Ivantsanych V. Psychological features of stress tolerance development in school students with a religious worldview

The dissertation investigates the problem of the psychological features of stress tolerance in school students with a religious worldview. The paper theoretically substantiates a solution to the actual scientific problem of ensuring the formation and development of an important life competency in school students – their readiness to overcome stressful situations. Based on the analytical-reflexive analysis of scientific sources, we have revealed that a child's school career is accompanied by the intensive formation and development of psychological personality characteristics. So it is an important stage in the development and ingraining of reaction types to stressors and stress-tolerance patterns. Stress tolerance is seen as a personality trait that is necessarily manifested in a stressful situation. It has a generalizing effect on human adaptation in various spheres of life and is comprised of the following components: reflexive and conative (assessment of a situation and self-feeling in it); emotional (emotional sufferings caused by stress and their conscious control); behavioral (actions in relation to a stressor, decision-making based on existing human instincts, knowledge about stressors of different kinds and ways to neutralize them as well as past experience of overcoming stressful situations). Individuals` stress tolerance is related to their worldview including the religious one. Religious worldview is a complex systemic psychological phenomenon consisting of religious beliefs (knowledge and views), which become a person's convictions underlying the formation of their personal values and setting the way to reflect and interpret reality. A religious worldview can be manifested as acquired knowledge about the existence of the higher power, its influence on the origin of the world and human existence as well as certain ethical norms of human behavior. The paper empirically verifies the importance of a religious worldview and a person`s affiliation with a religious community in their ability to cope with stressful situations. The study contributes to the improvement of the system of measures for stress tolerance formation in school students. The authors have found that school students experience stress in situations connected with the learning process, interaction with peers / friends, family relationships, extracurricular activities as well as expectations from themselves and their future. The thesis elaborates an experimental program for the development of stress-tolerance in school students in the context of forming their religious worldview in the summer Christian camp for schoolchildren. A set of its forms and methods is aimed at ensuring the moral and spiritual education of an individual. The paper substantiates the complex of methods to examine stress tolerance in school students. The dissertation also develops examination techniques of their religious beliefs, their affiliation with religious communities as well as the methods for the analysis of stressful situations school students face.