Dr.Hab, Professor V.D. Povzun
Ph.D., Associate Professor O.A. Fyntyne
Ph.D., Associate Professor A.A. Povzun
Ph.D., Associate Professor V.V. Apokin
Surgut State University (SurGU), Surgut

Keywords: creative potential, self-assessment, educational environment.

Introduction. Today, professional development and social adaptation of young graduates require employment of creative personality traits as never before; this in turn requires new creative pedagogical approaches, as education is crucial for establishment and development of such personal qualities [3]. The National Education Doctrine of the Russian Federation declares the priority of modern comprehensive development of young people, and highlights the necessity to identify and develop a person’s creative potential and abilities, and formation of self-fulfillment skills. This is relevant for all specialists, yet most of all for educators, physical education teachers, and coaches, whose challenge is to bring up a healthy, sound, and harmoniously developed personality that could be useful for the society [1, 8]. It is by no means accidental that creativity is a basic component of the teacher’s competency.

Creative potential is the most important indicator of readiness and ability for creative work. According to A.V. Brushlinsky [2], creative potential can be estimated by results. Yet potential means only that success is possible; therefore, one should learn to identify and predict it. Various abilities need to be developed to carry out creative work. Besides, in order to predict successful creative work, one should both understand the psychology of creative work and take into account the conditions in which it is being carried out. We believe that in order to understand the sources of creativity and its psychological mechanisms, creative activity should be treated as a holistic process, which appears impossible without interpreting a personality as a single systematic entity, whereby a person is understood as a self-regulated and self-developing system, and creative work – as a phenomenon of an integral personality. Here, a person’s base inner conflict, in fact the source of his/her life activities and development is to be associated with the strive for self-importance manifested in a person’s specific traits related to regulation of his/her life and specific creative activity [9]. However, the strive for personal self-importance may be realized in different ways depending on external and internal conditions, including social environment, individual circumstances, aptitudes, or abilities. Therefore, the research is relevant due to both the need of modernization of the educational system in Russia, which is presently aimed at bringing up and developing a future specialist as a creative competitive personality capable of finding his/ her own solutions to a wide range of issues, including professional ones, arising in his/her life, and due to emergence of a completely different interpretation of creativity, and therefore, of the approaches to its assessment and methods of its development.

The purpose of the study was to analyze the dynamics of creative potential of sports faculty graduates.

Materials and Methods. We used one of the most accessible and appropriate methods of analysis of personality formation, specifically, the method of self-assessment, with the Sharov’s test for assessment of individual's creative potential employed as a criterion of the students’ perception of personal creative abilities [10]. A 10-grades self-assessment scale for 18 personality traits or frequency of their display, used in the test, estimates the level of development of creative potential. Basing on the total of points scored by each student in the survey, the students’ self-assessed creativity levels and creative potential profiles for each graduation year were determined.

While considering the potential impact of the University’s educational environment on the development of the Sports Faculty students’ creative potential (CP), we have already noted that for effective development one should take into account its initial status, which is rather specific and reflects the high level of claim for recognition than any real creative abilities [4], while the aggregate profile of the students’ creative potential does not undergo any significant changes in the course of their five years of training. The situation is typical for other faculties too [5], which implies that the University as an educational institution and the university education as such do not play any major role in the formation of students’ creative abilities. However, if the University is to influence the development of its students’ creative potential, its top-priority task should be to identify appropriate means to exercise the necessary influence, since certain changes in priority levels of different psychological traits in the students’ self-assessed creative potential do take place, though reflecting, in our view, the students’ attempts to keep the established status quo, rather than any development or improvement of their CP [6].

Hence, since consistent or pronounced change dynamics had not been detected in the comparative analysis of different academic years or faculties, we attempted to trace such dynamics among the Sports Faculty graduate students and evaluated both the current status and prospects of their creative self-fulfillment. The research has been conducted at graduate classes for three years (from 2012 to 2014). 127 male and female students of the Physical Education Faculty aged 22 – 24 years were involved. Thanks to the sample both intermediate and somewhat preliminary conclusions on the students’ creative potential development status were made and the probability of its further development was predicted.

Results and discussion. The obtained results of self-assessed creative abilities are presented in Table 1.

Table 1. Dispersion of individual's self-assessed creativity levels in groups of Physical Education faculty graduates for different graduation years, %

Further, in order to provide a clearer picture of self-assessment results, we developed creativity profiles for each group of graduates (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Variance of creative potential profiles for SurGU Sports Faculty graduate groups in different graduation years

As seen from Table 1, there were practically no respondents with an inadequate level of self-assessed creative potential, meaning the obtained results, as well as the prospects for the graduates’ creative self-fulfillment appear quite satisfactory. However, the smoothed profiles and lack of any concrete well-defined peaks for any personality traits (such as the ones seen on the solid sample chart), reflecting the principal area of creative self-fulfillment, imply that the observed high level of self-assessed creativity reflects completely different processes [4, 5]. Moreover, the smoothed profiles are characteristic of inappropriate self-assessment, when a person claims his or her importance having no psychological or other grounds for its fulfillment, which implies overestimated personality traits rather than simply high self-esteem. The absence of respondents with low levels of self-assessed creativity contributes to such a conclusion.

Especially alerting is the fact that the profile peaks become less pronounced with years, which implies the students’ claim for inadequately high estimate of their own creative importance is strengthening, while any real grounds for such claims are most probably becoming weaker from year to year. This means, any creative plans or success are in fact an ungrounded expectation, an unacceptable result for both the educational institution and the graduates themselves.

The only positive thing is the virtual absence of respondents with inadequately high levels of creative potential [5], as compared to other faculties. This implies the graduates retain an appreciation of certain limits reflecting either perceptions characteristic of the professional sports community and formed by them during the study period, or the University’s policy that forms the attitude to higher education and its role in securing a success for the graduates’ creative aspirations. The latter hypothesis is supported by definite, though less pronounced, creative potential profile peaks reflecting individual psychological traits highlighted when assessing own creative abilities. As we have noted before, such traits coincide for different faculties [5].

Conclusions. The University as an educational institution and university education as such do not play any major role in the formation of students’ creative abilities. This is no tragedy for the Sports Faculty, as athletes, whose main goal is to achieve certain sports results, have other areas to demonstrate their creative abilities understood as a ‘strive for self-importance’[7]. However, if the University finds it necessary to impact the development of its athletes’ creative potential, its top-priority task should be to identify appropriate means to exercise the necessary influence.

References

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Corresponding author: apokin_vv@mail.ru