FORMATION OF CRITICAL THINKING OF FUTURE PSYCHOLOGISTS BY STUDYING THE DISCIPLINE ‘MATHEMATICAL METHODS IN PSYCHOLOGY

Abstract

Abstract. The article highlights the peculiarities of the formation of ‘soft and hard skills’ (soft and hard skills) in psychology students, in particular, critical thinking. It was established that if earlier the employee was required to skillfully perform assigned tasks, to have a responsible attitude to professional duties, etc. Today, there is a need for specialists who have a systematic, holistic approach to solving any professional and interpersonal problems. That is why, in order to train high-quality personnel, modern universities must improve their capabilities, implement innovative teaching methods, and use the latest technologies. The main forms and methods of teaching the discipline ‘mathematical methods in psychology’ are described, which fully ensure the development of the necessary professional competencies, in particular, the formation of critical thinking in psychology students. The purpose of the article is to establish the role of the educational discipline ‘mathematical methods in psychology’ in the formation of critical thinking of psychology students. Materials and methods. To diagnose the level of critical thinking, we used the critical thinking test of the American author L. Starkey, adapted by O. L. Lutsenko. Processing of the results was carried out using the statistical package for social sciences IBM SPSS Statistics 20.0. Research results. 137 students of the third year of the educational and professional program ‘Psychology’ of the Lviv State University of Internal Affairs participated in the study. Based on the conducted research, we statistically confirmed the obtained changes, in particular, in the indicators of a high level (p<0.001), very high (p<0.01), medium (p<0.05), low (p<0.01) and very low (p<0.01). Conclusions. In general, we can conclude that teaching the discipline ‘Mathematical methods in psychology’ forms a number of skills, in particular, such as: self-criticism, generalization of the received information and its critical rethinking, which fully ensures the development of critical thinking in psychology students.