SEARCH FOR SOCIO-PEDAGOGICAL DETERMINANTS OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF HIGHER EDUCATION STUDENTS’ EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE

Abstract

Considering the need for a substantive and technological upgrade of the social work system, which should meet the challenges of the time, to the demands of society, there is a need to find ways for its optimization. The article is devoted to the actual problem of improving the social work specialists’ professional training through the special development of applicants’ emotional intelligence. The publication presents modern views on the emotional intelligence phenomenon as a personal characteristic that requires special consistent formation. The author reveals the essence of this category in the context of professional conditions of future social work specialists: taking into account the complexity, stressogenicity, emotional and communicative tension of the social sphere, the need for timely prevention of employees’ professional destruction and burnout. The necessity of developing applicants’ assertiveness, emotional and stress resistance, emotional maturity on the basis of integration of social, emotional and academic components of their professional training is substantiated. The article highlights the objective prerequisites for the emotional development of students as persons sensitive to emotional changes. Formation of future social work professionals’ adaptive potential by creating professionally oriented, contextual learning situations that would lead to significant personal transformations, activate their emotional defense mechanisms. The role of foreign experience in the implementation of special socio-emotional programs, methods (strategies) for the development of emotional intelligence of youth, socio-emotional and ethical training programs, formation of an appropriate set of socio-emotional competencies in the purposeful improvement of the future social work professionals’ emotional intelligence is revealed.