In the rapidly changing conditions of the modern labor market, the social factor of the students' own professional development is the ability to perceive the reality and professional prospects in a flexible way. Among the individual features of a person that contribute to the rapid and adequate development of professional self-consciousness, creativity (intellectual and personal), which affects the speed and quality of development of a student as a future professional, is highlighted.
The image of the profession in the process of education of students in the university can be considered as a key component of their professional self-consciousness.
Psychologists claim that the development of creativity qualitatively changes a person's personality. This position allows us to connect creativity with the development of personality and intellect. According to this approach, creativity is based on a special combination of such individual factors as mental ability, personality traits, and environmental factors. Each person has a specific combination of these factors, so we can talk about creativity as a characteristic of individuality. Such a unique combination forms the creative potential of the subject.
As for the concept of profession image, in spite of the fact that almost all researchers agree that it is a part of the image of the world, there are still nuances in the interpretation of the concept of "profession image" in various scientists. The image of the profession it is:
1. the presence of certain mechanisms implemented through the processes of training and identification of specialists with the image-ideal;
2. employees have certain motivational orientation and corresponding professionally important qualities;
3. availability of criteria for its formation
The criterion of completeness of forming the image of the profession is the success of the professional activity, which we have divided into three components.
The cognitive component demonstrates the knowledge of the professional activity, the concept of oneself as a professional, the definition of one's place in the profession, the ability to anticipate the future, to plan and structure the activity.
The emotional-evaluation component is determined by the levels of self-esteem and claims, positive attitude to oneself, profession and professional, value orientations, motivation, adequate choice of profession according to one's propensities.
The level of a creative component depends on the creative potential, ability to self-regulate, self-development, self-improvement.
Firstly, at the initial stage of training students often have only a basic understanding of the profession. In addition, in the first year of study, the processes of adaptation to university studies are strongly pronounced. In addition, the students of the current 1st year will receive higher education at the bachelor's level, while the respondents from the 3rd and 5th years of study will receive training in a specialist program, which may increase the differences in the intensity of the image of the profession.
Secondly, at the next stage of training (3rd year) students of these specialties already have experience of several serious production practices, where they get an opportunity to get acquainted with the profession more fully. In addition, academic disciplines are becoming more and more specialized, which leads to the correction of the professional image and value attitude to the profession.
Third, by the end of the course, before entering the pre-diploma internship (5th year), future specialists understand not only the peculiarities of professional activity and the range of their duties, but also, almost always, the future place of work. Therefore, knowing almost everything about their profession, they solve the main value problem: whether they want to work in the profession or, having received a diploma, they will start to exercise their professional self-determination anew.
Therefore, the changes in the image of the profession, which can be traced at this stage of professional development, are particularly interesting.
The following methods were used as diagnostic tools:
- associative experiment to identify the individual's field of consciousness associated with the keyword profession for further psychosemantic analysis and description of the cognitive component of the profession;
- focus group method, which reveals the behavioral component of the profession's image;
- method of semantic differential, which allowed to obtain quantitative characteristics of the emotional attitude of the subject to the concept of profession's image;
- method Determination of the level
Thus, to study the relationship between the level of creativity of a future specialist and the image of the profession, 6 groups of students were formed. A total of 190 young respondents. The average level of creativity was found among the majority of freshmen, and among the students of the 3rd and 5th years of study, this level was about half.
It is also interesting that on the 1st year of study the number of students with a low level of creativity is higher than the number with a high level, the trend is changing among the fifth year students, and the number of students with high creativity becomes higher than the number with a low level.
It can be assumed that natural selection works: it is more difficult for individuals with low creativity to adapt to the system of higher education, which requires sufficient intensity of mental activity. It should be noted that the girls of the entire sample have, in general, an average level of creativity. Therefore, we will not pay attention to gender differences in the future, especially since girls and boys show similar results using other methods.
It should be noted that a stable top rank among the values occupies the material aspect of the profession among all students, regardless of the course. This is logical, as the chosen profession will create a good material basis for personal and family life.