Kulikova T.I. Assessing the Level of Psychological Safety of School Students in Cross-Cultural Education Environment

Abstract: The object of the research is psychological safety of school students in terms of cross-cultural education. Today many Russian schools have students of various nationalities and ethnic backgrounds. Understanding the uniqueness of their nationality, some school students express intolerance towards representatives of other nations which creates threats to psychological safety. The present article presents the results of the pilot study which targets were to define the level of psychological safety of school students in the cross-cultural education environment and to describe criteria that influence school psychological safety. 127 7th- and 8th-grade students aged 13 - 14 years participated in the research. Those were children who studied in different schools and lived in different regions, either in cities or country-side, with the different level of industry, science nd culture. The criteria of school psychological safety were the following: satisfaction with the education environment, feeling protected from psychological violence and self-confidence. In order the define the correlation between the aforesaid criteria and integral indicator of psychological safety, the author has calculated the pair correlation (r-Pearson correlation). The results of the research have allowed to define the present level of psychological safety for all 127 respondents as well as to compare indicators of psychological safety at the schools participating in the research. The analysis of the results prove that feeling protected is the factor that has the most influence on the level of psychological safety in the cross-cultural education environment. In its turn, the feeling of being protected is influeced by the high level of comfort of the psychological atmosphere, mutual help and support as well as the low level of aggression demonstrated by classmates and peers. 

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