Psychological predictors of inhibition development in educational environments

Abstract

This article examines psychological predictors of inhibition in educational environments as well as various aspects of pedagogical communication, including facilitation, which is aimed at enhancing educational effectiveness and developing students by means of using a particular communication style and the teacher's personality. The need to study inhibition (the deterioration of teacher-children interactions; the negation of a student's individuality; the inability to understand and accept students' viewpoints; teacher-provoked conflicts; and emotional callousness) is substantiated. The essence of psychological predictors as independent variables, changes in which lead to changes in other dependent variables, allowing the prediction of inhibition development, is explained. The research objective was to identify psychological predictors of the development of inhibition in pedagogical communication. An empirical study was conducted using standardized techniques for diagnosing communicative attitudes (V. Boyko), developing general communicative tolerance (V. Boyko), identifying aggressiveness (A. Asinger), identifying the level of empathy (V. Boyko), and identifying the degree of pedagogical inhibition (L. Polosova). The sample contained 375 teachers from Yekaterinburg educational institutions, with participant selection made using stratified sampling. The teacher's personality features (a negative communicative attitude, low communicative tolerance and empathy, and higher levels of aggression) were shown to be key predictors of inhibition, which itself was found to depend on the length of teaching experience. At the beginning of one's professional teaching career, the level of inhibition is minimal. However, the level of inhibition reaches its maximum level after 5-10 years of teaching, and after 20 years, there is a sharp decrease in the level of inhibition. The conclusion of this study stresses the importance of developing strategies to prevent and correct inhibition, which is especially essential for school teachers with 5-10 years of experience.