PROFESSIONAL TRAINING OF FUTURE SPECIALISTS IN THE CONTEXT OF SPIRITUAL SELF-DEVELOPMENT

Abstract

The article examines the educational cycle of training a psychologist as a psycho-developmental technology aimed at forming students’ professional competences and spiritual potential. In the context of integrating Ukrainian higher education into the European educational area, the need is emphasized to train highly qualified psychologists who combine professional knowledge, specific abilities, and welldeveloped personal qualities, including spiritual ones. The profession of a psychologist requires not only cognitive and interactive skills but also a high level of existential-meaning and spiritual maturity, which determines the effectiveness of psychological assistance. Drawing on A. V. Furman’s vita-cultural paradigm, a theoretical model of training a practitioner-psychologist is developed that encompasses four stages of the educational cycle: the informational-cognitive, the normative-regulatory, the value-reflective, and the spiritual-selfrealization stages. Each stage presupposes parity-based interaction between instructors and students, aimed at activating processes of self-awareness and developing the self-concept and spiritual potential. Diagnostic results show that the formation of the student’s spiritual sphere depends not only on age and individual characteristics but also on the organization and content of the educational process. It is established that the educational environment of a higher education institution positively influences the spiritual formation of the future specialist; however, this impact is insufficient for full self-realization as a highly spiritual personality, which necessitates specially organized conditions to activate processes of self-knowledge, self-understanding, self-development, and self-actualization. To this end, training sessions were designed and piloted that included dialogic-discussion methods, role-play, psychodrama, therapeutic drawing, aesthetotherapy, and elements of meditative techniques. Re-assessment confirmed an increase in indicators of spiritual potential among students in the training group. It is concluded that students’ spiritual growth occurs most effectively under conditions that create a value-meaning educational environment conducive to subjectively significant comprehension of the world. The proposed model and the methodological tools of the trainings provide a foundation for developing a spiritually mature practitioner-psychologist capable of self-realization and effective professional activity.