Educational psychology

Background. Cultural congruence serves as a measure of the conformity of an adolescent’s behavior to age-specific rules inherent in a particular cultural context. A cultural context is a system of situations with pre-set behavior-regulating rules.

Objective. Rule-based behavior management is known to be an issue in adolescence. Teenagers often defy common rules, thus pitting themselves against adults. In our study, we recruited adolescents between the ages of 12 and 15 years (N=699) who completed a questionnaire on the rules that they have to comply with in their day-to-day lives.

Design. Based on 2,498 responses, we identified 70 rules that were mentioned in 98.15% of the responses. We then designed a cultural congruence diagnostics test to measure the extent to which an adolescent’s behavior fits invariable age-specific rules in the Russian cultural context. The rules are combined into four factors: management, safety, studies, and social interaction.

Results. These factors appear to be in line with existing theories on the adolescents’ social context. According to cultural and historical psychology, peers are considered as the most important subjects that adolescents interact with within their social context; this is confirmed by relevant items in the questionnaire. Studies, the factor that dominates in the pre-adolescent age, are still relevant, which is why the test features such factors as studies and management. Safety emerges as an important factor in the cultural congruence test for preschool children and primary school students. This factor helps regulate behavior in adolescence since safety rules are part of the typical rules in the adolescent cultural context.

Conclusion. The test design features the following psychometric properties: internal consistency of the scale (Cronbach’s alpha), discriminatory power (Ferguson’s coefficient), validity, and reliability.

Background. The Psychological Risk Factors of Deviant Behavior in Adolescents In- ventory was developed based on “empirical keying” comparisons of answers to a pull of self-regulation-related items in clinical (drug addicts) and control groups. 

Objective. To reveal differences between adolescents with delinquent behavior from drug addictions and controls using the Psychological Risk Factors of Deviant Behavior in Adolescents Inventory and to study their relationships to anxiety, depression, and personal resources. 

Design. 760 adolescents aged 13–17 from three schools of the Murmansk Region of Russia, 288 from eight Russian special education institutions for adolescents with delinquent behavior (prevalent diagnosis was F91), and 108 adolescents having drug addiction filled out the Psychological Risk Factors of Deviant Behavior in Adolescents Inventory. Adolescents from the control and delinquent behavior groups also filled out the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale. Additionally 280 pupils in the 10th- 11th grades and 99 adolescents with delinquent behavior in the 10th grade and up filled out the Hardiness Test, Life Orientation Test, and Self-Efficacy Scale. 

Results. Data reproduced results indicating higher dissatisfaction with relation- ships with parents, “black-and-white” thinking, a technology addiction tendency and antisocial tendencies, a low level of self-regulation and a high level of risky behavior and sensation seeking in adolescents with drug addictions that could be explained not only by psychological differences but also by different social situations or strategies in responding to items. Adolescents with delinquent behavior also reported higher anti-social tendencies, novelty seeking, as well as lower self-regulation. In both the clinical and control groups, there were reasonable correlations between better self-regulation (lower technological addiction and antisocial tendencies, better self-regulation and emotion control) and personal resources of self-regulation. 

Conclusion. Antisocial tendencies, novelty seeking, and lower self-regulation could be psychological indicators of self-regulatory deficiencies in adolescents with a risk of involvement in delinquent behavior, but further studies are needed to distinguish whether these differences are explained by self-regulation, social situation or strategy of responding to items in adolescents with deviant behavior compared to controls. 

Background. The study of emotional creativity has not received very much attention in Arab studies. Emotional creativity is a clear concept that appears in the everyday practice of individuals. 

Objective. The present study aimed to examine the effect of a training program on emotional creativity among undergraduate students.

Design. The study comprised 67 undergraduate students at the Hashemite University; the participants were divided between a control group (N=35), and an experimental group (N=32), and data was collectedusing the Emotional Creativity Inventory(ECI).

Results. The results showed that the training program was effective in improving participants' emotional creativity, and a statistically significant difference was found between the control and experimental groups, showing the effectiveness of the training program in favor of the experimental group. The researcher recommends that students begin to be trained in emotional creativity skills from an early age.

Conclusion. The results of data analysis in the current study document the impact of the training program in improving the level of emotional creativity among members of the experimental group. This may be due to the strategies and techniques used in the training program, which contributed to raising the level of emotional creativity.

Background. The problem of students’ adaptation to a new educational level (normative educational crises, according to Slobodchikov, 2008) is considered. Unlike the literature (Barber & Olsen, 2004; Akçinar, 2013; Symanyuk & Pecherkina, 2016; Nisskaya, 2018), we explored this problem from the standpoint of human agency and studied all categories of students to determine the general patterns of overcoming normative educational crises.

Objective. The study aimed to explore the general criteria of agency — capacity to use psychological resources to solve problems and achieve goals — while overcoming normative educational crises (crises of adaptation to new learning conditions).

Design. The participants were 383 students aged 7–18 years (81 first graders, 84 fifth graders, 110 tenth graders, and 108 freshmen). Students’ agency and psychological resources were surveyed at the beginning of the first academic year at the new educational level. Adaptation criteria (informational, behavioral, and affective) were estimated at the end of the academic year. By using the k-means method of cluster analysis, each category of students was divided into clusters with similar agency indicators. We also compared agency indicators, abilities, and personal traits in these clusters by using U-tests and exploring correlation links between the psychological resources and adaptation criteria indicators in each cluster by Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient.

Results and Conclusion. In each age category of students, we observed many significant correlation links between the psychological resources and adaptation criteria indicators only in the cluster of students with a high agency level. We also found only isolated correlation links (or absence of links) between the psychological resources and adaptation criteria indicators in the clusters of students with a low agency level. This finding confirms our hypothesis that only students with a high level of agency use their psychological resources to successfully overcome normative educational crises. Students with a low agency level do not use their resources in full during normative educational crises: These students, despite their capacities, have a negative emotional state and problems in learning and behavior. This finding is also true for each age category of students. Thus, without human agency qualities, the intellectual and personal resources of students can remain unused during the period of adaptation and further training, as the results of the study demonstrated.