An outlook on some aspects of professional motivation was published in Education and Self-Development.
One of the co-authors, Inna Krotova, has been working on professional development problems for many years. Notably, she works on the theory of self-determination of self-effectiveness of a personality and acmeological characteristics of readiness for self-development.
In this new paper, the researchers theorize that professional competences of a defectologist (a Russian term for educators engaged in assisted teaching for disabled individuals) rely on their psychological readiness for such a profession. A defectologist must be ready to work under indeterminate conditions and be able to foresee methods and ways of correctional pedagogy while experiencing a lack of information.
Three major categories of characteristics of a defectologist's professional development were defined, namely, the zone of a professional subject's growth, the zone of acmeological approaches to professional competences, and the zone of psychological readiness to partake in assisting professions.
As an experimental group, students of advanced training groups in defectology were chosen. The study was conducted with psychodiagnostic tools: valid and reliable questionnaires, a computer program for statistical processing of SPSS data. Interpretation of the data was carried out according to their compliance with N (0.1) and a high level of reliability: p≤0.001*** and p≤0.01**.
As a result, three major components of psychological readiness were proposed – adaptability, self-respect, and motivation to achieve success. Speaking about the component ranking, motivation was determined to be the most important factor, and then self-respect and adaptability. It's worth noting that the latter has not been a part of classic models of psychological readiness.
For further inquiry, the co-authors think that it's important to expand the scope of research to psychological determinants of a defectologist's successful professional activities.
The psychological model of the specialist-defectologist's readiness for professional and acmeological development
Inna Krotova, Anna Akhmetzyanova
DOI: 10.26907/esd14.1.09
Source text: Inna Krotova, Yury Nurmeev
Translation: Yury Nurmeev