Nina V. Bordovskaia

Success in the development of cross-disciplinary connections between psychology and pedagogy in today’s Russia depends on many factors, including understanding the historical traditions of theoretical comprehension of educational innovations. To identify the specific influence of psychology on didactic terminology from the early 18th century through the first half of the 20th century. The study was designed based on historiographic, diachronic, and synchronic methods, and context and content analysis of 129 texts (105 words with general usage frequency of 81,397 units were analyzed). It was found reasonable to split the development of psychological-didactic terminology into two stages: the instrumental stage (early 18th century — first half of 19th century) and the reference stage (second half of 19th century — first half of 20th century). The first stage was found to be characterized by psychological terms performing predominantly an instrumental function, that is, describing psychological factors that affect the effectiveness of training. The second stage featured the growing significance of psychological knowledge, not only in solving educational tasks, but also in explaining didactic patterns. During the first stage of development of psychological-didactic terminology, teachers frequently used the psychological terms “teaching”, “ability”, and “diligence”; during the second stage — “teaching”, “senses”, and “development”. Statistical methods were used to prove stable conceptual and terminological connections between psychology and pedagogy.

The interest of psychologists in the study of safety in the educational environment and its psychological characteristics is increasing. The aim of this study was to select, substantiate, and disclose the psychological factors in the educational environment that influence the psychological well-being of pupils. There were three stages in our research: clarifying the level of psychological safety in the schools in the study; revealing the consistency of the teachers’ and the students’ evaluations of the level of psychological safety in those schools; determining the nature of the influence of the psychological safety of the educational environment on the psychological well-being of the students. The study involved 172 teachers and 876 students in Moscow and St. Petersburg schools.

Psychological safety is a condition of educational environments that are free from psychological violence in the interactions of the people in them; psychological safety contributes to the satisfaction of the needs for personal trust and communication, creates for the participants a sense of belonging (the referential importance of the environment), and contributes to their mental health.

The empirical study revealed that (1) the level of the psychological safety of the educational environment in the evaluations of the teachers was higher and had more expressed differentiation than did the level in the students’ evaluations; (2) the psychological well-being of the students was closely correlated with the level of psychological safety for the teachers; (3) such components of the well-being of the students as emotional comfort, self-confidence, a higher level of cognitive activity were developed in those schools with high levels of psychological safety for the teachers.

The results can be useful in educational psychology and environmental psychology as well as when creating technologies to support the safety of school environments and of the people in them, including situations related to minimizing safety violations and reducing risks and threats.

This article examines the theoretical and methodological justifications for studying students’ research potential. It presents proof of the isomorphic nature of human research activity and research potential as well as of the fluid nature of its development: from research-like behavior to science-based research activity. It defines three functional components (motivational, cognitive, and behavioral) that form the structure of research potential. It further presents the results of empirically studying the cognitive features of master’s students possessing different levels of research potential. It provides data on the dynamics of research-potential components at different educational levels (bachelor’s and master’s programs). Special attention is given to a comparative analysis of evaluations by research tutors regarding their students’ research potential and of the indicators obtained using psychodiagnostic methods.