Attitude Towards Studying in Different Periods of Russian School Education Development

Abstract

The basis for the study was the hypothesis that the attitude towards studying in adolescents finishing middle school varies depending on the specific social and economic requirements of society. Attitude towards studying is considered in the unity of its motivational and emotional components. The paper presents results of a comparative historical analysis of the attitude towards studying in modern middle school graduates and their peers of the postwar years and the era of ‘developed socialism’. The starting point for the comparison was the data of the studies conducted by L.I. Bozhovich’s scientific school in the second half of the last century. The methodological tools and parameters of the sample of subjects were determined in accordance with the requirements of a comparative historical study. Comparison with research data from the Soviet era was carried out both by quantitative parameters and by qualitative descriptions of age-related patterns of adolescent personality development. It is shown that the social situation of development significantly affects the content and structure of middle school graduate’s learning motivation. The motives for getting a profession were the most important in postwar years, whereas in the years of stagnation the value of learning and cognitive motives increased; moreover, the ranking positions of the former and the latter differed by several points. As for modern graduates, these motives have come closer and occupy leading positions in the hierarchy: learning and cognitive motives act as motives-stimuli, and the succeeding motives for getting a profession fulfill a meaning-making function. The modern middle school graduates’ attitude towards studying is emotionally more intense and contradictory than in the postwar years and the era of stagnation. We consider this indicates the tension of self-determination situation in the context of the variability of the modern educational environment.