Dr.Phil., Professor A.I. Panyukov¹
Dr.Sc.Psych., Professor Y.G. Panyukova²
Dr.Sc.Hist., Professor I.M. Kornilova¹
PhD, Associate Professor I.F. Ponizovkina^1
1Plekhanov Russian University of Economics, Moscow
²Psychological Institute of Russian Academy of Education, Moscow

Keywords: eco-psychological approach, physical education and sport service, educational environment, psychological representation of physical education and sport service, formal aspects of physical education and sports psychological representation, content of physical education and sports psychological representation, mental representation.

Backgroundю The ongoing initiatives to find optimal education service models and tools include the national physical education and sport specialist training service improvement efforts. The physical education and sport cluster in the modern educational environment is reasonably versatile to ensure a good follow-up of the educational process actors in every point of the individual education trajectory. It may be pertinent to mention, as a case in point, that the modern bachelor training curricula includes a basic physical education and sport curriculum plus optional physical education and sport disciplines in the variable parts of the academic curriculum. An analysis of the formal and substantive aspects of the bachelor competence formation process, as provided by the valid third generation standards (FSHES), may be found in study reports by L.B. Andryushchenko, I.V. Manzheley and S.N. Chernyakova [6, 17, 18]. The bachelor training process, as provided by the education service policy-makers, must be designed to train specialists highly competent and skillful in the modern physical education and sport toolkits for success of their professional and social services and responsibilities. For these competences and abilities being ‘inbuilt’ into the individual system of interactions with the social environment, they need to be ‘represented’ in the cognitive, affective and behavioral domains of the individual mentality. Every aspect of such representation may be studied by the theoretical and practical tools provided by the modern eco-psychological approach.

Objective of the study was to analyze the psychologically relevant aspects of the physical education and sport service representation within the educational environment.

Methods and structure of the study. We used analyses of the reference literature on the subject, theoretical analyses of the information flows, componential analysis and the fact finding methods to identify and discuss the general and specific aspects of the subject matter.

Results and discussion. Modern psychological community has long been developing eco-psychology as an independent research field which basics were laid by the foreign psychology [16], later on introduced in the national psychology by G.A. Kovalev [5], and then differentiated and methodologically classified by V.I. Panov [11]. Modern eco-psychological research is based on the fundamental assumption that an individual psyche grows and functions in a certain environment that largely determines its development pattern by the subject-environment interactions. A psychologically favorable interaction will be secured, on the one hand, by the subject’s individual/ personal resources and, on the other hand, by the environmental resources mobilized (‘subjectified’/ ‘anthropomorphized’) by the subject in its efforts to transform the surrounding space into a comfortable living environment.

Modern eco-psychology gives room for many studies to find the most promising educational environment optimizing models, including the educational environment vectoring theory by V.A. Yasvin [15], psycho-didactics model by V.I. Panov [10] and some others. Lately the eco-psychological and eco-didactical resources have been untapped and employed by the physical education and sport environment research community that defines the physical education and sport environment as the "wide range of the physical and spiritual personality progress encouragement inputs and aspects found in the natural and socio-cultural environments" [7, p. 132]. One of the theoretically substantiated and methodologically equipped options for the physical education and sport environment analysis in the context of eco-psychological approach is provided by the studies of psychological representation of the subject’s living environment. This research option may be considered beneficial for the academic physical education and sport psychological representation studies for at least the following reasons.

First, the psychological representation phenomenon (in mental domain) provides a universal and classical toolkit for studies of the systemic/ structural elements of the living environment of special importance for the subject, with the subjective rankings of these “elements” by importance, and with the relevant “descriptive” logics i.e. qualification and classification of the environmental elements critical for the subject [9]. We can mention a few modern approaches to interpretation of the mental representation structures, including the mental representation interpretation in the cognitive psychology and intelligence psychology domains that consider it a “subjective vision of what is going on” (as provided by M. A. Kholodnaya); or a “mental model” (by E.A. Sergienko); or a “socio-psychological space” (by to A.L. Zhuravlev, I.A. Kupreichenko) etc.

Second, the science has developed and empirically validated a theoretical psychological representation model of a living environment with its levels, components and operational parameters to generate data on the types of representation [8]. This model has been successfully tested to identify the subjectively critical educational environment characteristics [3, 12]. As was found by the studies, the formal and substantial specifics of the educational environment representation – including the numbers of represented “elements” and “subjectification” (within the “reflected subjectivity” framework as provided by S.D. Deryabo) aspects of the environment [2] – may be ranked among the psychologically relevant subject- educational-environment interaction factors that make it possible to spell out what in the educational environment is important for the students and relevant for their self-identification, and what is beyond their perceived lifestyle.

Third, eco-psychology and the related fields offer versatile practical toolkits to analyze the educational environment representation and profile every aspect of the subject-educational-environment interaction for the educational environment optimizing purposes [1, 4, 14, etc.]. The researchers offer the following key educational environment representation aspects/ criteria: subjective rating of the basic values and priorities being addressed by the educational environment [1]; subject-educational-environment interaction class/ type with its spatial, social and psycho-didactic components [4]; specifics of the socio-psychological activity space for the newcomer specialists [14] etc.

Every above aspect will be taken into account by the physical education and sport psychological representation facilitating educational environment research projects. It should be noted that, despite the fact that the theoretical basics for the physical education and sport service facilitating educational environment (dominated by the academic educational environment) have been well analyzed and developed, [13], no empirical studies have been run to address these issues as yet. Therefore, we would recommend running a wide range of empirical studies to analyze the psychologically relevant educational environment efficiency aspects for progress of the academic physical education and sport service. Of special promise may be the following research thrusts: analyses of the general/ universal specifics of the physical education and sport psychological representation facilitating educational environment and their classification; analysis of the environmental factors of influence on the physical education and sport psychological representation facilitating educational environment; and analysis of the individual psychological factors of influence on the physical education and sport psychological representation facilitating educational environment.

Conclusion. The article analyzes promises of the physical education and sport psychological representation facilitating educational environment studies driven by the modern eco-psychological approach. It is assumed that the physical education and sport psychological representation facilitating educational environment studies with contributions from students and teachers will make it possible to identify the resourceful and deficient avenues for the educational environment optimizing initiatives. Knowing the importance and relevance of the academic physical education and sport educational environment design and improvement goals both for the education service strategies and healthy lifestyle and psychological well-being cultivation domains, we believe that the efforts to mobilize resource of the modern eco-psychology are well grounded in the theoretical terms and beneficial in practical terms.

References

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Corresponding author: apanukov@mail.ru

Abstract

Objective of the study was to analyze psychologically acceptable indicators of representation of the physical education and sports environment of educational institutions.

Methods and structure of the study. The methods included study of the related literature, theoretical analysis of information, allocation of components of the investigated problem, systematization of selected facts, definition of general and various features of the phenomenon under study.

Results of the study. The authors analyzed the theoretical approaches to and methodological tools for the realization of the opportunity to conduct an eco-psychological study of the physical culture and sports environment of educational institutions. The methodological paradigm, within which it was suggested that the research should be conducted, rests on the eco-psychological approach – a separate direction that has developed in Russian psychology and is focused on the interpretation of the characteristics of subject-environment interactions as psychologically acceptable indicators.

Conclusions. The article outlines the main provisions of the eco-psychological approach to the physical education and sports environment of educational institutions, and presents the analysis of the methodological tools making it possible to perform the empirical validation of the considered theoretical provisions.

It is assumed that the data obtained during the study of the features of representation of the physical culture and sports environment of educational institutions conducted by the students and teachers will help determine the "resource"- and "deficit"-related directions of optimization of the sports and physical education environment.