UTOPÍA Y PRAXIS LATINOAMERICANA. AÑO: 23 , n° 82 (JULIO-SEPTIEMBRE), 2018, pp . 34-50 REVISTA INTERNACIONAL DE FILOSOFÍA Y TEORÍA SOCIAL
CESA-FCES-UNIVERSIDAD DEL ZULIA. MARACAIBO-VENEZUELA.
ISSN 1315-5216 / ISSN-e: 2477-9555
Fundamentos psicológicos y pedagógicos de las actividades de calidad de los profesores de disciplinas jurídicas en las instituciones de enseñanza superior
ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1624-2173 inpp.dept@lpnu.ua
Educational and Scientific Institute of Law and Psychology, Lviv Polytechnic National University, Lviv, Ukraine
Department of Theoretical and Practical Psychology, Lviv Polytechnic National University, Lviv, Ukraine
Department of Administrative and Information Law, Lviv Polytechnic National University, Lviv, Ukraine
Department of Criminal Law and Process, Lviv Polytechnic National University, Lviv, Ukraine
Department of Pedagogy and Social Management, Lviv Polytechnic National University, Lviv, Ukraine
This paper is filed in Zenodo:
DOI: http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1495788
The aim of the research is to identify and theoretically substantiate the psychological and pedagogical foundations of high-quality professional activity of the teachers of legal disciplines in higher education institutions and to identify experimentally the level of its manifestation. In order to achieve the purpose of study the various general scientific and specific methods of research were used. It was established that the quality of the professional pedagogical activity of the teachers of legal disciplines is its crucial feature. The basic psychological and pedagogical components of qualitative professional pedagogical activities of the teachers of legal disciplines are identified.
Keywords: Higher education institutions; psychological and pedagogical components; psychological and pedagogical reliability; teachers of legal disciplines.
El objetivo de la investigación es identificar y fundamentar teóricamente los fundamentos psicológicos y pedagógicos de la actividad profesional de alta calidad de los profesores de las disciplinas jurídicas en las instituciones de educación superior y determinar experimentalmente el nivel de su manifestación. Con el fin de lograr el objetivo de estudio se han usado diversos métodos científicos generales y específicos de investigación. Se estableció que la calidad de la actividad pedagógica profesional de los profesores de las disciplinas jurídicas es su característica fundamental. Se identifican los componentes psicológicos y pedagógicos básicos de las actividades pedagógicas cualitativas profesionales de los profesores de las disciplinas jurídicas.
Palabras Clave: Componentes psicológicos y pedagógicos; docentes de disciplinas jurídicas; instituciones de educación superior; confiabilidad psicológica y pedagógica.
Recibido: 20-08-2018 ● Aceptado: 17-09-2018
Utopía y Praxis Latinoamericana publishes under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0). For more information go to https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/deed
INTRODUCTION
Nowadays, there are many talks about the need for the teachers of higher education institutions to develop pedagogical culture, pedagogical excellence, pedagogical competence, and, in general, about the need for them to develop a high level of professionalism. Various scientific studies are conducted in these directions. But there are not many discussions about the quality of the professional activities of the teachers of higher education institutions. At the same time, according to the Article 1 of the Law of Ukraine "On Higher Education", the emphasis is on the quality of higher education, which implies "the level of knowledge, skills and competences acquired by a person that reflect his/her competence in accordance with the standards of higher education" (Law of Ukraine…, 2014). This Article also interprets the quality of educational activities as "the level of organization of the educational process in a higher educational institution, which corresponds to the standards of higher education, ensures the acquisition of qualitative higher education, and facilitates the creation of new knowledge" (Law of Ukraine…, 2014).
As one can see, the quality of professional pedagogical activity of the teachers of higher education
institutions is not explicitly mentioned. Although within the Bologna process, it is precisely the quality of training of specialists that is one of the crucial criteria of education along with
strengthening of trust among the subjects of education;
the compliance of the education with the European labor market;
mobility;
compatibility of the qualification at the stage of higher education and the postgraduate stage;
strengthening of the competitiveness of the European education system (Stepko et al., 2004).
However, once again, the quality of the professional pedagogical activity of the teachers of higher education institutions and its criteria are not mentioned.
As a rule, in higher education institutions of Ukraine, the quality of professional pedagogical activity of a separate teacher is determined sometimes on the basis of the students’ success (how high is the average grade of a student group and the quality of the students’ education, which is calculated in percent as a ration of the sum of "good" and "excellent" grades to the total number of grades in the group), and more often in the form of a rating based on the number of research papers, textbooks, manuals, et al., the time spent on teaching, methodical, scholarly, organizational and educational work, et al. In this context, it should be noted that this does not reflect the quality of the professional pedagogical activity of the teachers of higher education institutions, since students in the group could have had different achievements in secondary schools (colleges, gymnasiums, et al.), could have a different level of knowledge or abilities, et al (Aleksiuk, 1998).
Our studies show that teachers of higher education institutions (the teachers of legal disciplines among them) may have a highly developed set of pedagogical skills, sufficiently formed pedagogical competencies, various abilities, even have high professional and pedagogical qualities, may publish research works, textbooks, study guides and so on. But due to various reasons (for example, they are going through age, professional or life crisis, grief, social and/or economic deprivation):
they are being in a state of professional (mental, emotional) burnout;
they are overworked (for example, they are working in several places, et al.);
they might not apply them when performing the tasks of the educational process.
In other words, the quality of their professional pedagogical activity may be average, below average, low, and even very low.
In Ukraine, with a tacit consent, it is believed that a high level of pedagogical culture, pedagogical excellence, pedagogical competence, et al. of the teachers of higher education institutions automatically mean
the high quality of their professional pedagogical activity. Therefore, in this direction, in this direct formulation, there is virtually no research on the quality of professional pedagogical activities of the teachers of higher education institutions, or the methodology and mechanism for its identification either (Minetska, 2004).
The objective of the article is to discover and theoretically substantiate the psychological and pedagogical foundations of the high-quality professional activity of the teachers of legal disciplines in higher education institutions and to reveal experimentally the level of its manifestation.
Proceeding from the objective, the following tasks are set:
Theoretically substantiate the psychological and pedagogical foundation of the high-quality professional pedagogical activity of the teachers of legal disciplines in higher education institutions and to reveal its components;
Empirically identify the levels of the high-quality professional pedagogical activity of the teachers of legal disciplines in higher education institutions with different length of teaching experience.
MATERIALS AND METHODS
In order to achieve the objective and to solve the set tasks, both general scientific and specific methods of research were used:
Theoretical methods: analysis of research literature, comparison, generalization, classification and systematization of the received information in order to determine the key provisions of the study.
Empirical methods:
in order to identify in the teachers of legal disciplines the level of development of their psychological and pedagogical skills and properties and the effectiveness of their application in practice – "Method for determining the effectiveness of the teachers’ use of pedagogical skills and qualities in pedagogical practice" (Varii, 2013).
in order to determine whether a teacher of a higher education institution is motivated for
professional activity: for success – Th. Ehlers`s "Method of studying the motivation to success" (Raygorodsky, 2009);
with regard to avoiding failures – Th. Ehlers`s "Method for studying the assessment of motivation to avoid failures" (Raygorodsky, 2009);
in order to reveal the style of management of the educational process – the method "Assessment of the style of management" (O. Kozlovska, A. Romaniuk, V. Urunskyi) (Kozlovska et al., 1999);
e. to determine the style of behavior and relationships of the teachers of legal disciplines with their colleagues, students and student groups – the method of identifying "Communicative and Organizational Abilities" and "T. Leary’s method for diagnosing interpersonal relations" (Raygorodsky, 2009);
f. to determine the professional orientation of the teachers of higher education institutions – the method of "The questionnaire for the orientation of behavior" (V. Smekal, M. Kucera) (Kominco and Kucher, 2005);
g. to determine psychological and pedagogical reliability (through the inverse coefficients of the emotional burnout, depersonalization and reduction of personality achievements that reflect professional deformation) – "Method of detecting the "burnout syndrome" in professional activity" (Maslach and Jackson, 2002).
Methods of mathematical statistics:
a. to determine the coefficient of the quality of professional activity of the teachers of legal disciplines – a method of determining the geometrical mean;
b. to reveal a statistical connection between different components of the quality of professional activity of the teachers of legal disciplines – Spearman's rank correlation coefficient (Sedgwick, 2014);
c. to reveal the influence of individual components on the quality of the professional pedagogical activity of the teachers of legal disciplines – multi-factor regression analysis.
Statistical data processing was performed using the SPSS 17.0 computer program. All components of the high-quality professional activities of the teachers of legal disciplines are in a complex integral and probabilistic inter-subjective psychological and pedagogical interaction with one another, and they determine the concrete level of its manifestation: very low, low, below average, average, above average, high, and very high.
For the practical identification of the level of the quality of professional activity of the teachers of legal disciplines, we conducted an empirical study at the Educational and Scientific Institute of Law and Psychology of Lviv Polytechnic National University. The sample consists of 60 teachers of legal disciplines and covered 6 groups in accordance with the length of pedagogical experience, namely:
subgroup I (1-5 years of teaching experience) – 10 people;
subgroup II (6-10 years of teaching experience) – 10 people;
subgroup III (11-16 years of teaching experience) – 10 people;
subgroup IV (17-23 years of teaching experience) – 10 people;
subgroup V (24-30 years of teaching experience – 10 people;
subgroup VI (over 30 years of teaching experience) – 10 people.
The sample comprises 12 male teachers and 48 female teachers.
It should be noted, that the quality of professional pedagogical activity of each teacher of legal disciplines in higher education institutions is determined by us on the basis of the calculation of the coefficient of quality
Cqpa – which is represented as the geometrical mean of the coefficients of the quality of all of its components, that is:
Where:
𝐶��𝑎= 6√𝐶𝑒�× 𝐶��× 𝐶𝑚× 𝐶� × 𝐶�� × 𝐶���, (1)
Cqpa – is the coefficient of the quality of professional pedagogical activity of the teachers of legal
disciplines;
Cea – is the coefficient of development of pedagogical skills and qualities and the efficiency of their application in pedagogical practice by the teachers of legal disciplines;
Cpm – is the coefficient of development of positive motivation for professional pedagogical activity by the teachers of legal disciplines;
Cm – is the coefficient of development of the appropriate style of management of the educational process of students;
Cr – is the coefficient of development of positive behavior and relationships with colleagues, students, and student groups by the teachers of legal disciplines;
Cpo – is the coefficient of development of positive professional orientation by the teachers of legal disciplines;
Cppr – is the coefficient of development of professional psychological and pedagogical reliability by the teacher of legal disciplines.
Since the variables of all the coefficients have different intensity of manifestation, value, and probabilistic distribution nature, it is the geometrical mean that most accurately reflects the coefficient of the quality of professional activities of the teachers of legal disciplines in a particular period of time.
The geometrical mean is often also called the mean proportional, since the measurement is centered on the set of values of n variables (in our case n=6 variables) expressed by n (6) root of the product of the coefficients of these six variables.
It should be noted, that the components of the quality of professional activities of the teachers of legal disciplines are determined by the appropriate methods (by the number of points received). Thus, because of different point scales, we translate them into coefficients, each of which is calculated as the ratio of the sum of the received points to their maximum possible quantity for this component by the following equation:
Ccx = ΣSx (1 ...N), (2)
Ns
Where:
Ccx – is the coefficient of the quality of an x-component of the professional activities of the teachers of legal disciplines (x = 1,2,3,4,5,6);
ΣSx (1 ... N) – is the sum of the points received for all statements that reflect the x-component of the quality of the professional activity of the teachers of legal disciplines;
NS – is the maximum possible amount of points, which reflects the highest level of x-component of the quality of the professional activity of the teachers of legal disciplines.
The coefficient itself reflects the real value of one or another component in the development of the quality of the professional pedagogical activity of the teachers of legal disciplines, as well as of the component itself, depending on the number of factors that determine it.
Each level of both the quality of the professional pedagogical activity of the teachers of legal disciplines and its components is practically determined by the corresponding magnitude of the coefficient of quality, which lies within 0 ≤ C ≤ 1, namely:
very low: with C = 0÷0.143;
low: with C = 0.144÷0.285;
below average: with C = 0.286÷0.427;
average: with C = 0.428 ÷ 0.569;
above average: with C = 0.57÷0.711;
high: with C = 0.712÷0.853;
very high: with C = 0.854÷1.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Based on the study of the works on the quality of professional pedagogical activity of the teachers of higher education institutions (HEI), including of the teachers of legal disciplines (LD), we established that this quality is not the same as the notion of "pedagogical culture" or the notion "pedagogical excellence", "pedagogical competence", or "pedagogical skills". The quality of professional activity of the teachers of higher education institutions is most closely related to its effectiveness. Thus, in the Great Explanatory Dictionary of Modern Ukrainian, the word "quality" is defined as:
degree of value, worth, suitability of something for its intended use;
one or another characteristic feature, property of someone, something;
set of characteristics of products or services regarding their ability to meet the established and expected needs (Busel, 2007).
In its turn, the word "effective" means:
the one that leads to the desired results, consequences, gives the greatest effect.
the one that causes an effect (Busel, 2007).
In this context, the quality of professional pedagogical activities of the teachers of higher education institutions appears as a derivative of its effectiveness, which is its integrated feature, property.
We should note that, in general, the professional pedagogical activity of the LD teachers is aimed not only
at the transfer of knowledge, skills and abilities to students, at the formation of their general and professional competencies. It is also aimed at creating conditions for their socialization, adaptation, harmonious development, and the formation of readiness for continuous education during life, independent search for the latest knowledge, as well as professional, moral and civic qualities, et al.
No wonder that today’s scientists view professional pedagogical activity in a higher education institution:
Depending on the peculiarities of its course as:
a. the transfer of the culture and experience accumulated by mankind from older to younger generations;
b. preparation for professional activity and public life;
c. an important stage in the socialization of the younger generation;
d. harmonious development of future specialists.
Depending on the functional composition as:
a. organization of the educational process;
b. management of the educational process;
c. forecasting, planning and designing of the educational process.
Depending on the content of the activity as educational, methodical, scientific, organizational, et al.
The teaching of legal disciplines in higher education institutions has its own peculiarities, which lie in the fact that when studying these disciplines:
students undergo intellectual reflection through the content and semantic analysis of laws, individual articles, of the procedure of law enforcement activity, of investigation, trial, et al.;
the content of the professional training of lawyers gets complicated and transforms significantly in connection with the expansion of the scope of legal regulation, formation of the new branches of law, and respectively, new branches of legislation, in connection with the interdisciplinary nature of modern legal knowledge, et al.;
there is a personal, group, and inter-subjective reflection of the requirements of legal norms and their real observance;
the state legal reality, which is aimed at recreating the mechanism of the constitutional right and the state, processes of legal regulation, is taken into account;
the understanding of law-making and law-enforcement activities as a process of democratization and development of civil society, strengthening of the state, which extends the concept of coordination of all the branches of government in terms of correlation of formalized and non- formalized components in it;
students are prepared to respect the rule of law, justice;
principle of equality of all before the law is affirmed, and so on.
On a practical level, professional pedagogical activity in HEI manifests itself as:
active psychological and pedagogical interaction of students and teachers with the purposeful supervision of it by the latter;
teachers’ realization of a leading role in the organization and implementation of students’ educational process;
process of transfer and mastering of professional knowledge, skills and abilities, formation of competencies;
process of continuous psychological and pedagogical impact on students; fifthly, as the process of formation of personal traits and qualities by students, which are necessary for professional activity, social and public life.
Based on the above-stated, we came to the conclusion that the quality of professional pedagogical activities of the teachers of legal disciplines is its crucial feature, a property that reflects:
integration of the appropriately focused content;
pedagogical functions and tasks of the teachers’ active psychological and pedagogical interaction with the students and student groups;
motivation for professional activity;
adequate management style of the students’ learning and educational process;
teachers’ implementation of a set of appropriate psychological and pedagogical influences.
All of this together contribute to the students’ qualitative acquisition of modern professional knowledge, skills, abilities and competence, as well as to their formulation of personal qualities and properties that are necessary for future professional activities, social and public life.
In our opinion, in order to carry out qualitative professional pedagogical activity, the teachers of legal disciplines must, first of all, possess not only the necessary set of skills, which are formed on the basis of the relevant knowledge, not only have the appropriate abilities, pedagogical properties and qualities, but also use them appropriately in the course of the educational process. Therefore, the first component of the qualitative professional activity of the teachers of legal disciplines is their possession of a set of pedagogical knowledge, skills, abilities, properties, and qualities and their effective use in the course of realization of the tasks of the educational process.
A large number of research works is dedicated to the topics of pedagogical knowledge, skills, abilities, properties, and qualities, while significantly fewer works study the psychological and pedagogical conditions for their effective application in the course of implementation of the tasks of the educational process. A large number of researchers are talking about a certain set of qualities of teachers, which, in their opinion, is a prerequisite for effective professional pedagogical activity. For example, according to the Secretary General of the European University Association L. Wilson, the main professional qualities of the teachers of higher educational institutions should be:
general psychological and pedagogical erudition;
methodological thinking and activity;
democratic thinking and behavior;
professional pragmatism;
flexibility in communication and ability to navigate in unconventional situations;
high level of organizational skills (Minetska, 2004).
Possession and excellence of pedagogical skills and abilities, and developed positive personal qualities of the teachers of legal disciplines are a necessary, but insufficient condition for a high-quality professional pedagogical activity. As we have stated before, for various reasons teachers may fail to apply them in the course of the educational process. This can be also influenced by the lack of motivation to qualitative professional pedagogical activity. Therefore, the second component of the high-quality professional activity of the teachers of legal disciplines is their positive motivation for the implementation of all tasks of the educational process.
For a high-quality professional activity of the teachers of legal disciplines, the motivation for the achievement is important; this motivation is expressed in the need to overcome obstacles, realize their abilities, achieve high performance in their activity, constantly develop, compete with others, et al. Actually, the motivation for the achievement of the teachers of legal disciplines lies in the willingness to improve their results, to seek new ways and means of professional training of students, in the pursuit of yet new achievements, et al. We established that the teachers of legal disciplines that have a high level of motivation to succeed, seek ways and means to achieve goals, improve teaching methods, are confident in a successful outcome, act actively and decisively in uncertain pedagogical situations.
Motivation, as a combination of driving forces, has been studied in many works, including those by E. Ilyin (Ilyin, 2006), A. Maslow (Maslow, 1954), and others.
The absence of an expressed desire of the teachers of legal disciplines to succeed and improve, attempts to avoid failures lead to a decrease in the quality of their professional pedagogical activity.
The third component of the qualitative professional activity of the teachers of legal disciplines is their appropriate management of the educational process of students.
It is known that the professional activity of the teachers of legal disciplines is presented as a realization of a certain set of functions. The views of the scientists on the functional composition of the work of the HEI teaches differ substantially. In fact, professional pedagogical activity of the teachers of legal disciplines, as well as of any other HEI teachers, is multifunctional because it requires teachers’ simultaneous implementation of various functions in the educational process depending on a situation. At first glance, it might seem that all functions of the pedagogical activity of the teachers of legal disciplines are equal. However, research suggests that it is the supervision function that is the leading one that influences all the others. For example, A. Aleksiuk argues that the subject of pedagogical activity in higher education institutions is the management of the process of education, teaching and training of students, the appropriate organization of their professional development (Aleksiuk, 1998).
A researcher of pedagogical psychology V. Yakunin generally views teaching from the standpoint of the systematic approach and the theory of management (Yakunin, 1998).
In the functional and procedural management of the educational process, in the course of students’ learning a certain legal academic discipline, teachers simultaneously perform various functions. Thus, they must:
constantly supervise and analyze how this particular discipline is comprehended by student;
supervise and analyze the activity of students (learning) and their own (realization of informational, diagnostic, reflexive, gnostic and other functions);
forecast the course of studies given the corresponding influence, the attitude of students to the content of the laws (realization of orientation, information, research, prognostic and other functions);
design measures of influence aimed at activating and ensuring the effectiveness of the subject studied (realization of projective, constructive, goal-setting, instrumental, methodological and other functions);
change the influence on the educational process of students (realization of educational, methodical, research, educational, incentive, mobilizational, organizational, communicative, corrective, and other functions);
occasionally identify and evaluate the results of the quality of learning of a discipline (realization of diagnostic and informative functions);
carry out correction of the educational process of students (realization of reflexive, corrective, projective, prognostic, illustrative, and other functions).
An essential feature of the management function is that the teachers of legal disciplines also need to teach students to conduct self-management; that is, at a certain stage of the relationship they need to start providing students with some of the functions of management.
In the course of the study, we found that an important psychological and pedagogical peculiarity of LD teachers’ management of the educational process is the fact that this management manifests itself as a reflexive management at all the stages of its implementation. In our context, psychological and pedagogical influences, interaction, control and evaluation are reflected both by the teachers of legal disciplines and students. Thus, the management of the reflexive process takes place in the continuum of an individual/group entity. The main idea of the Bologna process is based on the synergic and systematic centrality of the managerial function.
During the study, we found out that the quality of the educational process management by the teachers of legal disciplines depends on the appropriate combination of the authoritarian and democratic management styles.
The fourth component of the qualitative professional activity of the teachers of legal disciplines is their positive behavior and appropriate relationships with their colleagues, students, and student groups. In order to fulfill the tasks of the education process, the teachers of legal disciplines must effectively interact with their students and student groups, influence their behavior, interpersonal relationships, relationships within student groups, resolve conflicts, and so on. The relationship between the teacher and students is realized through a bilateral interaction: 1) official interaction; it is characterized by formal connections and relations; 2) informal interaction; it is characterized by simplicity, accessibility, freedom of expressions, thoughts, and suggestions, the possibility to defend one’s opinion, to object, et al. The peculiarities of this socio-psychological contact determine not only the dynamics of the students’ moods, but also the dynamics of their cognitive activity, even attitudes to laws, law enforcement activities, et al.
The pedagogical environment is a meaningful and notional area of interaction of all participants in the educational process, therefore, the application of personal, group, interpersonal, content, and intellectual reflection in the analysis and realization of relationships allows raising their qualitative level both in the student groups and in the "teacher – student" system of relationships.
The behavioral style of teachers of legal disciplines is very important. With regard to the influence on the interaction with students, the behavioral style can be positive, neutral, or negative, as pointed out by Yu. Fokin (Fokin, 2002). The quality of the teachers’ interaction with students also depends on the peculiarities of the styles of their professional communication and interaction – authoritarian, democratic, liberal and indulgent, which are sufficiently represented and described in the academic literature.
The fifth component of the qualitative professional activity of the teachers of legal disciplines is their positive professional orientation. We shall pay attention to the fact that some researchers consider the professional orientation of teachers of higher education institutions through the prism of the teachers’ possession of professional qualities and the degree of development of the latter; while the others – through the prism of the aim (purposefulness) of a behavioral act.
We support the opinion of the second part of the researchers, which proceeds from a number of statements, first of all, from the theory of functional systems, in accordance with which, human behavior is purposeful, and all people’s actions are determined by goals. The main criteria of purposeful behavior according to the results of A. Newell and H. Simon’s (Newell and Simon, 1972) research are as follows: determining of sub-goals; the choice of means to achieve the sub-goals and goals; avoidance of repetitions; saturation.
If the goal-oriented system reaches a state that is similar to the one desired, it completes the action on the grounds the goal has been achieved (Blake and Mouton, 1990).
For a qualitative characteristic of the professional orientation of the teachers of legal disciplines, one can distinguish three vectors of their activity in terms of its content:
First vector – "orientation on the case". It contributes to the effective professional activity of the teachers of legal disciplines. This vector is characterized by its focus on the educational process of students, cooperation with students and student groups, examining and solving their problems, being demanding to them, as well as on the purposeful resolution of pedagogical tasks and conflicts, improvement of students’ learning conditions, constant search for new forms, methods and pedagogical technologies of development, et al.
Second vector – "orientation on formal interaction". It is the teachers’ formal approach to the performance of their duties, simulation of active commitment but only in order to appeal to the students, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, to avoid criticism and complaints about inaction. These teachers often make concessions to their students, even give them good grades, do not criticize them, do not require feedback, do not really control their cognitive activity, et al.
Third vector – "orientation on oneself". It lies in the fact that the teachers solve only their problems. They are not interested in either problems or difficulties of their students or in the quality of their learning, et al.
The sixth component of a high-quality professional activity of the HEI teachers is their professional psychological and pedagogical reliability. Over the years, the specifics of the professional pedagogical activity of the teachers of legal disciplines affect its quality. Therefore, the issue of their professional psychological and pedagogical reliability arises. This reliability implies the high level of development and continuity of professional and pedagogical abilities, properties, qualities, value orientations, motivation, style of behavior and management of the educational process of students, relationships, attitudes, emotions, et al.
The level of professional psychological and pedagogical reliability of the teachers of legal disciplines is in
reverse proportion to the level of their professional deformation. The latter means a loss of professional ability to qualitatively solve pedagogical tasks as a result of a destruction or distortion of the previous system of personality traits, qualities, motivation, emotions, feelings and value orientations; it also means an aggravation of the teachers’ behavior, of their relationships with their students and colleagues, attitudes towards their duties, et al., which have a negative impact on the quality the professional pedagogical activity.
It is believed that most often professional deformation of the teachers of higher education institutions occurs due to the development of a burnout syndrome by them. To date, the burnout syndrome is included in the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10). According to the WHO definition, "a burnout syndrome is a physical, emotional or motivational exhaustion characterized by a performance deterioration and tiredness, insomnia, compromised immunity, as well as by the consumption of alcohol and other psychoactive
substances in order to obtain temporary relief, which tends to develop a physiological dependence and (in many cases) suicidal behavior" (World Health Organization, 2004). The psychological phenomenon of burnout is described in many works of domestic and foreign scientists. By the way, foreign scientists C. Maslach and
Goldberg (Maslach, and Goldberg, 1998), K. Much (Much et al., 2005), G. Roberts (Roberts, 1997), P. Rothlin and P. Werder (Rothlin and Werder, 2007), W. Schaufeli (Schaufeli et al., 2009), and others view burnout as a multi-faceted phenomenon. Most often, foreign scientists view professional burnout as a long- term stress response that occurs as a result of prolonged profession-related stresses of moderate intensity (Maslach and Goldberg, 1998).
With regard to the manifestation of emotional burnout, V. Boyko sees it as a sequence of three phases:
Stress: the experience of psycho-traumatic circumstances, dissatisfaction with oneself, feeling of being "trapped", anxiety and depression;
Resistivity: inadequate choice of emotional response, emotional and moral disorientation, expansion of the sphere of emotional thriftiness, reduction of professional duties;
Exhaustion: emotional deficiency, emotional detachment, personal detachment (depersonalization), psychosomatic and psychovegetative disorders.
The researcher identified such personal factors in the development of an emotional burnout syndrome as a tendency to: emotional coldness, intense experience of negative circumstances in professional activity, a weak motivation for the professional activity (Boyko, 1999).
The modern science recognizes three models of "burnout". In the first model, a "burnout" is a state of physical and mental exhaustion, caused by a lasting experience of emotionally charged situations. The second model of "burnout" is described as a two-dimensional construct consisting of emotional exhaustion and depersonalization, which manifests itself in people’s changing their attitude either to themselves or to others. The third model of the "burnout" syndrome, developed by American researchers C. Maslach and S. Jackson (Maslach and Jackson, 2002), views the "burnout" syndrome as an emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduction of personal achievements. Emotional exhaustion is considered to be the main component of professional "burnout" and is manifested in lowering the emotional background, indifference or emotional oversaturation. Depersonalization is manifested in the deformation of relationships with other people. This may be an increase in dependence on others, or an increase in negativity, emergence of cynical attitudes and feelings towards others. The reduction of personal achievements is manifested either in the tendency to a negative assessment of oneself, one’s professional achievements and successes, in emergence of negativism towards professional achievements and opportunities, or in limitation of one’s opportunities, responsibilities towards others (Maslach and Jackson, 2002).
Based on the above-stated, we can conclude that the professional deformation of the teachers of legal disciplines is the result of development of a psychological burnout syndrome by them, in the first place. In its turn, the syndrome emerges under the mutual influence of the factors of the professional (in a narrow sense) and external environments, especially social and economic ones. Secondly, professional deformation is also the result of a depersonalization, which manifests itself in the deformation of properties, qualities, relationships, feelings, motivation, "I-image", et al. Thirdly, professional deformation is the result of the reduction of personal achievements, which primarily manifests itself in revision, revaluation, reconsideration of one’s professional achievements and success, life values, attitudes, et al., which leads to the deformation of professional and life values, motivation to professional activity, behavior and relationships, as well as to the change of attitudes towards people, activities, responsibilities, et al.
The higher the level of the professional deformation of the teachers of legal disciplines, the lower the level
of their professional psychological and pedagogical reliability.
Thus, the quality of professional pedagogical activity of the teachers of legal disciplines is its crucial property, which reflects the effectiveness of the realization of:
the totality of their pedagogical knowledge, skills, abilities, and qualities and their expedient application in the course of the educational process;
positive motivation for the implementation of the tasks of the educational process;
effective management of the educational process;
positive behavior and appropriate relations with the colleagues, students, and student collectives;
positive professional orientation;
professional psychological and pedagogical reliability.
These components (factors) are in a complex integral and probabilistic inter-subjective psychological and pedagogical interaction with each other in the course of realization of the tasks of the educational process and determine a concrete level of the quality of professional pedagogical activity of the teachers of legal disciplines. Having substantiated the main provisions of a high-quality professional pedagogical activity of the teachers of legal disciplines, we conducted an empirical study aimed at determining the level of development of the professional pedagogical activity of the teachers. By applying the above-mentioned methods, following the Equation (2), first we determined the coefficients of manifestation of each separate component of a high- quality professional pedagogical activity of the teachers of legal disciplines.
Then, on the basis of the Equation (2), we calculated the coefficient of a qualitative professional pedagogical activity (Cqpa) of each teacher of legal disciplines (with the help of the program of statistical analysis SPSS 17.0, we arrived at the indicators of the geometrical mean, which served as an indicator of the quality of professional activity of each teacher) and determined its level.
As a result of the analysis, it was established that the quality of the professional pedagogical activity of the teachers of legal disciplines (Figure 1) is available:
at the very high level – 5 persons (8.3%);
at the high level of development – 11 persons (18.4%);
at the above average level of development – 19 persons (31.6%);
at the average level of development – 14 persons (23.4%);
at the below average level of development – 10 persons (16.7%);
at the low level of development – 1 (1.6%) person.
Figure 1: The levels of quality of the professional activity of the teachers of legal disciplines and their percentage value
With regard to the subgroups of teachers of legal disciplines in terms of the length of their teaching experience, the development of the quality of their professional activity is available (Table 1 and Figure 2):
at the high level – subgroup VI (over 30 years of teaching experience);
at the above average level – subgroup III (11-16 years of teaching experience) and subgroup V (24-30 years of teaching experience);
at the average levels – subgroups II (6-10 years of teaching experience) and IV (17-23 years of teaching experience);
at the below average level – subgroup I (1-5 years of teaching experience).
Table 1: The quality of the professional activities of the sub-groups of the teachers of legal disciplines in accordance with the length of their teaching experience
Sub-groups of the teachers of legal disciplines in accordance with the length of their teaching experience
Indicator
Subgroup I
(1-5 years
of teaching experience)
Subgroup II
(6-10 years
of teaching experience)
Subgroup III (11-16
years of
teaching experience)
Subgroup IV
(17-23
years of teaching experience)
Subgroup V
(24-30
years of teaching experience)
Subgroup VI
(more than 30 years of teaching experience)
Coefficient 0.40 0.49 0.62 0.53 0.66 0.82
Level of development
below
average average
above
average average
above
average high
Figure 2: The levels of development of the professional activities of the sub-groups of teachers of legal disciplines in accordance with the length of their teaching experience
In order to calculate the correlation between the variables (components) of the quality of the professional activities of the teachers of legal disciplines, we chose Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient (rs). It was calculated using the program SPSS 17.0.
The analysis of the correlative relationships was carried out. It is revealed that, in the first place, there is a strong negative correlation between the indicators of the high-quality professional activity of the teachers of legal disciplines and their professional deformation (rs=-0.834, ρ≤0.01). This means that when the teachers of legal disciplines develop emotional burnout, depersonalization and reduction of personal achievements, their professional psychological and pedagogical reliability, and hence the level of quality of their professional and pedagogical activity, is reduced.
Also, there is a strong bilateral connection between the indicators of a high-quality professional activity of the teachers of legal disciplines and the motivation for professional activity (rs=0.804, ρ≤0.01). The higher the level of development of the motivation to professional activity the teachers of legal disciplines have, the higher is the level of the quality of this activity.
A moderate positive correlation is traced between the indicators of the high-quality professional activity of the teachers of legal disciplines and positive professional orientation (rs=0.496, ρ≤0.01).
A weak correlation is traced between the indicators of high-quality professional activity of the teachers of legal disciplines and the development of their pedagogical skills, personal qualities and the effectiveness of their application (rs=0.332, ρ≤0.01).
A moderate bilateral connection is traced between the high-quality professional activities of the teachers of legal disciplines and the individually-democratic style of management of the students’ educational process (rs=0.574, ρ≤0.01), and vice versa – there is a negative connection between the qualitative professional activity of the teachers of legal disciplines and the passive style of management of the students’ educational process (rs=-0.453, ρ≤0.01). This means that when the teachers of legal disciplines use the passive style of management of the students’ educational process, then the quality of their professional activities is reduced.
However, the existence of a correlative connection between a high-quality professional activity of the teachers of legal disciplines and its components is insufficient evidence that these are these components that influence it. In order to check this, we conducted a multi-factor regression analysis. The coefficients of the multiple-factor correlation between the factors (components) and the general quality of the professional activity of the teachers of legal disciplines were calculated with certainty (ρ≤0.05). On the basis of the coefficients of the multiple-factor correlation, the coefficients of the multi-factor determination were calculated, which are
equal to the square root of the coefficients of the multiple-factor correlation (R²). For the factors (components) of the qualitative professional pedagogical activity of the teachers of legal disciplines R² = 0.635, which indicates the dependence of the change in the quality of the teachers’ professional pedagogical activity on these components by 63.5%.
CONCLUSIONS
It was revealed that the quality of the professional activity of the teachers of legal disciplines is its crucial feature, a property that reflects the integration of the appropriately focused content, pedagogical functions, and tasks of the teachers’ active psychological and pedagogical interaction with the students and student groups, motivation for professional activity, adequate management style of the students’ learning and educational process, the teachers’ implementation of a set of appropriate psychological and pedagogical influences, which together contribute to the students’ qualitative acquisition of modern professional knowledge, skills, abilities and competence, as well as to their formulation of personal qualities and properties that are necessary for future professional activities, social and public life.
It is proved that a high-quality professional pedagogical activity of the teachers of legal disciplines is an integrated reflection of the influence of six main components:
the totality of their pedagogical knowledge, skills, abilities, and qualities and their expedient application in the course of the educational process;
positive motivation for the implementation of the tasks of the educational process;
effective management of the educational process;
positive behavior and appropriate relations with the colleagues, students, and student collectives;
positive professional orientation;
professional psychological and pedagogical reliability.
The identified psychological and pedagogical components (factors) are in a complex integral and probabilistic inter-subjective psychological and pedagogical interaction with one another, and they determine the concrete level of the professional pedagogical activity of the teachers of legal disciplines.
Based on the results of the empiric research, it was established that the quality of the professional
pedagogical activity of the teachers of legal disciplines has the following levels of development: very high – 5 persons (8.3%); high – 11 persons (18.4%); above average – 19 persons (31.6%); average – 14 persons (23.4%); below average – 10 persons (16.7%); low – 1 (1.6%) person. The quality of the professional activity of the sub-groups of the teachers of legal disciplines in accordance with the length of their teaching experience is presented at the following levels of development: high level – subgroup VI (over 30 years of teaching experience); at the above average level – subgroup III (11-16 years of teaching experience) and subgroup V (24-30 years of teaching experience); at the average levels – subgroups II (6-10 years of teaching experience) and IV (17-23 years of teaching experience); at the below average level – subgroup I (1-5 years of teaching experience).
The conducted correlation analysis showed the dependence of the quality of the professional activity of the teachers of legal disciplines on all of its components. The calculated coefficient of the multi-factor determination confirms the dependence of the change in the quality of the LD teachers’ professional pedagogical activity on these components by 63.5%.
The prospect of further research is to broaden the study of all six components of the quality of the professional pedagogical activity of the teachers of legal disciplines, as well as of the impact on them of various external and internal factors.
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