Volunteerism In Youth Association As An Educational Tool For Organizing Abilities Development
Abstract
In recent years, research on students’ organizing abilities development has become quite relevant and popular. The literature on the question shows a variety of approaches to solve the problem. However, little attention has been paid to the issue of development of organizing abilities by means of volunteerism in youth association. This article aims to feature out organizing abilities of students via volunteer activities and present forms and methods of organizing volunteer activities that contribute to the students organizing abilities development. Experimentally, the article introduces ‘We are Together!’ youth volunteer program that shows significantly positive results. The experiment involved 158 pre-service students of Kazan Federal University. As a result, it confirmed the authors’ hypothesis based on the assumption that the process of students’ organizing abilities development would be effective with the implementation of the program ‘We are together!’ These data were verified by methods of mathematical data processing Student's t-test. The summative experiment showed that the level of students’ organizing abilities development and their communicative and organizational abilities were very low. At the same time, the low level of organizational tendencies prevailed over communicative ones, which was significant for the research. The formative experiment showed essential positive changes in the reference group at the levels of communicative and organizing tendencies since the range of organizing abilities significantly expanded.
Keywords: Studentvolunteerismvolunteer activityorganizing abilitydevelopmentyouth association
Introduction
Culture explosion, economic revival, and the growth of the welfare of any state are inseparably linked with the development of education and science. In present-day conditions, higher education is one of the high priority social institutions that fulfils economic, social and cultural functions. For the high-quality implementation of these functions in higher education institutions, it is necessary to create pedagogical conditions for students promoting the formation of their independence, initiative, efficiency, and purposefulness. It is essential to help them realize themselves in future as organizers of the educational process based on humanistic principles, as specialists, as psychologists who understand the individual.
The formation and development of organizing abilities contributes to the development of independence and self-government, increases the effectiveness of educational impact, and expands the opportunities of each student in the future to participate in the organization of economic and cultural construction. The effectiveness of future teachers training for their professional activities largely depends on the degree of psychological and pedagogical basis of organizing abilities development process during their studies at a higher educational institution.
Organizing abilities are one of the forms of characteristic social manifestation of the individual, its social activity. Therefore, it is necessary to prepare students of higher educational institutions for organizational activities, since they are future organizers of the educational process.
Among the scientists there are some who investigated the organizing abilities, for example, the works of Alieva et al. (2011), Tsukerman and Masterov (2005) are devoted to the organizational abilities study as the training quality indicator. Teplov (2007), Umansky (2011), Andreeva (2006), etc. examined the psychological aspect of the individual organizing abilities formation.
Adolescence is the period of the most important events in human life, the period of social and professional guidelines formation, the formation of the worldview, value-motivational and normative structure. At the same time, one of the most important public educational institutions, helping the young generation to avoid spiritual devastation, are youth associations that neither school, university nor family can replace.
In this regard, special importance of the organizing abilities development in today's youth becomes obvious. Various youth associations play a major role in this process. Thus, well-known Russian teachers: Karakovsky (2009), Makarenko (2004) paid considerable attention to the development of the scientific and pedagogical foundations of children's and youth self-governing associations activity. Psychological and pedagogical aspects of the problem were characterized in the works of domestic and foreign researchers: Mudrik (2007), Maslow (1997), Nikandrov (2007), Umansky (2011), etc.
Various aspects of the younger generation education in youth organizations are considered in the studies of Platonov (2006), Sbitneva (2006), and others. All the works emphasize the influence of the social environment on the younger generation.
Nevertheless, despite the steady interest of a wide range of scientists to the problem, there is still no research devoted to the organizing abilities development through volunteerism in the youth association. The practical experience of youth associations shows that their potential for the students’ organizing abilities development is not used sufficiently.
Problem Statement
Today the problem of organizing abilities study among students is quite relevant; however, we consider it is important to begin the analysis with the concept ‘abilities’.
According to Tsukerman (2005) the ability can be defined as a synthesis of the properties of the human personality that meets the requirements of the activity and ensures high achievements in it.
Abilities are not equal to knowledge and skills, though they are shown and developed on their basis. Therefore, it is necessary to be very cautious in determining students’ abilities, so as not to accept a weak knowledge of the child for his lack of ability. Historically, there were such mistakes made even in relation to people who became big scientists, who for some reason did not perform well at school. For the same reason, conclusions about abilities are justified only on the basis of certain properties that prove not a low ability, but a lack of knowledge.
Mudrik (2007) pointed out that abilities are the individual and psychological features of the person that are conditions of successful implementation of this activity finding differences in dynamics of mastering necessary knowledge and abilities.
Thus, we came to conclusion that many authors agree on the definition of abilities. In their works, abilities are defined as individual psychological features of the personality providing success in activity, in communication and ease of mastering them. Abilities are not equal to knowledge and skills that a person can possess. They provide their fast acquisition, fixation and effective practical application.
In Russian and foreign psychology, the problem of organizing abilities was examined within four main approaches: biologic, psychological, functional-situational and systemic. The structure of abilities was determined according to the main provisions of this or that approach. In most scientific approaches, with the exception of the system approach, there is a tendency to absolutize certain factors that determine the effectiveness of organizational activities. Thus, representatives of biologic theories considered organizing abilities as a congenital privilege which in human society, as well as in fauna, very few can possess. From the point of view of foreign and domestic representatives of these theories, genetic programs and hereditary belonging to elite social groups determine the individual’s leadership role. Thereby they initially put the individual in position of the leader or subordinate, denying a possibility of development and self-development, education and self-education.
The scientific inconsistency of the biological point of view was the prerequisite for the emergence of a new (strictly psychological) approach to the problem of organizing abilities, also known as the ‘leadership theory’. It was based on the absolutization of the subjective psychological factor. Most of the representatives of this approach associate organizing abilities with the limited group of positive properties of the individual: intellectual, strong-willed, emotional. Many foreign and Russian researchers define organizing abilities as the sum of various positive personal traits (moral, ethical, cognitive, emotional-volitional, neuropsychic, communicative, etc.) without specifying the correlation of these qualities with each other. Pointing to a number of important properties for the organizer, representatives of the psychological approach ignore the relationship between the features of the organizer and the specific social conditions of his activity, which leads to a subjective-idealistic and speculative interpretation of the studied problem.
Attempts to overcome the abstract approach to the study of the problem are made within the third (functional-situational) behavioural direction. Behaviourists consider the organizing abilities as a variable value, receiving a real psychological content under the influence of a specific situation, the nature of the organized group, the functions of the organizer and the organized ones. A number of foreign psychologists consider the features of the organized group (its cohesion, size, age and stability, qualitative composition, peculiarities of the leader's identification) to be the main condition for the manifestation of organizing abilities.
Specialists of L. I. Umansky’s school distinguish three main substructures of organizational abilities:
organizational insight (manager "flair"), including psychological selectivity, practical intelligence, psychological tact;
emotional and volitional effectiveness (influence). It consists of such factors as energy, aspiration, the ability to "charge" others with their energy, desires, optimism in the achieving of the goal, demands, criticism;
tendency to organizing activity including readiness for organizing activity, from motivation to vocational training; health in the course of organizing activity (tone); working capacity (Umansky, 2011).
Review and critical analysis of literary sources made it possible to draw up a general idea of the problem state of organizing abilities and to see possible prospects for its further study. The theoretical and practical material accumulated in this scientific field is extensive and diverse; it contains a number of important approaches to the classification of organizing abilities and allows clarifying the conceptual apparatus of the studied problem. At the same time, some attempts to give the structure of organizing abilities were not entirely successful. In addition, researchers, as a rule, ignored the task of studying and developing organizing abilities among representatives of various professional spheres.
Volunteering can be organized or unorganized, carried out individually or in a group, in public or private associations. The extent of participation in the volunteer movement can also be various – from one-time actions to full involvement in the organization as a permanent volunteer. The most effective way to solve socially significant problems is the organized form of volunteer movement implemented in the non-commercial (third) sector, namely, in non-profit associations through long-term social projects, involving permanent volunteers. There are a number of problems in the development of Russian volunteerism, such as legal unsettledness of the issue, poor involvement of the population in this type of activity, connected with low living standards, weak motivation, homogeneity of the socio-demographic composition of the volunteer movement (the majority – students), the volunteers do not understand the long-term goals of their activities. Among the areas of volunteer work the most important for Russia are social sphere (the most often practiced - assistance to orphans), ecology and environment, health care. Although there are great prospects for the development of volunteerism in the sphere of culture and sport, it is less actively applied here. The functions of the volunteer movement are quite diverse: from raising the moral level of the individual and society up to meeting the needs of people in moral, professional development to build a strong economy, civil society, constitutional state.
It should be noted that different volunteers use different techniques of volunteer activity in different volunteer associations. They can be the techniques of work with deprived children, elderly people, and sports techniques. The authors rely on the technique of volunteer activities related to children at risk. In our opinion, the implementation of volunteer activity is of priority importance for the youth organization.
Analyzing the psychological and pedagogical literature and taking into account the experience of today youth associations, we have identified a number of characteristic features of youth associations. First, they have a social purpose, a specific program of activities, clearly formulated rights and duties of its members, their conscious discipline, a clear structure, the balance of the social roles of the membership, the coordination of their actions. Second, the tasks of youth associations include providing opportunities for self-realization to each member, development of student self-government, trust, protection of interests. Finally, we have identified the educational potential of the youth organization: the development and self-development of youth relying on individual psychological characteristics and interests, the disclosure of creative potential, providing each young man a position of the subject of knowledge, activity, communication, law, social adaptation. The latter includes the experience of interpersonal interaction, various social initiatives, socialization of young people in cooperation with society. All we have mentioned above is based on recognition of such universal values as human, culture, Motherland, peace, etc.
Here the authors conclude that the purpose of youth associations is to stimulate and develop the potential of the individual, its inclusion in the social communication system through socially useful activities.
We do believe that the solution of the tasks we have set is possible within the framework of any youth organization, regardless of clear organization, clearly articulated rights and duties, etc.
Research Questions
Analysis of psychological and pedagogical literature on the research problem demonstrated that scientists did not come to a common opinion about the essential characteristics of organizing abilities, as well as about the possibilities for volunteerism in youth associations in the organizational abilities development. Forms and methods of organizing volunteer activities to develop the students organizing abilities in youth organization were not proposed.
In this connection, the key issues of this experimental study are to reveal the features of the organizing abilities in youth association via volunteer activities, to test forms and methods of realizing volunteer activities that contribute to the students organizing abilities development.
Purpose of the Study
The purpose of the study is to provide theoretical justification and experimental verification of the forms and methods of volunteerism organization as a means of students organizing abilities development in the youth association.
Research Methods
Methodology and Empirical Methods
In accordance with the goals and objectives of the research, the authors used the following methods:
theoretical: study and analysis of pedagogical, psychological literature on the problem of students organizing abilities development, generalization, systematization;
empirical: a formative experiment, test, questionnaire;
data processing methods (quantitative and qualitative analysis), methods of mathematical data processing (Student's t-test).
Psychological and pedagogical experiment was conducted on the basis of the Institute of Psychology and Education of Kazan Federal University. It involved pre-service students of the 2d and 3d courses (57 people, 28 people – control group, 29 people – experimental group), members of university youth association ‘Sun to Children’.
To assess the level of organizing abilities development we used the ‘Diagnostics of organizing abilities’ test. The examinees are asked to answer a number of questions that reveal the level of organizational abilities development. A certain number of points evaluates each answer.
To identify organizing abilities we used the ‘Self-assessment of organizing abilities’ (Umansky, 2011) method. The examinees are offered a form with 10 qualities that the organizer is supposed to possess. The examinee needs to select those qualities that he thinks he has.
To assess the communicative and organizational skills we used the ‘Diagnostics of communicative and organizational skills’ method. This method allows estimating the level of communicative and organizational tendencies in the examinees.
Results and Discussion
The objectives of the summative assessment were to identify the communicative and organizational tendencies, to identify the students organizing abilities, the level of their formation.
In the experimental group, the low level of communicative and organizational tendencies prevails before the experiment. At the same time, the low level of organizational tendencies prevails over communicative ones, which is important for our experimental research. In the control group, prior to the experiment, a low level prevails in communicative and organizational propensities. Most students feel uncomfortable when communicating. Many have a fear of public speaking, especially when they are evaluated. The organizing and running the events cause many negative emotions associated with the fear of being misunderstood or ridiculed.
Among the proposed organizing abilities, the students of the experimental group mostly expressed the following: initiative (1.97), reliability (1.86), creativity (1.83), purposefulness (1.83), strong-will (1.83). The most significant among the abilities in the experimental group is considered creativity.
In the control group such abilities as determination (1.93), reliability (1.89), persistence (1.89), commitment (1.89), strong-will (1.86) prevail. Here the most significant organizing ability is determination.
Among the examinees of both groups, students with a low level of organizing abilities development predominate, and make up 66% of the experimental group and 64% of the control group. The level of organizational development is average in the experimental group 24% and 25% in the control group. Ten percent (10%) of students in the experimental group and 11% of students in the control group have a high level of organizational development. Thus, the level of students organizing abilities development from the experimental group is slightly higher than that of students from the control group.
During the observations of the experiment participants we came to the conclusion that many students do not have enough experience in establishing relations with others, they cannot rely on the identity of others. Some of the most active students, thinking of only the main goal - to fulfil the task, forgot about the interests, views, desires and needs of each individual person, sometimes did not take into account the possibilities of the others. Some students, considering intimidation and raising the tone by effective methods of influence, tried to force their group-mates to take part in certain events. The participants of the experiment with low and medium levels of organizing abilities often kept shackled, rarely shared their ideas, did not show activity, and desire to communicate. In classes and during preparation for various activities, the teachers tried to designate these children as leaders of creative groups responsible for organizing part of an event. Students with low level of organizing abilities did not cope with the task. Students with average indicators coped with the task partially.
Observing the activity of the participants, we noted that where there were no active children, the work was sluggish, without causing interest in group-mates. The results of the assignment were low. Where there were activists the work was better, there was interest in the activities. The result were significantly better. However, a small group of examinees or one person usually achieved positive results. More successful and active students left the passive and submissive participants of the experiment behind, preventing them from approving themselves.
Thus, we can state that at the summative stage of the experiment, the level of students organizing abilities development left a great deal to be desired. The low level of development of organizing abilities predominated. It was essential to start a purposeful educational work in order to develop their organizing abilities, and, in our opinion, the most effective means in this case is volunteerism, which is successfully realized in a youth association.
The next stage of our study is the organization of a formative experiment. Forming stage of our experiment was the approbation of the program ‘We are together!’ aimed at organizing abilities development through volunteerism in the youth organization.
We build up student volunteer activity for the development of organizational abilities on the following ideas. First, the organization of students’ activities in accordance with the pedagogy of Janusz Korczak. Second, students’ activity with children from sponsored orphanages (familiarization stage, observation, analysis and formation of intellectual abilities of pupils, correction of emotional sphere of pupils, formation of constructive communication abilities among pupils, further support of the child after his release from the orphanage). Third, organization of seminars and conferences of various levels and, finally, preparation of students for special research.
In the process of developing organizational abilities from the point of creating a humanistic pedagogical ideal, we take into account that youth has important characteristics: orientation to the adult world, the need for socializing with the society, and interaction with it. The study of the relationship of children to the adult world requires the rejection of the existing stereotypes. This problem analysis shows that there is a serious lack of attention and respect for the child. There is a sharply aggravated contradiction between the increasing need for attention of the growing child and the continuous weakening, and then the lack of necessary attention from adults. It is noticed that, when taking an overwhelming care for clothes, food, entertainments, the adult does not realize the possibility of communicating with them. As a result, we observe the development of a sense of loneliness, sometimes desperation, and cynicism growing into more open (and therefore more terrible) forms. Consequently, the respect for the most important human values as honesty or decency is levelled.
Communication with adults is of great importance for the developing person. In this contact he acquires the experience of communication, learns to perceive, accept and reject. This communication has both positive and negative sides. The young generation develops and implements the goals imposed by adults, but at the same time it has the opportunity to expand the activity zones beyond the established norms, searching for new forms of activity, that is, it gradually becomes the organizer of its own activity. Therefore, we organize the work of the student volunteer association so that the goal of the adult becomes the goal of its members. Moreover, in accordance with the ideas of Janusz Korczak we create a humanistic educational space in the society.
Special opportunities for the development of students’ research abilities give their work in orphanages, schools, and universities. Particular attention is paid to the educational background of students for special research activities (abilities) on the problem. In the system of organization of students’ extra-curricular research activities in the association there is a Student Scientific Society that studies social problems (orphanhood, loneliness, tramp children, deviant behaviour, etc.) We consider it an effective form of the creative potential development of the future specialist personality. This form of students’ research activity has a peculiar direction and organizational and pedagogical structure. The Student Scientific Society was established as a research laboratory within the framework of the activities of the Kazan Youth Korczak Association.
Its target settings are aimed at stimulating motivation and development of students scientific and creative activity abilities, which involves preparing students to participate in competitions related to the solution of important social problems (mayor's scholarship, Lobachevsky competition, ‘Pedagogical Olympus’, ‘National heritage of Russia’ - students annually take part and always win prizes, etc.). The activity of the association also includes conducting trainings on teaching students the abilities of performing complex scientific projects and general preparation for participation in competitions. Experience shows that the participants of the scientific community successfully cope with the competitive projects, trying to obtain recognition from experts. With the aim of promoting Korczak's ideas, we annually organize local, all-Russian and international conferences, youth seminars. Students actively participate in specialized conferences in Russian cities, international conferences, seminars, forums.
Practical experience allows students to try his hand at the chosen profession, to learn to apply the knowledge obtained in the training sessions in the professional activity. Despite the essential changes caused by educational reform, in general the system of pedagogical staff education in the highest professional educational institutions retains its traditional structure in which great importance is attached to the organization of students’ pedagogical practice. In our research, we mean practical work in orphanages, first. This kind of practice has its own characteristics of the organization, but the most important thing is to teach students to really love the child, to be with him on equal terms (not higher – to neglect, not lower - to regret, and nearby – to be together).
Our students help orphan children who have experienced and survived a lot, with wounded souls, lonely, who have lost love, joy, warmth, and lost hope. We teach them to enjoy life and to love, to believe in themselves, we help them to find the place in life and to realize all their human capabilities and abilities. However, at first the future teachers should be taught all these qualities, which is an extremely difficult task, much more challenging than traditional pedagogical work (for example, the organization of leisure activities).
Inexperienced students come to different social and pedagogical institutions – orphanages, boarding schools for children left without parents, or those whose parents are deprived of parental rights. They, perhaps, for the first time are exposed to the world of child misfortune, injustice, humiliation and pain, heartlessness and cruelty. In order for students to feel better, when visiting orphanage it is very important to discern in each student the best things to rely on, help them prepare and make sure that they are able to make this cruel world better, happier, more perfect. It is crucial for the educators that the student from the very first days of study was minded to do it.
Now the educators meet the challenge what pedagogical manuals and tools could help first-year students of Korczak Association to accept sometimes a very "difficult" child, to give him the warmth of their hearts and return from the orphanage inspired by the idea that what they are doing is important and necessary for these children.
This problem is very complex, and the first difficulty is the heterogeneity of students. It is obvious that not everyone is able to accept this activity and devote his whole life to it. However, we cannot determine his personal qualities and internal motives at first sight. However, we cannot determine his personal qualities and internal motives at first sight. People with very different motivation appear in the university classrooms. It varies from the external, narrowly personal - the desire to receive a diploma of higher education, no matter what specialty - to the internal, widely social, conscious motive to help those who live worse than you do. Independent initiative public activity of students is a means of life-support of their economic independence, a way of self-determination, establishing oneself as a person, an opportunity to test the development of abilities and business qualities, the process of accumulating life and professional experience. Social initiative and participation in the work of youth associations is considered as a form of voluntary activity in the interests and to the benefit of the individual, society and the state aimed at the construction of a new social reality. Social initiatives supporting implies a further transition from regulated, authoritarian education to humanistic, non-violent education, based on the voluntary choice of forms of activity, credibility towards children and youth. Education is guided by a harmonious combination of universal values and the national ideas of humanity, mercy, social and pedagogical solidarity.
Volunteering is a special view of life, a whole worldview that has absorbed all the most worthy of the created in the world pedagogical space for many centuries.
When organizing practical, humanistically oriented activities with children that require special attention and care in the Kazan Youth Korczak Association ‘The Sun for Children’, first, it is necessary to identify the problems that arise during the communication with orphans. Children-orphans, in addition to their mental characteristics, specific intellectual, emotional, and personal spheres have an important and significant difference from ‘home’ children, living in families. It is those children, in general, who do not have any positive experience of communication in the family and the surrounding society, and their ‘home’ experience is rather negative. Usually it leads to negative consequences. Firstly, children form a distorted idea of themselves. Secondly, they develop a wrong attitude to life, people, and society in general. Thirdly, they have no idea of group norms of communication, forms of constructive communication with peers and adults within the orphanage and beyond, there are no abilities of analysis, evaluation and resolution of life situations. This is followed by questions: how can we teach children to feel it? Do they have enough examples of "right" communication when dealing with educators? Who else, besides "formal" adult - educator can supplement their positive experience? Where can they learn the standards of this positive life experience?
We have identified the working goals with children in orphanages:
formation of positive experience of communication among pupils in orphanages;
formation of ideas about group norms of communication, constructive communication abilities with peers and adults within the orphanage and beyond it;
development and correction of the emotional cognitive spheres of children: the creation of a positive emotional atmosphere in the children's collective; help in understanding your emotions and feelings, adequate forms of emotional response; broadening of children’s outlook; formation of abilities in analysis, assessment and resolution of life situations;
training of children to be responsible for themselves and their actions; acquaintance them with the rights and duties of an adult;
creating a positive attitude to the world of adults and society in general.
For orphans classes with students are extremely useful. For children, any activity: diagnostic or correctional, can be considered as training, associated with the development of individual processes of attention, memory, thinking. We believe that only informal activities of this kind can give children the opportunity to realize their cognitive needs. Therefore, we assume the possibility of prolonged work with children and adolescents who found themselves a difficult life situation with the condition for the development of the youth organization and the emergence of its new directions.
In order to organize practical, humanistically oriented activities with children requiring special attention and care, we develop and implement various grants and projects.
In the Kazan Youth Korczak Association ‘The Sun for Children’, we try to build communication based on enthusiastic and cooperative activity, without authoritarianism, accepting everyone's point of view. It is necessary to form friendship as a certain tone in relations with each other.
The system of relations in Association is characterized by interaction of led and cooperation factors, feeling within a psychological community, orientation to an adult with high self-consciousness and self-esteem, levelling of authoritarian forms of interaction, use of interest in the common goal as a factor of management, unity of business and personal communication, inclusion of students into various forms of activity (research, conferences, the implementation of various social projects, practical activities in orphanages, etc.).
These techniques of volunteer organization are laid in the basis of our program for students organizing abilities development ‘We are together!’
The program purpose is to develop students organizing abilities.
Program objectives:
formation of the ability to empathize, to sympathize, responsible attitude towards others;
formation of love for children;
development of readiness to accept and help in the necessary situation;
disclosure of communicative and organizing abilities;
development of initiative and activity;
development of skill to analyze the behavior and the events, to realize the relation to the world;
formation of ability to appreciate personal and others’ work, to be responsible for one's own actions and deeds of others;
consolidation of the feeling of joy from cooperative work and creativity;
development of ability to listen to others;
development of abilities to cope with and avoid conflict situations.
During the work in the orphanage, we could observe how the research interest change the emotional state of the children from suspicion and closeness to desire to establish relationships with other participants. At the first stage of work, competition and the desire for leadership were often manifested. On the last day, the participants established a close emotional connection with each other. In general, the goal of the program was achieved. The overall emotional state at the end of the program was elated. According to the children’s opinion, all the tasks were useful and helped them get to know themselves and their class-mates, the experience helped overcome some barriers in communication, increased the participants’ readiness for business and psychological communication.
If we talk about the students, there was also a significant change in their minds. They became more caring, began to think more about others. They are ready to help a person in a difficult situation. They mark that he fear to deal with orphan children at risk disappeared. These positive changes once again prove the fact that volunteering is a necessary part of the future specialists training in the field of social pedagogy. The organization of such classes allow to apply the knowledge and abilities in practice, to express themselves, help solve problems, form the ability to present and defend their point of view, to conduct a dialogue, to express their opinion in public.
The control experiment was aimed to identify the work result. After the experiment there were essential changes in experimental group of students at the levels of communicative and organizing tendencies. In particular, there was a very high level of communicative and organizational tendencies (28% and 34%), while before the experiment this level was absent at all.
Essential changes were noticed at all levels of communicative and organizing tendencies, for example, the high level of communicative tendencies prior to the experiment was 14%, after the experiment it made 24%, low level was 34% prior to the experiment, after the experiment – 10%. In organizing abilities, the high level was 14% before the experiment, and it increased up to 21% after the experiment, the low level was 43 % before the experiment, after the experiment it was absent.
In the control group, we also observed some changes – the high level of communicative and organizing tendencies increased slightly, and the increasing was also revealed in low level.
Among the proposed students organizing abilities the experimental group showed as the most prioritized after the experiment: activity (2.66), strong-will (2.62), reliability (2.59), curiosity (2.48), determination (2.48), initiative (2.45), creativity (2.41). The most significant organizing abilities turned out strong-will, reliability, and initiative.
In the control group the following organizing abilities as determination (1.93), self-confidence (1.89), curiosity (1.89), creativity (1.89) were prevailed. In the control group, the intensity of organizing abilities decreased after the experiment, but the decisiveness remained the leading one, the students of the experimental group represented the most intensive picture of organizing abilities.
Among the examinees of the experimental group there were significant changes in the levels of students’ organizational development. The high level of development of organizing abilities was 31%, the average level – 41%, low level – 28%. The average level prevailed in the experimental group after the experiment. There were no significant changes in the control group. Fig.1 presents the dynamics of organizing abilities development of experimental group.
Thus, we see that in the experimental group after the experiment, the high level changed from 10% to 31%, the average level increased from 24% to 41%, the low level decreased from 66% to 28%. In our opinion, the obtained data indicate the effectiveness of the organizing abilities development program through volunteer activity in the youth association.
Findings
As a result of applying the Student's t-criterion, it was found out that there are significant differences between the average values of organizing abilities development in the experimental group before and after the experiment, as temp >tcr (temp= - 3.34, at р = 0.05). There are reliable differences between average values of organizing abilities development in experimental and control groups after the experiment, as temp>tcr (temp= 3.32, at р = 0.05) and significant differences were not revealed in the control group.
Conclusion
Analyzing and comparing the results of the summative and controlling stages of experimental work, it can be concluded that the volunteer youth program ‘We are Together!’ is really an successful means of developing organizational abilities among pre-service students at university, as the results indicated positive dynamics and effectiveness of the program. No doubt, the program based on volunteer activity plays a significant part in students’ organizing abilities development.
Acknowledgments
The work is performed according to the Russian Government Program of Competitive Growth of Kazan Federal University. This work was funded by the subsidy allocated to Kazan Federal University for the state assignment in the sphere of scientific activities №27.9412.2017/8.9
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05 September 2018
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Cite this article as:
Rybakova, L. A., & Nikolaeva, O. A. (2018). Volunteerism In Youth Association As An Educational Tool For Organizing Abilities Development. In R. Valeeva (Ed.), Teacher Education - IFTE 2018, vol 45. European Proceedings of Social and Behavioural Sciences (pp. 748-760). Future Academy. https://doi.org/10.15405/epsbs.2018.09.89