Dr.Hab., Professor E.A. Levanova¹
PhD V.E. Tsibulnikova¹
Dr.Hab., Associate Professor Т.V. Pushkareva^1
1Moscow State Pedagogical University, Moscow

Keywords: teacher’s health-prioritising image, health-prioritising professional education service style, health-building agenda.

Background. In the context of the ongoing reforms in the national general education system giving a special priority to schoolchildren’s health, in the modern education theory and school policies and practices a high priority has been increasingly given to the health-building education initiatives, with the teacher’s individual health-prioritising image, agenda and service style being considered central for success of the professional education service, conditional on due contribution of the role model created by the teacher in communication, interaction and goal-focused education service process.

In opinion of B.G. Ananiev, it is the individual developmental course that is viewed as a pivotal factor of personal stamina, charisma and longevity. Individuality may be understood only in the context of integrity and interrelation of its specific traits as personality and subject of some activity. Any complex structure of personality and individuality is formed based on certain individual traits in their combinations and effects [1].

Methodologically, the modern teacher’s individual health-prioritising image and agenda building process shall be based on the axiological and humanistic approaches ranking human health among the key values of social progress. The teacher’s individual health-prioritising image and professional service style shall be built on the following basic principles.

First, it is the deterministic principle interpreted as the frame format geared to identify the causes, effect and core regularities of the health-prioritising image building process in the context of the relevant factors of origin and influence. The following variable set of causes and factors may be viewed as determinants of the modern teacher’s individual health-prioritising image building process: prudent design and management of the corporate education process with top priority given to the health-prioritising and health-building agenda driven by the relevant values system with health being viewed as one of the key components of the values core of the corporate culture; legal and regulatory provisions for the education service including the provisions to secure health of the students and due teacher’s competency in the modern health-protection education technologies; acceptance of professional health as a core individual teacher’s resource to secure due quality of the general education service and a key asset of the teacher’s individual competitiveness; teacher’s health examination and test data to help the teacher change the individual attitude to health values from negligent to conscientious and responsible etc.

Second, the initiatives to facilitate the teacher’s individual health-prioritising image and style being built shall be based on the fundamental consciousness and service integration principle that is designed to: give an all-round format to the service-centred approach with the relevant priority values and senses to encourage the health-building component of the individual professional education service; set due reference points for cooperation of the education teammates in the healthy lifestyle acceptance and joint promotion domain; design, on a purposeful basis, a health-building-and-protecting environment at school; shape up a conscientious and responsible attitude to health; and develop an individual health-building style in professional education service of every education team member. S.L. Rubinstein, when spelling out the consciousness and service integration principle, mentioned that consciousness reflects the dialectics of individual and social aspects and, therefore, may be viewed as the top level of the mental process structure formed and developed depending on the degree of activity of the actor [3].

Third, it includes the personality development principle viewed as the fundamental postulate of the teacher’s individual health-prioritising image building process with the personal professional resource being mobilised for dynamic education to shape up a mature top-professional individuality striving to attain a professional and individual acme.

O.G. Krasnoshlykova considers the individual teacher’s image both as a prime condition for success of the professional service and a component of the professional competency with the relevant professionally valuable qualities, educational competences and mastery. Therefore, an individual teacher’s image includes every individual quality of an education specialist [2].

Furthermore, it is a healthy professional education service style that may be interpreted as the sustainable specific individual way to attain the values-driven health-prioritising professional education process goals and fulfil the process missions with the core role played by the teacher’s individual traits and agenda. The professional education style formation process includes the values-and-senses, motivational, individual professional, professional-service prioritising and socialising components [4].  It is the education team joint motivation for the health-building priorities in education service that shall encourage the individual teacher’s health-prioritising agenda building efforts.

A powerful boost for the individual teacher’s health-prioritising agenda may be given by a due training process in the academic education period; and this healthy academic background manifests itself in the determined attitudes to new theories, practices, traditional and untraditional education technologies and the past educational experiences forming a basis for the individual professional service culture on the one hand; and the individual professional growth with the growing individual health culture on the other hand.

Objective of the study was to analyse the individual teacher’s health-prioritising image building process and factors of influence on the latter in their correlations.

Methods and structure of the study. The individual teacher’s health-prioritising images, agendas and professional service styles were profiled and analysed by a questionnaire survey of the teachers engaged in the advanced professional education course “Health protection technologies in the general education system in the context of FSES implementation process”. Subject to the survey were 420 teachers of general education establishments coming from 23 regions of the Russian Federation, aged 23-67 years and having the work records of 2 to 34 years. The “Health-prioritising teacher’s Image” questionnaire survey form offered the following three groups of questions: healthy lifestyle; health-prioritising professional education service; and motivations for the individual teacher’s health-prioritising image building efforts. The survey format was largely subjective due to the following: first, the high individuality of the information reported by the respondents on their own qualities and agendas; and, second, specifics of the advanced education course attended by the health-prioritising sample group.

Study results and discussion. The first group of questions to test the individual teacher’s determinants for healthy lifestyles revealed the following: 98% of the subjects believe that life and health are the topmost human values (ranked with the values-and-senses component); 22.9% of the subjects reported taking persistent efforts to maintain good health and reinforce the natural bodily protection mechanisms, being devoted to a healthy lifestyle and engaged in habitual physical training practices (physical training component); 37.6% of the subjects reported being able to control their emotions and adequately respond to upcoming problems; albeit 68.2% still reported being periodically sensitive and showing emotional burnout symptoms (emotional component); 78.2% of the respondents rated themselves as socially healthy individuals with due social responsibility, social tolerance, high social immunity, social wellbeing, social activity and conscientiously responsible internal predispositions to health values (social component); 42.7% of the respondents believe that they efficiently utilise the relevant and necessary information for their health protection agendas (intellectual component); and 72.6% of the subjects are confident of their spiritual health including such components as positive thinking, high sense of morality, peaceful individual philosophy and predisposition to kind actions (spiritual component).

The second group of questions to test the health priorities in the professional education service, revealed the following: 72.4% of the respondents consider their professional service being focused, among other things, on the health-building aspects including the following: individualised nature of health values and their acceptance by the values-driven core of the education team; practical application of the modern health-protection education technologies in the educational process; efficient contribution to the health-building and health-protection school environment; practical toolkits to develop and implement the relevant health initiatives; and active health-building cooperation of the educational process actors.

The third group of questions to test the internal and external factor of influence on the individual teacher’s health-prioritising image building process revealed the following: 38.6% of the respondents believe that their individual professional images are largely health-prioritising. Determinants of this image, in their opinions are the following: 78.9% believe that the image was largely built by the healthy lifestyles in their families and then was naturally transferred to the professional education service domain; 43.1% consider poor health as a high risk that shall be minimised by a healthy lifestyle – manifested, among other things, in the health-prioritising image. Furthermore, 52.8% of the subjects tend to believe that the health-building priorities in the corporate education policies facilitate the individual health-prioritising image building efforts; and 78.3% of the respondents report their values, senses and internal attitudes to health being dominant for their decision to actively build up their individual health-prioritising image.

Conclusion. The questionnaire survey to analyse the modern teacher’s health-prioritising image building process showed the effects of the relevant internal and external factors of influence on success of the process. Of 420 teachers polled, only 32.6% self-rated their professional image as health-prioritising, with the following reasons and motivations for it being mentioned: high priority to a healthy lifestyle in their families in the early childhood with the healthy agenda being then naturally transferred to the professional education service domain (ranked 1st); values-and-senses personality domain and internal positive attitude to health (ranked 2nd); health-building corporate policies pursued by their general education establishments (ranked 3rd); and poor individual health considered as a high risk that shall be minimised by a healthy lifestyle – manifested, among other things, in their individual health-prioritising teacher’s image (ranked 4th).

References

1. Ananiev B.G. Chelovek kak predmet poznaniya [Man as an object of knowledge]. St. Petersburg: Piter publ., 2001, 288 p.
2. Krasnoshlykova O.G. Metodologiya i metodika razvitiya professionalizma pedagogov v munitsipalnoy sisteme obrazovaniya. Dis. dokt. ped. nauk [Methodology and technique of teachers' professionalism building in municipal education system. Doct. Diss. (Hab.)]. Kemerovo, 2005, 387 p.
3. Tikhomirova S.V., Abulkhanova K.A. Filosofsko-psikhologicheskoe nasledie S.L. Rubinshteyna: sb. Statey [Philosophical and psychological heritage of S.L. Rubinstein: col. articles]. Moscow: Institute of Psychology, RAS publ., 2011, 429 p.
4. Tsibulnikova V.E., Tsibulnikova V.E. Motivatsionny podkhod v upravlenii razvitiem zdorovogo stilya professionalnoy deyatelnosti uchitelya [Motivational approach in managing development of healthy style of teacher’s professional activity]. Kazanskiy pedagogicheskiy zhurnal, 2015, no. 5, pp. 255-260.

Corresponding author: vicki-77@yandex.ru

Abstract

The study considers the issue of how a health-prioritising image and the relevant professional service style shall be built by a modern professional teacher. Objective of the study was to analyse the modern teacher’s health-prioritising image building process and factors of influence on the latter in their correlation. We applied a Health-prioritising Teacher’s Image questionnaire survey by V.Y. Tsibulnikova to profile the teacher’s health-prioritising image and its components as a basis for individual professional education service style. It was concluded that the image building process should be based on the following fundamental principles: deterministic principle; consciousness and service integration principle; and personality development principle.