Субъективная картина профессионального жизненного пути педагогов с различным уровнем ответственности

Abstract

The work of the teacher requires taking responsibility for a variety of activities. Such responsibility is in the interests of the students, but the influence of a teacher’s personal responsibility on his or her own well-being remains practically unexplored. A sense of responsibility integrated in the system of a teacher’s personal qualities can improve the teacher’s quality of life, since responsibility includes the ability to assign meaning to the process and the result of an activity. Our research was aimed at studying the subjective view which female teachers of a mature age with different levels of responsibility have on their professional life journey. We hypothesised that different degrees of responsibility result in different characteristics of the subjective view of teachers’ professional life journeys. We then surveyed 43 teachers (all female, aged 45–60) employed in secondary schools in St Petersburg with teaching experience of 12–38 years. Conclusions: Emotional acceptance of responsibility by a teacher in the spheres of personal achievement, family life, and career is positively interconnected with such important characteristics as a positive attitude towards events and stages of life, the view on crises, the later stages of career, and retirement. A low level of emotional acceptance of responsibility is associated with ignoring crises, while a low degree of responsibility in regard to personal health can be linked with a negative assessment of past events. Teachers commonly perceive the past as expansive in terms of both events and stages of life, and view the future as less extended. We propose that resources for adaptation to the crisis of mature age can be found in re-evaluating the stages and events of the past. The extent to which teachers with a high degree of responsibility analyse past events is lower than their level of attention to present and future events, which indicates their greater sense of conscious control in the present. During subjective assessment of events, the past was rated more negatively in the group of respondents with a high degree of responsibility, whereas the present and the future were rated more positively. In the group with a low degree of responsibility, a positive image of the past was replaced by a negative view on the present and future. Core value orientations of the respondents were not interrelated with the degree of responsibility; professionalism, social values, and emotional intensity of life were put first, which can be explained by the specifics of pedagogical activity. For the group with a higher degree of responsibility a positive attitude to the later stages of career and retirement is common as well as a positive crises reorganisation.