Educational and Professional Motives of First‑Year Psychology Students in Modern Conditions

Abstract

This work is devoted to the study of the educational and professional motives of first‑year students majoring in Psychology who live and study in different sociocultural environments. This research is driven by the need to study the influence of external conditions on the formation of educational and professional motives in first‑year students, since this process is of key importance for training qualified specialists prepared for the challenges of the labor market and of modernity. According to self‑determination theory, the factors influencing the transformation of professional aspirations are social relatedness, the academic environment, and work experience. The methodological framework of the research comprises the theories of motives developed by E. P. Ilyin and A. N. Leontiev, J. Atkinson's achievement motivation theory, A. Maslow's motivation theory, and the results of contemporary scholarly work. The study, aimed at examining the motives of first‑year students, involved 88 students from Mariupol and 76 students from Saint Petersburg. Qualitative and quantitative methods were used to process the research results, in particular, the calculation of the Kolmogorov-Smirnov coefficient and the Mann-Whitney U test. Statistically significant differences in the motives for academic activity were found among first‑year psychology students studying in different regions. In the Mariupol sample, the motive of creative self‑realization, along with the professional motive, was found to occupy a leading position, while the prestige motive was absent; in the Saint Petersburg sample, by contrast, professional and social motives for learning ranked first and second, with no pronounced motives for creative self‑realization or learning‑cognitive activity as such. The conducted pilot study demonstrated the need for further research. This will subsequently allow for the development of recommendations for higher education teachers on organizing the educational process in order to foster the educational and professional motivation of future specialists and to take it into account when designing curriculum content and supporting the educational process.