, the more prominent their value orientations are. These correlations correspond to significant differences in the expression of values among students with relatively high and low levels of self-esteem.

Discussion and Conclusion. The conducted research deepens our understanding not only of the specifics of the modern Russian students’ axiological positions, but also of how the indicator of subjective well-being, measured by the level of self-esteem, relates to them. The results obtained can be used as part of the development of educational concepts, value-based motivational strategies, for working with at-risk students, and designing adaptation and development programs.

Introduction. Prosocial behavior is a type of a socially oriented behavior which purpose is to benefit individuals, social groups, and society as a whole. In the modern world, where ensuring the social well-being of a person is one of the main tasks of any state, it is this orientation of behavior that is socially approved and supported by the state. In this context, the study of the factors that determine a personality’s propensity to such forms of behavior is not only relevant, but also necessary. Despite the fact that interest in the problem of determinants of personality behavior has not waned for a long time, the results of research in this area are often ambiguous and sometimes contradictory. Moreover, most studies are based on comparative analysis, which does not allow us to solve the problems of predicting success and propensity for socially oriented forms of behavior. The purpose of our study is to identify the psychological prerequisites of modern students’ propensity to prosocial activity.

Materials and Methods. A total of 102 respondents, students of the Institute of Pedagogy and Psychology of the Moscow Pedagogical State University, aged 18–25 years, participated in the empirical study. To study the level of involvement of young people in prosocial activities, the author’s questionnaire “Youth Prosocial Activity Scale” was developed and used. To study the psychological prerequisites of a person for prosocial activity, a number of questionnaires were used, including the assessment of characteristics at the organismic, formal-dynamic level of the person’s organization (temperament) and characteristics at the personal level of individual organization (person’s orientation). In order to identify the prerequisites of prosocial activity, a number of methods of mathematical analysis were used, including comparative and factor analysis, as well as multiple regression analysis to build a model of a socially active person.

Results. The authors have shown that the psychological prerequisites of personality prosocial activity are both the properties of the basic, formal-dynamic level of organization of individuality (high rigidity and plasticity) and the property of the personal level – orientation of personality to altruism. The development of the questionnaire “Youth Prosocial Activity Scale” is also one of the significant results of the conducted research.

Discussion and Conclusion. The results of the study contribute to the development of ideas about the psychological conditions of personality predisposition to prosocial behavior. The material of the article can be used in applied projects on formation of prosocial activity of modern youth in the organization of psychological and pedagogical support of educational work in the student’s environment.

Introduction. Innovative approaches to the training of specialists in Chinese educational institutions are driven both by globalization processes, which imply international cooperation in various fields, and by national interests aimed at the development of the economy and other spheres of life in the country. The international interaction between China and Russia in various fields also defines cooperation in education, which is in line with the principles of the state initiative “One Belt, One Road”. This study identifies issues in the education of future specialists in the context of the development of a digital society and international connections. The aim of the article is to describe the problematic areas in the training of specialists at Jiangsu University of Science and Technology against the backdrop of the challenges faced by graduates of other universities in China that prepare professionals for international cooperation with Russia.

Materials and Methods. The research material is based on the authors’ practical observations of the Russian language teaching at the Jiangsu University of Science and Technology and on the articles of Chinese scholars on the subject. Descriptive and analytical methods are used to analyze the works.

Results. The article analyzes new trends in higher education, such as the integration of language modules into professional programs under the “Russian Language + Specialty” model, the use of digitalization opportunities in teaching, and teacher and student exchanges. It also identifies existing problems in language education: outdated methodologies and teaching materials, a focus on testing at the expense of a communicative approach, and other issues that need to be addressed as student motivation remains low. 

Discussion and Conclusion. The article suggests measures to increase the effectiveness of Sino-Russian educational contacts, including in the field of Russian language teaching within the framework of the “One Belt, One Road” initiative. Among them, the authors consider diversification of Sino-Russian joint educational projects, integration of ideological and political principles of China’s state development into Russian language teaching, etc. The results contribute to the development of the Chinese system of Russian language teaching integrated into professional university education programs.

Introduction. The problem of the interaction between family and school is being actively discussed in a number of African countries in the context of the active reform of the education sector. On the one hand, the educational system is being modernized; on the other hand, the potential of traditional education remains, emphasizing the special role of the family in the formation of fundamental values as the main vector of modern educational reform in Africa. The purpose of this article is to identify the role of the family in the education of schoolchildren and the development of education in Guinea, based on an expert survey.

Materials and Methods. The theoretical basis of the study was the approach of P. Bourdieu and J.-C. Passeron which reveals the principles of the educational system, the conditions for the success of the educational process, the influence of the cultural and linguistic capital of the family on the success of the child. The empirical basis is statistical data, expert interviews with teachers, school principals, employees of the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Guinea (N – 20 people).

Results. The study identifies trends in the development of school education in the Republic of Guinea, and provides an expert assessment of family and school cooperation in the process of education and upbringing of schoolchildren. The study shows that although the country declares a universal and free right to education, the inequality of educational opportunities for children reproduces a wide gap between the strata of Guinean society. To a greater extent, inequality in access to education is linked to the place of residence. According to the experts, the solution to the current problems in Guinea’s education system depends not only on the school and the government’s education policy, but also on the family. The experts highlighted the growing role of the family in the education of children and identified the main forms of interaction between school and family: constant contact with teachers and the administration, participation in the development and adaptation of curricula, in civil society structures (APEAE), etc.

Discussion and Conclusion. On the basis of expert opinion, the expediency of developing forms of interaction between schools and families is justified. The material in this article may be of interest to educational researchers, teachers and specialists involved in the development of educational policy in Guinea.

Introduction. Formation of political culture of youth in conditions of complex geopolitical situation and multipolarity of political opinions and decisions becomes an urgent task for modern socialization institutions. The choice of the most effective directions and forms of organisation of this process is based on the understanding of the characteristics of political thinking of modern youth. The scientific problem of the article is to explore and identify indicators of characteristics of political thinking of modern youth and defining options of their transformation into life choices of political strategies. The purpose of the research is to assess the characteristics of political thinking and strategies of youth as a basis for forecasting the consequences of political reflection of youth.

Materials and Methods. The verification of the research model was based on data from the 2022 sociological study conducted by the International Centre for Sociological Research of the Belgorod State National Research University. The study was conducted using an online survey method and involved 4,215 people, regional youth aged 17–35, divided into age and status groups (students, graduates and working youth).

Results. As a scientific result, the characteristics of political thinking are identified and its possible deviations are called additional characteristics. The indicators of young people’s political thinking characteristics are verified, their main accentuations are established, types of dispositions of young people and life planning guidelines in relation to political strategies are considered.

Discussion and Conclusion. The results of the study and the analysis revealed problems associated with a risky combination of characteristics of political thinking (criticism and pessimism), which potentiate migration activity, marginalisation and anomie among young people; with the reproduction of inequality in the political socialisation of rural youth; with the unwillingness of the state to support politically ambitious youth. The results of the study contribute to the development of sectoral sociologies such as youth sociology and political sociology. The research materials may be requested by state youth policy management bodies at various levels, state and municipal government bodies, management bodies of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, youth organisations and educational institutions.

Introduction. Revealing the psychologically real, individual meaning of the word as opposed to its dictionary meaning is the important task since such knowledge is crucial for effective communication. This is especially true for the words which denote key ideas and concepts of the culture. The word association experiment has been one of the most used methodologies to examine individual meaning of the word but it has been heavily criticized because of its subjectivity. In some of the recent works, data from language models and methods of vector semantics have been used to solve this problem. However, firstly, the very set of the features by which the meaning of the word is described is not uniform, which does not allow for a comparison of the results, and, secondly, some other types of data related to word production (i.e., behavioral data) are typically not taken into account. The aim of the present study is to reveal and systematically describe individual differences in the psychologically real meaning of the particular key words of the Russian culture using a new methodology which could be applied to any word association task. We propose to analyze data of different types (semantic features and keystroke dynamics markers) obtained during word association production to reveal individual differences in the word meaning.

Materials and Methods. The material of the study is a newly developed dataset containing associative reactions to the keywords of Russian culture, anonymized data about the informants, as well as the reaction time while producing associations measured using a program that records keystrokes. The proposed research methodology includes both the existing approaches (automatic extraction of relations from texts based on data from language models and methods of vector semantics, i.e., “cultural cartography using word embeddings”) and a new list of features developed by the authors to describe individual differences in the meaning of a word based on the data from neurobiology about the meaning structure of word. A set of data analysis methods (linear mixed models, principal components analysis, hierarchical clustering on principal components) implemented in R packages is used to reveal individual differences in the word meaning in terms of the proposed list of features and association of the revealed differences with participants’ characteristics.

Results. The cluster analysis showed the presence of two to three variants of psychologically real meanings for the 9 studied cue words which are listed among the key words of Russian culture. Systematic differences in the individual meanings of the words according to the proposed set of semantic features reflecting different aspects of semantic representations of word meaning in the human brain are described in detail, and a connection between specific features of the word meaning and the characteristics of the participants and markers of keyboard behavior are established for the first time.

Discussion and Conclusion. The specific scientific results related to the individual differences in the psychologically real meanings of the words, as well as fully reproducible methodology proposed in this paper (the dataset and code of this study are available on GitHub) can be used in the practice of effective teaching of Russian as a foreign language, in the study of the changes in semantics of the key words of the culture based on text data, for designing effective political and advertising campaigns, etc. Among strands of the future research are the study into the effect of the different characteristics of the cue words on their semantic features and participants’ keystroke behavior, the broadening of the list of the proposed characteristics, the use of new language models and text corpora for the further development of an important theoretical and applied problem of revealing and describing the psychologically real word meaning.