Developing Interethnic Tolerance Of Social Work Students By Non-Violent Communication

Abstract

The article focuses on developing future Social work specialists’ interethnic tolerance. Since the development of interethnic tolerance takes place throughout the life of an individual and depends on the age characteristics of university students, the authors question if interethnic tolerance can be developed between the ages of 18 and 21. As a means of its formation, we suggest using non-violent communication among students, which performs as the basis of productive interaction between social work specialists and their clients, and as a conflict resolution technique that allows participants to understand and cater for the wishes and peculiarities of communicators. In non-violent communication, there is no negative attitude towards interlocutors, combined with tolerance for unfamiliar aspects of other cultures or ways of life, as well as readiness and possibility to interact effectively without conflict with representatives of various nations or ethnicities. The authors also justify that a specially developed programme might be used to successfully develop interethnic tolerance of future specialists in Social work by the means of non-violent communication. In addition, based on qualitative and quantitative methods of the experimental study data we prove that non-violent communication in the “teacher-student” interaction pattern has a positive impact on forming interethnic tolerance of students.