Associate Professor, Dr.Hab. M.M. Shubovich
Associate Professor, PhD L.I. Eremina
Professor, Dr.Biol. N.A. Ilyina
Associate Professor, PhD L.N. Belonogova
Associate Professor, PhD N.N. Belukhina
Ulyanovsk State Pedagogical University n.a. I.N. Ulyanov, Ulyanovsk

Keywords: spiritual and ethical education, base social values, students’ personality development.

Background. Modern national society has realized the need for due educational system for children and young people making a special emphasis on the personality development, family, social culture, patriotism and ethical values. An objective and modern national educational ideal of the Russian Federation Citizen’s Spiritual, Ethical and Personality Development Concept is a highly ethical, creative and competent Russian citizen accepting the faith of the Motherland as his own faith, realizing his responsibility for the present and future progress of the nation and devoted to the best spiritual and cultural traditions of the multinational people of Russia.

The efforts to form due social culture (as the ability for conscientious personal, professional and civil self-determination), family culture (accepting family as the absolute value and fundamental manifestation of the personal belonging to the nation and contribution to its future), personality culture (meaning the preparedness and ability for ethical self-improvement, self-assessment in the context of life goals, individual responsible behavioural model etc.) – are given the top priority by the ethical and spiritual education of the Physical Education and Sports Faculty students.

Objective of the study was to identify and substantiate the academic spiritual and ethical education specifics at the Physical Education and Sports Faculty and explore variations in the student’s attitudes to the fundamental social values on the assumption that the external manifestations of the spiritual and ethical education are generally formatted by the sociocultural situation, while the internal form implies the systemic evolution of the students’ attitudes to one or another value.

Methods and structure of the study. Tests and experiments under the study were performed in the period of 2010-15. Subject to the study were 120 students from the Physical Education and Sports Faculty of Ulyanovsk State Pedagogical University named after I.N. Ulyanov.

We assumed that the student’s attitudes to base values may be studied through monitoring of their behaviour and emotional responses in the following domains: everyday life; special case situations in the educational process; role/ business/ management/ organizing/ social-relations-modelling games; group discussions of the priority issues; joint creative activity etc. The student’s personality progress was rated by qualitative monitoring and content analysis of written works by the student, including synopses, essays, articles for journals etc.

We used a Personality Growth Questionnaire Survey form by D.V. Grigoryev, I.V. Kuleshov and P.V. Stepanov [6] that provides the means to rate both the qualitative and quantitative trends in the student’s attitudes to the fundamental values of the European civilization, including family values, devotion to the Motherland, natural environment, peace, knowledge, labour, respect to other people and his own identity. The survey is specific in the sense that it is designed to trace changes in the personality profiles of the students (the past profile versus the present) rather than match them with some universal cultural standard, and this format makes it possible to rate the progress of educators in solving one or another problem in the academic spiritual and ethical education process and highlight and correct deviations in the process. Since a personality growth is a dynamic process, the questioning was designed at the following two stages: Initial Profile (IP) in the first academic year (December 2010) and Final Profile (FP) in the fifth academic year (May 2015). The survey was designed to rate variations in the student’s attitudes to different core values by the following key levels: stable positive attitude; situational positive attitude; situational negative attitude; and stable negative attitude. It should be noted the level-scale rating gives only a generalized, guiding picture of what stands behind the students’ responses to a certain groups of questions. Therefore, it gives a trend and guidance for the educational process design rather than a precise diagnosis.

Study results and discussion. The initial tests of the students’ current (static) values-based relationship to the world, other people and himself showed that 7.4% of the students were driven by the stable positive attitudes; 19.4% by the situational positive attitudes; 40% by the situational negative attitudes; and 33.2% by the stable negative attitudes. By the end of the study, the tests showed a notable progress in the positive attitudes, with the stable positive attitudes growing to 37.7% and the situational positive attitudes to 33.2%, whilst the situational negative attitudes decreased 2 times and the stable negative attitudes 3.7 times in the sample.

Table 1. Students’ integrated personality progress rates, in % of the students tested

Note: IP and FP mean Initial Profile and Final Profile

Analysis of the survey data showed that the initial-stage sample was dominated by the students reporting the stable negative (33.2%) and situational negative (40%) mindsets to such key values as family, own spiritual and internal self and other humans; versus that for the final stage of the empirical study when 33.2% of the students reported the situational positive and 37.7% the stable positive attitudes. It is these values that were subject to the highest progress as was found by the survey since they largely contributed to the personality growth of the students.

We used the Fisher angular transformation φ^* criterion to rate the efficiency of the process, and it verified that the percentage of the students showing better attitudes to the key social values (including the situational positive attitudes with φ*_emp = 5.96 and the stable positive attitudes with φ*_emp = 2.45) was higher at the final stage of the study versus the initial stage. The academic spiritual and ethical education process may be considered efficient when the students’ attitudes to the key values are found to positively change from the low-level (i.e. stable negative) to the highest-level (stable positive) ones.

It is the models and forms of the students’ behaviour that may be assumed as indicative of a success of the academic spiritual and ethical education process. A student of the Physical Education and Sports Faculty must be prepared to select the core area of activity on his/ her own, efficiently control own activity and be responsible for the individual performance and results. The academic spiritual and ethical education quality rates of the students should not be considered as a final assessment of the students on the whole, but only as an assessment of the academic cultural process result.

Recognizing the benefits of the experiment, we should acknowledge the significant contribution of the following general factors to success of the Physical Education and Sports Faculty students’ personality, family and social culture formation by the academic educational process:

1. Regionalization of the educational system to facilitate the integrated process of the student’s personality modification designed to shape up due values-centred agenda and multicultural world outlook and develop good tolerance and interest to the interaction of the local communities in the context of local ethnical, cultural, historical, social, political values and the natural environment [1].

2. Multicultural approach to the academic spiritual and ethical education process based on respect to the local cultural and personality developmental interest and traditions of different national and ethnic minorities with an emphasis on the student’s adaptation to a variety of values in the context of the local variety of cultures to help him/her interact with people of different traditions. The multicultural education helps develop in the student a spirit of solidarity and understanding for the sake of peace and harmony and due respect to the cultural identities of different people.

3. Social and cultural modernization of the national educational system with integration and advancement of the curricula and due focus on the key positive social values with respect to different needs and interests of the students (for instance, “Integration of interdisciplinary humanitarian knowledge in the context of the family-centred education”, “Creative technologies in the personality socializing process”, “Civil patriotism centred education of children and young people” etc. [1, 3, 5]).

4. Due emphasis on the systemic active approach in the educational process that implies a personality being developed through the process of the student’s entering different social groups in different specific activities [7].

5. Innovations in the technological domain of the spiritual and ethnical education dominated by the intrinsic-values-centred forms of activity (socially important actions, social assistance initiatives, social creativity etc.) and creative personality-development technologies, including group creativity encouragement technologies; research process technology; creative design technology; creative mission setting technology; joint creative process technology; interactive technologies; gaming technologies etc. [3, 4].

6. Trans-bordering focus in the educational process with the increasingly growing scope of the spiritual and ethical education based on a reasonable combination of the group and individual education activity, information and communication technologies, Internet-education etc.

 7. Due contribution of the networking instruments to facilitate a safe dialogue of cultures through free exchange of thoughts and emotions to foster mutual trust and encourage joint creative activity; and initiatives to support social partnership as an interaction and communication with people of different social positions (professional specialists, business people, government officials etc.) for due harmony and succession of the personal socializing forms, including academic socialization in the educational process [2].

8. Creative sociocultural environment at the university that may be described as a combination of historically formed factors, circumstances and situations, i.e. a unity of adequately designed educational conditions to facilitate the personality development process and mobilize the individual resources. The whole process of the academic spiritual and ethical education may be viewed as a situation, case and environment for the students to be absorbed by the educational process on the whole. Success of the academic spiritual and ethical education is largely determined by the local social and psychological climate, established traditions, educational process design, authoritative academicians and educators in charge of the educational process, and creative environment that ensures high demand for newly formed personality values [3, 5].

Conclusion. The empirical study designed to identify and explore the academic spiritual and ethical educational process and prospects for improvement of the educators’ professional performance enabled us to both overview the students’ attitudes to the world, other people and themselves and to trace variations of these attitudes with an emphasis on their contribution to the personality development process. The positive trends in the students’ attitudes to the fundamental social values, as verified by the study, give us the reasons to appreciate the valuable contribution of the Physical Education and Sports Faculty to the personality development process of the students and rate the academic spiritual and ethical educational process as highly effective due to the good creative social and cultural educational environment created with an emphasis on the relevant socializing and physical education modernization technologies, including regionalization, innovation, trans-bordering, networking etc.

References

1. Belonogova L.N. Formirovanie gotovnosti studentov pedagogicheskogo kolledzha k patrioticheskomu vospitaniyu mladshikh shkol'nikov: regional'ny aspekt: dis. ... kand. ped. nauk (Formation of readiness of pedagogical college students to providing patriotic education to primary pupils: regional aspect: PhD thesis) / L.N. Belonogova. – Ulyanovsk, 2014. – 264 p.
2. Belukhina N.N. Stanovlenie i razvitie regional'noy sistemy distantsionnogo obrazovaniya (Formation and development of regional distance education system) / N.N. Belukhina. – Ulyanovsk: USPU (UlGPU), 2011. – 218 p.
3. Eremina L.I. Vliyanie gruppovoy kreativnosti na sotsial'noe tvorchestvo studentov v Povolzhskom regione: monografiya (Influence of group creativity on students' social work in the Volga region: monograph) / L.I. Eremina. – Ulyanovsk: USPU (UlGPU), 2014. – 144 p.
4. Eremina L.I. Formirovanie kreativnosti studentov v protsesse sotsial'nogo vospitaniya: monografiya (Formation of students' creativity in social education process: monograph) / L.I. Eremina. – Ulyanovsk: USPU (UlGPU), 2013. – 136 p.
5. Ilyina N.A. Sistema professional'noy podgotovki studentov k organizatsii sotsial'no-pedagogicheskoy deyatel'nosti s sem'ey i usloviya ee realizatsii v vuze (Student professional training system to organize family social educational activities and their implementation conditions in university) / N.A. Ilyina, M.M. Shubovich // Kazanskaya nauka. – 2012. – # 3. – P. 287-290.
6. Stepanov P.V. Diagnostika i monitoring protsessa vospitaniya v shkole (Diagnostics and monitoring of school educational process) / P.V. Stepanov, D.V. Grigorev, I.V. Kuleshova (Personal growth testing method) URL: http://www.s_136.edu54.ru/DswMedia/diagnostikalichnostnogorosta.pdf (date of access: 10.12.2015).
7. Shubovich M.M. Podgotovka studentov vuza k sotsial'no-pedagogicheskoy deyatel'nosti s sem'ey: monografiya (Training university students for family social educational activities: monograph) / M.M. Shubovich. – Ulyanovsk: Kachalin A.V., 2010.

Corresponding author: shubmm@mail.ru

Abstract

The article explores specific aspects of the spiritual and ethical education at the Physical Education and Sports Faculty, including facilitating social, cultural and creative environment; socializing technologies; and the physical education process modernization through regionalization, innovation, trans-bordering, networking etc. The study included tests and experiments performed in the period of 2010-15. Subject to the study were 120 students from the Physical Education and Sports Faculty of Ulyanovsk State Pedagogical University named after I.N. Ulyanov. The study reports and analyzes variations in the students’ attitudes to the fundamental social values. The positive trends in the students’ attitudes to the fundamental social values, as verified by the study, give us the reasons to appreciate the valuable contribution of the Physical Education and Sports Faculty to the personality development process of the students and rate the academic spiritual and ethical education process as highly effective due to the good creative social and cultural educational environment created with an emphasis on the relevant socializing and physical education modernization technologies, including regionalization, innovation, trans-bordering, networking etc.