Pedagogical resources for the formation of optimistic worldview among modern university students

Agienko Marina Ivanovna PhD in Philology Docent, the department of Western Languages and Literature, Ardahan University, Turkey 75002, Turtsiya, g. Ardahan, ul. Ardahan Üniversitesi Yenisey, 1 marinajuno@gmail.com Naumov Aleksandr Andreevich Senior Educator, the department of State Legal and Criminal Law Disciplines, Kemerovo Institute (branch) of Plekhanov Russian University of Economics 650992, Russia, Kemerovskaya oblast', g. Kemerovo, ul. Kuznetskii Prospekt, 39 aanaumoff@rambler.ru Saltash Dogan Doctor of Philology Docent, the department of Western Languages and Literature, Ardahan University, Turkey 75002, Turtsiya, g. Ardakhan, ul. Ardahan Üniversitesi Yenisey, 1 dogansaltas@gmail.com

Karpenko Elena Petrovna PhD in Philology Docent, the department of Russian Language and Literature, Ardahan University, Turkey 75002, Russia, g. Ardahan, ul. Ardahan Üniversitesi Yenisey, 1 olenakarpenko@ardahan.edu.tr

 Introduction

 The problem of professional correction of educational motivation in the formation of a specialist is a matter of economic importance for any country. High motivation to study – a sincere desire to gain knowledge and skills while studying at a university – creates the foundation for future professional success, gives a sense of satisfaction with the results of their work, lays the foundations for the psychological health of a specialist.

One of the reasons for the low academic motivation of students is considered to be a reduced level of psychological well-being ^[24]. The state of learned helplessness underlying pessimistic views on life events and related motivational deficit is considered as the main factor hindering the formation of psychological well-being of a student's personality ^{[23, 45, 46]}.

In the works of M. Seligman, the pessimistic perception of events is contrasted with the optimistic one as a special style of explaining successes and failures, especially its positive motivational characteristics. The scientist claims that optimism can and should be taught at any age. Moreover, consciously acquired optimism will have all the same positive consequences, including motivational ones, as the optimism learned from parents since childhood.

In order to carry out the task of forming an optimistic worldview among students, a certain psychological and pedagogical competence of the teacher and especially a motivational attitude to the use of psychological and pedagogical knowledge is necessary. The task is complicated by several factors. Firstly, most teachers build the learning process either "on a whim", or copying the style of their colleagues or teachers who taught them during their apprenticeship. Behavioral models of such a teacher, chosen intuitively or consciously, but without taking into account psychological and pedagogical knowledge, inevitably rely on the characteristics of his personality - both advantages and disadvantages, many of which may be contraindicated to the profession of a teacher, for example, emotional deafness, authoritarian communication style, a tendency to verbal aggression, etc.

Secondly, "the centuries-old Russian education system periodically excluded the idea" of the optimism of the individual (both the teacher and the student) "as an indispensable determinant of the effectiveness of the pedagogical process" ^{[15, p. 358]}.

Therefore, it is necessary to look for new ways in this area and train teachers who are able to emotionally and professionally support students' interest in learning, form an optimistic style of perception of their own academic successes and failures. 

 Data on the research methodology

The methodological basis of the study was made up of a scientific and theoretical method consisting in an analytical review of the literature devoted to the description of the psychological states of students and teachers.

The scientific approach to the description of the motivational potential of optimism and the parameters of optimistic attribution of life events is described in the works of Martin Seligman ^[9-11]. His work made it possible to define an optimistic worldview as a health-saving principle and a factor of educational motivation, to apply the concept of "style of explanation" and its characteristics (personalization parameters/locus of control, stability/constancy and generalization) to assess the level of optimism of the utterance. The ideas of learned optimism made it possible to present the possibility of teaching an optimistic vision of a life situation as a problem, as well as to consider the state of learned helplessness as a demotivating factor for learning.

The postulates of Albert Bandura's socio-cognitive theory, which describes the determinant of personality behavior in society, allowed us to consider verbal types of encouragement and punishment as a lever for shaping human behavior ^[2].

The arguments of E. V. Abramenko and L. A. Fedotova about the importance and role of a positive worldview of a university teacher both for the teacher himself and for the student's personality made it possible to include in the study an analysis of the teacher's speech behavior as a factor influencing the effectiveness of efforts to increase student's educational motivation.

The theoretical basis for predicting the influence of various teacher's remarks on the psychological state of a student was the method of determining the degree of optimism of a statement, developed by A.V. Puzyrev and widely used by Yu. V. Kotova.

To assess the compliance of pedagogical speech with an optimistic standard, the method of assessing the environmental friendliness of speech is used. It implies an assessment of a certain statement according to the parameters of attribution of M. Seligman's life events (personalization/locus of control, stability/constancy and generalization), and also relies on the methodology of "determining the degree of expression of optimism/ pessimism in the speaker's speech" by A.V. Puzyrev.

Review of domestic and foreign literature

The word "optimism" as a scientific term has been used in the pedagogical literature since relatively recently and is studied in several aspects – as a "strategy for achieving success" and as a pedagogical principle.

Having created the theory of learned optimism, Martin Seligman described the advantages of an optimistic worldview: optimists are more successful people in life, and their health is generally better than that of pessimists ^[38-40]. Pessimism, on the other hand, is much more common. Pessimists are more likely to give up in the face of misfortunes and troubles and suffer from depression.

Later, in the literature on the pedagogy of achievements related to the problems of education (as applied to the educational process), various components of optimism – cognitive, emotional and motivational - began to be studied. L. Aspinwall and S. Taylor investigated the optimistic worldview as a factor facilitating the difficulties of psychological adaptation of first-year students to the requirements of higher education ^[1]. N. Solberg et al. studied optimism as a prerequisite for maintaining the contingent of students at the university ^[12].

The view of optimism as a motivational component of the educational process highlighted the positive connection of the optimistic attributive style of the teacher with the academic achievements of students ^[3]. The works carried out within the framework of this direction, for the most part, are devoted to the problem of studying the effect of academic optimism in school education, but the accents placed by some authors, in particular, V. Khoy et al., are relevant for higher education, since in them academic optimism is considered as a triad of the teacher's views on his own behavior, personal factors and environmental factors ^[6].

The term "optimism" in the Russian pedagogical literature began to be used relatively recently, but it has always existed as a household concept or a basic principle of pedagogical culture, a situation of success, humanistic ideas in the pedagogy of cooperation. V. A. Sukhomlinsky wrote about the positive attribution (in the modern sense) of the personal qualities of a teacher and a student, saying that "to educate means, first of all, to think well of each other: the teacher thinks well of his pupil, and the pupil thinks well of his tutor" ^{[41, p. 355]}. The value of the emotional component of optimism as one of the factors of happiness was stated in the works of A. S. Makarenko: "It is impossible to teach a person to be happy, but it is possible to educate him so that he is happy" ^{[34, p. 559]}. The motivational effect of a success situation – a combination of positively colored emotional impact and effective pedagogical techniques of a "humane" teacher (including positive attribution techniques – praise and approval) was described by prominent Soviet teachers A. S. Belkin ("... Even a one-time experience of success can radically change the psychological well-being of a child, dramatically change the rhythm and style of his activity, relationships with others ..." ^{[19, p. 30]}), Yu. E. Lukoyanov ("Success inspires a child, promotes the development of his initiative, self-confidence, subsequently ensures the formation of the character of a fighter who believes in his own strength" ^{[33, p. 62]}).

The transition to the use of the term "optimism" as a term of didactics occurred in the works of N. A. Baturin. He introduces this concept in the context of the attribution style – the process of "attributing reasons to one's own and someone else's behavior and the results of actions" ^{[18, p. 27]}. According to Baturin's ideas, pessimism-optimism are epistemological categories, phenomena that characterize a person's attitude to the outside world.

Modern pedagogical studies of optimism are devoted to the forms of academic optimism (Yu. V. Andreeva), the relationship of cognitive activity and optimism of students (O. A. Sychev), optimistic attributive style as a motive for professional growth (B. A. Yasko), optimism as a significant factor in the labor economy (O. V. Kadnikova & N. A. Babkina) ^{[16],[44],[49],[28]}.

Recently, philologists have become interested in the problem of forming an optimistic worldview as the basis of health saving. Using the theoretical achievements of psychology and, in particular, pedagogical psychology, they try to improve the verbal side of pedagogical practice: they investigate and describe speech means of harmonizing pedagogical discourse (O. A. Gudina, Yu. V. Shcherbinina, etc.), develop recommendations for improving the environmental friendliness of pedagogical communication (M. I. Agienko & A. A. Rolgizer), describe strategies and tactics with highly positive emotionogenic potential (E. A. Kazantseva), the possibility of avoiding verbal conflicts (I. V. Pevneva et al) ^{[25],[48],[14],[29],[7]}.

Psychological and pedagogical studies of optimism as the basis of human moral health are conducted by A.V. Puzyrev and his students. Scientists are developing a methodology for determining the degree of optimism of a statement (Yu. V. Kotova), analyzing linguistic manifestations of optimism and pessimism in the works of writers (S. A. Baishev), in the song repertoire of famous performers (A.V. Puzyrev & Yu. V. Kapriantseva) ^{[30-32],[17],[36]}.

Reasoning and research results

 Motivational Benefits of Optimism

In our theoretical arguments, we use the concepts of optimistic and pessimistic attributive styles as special styles of explaining life successes and failures, described in the works of M. Seligman, who claims that students with optimistic views on life study much better than pessimistic students. Optimistic students are cheerful, focused on success, demonstrate a high motivational attitude to academic activities, which is based on faith in creative, intellectual powers and capabilities. Their habitual positive assessments exclude self-deprecation, as well as humiliation of other people. These students usually make up groups of students who are the most motivated to study and easily adapt to the academic environment.

The obvious conclusion is that the "reformatting" of a student's worldview from pessimistic to optimistic could improve not only his academic success, but also health indicators and a positive change in life scenarios, which will be facilitated by knowledge of the features of the style of optimistic and pessimistic attribution of life events. It is also obvious that this "reformatting" can be carried out more successfully by a carrier of an optimistic worldview, who, according to M. Seligman, considers success to be the result of his own efforts, and not a matter of chance (the personalization parameter is positive), I am sure that, if desired, he will be able to succeed in any circumstances, and not only in the best conditions (the latitude parameter in space), I am convinced that in the future he will be able to be successful, as it has always been, and if the moment of time is not quite successful, he will try until he gets his way (generalization parameter) ^[11]. M. Seligman emphasizes that, unlike optimists, pessimists give up when trouble is not because because the trouble is so great, but because they "give the most generalized interpretation to the troubles," for example, "all teachers are unfair; I am unpleasant to people; books are useless" ^{[12, p. 127]}.

The owner of a pessimistic worldview, according to M. Seligman, believes that success was formed by chance, and failures in his life are natural (the personalization parameter is negative), he just happened to be in the right place (the localization parameter in space) at the right time (the localization parameter of time), under other circumstances, and time would have been waiting for him only failure. 

Means of pedagogical influence in the formation of attribution style

Probably, the attribution style is acquired as a habit – it can be adopted from family, friends, significant adults (teachers, acquaintances, heroes of books or TV series, etc.). In the process of communication, participants in educational interaction "talk" about their worldview, instilling in each other their beliefs, perhaps far from optimistic.

It is impossible to force or invite a person to become an optimist and thus influence his motivation ^{[37, p. 85]}. A person should abandon the pessimistic worldview himself, having got used to the idea that his educational efforts are controlled and can be a way to overcome failures, and failures can be temporary, and their causes are not generalized. It is obvious that persuasion as a logically reasoned influence is not suitable for reshaping the worldview ^[35]. A high degree of effectiveness in creating the attractiveness of a different explanatory style, most likely, has a verbal impact that does not cause a person to have a critical perception – suggestion.

Note that in this paper we are not talking about suggestion as a method developed by scientists of the Soviet period (V. M. Bekhterev, I. E. Schwartz, etc.) ^[20],[47].  By suggestion we mean, to paraphrase V.M. Bekhterev's definition a little, any verbal influence on a person, as a result of which, in addition to his active understanding, his feelings, emotions change, new ideas appear… As I. E. Schwartz notes, "Suggestion ... is a real life phenomenon, ... it is produced in all areas of human relationships (pedagogical, medical and industrial practice, art and literature)," but "the importance of the influence of suggestion ... is not detracted from the fact that some teachers do not know that their authority and effectiveness of leadership education is largely based on the mechanism of suggestion" ^{[47, p. 93]}.

According to the presence of a goal and the efforts used for suggestion, two types of verbal pedagogical suggestion are distinguished – intentional and unintentional suggestion ^[27]. If, with deliberate suggestion, the teacher knows exactly what he wants to suggest, then with unintentional suggestion, the teacher does not realize what thought or action he is suggesting.

The consequences of unintentional suggestion can be quite traumatic for the personality of the suggestible. So, for example, the phrase "When you are not preparing, you become even more stupid!" suggests the attitude "I am stupid" or the phrase "This is a difficult task for you!" suggests the inability to cope with difficulties, and the reproach "you never succeed" contributes to the formation of learned helplessness.

It is believed that negative attitudes are most often unintentionally suggested ^[37]. The study of the psychological portrait of participants in the educational process will allow us to assess the probability of suggesting a negative attitude to the student in the educational process.

 Features of the psychological portrait of participants in the educational process

When assessing the resources that a modern teacher and student have to form an optimistic worldview, we are based on taking into account psychological states characterized by a pessimistic attribution style and having demotivation potential – learned helplessness and professional deformation of a specialist. Both factors are taken into account due to the specifics of the formation of the "style of explanation" – it can either be learned from an authoritative person, or acquired as a result of the action of internal instructions (for example, as a result of unintentional suggestion).

Pessimism is deeply rooted in the consciousness of Russians. E. P. Ilyin, with reference to A. B. Khromov, shows that "the average values of optimism among Russians, compared with the norms of the ASQ Seligman attributive style questionnaire test, are very low, which indicates a sufficiently pronounced pessimism even among representatives of the youngest generation of Russians" ^{[27, p. 136]}.

Recently, teachers of higher education have noted the cognitive passivity of young people, apathy to active activity, emotional deficits of young people. The noted symptoms: motivational deficit (reduced initiative and persistence "I will not succeed"!), cognitive deficit (the desire to have, but not be able to), emotional deficit (reduced self-esteem, thoughts of failure) are symptoms of a phenomenon called learned helplessness by Martin Seligman. Learned helplessness can appear as a result of traumatic uncontrolled events in a person's life at any age, but it is usually formed during school years and by the time of student life becomes a habitual condition. Studies by M. Seligman and D. Hiroto have shown that helplessness can be learned by observing the "helpless" behavior of other people. That is, family, friends or teachers/teachers can teach helplessness by demonstrating helpless behavior or sharing a pessimistic vision of the reasons for their failures ^{[4, p.187],[5, p. 311]}.

The number of students with symptoms of learned helplessness is quite large. Numerous studies on the presence of signs of learned helplessness show that a group of experimental participants (representatives of different ages) who do not have signs of helplessness usually make up 10-12% of test participants, the percentage of carriers of distinct signs of learned helplessness in different groups of interviewees ranges from 25% to 72%. The remaining participants make up a group with intermediate, mixed indicators.

As we can see, learned helplessness cannot be considered as a psychological state that does not play any significant role in the student's educational motivation, since it significantly changes the model of human behavior (both student and teacher).

The psychological state of teachers is complicated by a number of additional circumstances. The negative influence of a profession on a person's personality after some time of conducting professional activity leads to the formation of a "specifically professional type of personality", called professional deformation. Signs of professional deformation of a teacher, obvious signs of which are noted in teaching staff after 10 years of work, are "passivity, sadness, anxiety, hostility, ... loss of behavioral control" – symptoms that coincide with the symptoms of a state of learned helplessness ^{[42, p. 111],[43, p. 72]}.

Signs of professional deformation significantly reduce the communicative culture of the teacher. A study of the features of pedagogical interaction by specialists in the field of pedagogical psychology shows that "76% (the author did not specify the total number of participants in the experiment – M. A.) of teachers have emotional difficulties that prevent them from establishing emotional contacts with students, complicate interpersonal interaction. The main causes of violations in the studied group of teachers are: inadequate expression of emotions; inflexibility, underdevelopment, inexpressiveness of emotions; predominance of negative emotions, etc." ^{[22, p. 416]}.

If we take into account that "at the present stage ... the corpus of fundamental human emotions mostly consists of negative emotions, which reflects the inner mental essence of a person" ^{[29, p. 120]}, and in pedagogical communication "fear, anxiety, anger, irritation, suffering, disgust, embarrassment, shame" prevail ^{[21, p. 18]}, then the optimistic style of explaining life events in education is formed only by a very small group of optimistic teachers, perhaps some of them unconsciously, acting only as an object for imitation in relation to the student.

So, the task of forming an optimistic attributive style in order to increase motivation is solved in a situation where the actors have, for the most part, a pessimistic attributive style, including, perhaps, the teacher himself. The problem can be solved only if the teacher determines his explanatory style for himself and, if there is a non-positive attribution, changes it.

Assessment of the environmental friendliness of the teacher's remarks

To solve this problem, we made an attempt to evaluate some of the teacher's phrases on the subject of what style of explanation – optimistic or pessimistic – the teacher demonstrates: does he make the student look at himself from the usual pessimistic state or offers an optimistic vision of the situation.

The assessment of the emotional burden of the teacher's remark and the forecast of its possible interpretation by the student is not devoid of subjectivity, but is an attempt to bring an intellectual beginning to the intuitive component of the teacher's profession dealing with subjective reality – with the inner world of the student, with a set of personal constructs that help him interpret the behavior of other people.

We consider it possible to predict the emotional reaction (behavior) to the teacher's remark, based on the formula of J. Rotter's "behavior potential = expectation + reinforcement value" ^{[26, p. 272]}, where expectation is considered as a "generalized expectation" dictated by the locus of control of the individual, and the value of reinforcement, according to Rotter, correlates with attribution, the nature of which we know from the literature on the problems of learned helplessness: the pessimist sees the reason for failures in himself- and just as pessimistically, he will interpret the teacher's remarks that do not contain an explicit indication of an environmentally friendly, therapeutic reason for the student's failure. The absence in the remark of an indication of a way for the addressee to overcome failures can provoke an increase in the level of anxiety and unbalance, since a pessimistic student is inclined to look not for solutions, but only for reasons that prevent him from solving the problem, generalized in time and space (nothing will ever improve under any circumstances).

The emotional load of the replica is determined by the general semantics of the phrase. Optimistic attribution of events is taken as an example of positive emotionality – externality of the cause of failures (for example, "The task was vaguely formulated!"), internality in overcoming failures (for example, "You can overcome failure yourself!"), locality of failure in time (for example, "Under certain conditions, next time you will be able to cope with the task!"), locality of failure in space (for example, "If the task is formulated clearly, you can easily complete it!").

The prediction of the student's emotional reaction to the teacher's phrase is made as follows (here and further examples of speech actualization of pedagogical tactics are borrowed from the work of M. I. Agienko and A. A. Rolgizer ^[14]).

The teacher's remark "You should learn how to properly manage your time!". The locus of control of the cause of failures in the phrase lies in the internal domain, since it means "you do not know how to properly manage your time" (pessimistic attribution). The locus of control in the field of overcoming failures from the point of view of the observer (in this case, the teacher) lies in the internal plane (optimistic attribution), the observer believes that efforts in relation to the effective waste of time are a controlled factor. But the addressee of the remark is presumably in a state of learned helplessness: he has a poor behavioral repertoire, low self-esteem of his ability to cope with the problem and a desire to keep the situation unchanged. He understands this remark as a hint at his disadvantage, which theoretically has a permanent character (I can't and will never learn), as well as latitude in space (I won't learn to do it under any circumstances). In this case, the perception of the replica is pessimistic and, from our point of view, will remain an ineffective/unecological implementation of the tactics of "criticism of shortcomings", since not only does not contribute to the formation of an optimistic perception of educational situations, but also aggravates the negative state of the student experiencing a state of learned helplessness. It seems to us that it will become effective if the observer offers options for breaking the behavioral deadlock (as the addressee of the replica may perceive it). That is, instead of criticism, it would be more productive to casually share your successes in time allocation, familiarity with the convenience of using the "Eisenhower matrix" or talk about the basic laws of time management. 

Ineffective for therapeutic purposes are also the comments of the teacher, consistently based on social standards – "it was necessary to do as required", "not as you want, but as it should be". Studies by M. Ryan and E. Desi have convincingly shown that the tactics of alignment with the standard leads to a decrease in the motivation of students to perform those tasks that they do with pleasure ^[8]. Instead of such replicas, you can practice more eco–friendly reinforcements such as "You tried, and your efforts were crowned with success - You offered a very interesting solution to this problem", "In my opinion, the work can benefit if you add the following information ...", "Compared to last semester, you have improved .....".

From our point of view, the group of ineffective remarks of the teacher addressed to students who are prone to pessimistic attribution of events is supplemented by a compliment like "You are a very good student!". The locus of control in the field of overcoming possible failures in a compliment is located in the internal area (optimistic attribution), but, with all the external positivity of the phrase, it actualizes external control, the desire to be equal to the standard set by a separate teacher – the author of the replica. The bearer of a pessimistic worldview with the basic belief "I am a loser" may attract in this situation not the training and knowledge itself, but the fulfillment of the requirements of an individual teacher, which, firstly, may reduce the quality of educational motivation, and secondly, may lead to the formation of inflated expectations from teachers in general.: "Everyone who does not praise is not good teachers", thirdly, in line with the theme of our work, imposes additional requirements on the optimism of the worldview of the teacher himself, whom the student begins to trust.

The most eco–friendly compliment option for a student with a pessimistic worldview, as it seems to us, can be "localization" of luck in the internal sphere - praising the way of performing a specific task, solving a problem, mastering a topic, etc., in order to direct the student's interest in knowledge and skill acquisition. Our assumptions are supported by the conclusions of other scientists. E. M. Anderman, S. A. Walters emphasize that if a positive learning experience is explained by the factor of internal control, the student feels proud of himself, has high self-esteem, is persistent in achieving the goal, balanced, friendly.

So, the most eco–friendly comments of the teacher to the student are based on the principle "failures are temporary, the cause of failures is external, overcoming failures is internal." Internal causes are changeable factors that can be corrected and depend on the student (the amount of effort, diligence).

 Unfortunately, a teacher with signs of emotional burnout and learned helplessness is prone to non-ecological criticism, censure, condemnation, reproach, demonstration of his disappointment with the student, to declaring the internal cause of failures, a wide localization of failure in time and space, which corresponds to his own pessimistic construct and only strengthens the student's "faith" in the impossibility of overcoming educational failures. The teacher's tendency to generalized praise may also be ineffective in order to "reformat" the worldview from pessimistic to optimistic – praise without indicating the reason for success can form a distorted motivation to approach a given standard instead of motivation to learn, to professional skill.

Conclusion

As the results of our research show, the teacher should be able to analyze his own remarks to the student in terms of possible adverse consequences on his educational motivation. Thoughtless comments, at best, do not worsen the psychological state of the student. It remains to be seen how the teacher's pessimism affects the motivation of the optimistic students of the group. But it is already clear that, for the most part, the familiar phrases of the teacher, reflecting his own, not always optimistic style of explaining successes and failures, reinforce the pessimistic vision of students of their problems, which does not contribute to correcting the level of their educational motivation.

A deeper awareness by the teacher of the environmental friendliness of his speech and his recognition of the fact that there is an element of suggestive influence in any pedagogical act will give him the opportunity to carry out pedagogical interaction more subtly and tactfully, forming an optimistic worldview, and ultimately, realizing the ideas of humanization of education – the upbringing of a truly happy member of society, a specialist distinguished by the presence of internal resources (knowledge and skills), business performance, cognitive activity and physical health.