Values of service to society and professional ethics as interrelated determinants of civic development and patriotic motivation of students

Abstract

The article reveals the relationship between values of service to society and professional ethics as factors determining civic development and the nature of patriotic motivation of students under conditions of transformation of value orientations and weakening of traditional notions of duty. Professional ethics is interpreted as an internal moral regulator that translates abstract ideas about patriotism into the realm of socially productive behavior and responsibility for the results of work, which makes it possible to consider patriotism predominantly in an active rather than declarative form. Based on a data set obtained from 1,458 students of humanities and technical profiles, the dynamics of axiological attitudes along the educational trajectory are demonstrated: prosocial values ( service to society , professional ethics , civic responsibility ) increase statistically significantly from junior to senior years, while the importance of career and material priorities moderately decreases, remaining nevertheless high. The correlational structure indicates a close association between social responsibility and active patriotism (r=0.723), as well as a significant relationship between professional duty and patriotic activity (r=0.594), with a comparatively smaller contribution of empathy, which emphasizes the role of the normative-volitional component in transforming values into practice. A comparison of groups with different levels of involvement in socially oriented activities reveals pronounced differences in indices of civic maturity, ethical stability, and patriotic motivation with high statistical reliability, identifying social activity as a powerful predictor of ethical and civic development. Regression modeling demonstrates the leading contribution of the value of service (β=0.412) and professional responsibility (β=0,287) in explaining the variability of patriotic motivation with high predictive power of the model (adjusted R²=0.645), while the significance of intolerance to corruption confirms the role of ethical principledness. The presented results make it possible to assess the relevance of the study for the development of educational practices in which civic identity is formed through reflection on the social mission of the profession and consolidated by experience of moral choice and real social action.