The Life Perspectives of Students as a Factor of Mindful Attitude
Towards Learning
Elena Bondareva, Marietta Karamyan, Nozima Mullabaeva and Olesya Bondarchuk
National University of Uzbekistan, Tashkent, Uzbekistan
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Keywords Life Perspective, Life Path, Motivational Orientation, Self-Fulfillment, Psychological Mindedness.
Abstract The article presents the results of a study of the life perspectives of students in the context of their education
in higher educational institutions. The study participants were 542 students of higher educational institutions.
The Motivational Induction Method by J. Nuttin and The Psychological Mindedness Scale (H.Conte) were
used in the study. The results of the study showed gender differences in the characteristics of life perspectives,
insufficient formation of professional motives among students and the connection of psychological
mindedness with the depth of life perspective and with creative motivation.
1 INTRODUCTION
It would not be an exaggeration to say that
psychology plays a key role in the study of the life
path and life perspectives. Philosophy and sociology
approach this problem phenomenologically, while
psychology reveals the mechanisms of the formation
and functioning of a life perspective, which makes it
possible to manage them purposefully. The practical
significance of this problem is obvious to anyone
involved in teaching, upbringing, management, team
building – in a broad sense, organizing the activities
of other people. It should also be noted that research
in this direction meets a social need. Life perspective
is an integrative concept that determines not only
psychological well-being, but also the success of
personality formation, including professional
development. Today, it is especially important to be
able to imagine your possible life path, consciously
make plans for the future, and be able to adjust them
as life circumstances change. These skills in
adolescence ensure the preservation of the integrity of
the individual's inner world, better adaptation to the
chosen profession, and the achievement of self-
realization in the future.
Thus, the study of the problem of life perspective
and its features in student age could contribute to the
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organization of more effective teaching, the creation
of favorable conditions for the harmonious
development of the personality of students. However,
it is obvious that no teaching methods, whether
active, interactive, or traditional, will lead to an
increase in the quality of training of our specialists if
they, the future specialists themselves, are not
interested in assimilating the knowledge offered to
them. And here, cognitive motivation alone is not
enough.
First of all, it is necessary for students to see the
connection between what they are studying and their
future professional activities. Of course, an
experienced teacher highlights this connection at
every lesson, showing how what is discussed in a
lecture or seminar can be used in practice. However,
this requires that students have some ideas about what
they will do after graduation, as well as an active
desire for such activities. In other words, future
professional activity should serve as an expression of
their life values and at the same time be based on the
leading motivation already in the learning process.
This, in turn, leads to the question of how clearly
students generally imagine their future, what feelings
it evokes in them, and whether they see the
connection of this future with what is happening now
and what happened in the past.
Bondareva, E., Karamyan, M., Mullabaeva, N. and Bondarchuk, O.
The Life Perspectives of Students as a Factor of Mindful Attitude Towards Learning.
DOI: 10.5220/0012476400003792
Paper published under CC license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
In Proceedings of the 1st Pamir Transboundary Conference for Sustainable Societies (PAMIR 2023), pages 19-24
ISBN: 978-989-758-687-3
Proceedings Copyright © 2024 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda.
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2 LITERATURE REVIEW
The concepts of life perspective and life path are not
new and poorly understood. Even a superficial review
of the scientific literature shows that there has been a
lot of research on this topic. The first reason for this
interest is that the problem of life path is
interdisciplinary. Existential philosophy considers it
in the context of a person's being, the meaning of their
life, choice, and responsibility. Sociologists look for
typical features of life paths in specific socio-
economic conditions and in the historical context.
Psychologists are interested in how the facts and
events of the past, present, and future are represented
in the mind of a person, and how these ideas are
reflected in their activities.
The psychological analysis of life perspective
goes back to the genetic psychology of Pierre Janet.
In his book "Psychological Evolution of Personality",
Janet offers a level concept of motivation of human
actions, showing how on the basis of the simplest
reflex reactions, more complex acts arise - elementary
intellectual actions and primary speech forms; then,
at the middle level, intention, discussion, and
decisions; and, finally, the highest level is represented
by unique personal actions, the creation of a
biography, and a focus on the future. Rational
behavior inherent in a person at the top of
psychological evolution is expressed, according to
Janet, in the ability to independently set goals for their
activities and achieve them. Another most important
aspect of higher forms of behavior, Janet considers
the creation by a person of their own biography, a
kind of "history of the hero", integrating the events of
life and their meaning for a person. Although Janet
does not literally use the concept of life perspective
and life path, the range of problems he touches is
directly related to the topic of our research. According
to the ideas of Pierre Janet, the ontogeny of
personality cannot be understood outside the
historical context, the real conditions of human life.
Let us further consider how this thought is
reflected in Alfred Adler's individual psychology.
Adler designates the real model of life behavior by
the term "life style". According to Adler, life style is
a unity that is formed in the process of overcoming
difficulties experienced in childhood and based on
striving for a goal. The mechanism for the formation
of a life style can be described as follows: problems
that a child cannot solve due to their physical
limitations lead to the formation of feelings of
inferiority and an inferiority complex. The desire to
get rid of unpleasant experiences requires starting an
activity and, therefore, setting a goal. This persistent
movement towards the goal, according to Adler, is a
life style. The author considers it important, when
considering an individual life style, to compare it with
the life style of a well-socially adapted person, who
in this case plays the role of a standard. Thus, for
Adler, life style is not only a way for a personality to
travel through their life path, but rather a way of
planning it, which directly leads us to the concept of
life perspective.
The concept of a personality's life path was
introduced into the scientific vocabulary by Charlotte
Buhler and her collaborators at the Vienna Institute of
Psychology. Buhler established patterns and
dominant tendencies in the change of phases of life.
The sequence of external events, their reflection by a
person, and the results of their activities form,
according to the author, three directions of
personality development. The structural units of the
life path are events - external and internal, and the
main driving force of development is the individual's
desire for self-fulfillment, which Buhler understands
both as a result and as a process. On the one hand,
self-fulfillment is the goal and result of the life path
in the case of adequate implementation of the
intermediate goals and values of the individual. On
the other hand, self-fulfillment is a continuous
process, the content of which changes at different age
stages.
A concept similar in content is the term "life
space", which was introduced into psychology by
Kurt Lewin. For Lewin, the life space is a special
relationship between an individual and their physical
and social environment, reflected in a person's
consciousness and determining their behavior. Any
behavioral reaction is associated not only with the
current situation - it is the result of existing
experience and at the same time a step in achieving
the goals of the future. Thus, the past, present, and
future, being included in the life space of the
individual, form their time perspective. The degree of
structuredness and integrity of the temporal
perspective, as well as its breadth are indicators of
personality formation.
In the 1920s and 1930s, the concept of the life
path was in the focus of attention of Boris Ananyev,
the author of the largest longitudinal study of
personality in psychological science. The study of
character inevitably led Ananyev to the problem of
the path of life. He understands the path of life as the
history of the formation and development of an
individual in a certain era, in a certain social
environment.
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3 METHODS
The research methodology is based on the following
concepts:
The concept of a life path (S. Buhler, S. L.
Rubinstein) is the broadest in scope and reflects the
objective characteristics of human ontogenesis. It is
considered as an interdisciplinary category. The
subjective picture of the life path (B.G. Ananyev,
A.A. Kronik, A.R. Akhmerov), living space (K.
Levin), time perspective (J. Nuttin, O. N. Arestova) is
actually a psychological category. It reflects a
person's perception of their past, present, and future,
as well as their attitude towards these time periods.
Life perspective (K. A. Abulkhanova-Slavskaya, E. I.
Golovakha), life style (K. Levin), future perspective
(J. Nuttin), life scenario (N. V. Grishina), life plan (A.
A. Kronik) is a cognitive-motivational category that
is related to the future. It includes the immediate and
distant goals of human activity and the events that a
person expects to happen. The purpose of our
research was to comprehensively study the life
perspective of students and to identify the
psychological mechanisms for the formation of a life
perspective. The research participants were 542
students enrolled in different courses at domestic and
foreign universities. To study the characteristics of a
life perspective, we used the following psychological
techniques:
The Motivational Induction Method by J. Nuttin
(MIM). J. Nuttin considers the time perspective in
three aspects-The extent and richness of the time
perspective: This aspect refers to the breadth and
depth of a person's life perspective.
The "temporary setting": This aspect refers to a
person's attitude towards their past, present, and
future.
The temporal orientation: This aspect refers to the
dominant orientation of a person's attention towards
the events of the past, present, or future. The attitude
to life events is mediated by the system of personal
meanings of a person. On the basis of this system, a
person distributes events according to their
importance at the moment, sets more or less distant
goals for the future. A life perspective can be
characterized in terms of its depth, that is, its
deployment in time, motivational richness, and also
from the content side. To assess the life perspective,
respondents were invited to write down their desires,
indicating the possible time of their implementation.
After that, they were asked to indicate how these
desires would come true. The Psychological
Mindedness Scale (H.Conte) (PM). Psychological
mindedness is defined as a personality trait that
presupposes a certain availability of one's feelings, a
willingness to understand oneself and others, belief in
benefit from discussing one's problems, an interest in
the meaning and motivation of one's own and other
people's thoughts, feelings, and behavior, as well as
the ability to change [Conte H., Plutchik R., Jung B.
1990].The method contains 5 scales that measure
these components, as well as an integral indicator. To
analyze the results, we used qualitative analysis and
statistical methods of data processing. The statistical
data processing was carried out using the SPSS 23.0.
We tried to find differences in the answers of female
and male respondents, differences in the age of the
respondents, as well as differences related to the
direction of education.
4 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Figure 1 shows the results of a survey of respondents
on the MIM time code scale.
Figure 1: Depth of time perspective, measured using the MIM timecode scale (% of the number of respondents).
The Life Perspectives of Students as a Factor of Mindful Attitude Towards Learning
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As can be seen in the diagram, the subjects generally
associate their plans and desires with a time interval
of 1 year (40% of statements). Plans for a month
(19%), 10 years (18%), and 5 years (17%) are much
less pronounced. Only 4% of the respondents
attribute their desires to a moment that is more distant
than 10 years. In our opinion, this indicates that the
near future is more understandable and conscious for
students, while their attitude towards the future is not
so differentiated. If we talk about the period of life to
which the desires of the respondents belong (social
time, in the terminology of J. Nuttin), we found
differences in the answers of boys and girls. In 80%
of girls, plans and desires related to the period of
study prevail. The same proportion of young men is
oriented towards the period of maturity (80%). Let's
move on to the analysis of the content of the desires
of boys and girls, which is presented in Figure 2. For
both the male and female respondents, the leading
motive is self-realization, with the predominance of
this motive being more noticeable in women. Male
students show a more pronounced orientation towards
their own personality, as well as the possession of
material values such as a car, apartment, computer,
and telephone. Female students have higher cognitive
motivation and desires related to leisure. It is worth
noting that creative activity is very little represented
in the answers of both male and female respondents -
it has the smallest value in the sample as a whole.
Moreover, the few answers that touch on creative
activities are mainly related to the achievement of
personal prestige or family well-being.
Figure 2: Differences in indicators of motivational orientation by gender (frequency of choice).
Our tasks also included the study of how the
characteristics of life perspective are related to the
age of the respondents. To do this, we divided the
respondents into two age groups: younger (17-20
years old) and older (21-25 years old). Differences
between age groups were found as follows: the
younger age group is dominated by short time codes
(1 year) and the period of study at the university,
while the older group has long-term plans (10 years
or more). As for the differences in motivation, it is
worth pointing out that the younger group has more
pronounced motives for self-realization,
communication, and relaxation, while the older group
has a personal and creative orientation. The data
obtained allow us to conclude that it is necessary to
pay special attention to the development of students'
time perspective, filling the ideas about the future
with events of a moral and business nature. Further,
our task was to identify a possible connection
between the characteristics of life perspective and the
psychological mindedness of the students we
examined. The term 'psychological mindedness,'
originally proposed in the 1990s in clinical
psychology and psychiatry and considered mainly in
connection with the success of psychotherapeutic
work, has recently attracted the attention of
researchers in the field of personality psychology,
educational and professional activities, and family
psychology. This is due to the fact that psychological
mindedness is associated with many personal and
intellectual characteristics. Interest in the inner world,
the reasons for people's actions, and the willingness
to discuss their own and other people's emotions can
be boldly called not only professionally important
qualities of a counselor psychologist but also
important conditions for effective interaction with
people of various professions. It would be interesting
to identify indicators of psychological mindedness in
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our student sample, as well as possible gender and age
differences in these variables. One of the hypotheses
of our research was also the assumption about the
relationship of individual scales of the questionnaire,
and in particular, the scale 'Openness to new
experiences (changes),' with the peculiarities of the
life perspective of students - its meaningfulness,
depth, content, and fullness. Students from different
fields of study took part in our research. We
conditionally divided them by specialty into 3 groups:
psychologists (group 1), humanitarian direction
(group 2), and natural science and technical direction
(group 3). It was expected that psychology students
would show the highest results on all five scales of
the questionnaire, and the lowest results would be
among the representatives of the third group.
However, our survey results showed the following.
Psychology students received significantly higher
marks than representatives of other groups only on
one of the scales - 'Interest in the meaning of one's
own and others' behavior.' On the rest of the scales,
their results were lower, moreover, the lowest among
the three groups of respondents (Figure 3).
Figure 3: Indicators of psychological mindedness by areas of student learning (average scores).
Corrected grammar:
Regarding gender differences, as can be seen in Figure
4, female students outperform male students on scales
1, 4, and 5. In other words, they believe more in the
benefits of discussing their experiences with others,
they are more open to changes, and they have a greater
interest in the motives of their own and other people's
behavior. At the same time, men show a noticeably
greater desire to discuss their problems and believe in
the benefits of such discussions. Our next task was to
identify a possible connection between the results of
the scales of psychological intelligence and the
characteristics of a life perspective. When comparing
the answers of our respondents using the PM and MIM
methods, we found a strong negative correlation of
the Access to One’s Feelings Scale with the ‘
More than 10 years’ time code scale (rs = -0.74). This
Figure 4: Indicators of psychological intelligence by gender (average scores).
The Life Perspectives of Students as a Factor of Mindful Attitude Towards Learning
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suggests that respondents who are well aware of their
feelings are not inclined to plan too distant events in
their lives. It can be assumed that it is more common
for people who are emotional and value emotions to
live according to the principle of 'here and now,' in
contrast to the rational type, who are inclined to
planning.
The Openness to New Ideas and Capacity for
Change Scale positively correlates with motivation
for creative activity (rs=0.726). Thus, a positive
attitude towards change and a willingness to change
oneself are accompanied by a desire to realize oneself
in concrete achievements and to benefit one's family
or society as a whole.
5 CONCLUSIONS
The inability to imagine your future, the lack of a
clear idea of what you would like to achieve in life is
not just a lack of planning. If the problem of a narrow
life perspective could be solved only through the
development of time management skills, then the
question of motivation for learning would not be so
acute. Our research has shown that special attention
should be paid to the development of professional
motivation of future specialists, which, in turn, is
unthinkable without organizing their practical
activities from the very first year. This is especially
true for female students. In turn, the low values of
psychological mindedness among psychology
students also become a problem in the learning
process. Of course, these are only preliminary results
that require further understanding and clarification.
However, it is already obvious that psychological
mindedness as an object of research deserves the
closest attention in connection with the problem of
life perspective.
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