STRUCTURAL-DYNAMIC PECULIARITIES AND TYPES OF THE STUDENTS’ FEARS

Abstract

The necessity of introducing the “student fears” notion has been substantiated. These are emotional processes and states occurring with the students in the course of the educational and cognitive activities in the higher education institution. The aim of the article is to educe the varieties of students fears, to offer their classification, to study their structural–dynamic peculiarities based on the empirical study results.

The authors have made a list of student fears. Eight groups of student fears have been educed with its help during the examination in which 203 of the 1st, 3rd and 6th–year students of the Kharkov Pharmaceutical Academy took part. Some fears (the fear of examination, public appearances, expel from the higher education institution, etc.) are present in the student mentality during the whole period of studies. The types of fears which get intensified by the end of study in the higher education institution have been defined. Some of the fears vice versa gradually disappear.

It became possible to educe the types of student fears which reach the peak of intensity in the middle of the studies. An assumption was made that the analysis of these types of fears would provide a possibility for profound studying of the emotional aspects of the “3rd–year crisis”. These types of student fears point at problem areas of the third–year students, particular “weak links” in the psychic regulation of the educational activities, interrelations with the studying process participants in the higher education institution, self–relation of the personality.

The hierarchic agglomeratic cluster analysis has been applied in order to educe the structural peculiarities of student fears. It has been proven that the student fears are organized into structures. Certain close–in–context fears approach one another and get united into compact groups of emotional stresses built on the common conceptual foundation. The dynamics, taking place in every year of study and being expressed in the intensification of the thematic precision of factor unions, is inherent to the structure of student fears. The dendrogram of the first–year students contains the least homogenous and the vaguest clusters and sub–clusters. The dendrogram of the sixth–year students is structured most distinctly.

Based on the analysis the following conclusions have been made: 1) variety of the types of student fears, 2) their unification into eight main groups, 3) their dynamics in the course of study in the higher education institution, 4) availability of the structure in their manifestation, 5) possibilities of practical application of the obtained results in the psychological service practice of the higher education institution.