Abstract:

The social maturity of university students is an important indicator of the success of the educational activity. One of the criteria of a socially mature person is the assimilation of social values and standards of behavior. The choice of values characterizes the orientation of students. It shows which social standard is decisive for them. We assumed that the orientation to education is the preferred one in the hierarchy of values of successful students. At the same time, we believe that there are differences between externals and internals in the assessment of various modes of educational success.

The study involved 953 students (426 male, 527 female) aged 18-25 years. Of these, 365 students of humanities, 102 students of natural sciences, 339 students of technical specialties, and 147 students of socio-economic sciences.

Measures:
1) "Value orientations" (M. Rokich), which allows determining terminal and instrumental values;
2) "Self-assessment of social maturity" (assessment of such qualities as, for example, activity, responsibility, control, etc.);
3) The dynamics of academic performance;
4) The degree of independence in socio-economic issues.

The group of preferred values for students includes "good health" (70%), "financial well-being" (59%) - according to the number of elections, these values took 1st and 2nd place. The categories "good education" (36%) and "successful study" (18.5%) were not included in the group of preferred values, which allows us to conclude that their role is insignificant in the hierarchy. The most significant qualities for achieving the goal are "purposefulness" (71.5%), "industriousness" (65.7%), and "knowledge" (47.3%). Gender differences are manifested in the orientations of students. Internal and external traits were more pronounced among women than in men.

The relationship was determined between what students think about formal results (scores, grades, graduation) and what thoughts and feelings they have when thinking about the need to constantly improve their level of knowledge (r=0.46, p=0.00). Consequently, students who have different attitudes to their formal results have significant differences in the issue of continuous improvement of the level of knowledge. At the same time, there is also an average ratio between how students assess their attitude to the knowledge that can be obtained in the education system and whether they are engaged in self-education (r=0.24, p=0.00). Students engaged in self-educational activities significantly differ in their attitude to the knowledge obtained at the university from those who do not devote time to this. In turn, these two groups also have quite significant differences in how they evaluate their success in learning (r=0.3, p=0.00). It was also revealed that the opinion of students about education with different degrees of satisfaction with the volume and quality of knowledge, skills and abilities obtained during training significantly differs (r=0.22, p=0.00).

The conclusion is made about the different modes of success of educational activity in teaching students with different levels of social maturity.

Keywords:

Social maturity, university students, value orientations, education, learning success, success modes.