Personal characteristics of students as condition to form orientation to specific type of engineering activity

Convergence processes and the emergence of end-to-end technologies radically transform the production technology platform and affect the scientific picture of the world, which, in its turn, impacts the formation of the orientation of future technical specialists. This expands the sphere of personal development beyond the technical one. In the light of these changes, the problem of determining the personal characteristics arises that affects the formation of a focus on a certain type of engineering activity of future technical specialists. The research aims to empirically verify the significant interrelationships of personal characteristics with the focus on the type of engineering activity of future technical specialists. The sample of the study comprised 125 students of 1-2 courses enrolled in higher education programs of technical profiles. The average age of students is 18.8 years. The following methods were applied: “Orientation to the type of engineering activity” (author O.P. Godlinik) to determine the leading type of orientation to engineering activity; “Methodology for self-government research” (authors J. Kuhl, A. Fuhrman; adaptation O.V. Mitina, E.I. Rasskazova) - to study the self-regulation and self-control of personality; “Questionnaire of subjective localization of control” (authors S.R. Pantileev, V.V. Stolin, J. Rotter) - to study the internal orientation of the locus of control; “Johnson's Creativity Questionnaire” - to assess the manifestations of creativity accessible to external observation; “Golomstock's map of interests” (author A.E. Golomshtok, modification O.P. Meshkovskaya, etc.) - to determine the formation of interest in the field of electrical and radio engineering (technical profile of the profession). Spearman's rank correlation (rs) method was used. The research showed that among students of technical profile programs, the predominant focus was on production types of engineering activity; the personal characteristics of future technical specialists influence the formation of focus on engineering activity; for all types of engineering focus (except for research), self-regulation of future specialists significantly affects their orientation. The formation of focuses on types of engineering activity in students should be carried out with consideration for pedagogical support of self-regulation manifestations (self-determination, self-motivation, and self-relaxation) both in academic and extracurricular activities.