Teacher’s capacity for psychological safety as a condition for schoolchildren’s psychological safety

Abstract

Introduction. The article reviews modern approaches to the role of personality of the teacher in ensuring students’ psychological safety as well as the resources used by the teachers in order to promote students’ psychological safety. The purpose of this article is to clarify the capacity for psychological safety of the teacher as one of the conditions for schoolchildren’s psychological safety by means of the subjective assessment of its components by students. Materials and Methods. The study relies on the ideas of Russian psychologists about psychological safety of an individual and learning environment, as well as ideas about the personality structure as a possible foundation for building the capacity of teacher's psychological safety. The authors used the following theoretical methods: analysis, generalization and reviewing scholarly literature on the safety of educational environment. The empirical methods include a survey, analysis and interpretation of research data. Results. The authors defined the concept of ‘the capacity for teacher's psychological safety’ and clarified its role in promoting the psychological safety of schoolchildren. The structural model of ‘the capacity for teacher's psychological safety’ has been proposed and described. It includes three components: teacher’s personality traits, professional and communicative characteristics. Empirical data allowed the authors to describe each component of the model. Conclusions. The article concludes that teacher’s capacity for psychological safety is a condition for ensuring psychological comfort and safety of schoolchildren. The subjective assessment of the components of the teacher’s capacity for psychological safety by schoolchildren enabled the authors to reveal their characteristics. According to the obtained empirical data, the personality component consists of such characteristics as openness and sincerity. Professional characteristics include attentiveness and orientation to students’ achievements. The communicative component comprises teacher’s fairness and objectivity.