Hardiness and psychological safety of a teacher in an educational environment

Abstract

Introduction. In the conditions of emerging psychological threats and risks of the educational environment, the development and formation of the hardiness of a teacher as one of the participants in educational relations becomes relevant. The study of professional hardiness in the system of psychological safety of a teacher and the justification of the means of its support are of particular relevance.Aim. The aim of the study was to identify the characteristics of the hardiness and psychological safety of teachers in the educational environment of the school.Methodology and research methods. The provisions on the social environment as a source of development, the provisions of resource and risk-resource approaches in psychology, theoretical and empirical approaches to the psychological safety of the educational environment were used as subject-scientific guidelines. Psychodiagnostic methods were used: “Psychological Safety of the Educational Environment of the School” (I. A. Baeva), “Hardiness Test” (by S. Maddi, Russian-language adaptation of D. A. Leontiev, E. I. Rasskazova), “The Index of Well-Being” (WHO-5) (Well-Being Index, WHO). The data obtained were processed using descriptive statistics, factor analysis (principal component method, Varimax rotation), correlation and regression analysis.Results and scientific novelty. The conducted research allowed authors to identify four factors of subjectively significant psychological threats to the teacher in the educational environment (social nature, intensity of work, interpersonal relations and digitalisation of education). The authors revealed direct interrelations of the teacher’s satisfaction with the significant characteristics of the educational environment, its reference significance, psychological security with well-being and hardiness; inverse relationships between threats of a public nature and the teacher’s well-being, resilience, psychological safety and reference significance. It was established that the main predictors of the teacher’s hardiness in the educational environment were its reference and subjectively significant threats of a public nature for the teacher.Practical significance. The identified factors of the threats, psychological predictors of hardiness allow us to outline approaches to the development and implementation of psychological and pedagogical programmes to support the hardiness of a teacher, as well as to the introduction into teacher training programmes of methods for teaching interpersonal communication skills, stress management and burnout prevention, contributing to teacher hardiness.