LEARNING AND PSYCHOLOGICAL AND EMOTIONAL STATE OF THE UKRAINIAN ADOLESCENTS IN THE CONDITIONS OF WAR IN UKRAINE

Abstract

The results of studying the educational activity and psychological and emotional state of the Ukrainian adolescents during the war were shown and analyzed in the given article. The survey, conducted in April 2022 by means of a questionnaire, involved 519 Ukrainian adolescents, of whom 64.7% were girls and 35.3% were boys. At the time when the survey was conducted, 61.8% of surveyed teenagers were in Ukraine, and 38.2% were abroad. The analysis of the survey results showed the emergence of a new motive for adolescents’ willingness to learn – the perception of learning as their own educational front and a patriotic attitude to contribute to the victory over the Russian occupiers. This motive is more relevant among those respondents who stayed in Ukraine. The predominance of fatigue as a polydeterministic phenomenon that accompanies the learning of most adolescents has been detected. It has been established that the internal and external displacements of adolescents due to full-scale Russian aggression do not correlate with negative emotional support of learning or the feeling of its worsening. It was found that the majority of respondents have a somewhat negative perception of the transition to distance learning during the war due to limited communication, information overload, while teenagers see their advantages in such a format of educational process amid the effective martial law. It has been confirmed that a full-scale Russian invasion has become a powerful challenge to the psychological wellbeing of the Ukrainian adolescents. Adolescents who have been or are in a zone of hostilities or occupation are found to be at risk for adaptation disorders. However, those respondents who are in relatively safe areas in Ukraine still show significant stress reactions, their resilience balances within the limits of depression or uprisal, and some adolescents experience feelings of helplessness against the backdrop of chronic fatigue.