Cadet's representations of security and value-semantic predictors of its formation in military high school

Introduction. The main problem of this study is compliance of military students' understanding of security with the professional competence requirements for military officers. Material and Methods. Understanding of security is considered as a complex semantic construct in the mind, and one of the main elements of the professional ideas system. Theoretical analysis and content analysis of the interview data enabled the authors to identify the main components of the concept of security and elicit the criteria of formation of security understanding. The authors used the method of in-depth interviews, followed by a qualitative content analysis and an assessment of formation of safety understanding of 96 first-year and fifths-year military students. Results. The authors found that the majority of military students demonstrate rather restricted knowledge and understanding of the concept security, including its multi-dimensionality, impossibility to reduce it to the physical security and defense. According to the results of statistical data processing the authors found significant positive correlation between the meaningfulness of life, the maturity of the system of personal values and the formation of understanding security. It is suggested that the value-semantic characteristics of the person can be studied as predictors of formation of security knowledge and understanding. Conclusions. Underdeveloped understanding of the concept of security by the majority of military students is determined by traditional understanding of security as a physical defense within the framework of military education. Individual differences in understanding of security and their relationship to the characteristics of the value and semantic system leads to the conclusion that the value-semantic characteristics of the person are the predictors of formation of military students' understanding of security.