Professional tolerance of Humanities degree students: essences, structure, peculiarities of formation

Abstract

The paper offers a theoretical and methodological analysis of the types, levels, aspects and approaches to the study of tolerance as a socio-cultural phenomenon and an integral personality trait, as well as definitions and semantic invariants of the term “tolerance”, which are the most used in modern scientific discourse. The attention is focused on the coverage of tolerance essence as a general scientific category in the aspect of axiological, ideally-typological, conflicting, ontology-historical and other interpretations. Psychological structure and peculiarities of tolerance in Humanities degree students are analyzed component by component in the context of basic psychological directions: existential-humanistic psychology, cognitive psychology, psychoanalytic theory, behaviorism and psychology of behavior, personality psychology. It is proved that this is a complex psychological phenomenon that has a specific structure and is considered in the complex of motivation and value, cognitive, emotion and volition, connotative and reflexive components. The motivation and value component of tolerance is related to the value-meaning system of a person, in which the values of respect for the person, the values of his rights and freedoms, equality in the choice of outlook and life position, the importance of responsibility for personal life, the recognition of similar opportunities for development and self-affirmation in other people are the central; the cognitive is expressed in the ability to understand what is happening around and what fills and organizes the world of content, including the problem of consciousness and active thinking; the emotion and volition is the ability to overcome irritability, to show endurance, self-control and self-regulation, and when working on yourself it is expressed in empathy, love, interest and respect for others; connotative component is a complex system of skills and norms that integrate the behavioral repertoire of an individual and aim at establishing productive contacts, avoiding conflicts or resolving them constructively; reflexive component means the ability to restricting consciously the inadequate attitudes, relationships, constructs and actions, as well as the ability to self-report on what is happening around. The scheme of experimental and diagnostic study of tolerance as the interdependence of its structural components, their psycho-sensory characteristics, activation criteria and derived indicators is proposed. It is specified by the system of research methods and techniques, and reveals in detail the main scales of tolerance measurement, both at the ascertainment and formation stages. The empirical study results of the component tolerance peculiarities in students of the 1st, 3rd, 5th year are described. It is established that the majority of Humanities degree students are characterized by a low level of tolerance, but with a tendency to increase the psycho-social filling of its structural components from the 1st to the 5th year. It is developed a program of professional tolerance formation, aimed at the increasing of its components level formation, which was realized with the help of psycho-diagnostic technology, training sessions and role-playing games in the conditions of credit-modular system of education. Its validation on a real sample of students gave positive results: the increase of formation level of motivation and value, cognitive, emotion and volition, connotative and reflexive components of professional tolerance, which testifies to its effectiveness and possibility of widespread using in educational work.