Research of Types of Learned Helplessness of Future Specialists in Foreign Philology.

Abstract

Thepurpose is to conduct empirical research and theo-retically substantiate the types of learned helplessness of future specialists in foreign philology in the context of educational and professional training. The respond-ents of the empirical research are graduates of the final years of study: students of the fourth year – Bachelor’s degree seekers and students of the second year – Mas-ter’s degree seekers, the total number of 432 individu-als (M=24.23; SD=±3.08; Me=24; Mo=22). The respond-ents were majoring in a single or double specialty. Methods.Valid and reliable psychodiagnostic tools that have been adapted and tested were used: “Attri-butional Style Questionnaire” (ASQ) (Peterson et al., 1982); Ehlers’ questionnaire “Motivation for Achieving Success and Avoiding Failures” (MASAF) (Elers, 2002); the questionnaire “Level of subjective control” (LSC) (Bazhin et al., 1984); Zung Self-Rating Depression Scale (SDS) (Zung, 1965). Results.The provided descriptive statistics confirms that there are no statistically sig-nificant differences between the obtained empirical data and the results of similar measurements. Eighteen statistically significant correlations (р<.050; р<.010) of attributive style parameters with independent var-iables were found: motivation for achieving success, motivation for avoiding failures, level of depression, level of subjective control in educational and profes-sional activities, areas of success, areas of failure. It was established that the level of depression (LD) has the strongest correlations with the attributional style scales: permanence of the bad (R=.189; p<.010), perva-siveness of the bad (R=.221; p<.010) and personaliza-tion of the bad (R =.185; p<.010), which gave grounds to consider depressive states as the most dangerous in the formation of learned helplessness. Cluster anal-ysis using the k-means method revealed four types of learned helplessness of future specialists in foreign philology: “Depressive learned helplessness” (cluster 1, n=31; 13.36%), “Avoidant learned helplessness” (clus-ter 2, n=75; 32.33%), “Optimistic learned helpless-ness” (cluster 3, n=68; 29.31%), “Uncontrolled learned helplessness” (cluster 4, n=58; 25.00%). Discussionandсonclusions.It was substantiated that the types of learned helplessness are personal formations that were manifested in a high level of depression, the dom-inance of pessimistic parameters of the attributional style of behavior, a high level of motivation for avoid-ing failures, a low level of motivation for achieving suc-cess, and low/lack of subjective control of the events of educational and professional activities. The appro-priateness of implementing the obtained results in the educational and scientific processes of training future specialists in the socionomic profile was empiri-cally clarified and theoretically substantiated.