Development of Social and Psychological Readiness for Professional and Working Life in Students with Intellectual Disabilities

Abstract

The research revealed and explained the main contradictions in the impact of learning environment on the formation of interpsychological supports that allow a graduate with intellectual disabilities (ID) to make an independent professional choice and successfully find a job in the future. The study involved graduates of general education schools and special boarding schools with ID (N=742) living in Russia, Ukraine and Poland. The study consistently proved that the psychological mechanisms that determine the ability of a student with ID to perform actions according to a known algorithm, to manifest independence, to accept workplace discipline, formed by the learning environment of a correctional school, do not work in case of any change in conditions, methods of activity and multitasking present in the open labour market. The level of development of logical operations in a homogeneous environment does not lead the student to the search for a new solution to the problem; quite the reverse, it leads to the wrong solution or to the refusal of activity. The experiment indicated that the learning environment that develops the social competence in students with ID, triggers the mechanisms of group interaction in a heterogeneous environment to expand the boundaries of their social experience and transfer skills to new conditions of activity is the key leverage that activates the thinking and search activity.