High school students' ideas about future time perspective with the focus on different levels of personal maturity

Introduction. The authors investigate the problem of high school students' ideas about future time perspective, which reflect the level of their personal development and the ability to solve life and professional problems independently and creatively. The purpose of the study is to identify the structural and content features of high school students' ideas about future life perspective taking into account different levels of personal maturity. Materials and Methods. Ideas about future time perspective were considered based on the concepts of the event-situational approach and the personal-time arrangement of future time perspective. The following biographical and psychodiagnostic methods were used to collect empirical data: E. Korzhova's ‘Psychological autobiography'; The Twenty Statements Test (TST) by M.Kuhn and T. McPartland; A. Miklyaeva's ‘Scale of personal maturity self-assessment'. Methods of mathematical statistics were used to analyze the quantitative results of the research. Results. The authors summarize the findings of the theoretical and experimental study of high school students' ideas about their future time perspective. The structural components of the ideas have been clarified, their functions in building future time perspective and regulating social activities of high school students have been determined. The study reveals the distinctive features of students' ideas about future taking into account different levels of personal maturity in such aspects as event-richness and extensity of life perspective, its emotional coloring, concretization, and relationship with various aspects of personal maturity. The key content characteristics of the students' ideas about future reflect their experience of self-identity and awareness of changes. Their important function is to regulate high school students' activities, aimed at the implementation of life plans. The level of personal maturity affects structure and content of adolescent ideas about future time perspective. Conclusions. The structure of high school students' ideas about future time perspective includes a number of components that determine future well-being, socialization, and self-fulfillment. The principles and ideas, which have been developed as a result of the research, can be transferred to teachers' and psychologists' work with problems of life and professional self-determination of high school students.