Constructive aggressiveness as a psychological and pedagogical resource for developing assertive behaviour skills of students in the modern educational environment

Abstract

The increase in aggressive manifestations within the educational environment is traditionally interpreted through prevention and correction, while the energetic and motivational potential of aggressiveness remains outside pedagogical use. The contradiction between the unambiguously negative reading of aggressiveness and the need to form in students the skills of confident, interest-defending behaviour frames the question of constructive aggressiveness as a controllable psychological and pedagogical resource. The aim is to construct a structural and functional model linking constructive aggressiveness with assertive behaviour skills and with the conditions of the modern educational environment. Conceptual and categorial analysis, systematisation, the comparative method, structural and functional modelling and content analysis of educational regulatory documents are applied. A distinction is proposed between destructive aggressiveness, constructive aggressiveness and assertiveness according to direction, attitude to the social norm and outcome for the subject and the environment. Motivational and goal-related, emotional and regulative, behavioural and communicative, and reflexive components of constructive aggressiveness are identified, and their correspondence to particular assertive skills and to the metasubject results of the federal state educational standards is established. The resulting comparison shows that the transition from aggressiveness to assertiveness is achieved not by suppressing self-asserting activity but by redirecting it towards socially acceptable goals using already operating pedagogical instruments, which removes the false dilemma between the safety of the environment and the agency of the student.