The socio-psychological features of the professional dispositions of students becoming specialists in psychology

Spitsyna, L. V. (2021). The socio-psychological features of the professional dispositions of students becoming specialists in psychology. Ukrainian psychological journal, 2(16), 141-158. https://doi.org/10.17721/upj.2021.2(16).9

Over the past year, the issue of students’ professional development is becoming one of the most important, since it largely determines the development of all spheres of society in the near future. This year, very noticeable changes were noticed in university training, associated, first of all, with the global pandemic and the transition of many educational institutions to the online format of education, as well as with significant socio-economic changes. In this regard, we can also observe changes in students’ ideas about their future professional tasks and opportunities, on their socio-psychological attitudes, career orientations and prospects. Taking into account the traditional interest in the topic of young specialists’ professional priorities, we have noted an even greater increase in interest in this topic recently. At the same time, as shown by the scientific-theoretical analysis, today we do not really have generalized works devoted to the study on social-psychological factors influencing higher education students’ professional dispositions. The aim of the research was to reveal the social-psychological features of psychology students’ professional dispositions. The approaches to the study on social-psychological aspects of the formation of students’ professional dispositions and career orientations were analyzed to achieve the aim of our research. The article also presents the results of vthe empirical study on the social-psychological characteristics of students’ professional dispositions. Based on our analysis, we have defined professional dispositions as a set of social-psychological attitudes, reflecting an individual’s readiness to perform tasks, to meet norms and prescriptions for a certain profession. Career orientations have been defined as a type of professional dispositions, which predict the trajectory of a person’s career development. There are also tendencies to group individual professional attitude and career orientations into integral professional priorities. We determined five disparate professional dispositions, which focus on: achievements; well-being of life; values of the profession; self-development, stability. In addition, there was a tendency to group individual career priorities into a respondent’s personal profile, which indicates students’ focus on high achievement. Our research also revealed possible resources that can be used by students during higher education training for coping with emotional, psychological problems, based on current professional priorities. First of all, we talk about resources of adherence to a chosen profession - orientation towards the realization of professional values, service, achievement of professional competence, self-development, achievement of high results in one’s work, as well as such personal resources as family relations, life realization - orientation towards stable life. Therefore, the further research is promising if it aim will be to deepen the understanding of the main trends in the formation of future professionals’ professional dispositions and career orientations in connection with the actual changes in the higher education system.