Journal archive

Abstract: The review deals with the issues of organization of a socio-psychological support service for students. The realization of priority projects aimed to attract foreign students to Russian higher education institutions sets the task to design socio-psychological support models for these students. In view of this, it is important to study the experience of organization of such student support abroad. This review describes the approaches to the organization of student support services in the USA. The article provides a detailed description of the TRIO programs which presuppose discretionary and competitive grants for higher education institutions. Funds are awarded to institutions of higher education to provide opportunities for academic development, assist students with basic college requirements, and to motivate students toward the successful completion of their post-secondary education. TRIO projects include: academic tutoring, services in the field of education and counseling to improve the financial and economic literacy of participants, individual counseling for young people who are officially registered as homeless during vacation or live in a foster family. The review emphasizes the importance of development of the student support system in Russian education institutions. The authors define the notion of “social student support” in the following way: in a broad context, as a unity of positive interventions of the closest social environment, and in a narrow context, as direct assistance in stressful situations. The following kinds of social student support have been analyzed: information support, status support, instrumental support, emotional support and diffuse support. Social support should meet the following demands: to be protected, to be recognized, to belong to a community, and to achieve self-realization. The review explores the mediating effect of support on various levels: on the physiological level (lessening of anxiety); on the level of motivation sphere (perception of other people’s attention; it increases students’ inner motivation); on the level of affective sphere (creation of the feeling of security and safety); on the level of cognitive sphere (acquisition of new points of view, alternative context while perceiving stressful situation); on the level of behavior (new ways of problem solving, alternative behavior models, etc.); on the level of personality (encouraging self-respect, provision of emotional support, enhancing the feelings of inner control and competence, critical for inner resources mobilization in stressful situations).