XVII Международная студенческая научная конференция Студенческий научный форум - 2025

One of the problems of higher education today is that the main focus is on professional training and mastering a specialty, while intellectual and personal training fades into the background. As a result, we get specialists who are not able to independently acquire knowledge, do not strive for self-development throughout their lives, do not know how to build a trajectory of personal professional growth, do not want to show responsibility for the results and quality of their activities. Therefore, the educational process of the university should harmoniously combine professional training and the formation of personal qualities of students. In order to successfully solve problems that arise in everyday life and professional activity, a person resorts to many mental operations, the main ones of which are considered to be analysis and synthesis, and their derivatives: comparison, generalization, classification and systematization, abstraction and concretization [1]. Without formed skills of mental operations, the process of learning and assimilation of new knowledge, cognitive and research activities and productive thinking in general are impossible.

Undoubtedly, many mental operations are used by a person intuitively and unconsciously, but for productive professional activity it is necessary to form and improve these skills, including in the process of studying at a university. Since the personality of a student in the process of studying at a university makes a transition from adolescence to adulthood and, according to L.S. Vygotsky, «the age from 18 to 25 years is rather the initial link in the chain of mature ages than the final link in the chain of periods of childhood development» [2], then the formation of the personality of the student, on the one hand, is associated with the strengthening or change of his value attitudes and, on the other hand, the formation of his professionally significant qualities.

In addition, according to the research of B.G. Ananyev and his students, the evolutionary intellectual development of a person falls on the period from 18 to 30 years, and the «optimum development of intellectual functions as the highest manifestation of human intellectual activity» is located between 18 and 20 years [3]. Therefore, a particularly urgent task of higher education for this period is the formation of intellectual maturity, which is the process of accumulating knowledge and forming independent creative thinking, as well as the process of actualizing the ability to set promising tasks of intellectual development with their high-quality implementation in future professional activities [4].

In the framework of this study, intellectual maturity is understood as the ability to make informed decisions in the process of processing large amounts of information and in conditions of uncertainty and instability [5] or even in risk-forming situations. Hence, intellectual maturity includes the following mental operations: analysis and the ability to predict, synthesis and inference based on existing experience, systematization and argumentation, and finally, self-assessment and self-regulation. To form the intellectual maturity of students in the process of studying at a university, one should concentrate on the development of such abilities as:

- the ability to analyze, synthesize, generalize, systematize and establish cause-and-effect relationships; - the ability to highlight the main idea and build connections between the main meanings in order to obtain a holistic picture of the issue under study;

- the ability to convincingly and consistently present the results of one's reasoning and make informed decisions based on them;

- the ability to control one's own thought processes for the purpose of self-assessment and self-regulation.

As mentioned above, intellectual maturity is aimed at processing arrays of data under conditions of uncertainty, which is interconnected with the concept of «risk». According to A.V. Shaboltas, «risk is understood as an action performed under conditions of choice in a situation of uncertainty, when there is a danger of failure to find oneself in a worse position than before the choice» [6]. Since it is impossible to achieve absolute awareness and it is impossible to eliminate the uncertainty of future events, risks are inevitable companions of the decision-making process [3]. Therefore, students must be prepared for the fact that the risk may be crowned with success and then cause feelings of delight and satisfaction, or the consequences of the risk will be negative and cause a feeling of disappointment and bitterness.

In any case, young people in the process of studying at a university should be adapted to risk-generating situations in order to minimize their consequences in the event of a negative outcome. The formation of intellectual maturity of student youth can contribute to the formation of a personality capable of resisting the negative influence of risk-generating situations.

On the other hand, students need to understand that risk can also be a noble cause, i.e. have the most positive consequences, especially in their future professional activities. How to copeP.D. Tishchenko caustically notes that risk contains «the ontological courage of a person, the compulsion to act, to realize oneself in conditions of deepening uncertainty» [7]. Thus, risk also has a great positive potential, which can be useful for future specialists in their professional activities, since many discoveries would not have taken place at all if researchers and specialists had acted according to strictly established scenarios and had not taken risks.

Consequently, the formation of intellectual maturity of students in the educational process of a university is relevant and necessary, because it promotes the development of vitally important mental operations and has a positive effect on the development of the ability to cope with risk-generating situations. In turn, it can be assumed that the development of intellectual and personal qualities of a student in the process of studying at a university will contribute to the professional training of future specialists, revealing their inner potential and activating the area of not yet sufficiently formed personal dispositions.

References:

1. Norova R.F. Thinking operations and solving thinking problems // Achievements of science and education. - 2017. - No. 5 (18). - URL: https://cyberleninka.ru/article/n/operatsii-myshleniya-i-reshenie-myslitelnyh-zadach (date of access: 10.02.2025)

2. Vygotsky L.S. The problem of age / Collected works: in 6 volumes. - Vol. 4. Moscow: Pedagogy, 1984. - P. 244-256.

3. Gubanov N.N., Gubanov N.I., Cheremnykh L.G. Science of the essence of risk and characteristics of a risk situation // Humanitarian Bulletin. - 2017. - Issue. 11 (61). - P. 1-16.

4. Kedrova E.M. Intellectual maturity of the individual in the context of the intentional-dynamic model «acme» // Bulletin of Polotsk State University. Series E. Pedagogical sciences. Pedagogy. - 2009. - No. 5. - P. 21-25.

5. Bokova M.M., Volynkina N.V. Formation of critical thinking of cadets of a military university: theoretical and methodological aspect // Professional education in Russia and abroad. - 2023. - 3 (51). - P. 36-43.

6. Shaboltas A.V. Risky behavior. / Psychology. - Moscow: Prospect, 2009. - P. 502-505.

7. Tishchenko P.D. Bioethics, risk society and challenge heuristics // Philosophical sciences. - 2010. - No. 12. P. 42-49.