Resource of Involvement as a Psychological Characteristic of the Correspondence Degree between a Person and the Educational Environment

Abstract

The article deals with the problem of student engagement in the modern educational space. Based on the analysis of the works of Russian and foreign authors, it is shown that engagement is considered as a process, as condition, as a mechanism, as a situation, as an investment of time and energy in the performed activity. There are also various approaches to understanding the structure of engagement, its types, forms, levels, indicators and diagnostic criteria. The most studied is the behavioral side of engagement, the least studied are the mechanisms of the formation of involvement and its management. The authors proposed a systemic anthropological psychology as a methodological basis for the study of student engagement, the foundations of which were laid in the works of Tomsk scientists (V.E. Klochko, E.V. Galazhinsky, O.M. Krasnoryadtseva, O.V. Lukyanov). In this vein, the concordance between the person and the environment is considered as the main mechanism for the formation of engagement. The measure of compliance is the “resource of engagement” of a person, which includes instrumental and value and meaning characteristics. The instrumental component includes various aspects of self-regulation of activity in a changing environment, the value and meaning component is the value and meaning dimension of the objective conditions of activity. The resource of engagement determines the fundamental possibility of including a person in an environment with specific characteristics. The authors conducted an empirical study of the "resource of engagement" of students of two large universities in the Russian Far East; the sample consisted of 498 people. As a result of the factor analysis of the data, the dimensions of the concordance between the student and the educational environment were identified. These are subjective disorganization of activity (impossibility of performing activities in an environment with the specific parameters); flexibility and readiness for change (orientation towards activities in a changing environment); willingness to take responsibility (focus on own forces and resources); result orientation (experience of pleasure in achieving specific results); willingness to work in conditions of uncertainty; selfishness (self-dependence and focus on gaining benefits); focus on the labor process (without taking into account its goals and working conditions). For each option, the directions of psychological assistance aimed at increasing the academic and social involvement of students in the educational space are determined.