Formation of life-purpose identity in adolescent and junior age

Abstract

Research background: the concept of “identity” is defined as a property of the human psyche to express in a concentrated form how one perceives his/her affiliation to various social, economic, national, professional, linguistic, political, religious, racial and other groups or other communities, or a person’s acceptance of the properties inherent in these groups or communities. The life-purpose identity is a fundamental parameter for defining one’s place in life, one’s value orientations and, above all, for affiliating oneself with the major social values of the modern society. Purpose of the research: theoretical justification, experimental representation and technological support of the process of life-purpose identity formation in adolescent and junior age. Methods: theoretical analysis and study of psychological literature on the problem under discussion, which included generalisation, comparison and systematisation of the obtained data. Empirical data collecting methods (testing). Methods of mathematical statistics (λ-Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, Student t-test, Pearson linear correlation r-coefficient), Leontyev’s life-purpose orientation test, Karpov’s methods for determining the individual measure of reflexivity, Stolin’s and Pantileev’s self-attitude method, Sharov’s ontology of personal myth of life. Results and novelty: the article makes an attempt to delineate the problem-plagued field of one’s life-purpose identity; gives a representation of diagnostic results, substantiates and develops the technological support for the formation of life-purpose identity in adolescent and junior age. The technology of commemorative practices is used as a framework (reading of authentic texts; practice of commemorative speeches; family saga; legendisation of hero’s image; “School is my home”; “Time machine”; “Memory dialogue”; “Planets of childhood”; background commemorative practices; calendar-specific commemorative practices and others).