Determination of the content of a construct "volunteer activity" in educational practice: the experience of theoretical comprehension and empirical reconstruction

Abstract

Introduction. Volunteering is becoming more and more important in the life of civil society and for the formation of human capital, but at the same time there is a lack of comprehensive scientific practice-oriented psychological-pedagogical research on the concept of "volunteer activity". The purpose of this work is to determine the actual effectiveness of an interdisciplinary study of the psychological-pedagogical concept of “volunteer activity” in the educational space. Methods. Empirical data were obtained using the methods of psychosemantics and psycholinguistics (verbal self-descriptions "My volunteer activity" (schoolchildren and students) and "I am an organizer of volunteer activities" (teachers-organizers, leaders of volunteer centers/teams) were used; compilation of an associative dictionary, a "Personal Differential" technique. The data underwent the procedure of content analysis with the extraction of semantic units. To process the results obtained, an iterative method of cluster analysis – k-means clustering – was used; a comparative analysis of fields was implemented. The empirical study involved schoolchildren (N = 44, aged 14-17) and university students (N = 432, aged 18-20) engaged in volunteering and organizers of volunteer activities (N = 37, aged 35-40) from the Altai Territory. The total sample consisted of 910 people. Research results. The scheme of the interdisciplinary study has been tested, which makes it possible to construct the semantic space of a psychological-pedagogical concept of "volunteer activity". For each sample of respondents, two clusters were obtained: schoolchildren and university students (p≤0.01) – the measure of proximity varies from 4.59 to 9.52 for the first cluster and from 4.19 to 7.57 – for the second one; teachers-organizers (p≤0.05) – the measure of proximity varies from 2.67 to 4.89 for the first cluster and from 1.72 to 3.36 – for the second one; volunteer leaders (p≤0.05) – the measure of proximity varies from 2.67 to 4.33 for the first cluster and from 2.35 to 4.73 – for the second one. Significant differences and points of contact of semantic fields were revealed. The average values of the scales according to the "Personal differential" technique are as follows: for schoolchildren – 5, for university students – 16. Conclusion. The prospects for the implementation of this study are outlined, which consist in the empirical generalization of the continuity of implementation of volunteer practices; the structural analysis of psychological-pedagogical technologies and interactive forms of education, the development of a set of tools for assessing the effectiveness of the results of implementation of volunteer programs, the creation of an electronic database of the most effective and adequate practices.