Abstract:

Internationalization is one of the main trends of higher education in modern world. It has significant impact on the state of psychological health of the academic staff due to the changes in the conditions of professional activities, new requirements for the teaching and scientific activities and innovative professional actions. Based on values different from nationalization principles, internationalization has innovated university changes that are not always consistent with the internal position of the academic staff belonging to previous generations. In many cases it causes conflict between real higher education conditions and academic staff’s values and positions. Misunderstanding of personal place in the world scientific and educational space causes a range of psychological problems for university teachers, such as professional crisis, professional burnoutor even disease.

This article is an attempt to solve the problem of strengthening the academic staff’s psychological health under higher education internationalization by creating a model of measures that can help academic staff’s self-determination and their readiness to change and recover from possible crisis. Scientific literature analysis shows the existence of educational and socio-cultural measures for this purpose, but most authors make accent on only one group of measures or study autonomic elements or parts of them. No complex research of the pedagogical and socio-cultural measures for academic staff’s mental health strengthening at the university level has yet been done. This paper aims to reveal the main educational and socio-cultural factors that influence the state of academic staff’s mental health under internationalization and to develop appropriate measures to improve academic staff’s health.

The conditions, reasons and factors of internationalization having influence on academic staff’s mental health were studied and SWOT-analysis was made. Surveys and psycho diagnostics were used to identify the attitudes and mental health of the academic staff. The sample is representative as empirical data were gathered in three typical large universities of the Ural area in Russia. The modeling of pedagogicaland socio-cultural measures of the academic staff’s mental health strengthening was undertaken. The model includes two complementary parts: preventive and corrective. To verify the model the corresponding pedagogical and socio-cultural complex program was constructed and realized. Both the content modules of the programs for academic staff and socio-cultural activities that enhance the impact of the educational factorswere proposed helping to prevent the deterioration of academic staff’s mental health. The dynamics of the states of psychological health of the academic staffwasstudied and analyzed. That allowed revealing the practical importance of each method and of the program.

Keywords:

Internationalization, academic staff, mental health, professional psychological crisis, professional burnout, pedagogical measures, socio-cultural mesures.