Abstract:

The issue of the increase in children's risky behavior is becoming highly topical nowadays due to the rapidly changing conditions and relations in society. Above all, school is no longer just about education and upbringing in the classical sense, but also about improving the ability to respond to changes in society, in life, in family and relationships, in the classroom to be part of a team or to integrate into a collective in the sense of a healthy lifestyle. This should be the area or focus of preventive action by teachers already in primary schools.

The priority area of action for teachers of preventist in these positions should be to support and implement projects that are aimed at forming attitudes towards healthy lifestyles, protecting physical and mental health, eliminating harmful influences on health and preventing risky behaviour, promoting healthy lifestyles, improving the psychosocial climate and promoting mental health.

The study we present maps the self-concept of primary school teachers in Slovakia and the Czech Republic who are engaged in the prevention of risky behaviour in children. The research, in a quantitative design, involved 321 teachers from both countries. The author's questionnaire was used to determine the self-concept, which was adapted to the conditions of the Czech Republic in 2018 and to the conditions of Slovakia in 2019.

The reliability of the questionnaire components was determined using Cronbach's Alpha. The items within each component of the questionnaire were correlated with respect to the other items of that component (item-total correlation). Items that had low or even negative correlation were excluded from the component. The final questionnaire has therefore 26 items.We conducted face validity based on our own judgment about the appropriateness of the wording of the items with respect to the questionnaire component. We tested the relationship between the components of the questionnaire with the correlation coefficient.

The research brought interesting findings in several categories, namely, perception of the status of the coordinator, cooperation with school staff, motivation to work in the field of risky behaviour of pupils, evaluation of one's own work, and limits to the influence of one's own influence on pupils. The study is also comparative in nature, as it maps the situation of the issue raised in two countries. The results clearly show the influence of the length of experience in the position of coordinator/methodologist towards the clarity of answers in all categories and also with the own self-assessment and a certain dose of certainty in assessing the limits of the impact of one's own work at an experience length of 7-9 years. The results clearly show maturation and progression across categories in terms of the longer the experience, the greater the confidence and conviction.

Universities in both countries should necessarily prepare students for work in the field of social pathology prevention as part of their particular study programs and should pay attention to, or create sufficient space for, internships in institutions that deal with social pathology, thus enabling them to acquire the widest possible portfolio of knowledge. Our definite recommendation is that the training of prevention coordinators/methodologists should be cyclical and systematic and should include the personality-developing elements described in the study.

Keywords:

Prevention, school prevention methodologist, self-concept, risky behaviour.