Almost all career guidance technologies, standards and approaches for IT-workers relate to technical or soft skills, but do not take into account that not all people can become the masters in IT domain because of some limitations of their abilities. Unfortunately, human psychological abilities are often out of HRs' focus. That is why, we wished to study important abilities of IT-learners in projection on professionally important qualities of IT professionals from point of view of evolution (changes) of some intelligence and personality indices on the edge of a human transition from adolescent to young adult as a future IT-specialist. It has been revealed that structure of intelligence can change at micro-age intervals over the high school and university learning, though the most popular view of researchers was relatively stable level of intelligence after 15 years-old. Besides, our research has demonstrated a diference in that structure in high school pupils and university students despite the fact that all students studied in specialized classes or faculties and represented selective samples. Our findings allowed to propose educators to adapt educational process of IT-learners with regard to specific and/or non-specific training such professionally important psychological qualities as ability to solve practical computational tasks and operation with spacial objects (both 2D and 3D).
As noted in the materials of the World Economic Forum in Davos (January 2024), a teacher of specialized
education can enter the top 10 professions on the labor market in the period 2023-2027 [
Modern professional and technical education allows people to get creative skills and personal
development skills that can be transferred to others in the virtual space [
Purpose. To analyze the variation of students’ intellectual and personality qualities necessary for the formation of ICT competences during vocational high school and university learning.
In a screening study with the help of ICT, it was developed. To identify the dominant fields of
intellectual activity of high school pupils (grades 8-11) and university students (1-6 years), it was applied
methodology [
M. Luscher color and associative test (pairs comparison method); purpose of use is an assessment of stress, balance of psychological qualities; recorded parameters are as follows: summarized deviation (SD), Shiposh vegetative coeficient (VK), stress level (S), working capacity (R), heteronomy-autonomy (H), concentricity-eccentricity (C), balance of personality traits (BP), the balance of the vegetative system (BV).
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI); the purpose of use is an introspective questionnaire to indicate difering psychological preferences in how people perceive the world around them and make decisions an assessment of the ability to certain activities and individual properties of communication; traditional indices of an individual typology estimation according to the Myers-Briggs methodology are recorded based on the evaluation of the prevailing signs on the 4 criterion scales: extraversion E – introversion I (orientation of consciousness), intuition N – sensory S (way of orientation in a situation), thought/judgment J – perception P (method of preparation of decisions), thinking T – experience F (decision-making); in our research, we used quantitative evaluation of subjects’ report on each scale, where each value was calculated as a sum of positive answers to the appropriate question.
Modified Intellectual Structure Test after R. Amthauer (TCI); purpose of the test use is an assessment
of the development level and structural features of intelligence, as well as attention and memory
[
The values of the structural components of intelligence were calculated as the sum of the correct answers for each subtest, the values of verbal (VI) and nonverbal (NI) intelligence were calculated as a sum of values, respectively, LS, GE, AN, ME and RA, ZR, FS, WU. The overall score II was calculated as the sum of values VI and NI.
The resulting primary data was entered into a spreadsheet for further analysis. Test results were not personified, but were taken into account for each grad/course separately.
The data analysis included: • comparative evaluation of indices measured; • visualization of these data; • comparative analysis for grads (K8-K11) and university years (Y1-Y6); • stepwise discriminant analysis to reveal intellect and personality structure indices for comparable groups.
Subjects. In order to verify the efectiveness of the methodology, pupils of 8th – 11th grades of high
school (technological and nature-math classes, = 145) and students of 1st to 6th year (the same
vacation, = 257) were involved in the observation process on-line (https://tests-beta.talents.center/)
as highly motivated volunteers. Such a vacation was in the study focus, because these groups of
vacations have similar intellect structure and and demonstrated similar dynamics in school grades [
It is important for psychological and pedagogical analyses to take into account that children of the generation Z grew and got education when computers became widly accessed in comparison with previous generations. As a result, their intellectual and personal abilities seriously changed, firstly, in relation to less mental mathematical operations and requirements to memory, secondly, in relation to verbal and communication skills, especially needed for increased self-attractiveness. So, it is possible to expect that the structure and general level of the intelligence could change as well, and previously existed in 20th century view of psychologists on the intelligence’s micro-age dynamics could become not so correct, in general. In addition, new professions, especially related to ICT, evoked new requirements for skills structure and their formation during education process at high school and university.
At present, among the researchers of the problem of intelligence’s study, there are two opposite trends in the interpretation of the nature of intelligence, which arose within the framework of the testological paradigm: one is associated with the recognition of a general factor of intelligence, the other – with the assertion of the existence of a set of independent intellectual abilities (intelligences).
Among the multitude of theories of intelligence, one group can be singled out: experimental psychological theories of intelligence. They became a kind of response to the unconstructiveness of testological theories of intelligence and were designed to identify the mechanisms of intellectual activity. Within the limits of the genetic approach, intelligence is understood as a consequence of complicated adaptation to the demands of the environment in the natural conditions of human interaction with the external world.
The recognized point of view has been formulated by J. Piaget, who believed that intelligence is the
most advanced form of the organism’s adaptation to the environment, which constitutes the unity of the
processes of assimilation (reproduction of elements of the environment in the psyche of the subject in the
form of cognitive mental schemes) and accommodation (change of these cognitive schemes) depending
on the requirements of the objective world) [
We agree with this notion, but with regards to increasing role of the digital environment as a part of a human “natural” environment. Gen Zers are tech-depended. Especially, this is important for formation of professional activity of IT specialists, because IT vocational specialization is very popular at the basic school, and digital literacy is a core of the Reskilling Revolution launched by the World Economic Forum in January of 2020 (https://initiatives.weforum.org/reskilling-revolution/home). Besides, they are the first really digitally native generation, perhaps ready for earlier changes in the intelligence structure.
According to the theory of J. Piaget, 5 stages can be distinguished in this process (5 stages in the
formation of operations) [
Thus, intellectual development is the development of operational structures of intelligence, in the
process of which mental operations gradually acquire qualitatively new properties, such as coordination,
reversibility, automation, reduction. Such transformations of the intelligence can be considered as a
basis for “The Theory of Multiple Intelligences” proposed by H. Gardner in 1983 [
This corresponds the idea that a human intelligence is evolutionary connected to the personality
features and vise versa, a human personality is a result of his/her intellectual development. Thus, the
social development of mankind naturally afects and needs the intelligence development with special
attention to some components (sub-types) of it depending on the world economics transformation
and appearance of new professions. Particularly, this is important if accounting the role of artificial
intelligence in humans’ life [
To date, hundreds of researchers still study the scientific domain “intelligence” and this is evolutionary process because of increasing role not only the general intelligence, but of its diferent structural components, from one hand, and new knowledge about them, from another hand. Besides, study of the intelligence nature is continuing from position of psychology, biology, pedagogics and technique. There are at least three interpretations of the concept of intelligence: • biological: the ability to consciously adapt to a new situation; • pedagogical: ability to learn; • structural/behavioral (formulated by A. Binet): intelligence as “the ability to adapt the means to the goal.”
In psychological literature, the concept of “intelligence” also has 3 meanings: 1) the general ability to learn and solve problems, which determines the success of any activity and is the basis of other abilities; 2) system of all human cognitive abilities (from feeling to thinking); 3) the ability to solve problems without external trial and error (in thought), the opposite of the ability to intuitively know.
Absence of generally-recognized definition of the term “intelligence” can indicate that study of this issue is still far from the finish, and any new knowledge and research results can help both the theory and practice. According to the goal and context of our research, we use the following philosophical definition proposed by the “Encyclopedia of Education” (Ukraine): Intelligence is “A holistic integrated mental formation that ensures the generation, construction and reconstruction of personal mental models of the world”.
Many researcher share the view that a human intelligence is formed in early years by 20 and left more
or less stable after that. But the question is what the intelligence level can be from one generation to
another if education, quality of life and technology development need its development? How can this
corresponds to the so-called Flynn efect that means a rising intelligence test performance’s results in
the general population over time and generations? How can it varies across countries and intelligence
domains, and its substantive meaning and causes remain elusive [
What is important in context of our study, according to authors, “Therefore, increases in specific
abilities may have so far masked a g-based ability decrease. This idea is consistent with previously
reported declines of reaction times (i.e., highly g-loaded measures) over the past century” [
There are known not so many studies of the intelligence development over high school and university period, both by screening and monitoring methods. Such research, especially experimental ones, have a number of dificulties. F.e., a change in the composition of students in a school class, especially when moving from basic to high school; changing the pupil’s learning vocation; changing the composition of students’ group; improvement of education techniques and methods, especially because of implementing innovative digital technologies etc.
E. Budrina’s dissertation study demonstrated that the dynamics of intellectual development in
adolescence (taking into account the peculiarities of the manifestations of convergent, divergent and
stylistic properties of the intellect) has a non-linear, multidirectional character. At the same time
four possible types of changes in the indicators of the intellect properties were empirically recorded:
progressive, stagnant, regressive and jumpy. Leap-like changes are mainly associated with a drop in the
productivity of intellectual indicators at the age of 13-14 years, as it was known from other publications
[
Tens of thousands of intelligence changes’ studies have been conducted worldwide. However, data on micro-age changes in the relationship between psychometric intelligence and its dynamics are insuficiently presented in scientific publications and have varying outcomes.
Studies of the age dynamics of intelligence have identified a number of microperiods in the
development of intellectual abilities of individual intelligence components [
According to the experimental data obtained under the leadership of B. Ananiev, the process of
psychophysiological development of adults is heterogeneous and contradictory. From 18 to 25 years,
the main age period of the university students, the level of development of thinking is higher than the
level of development of attention. Increases in the level of development of attention occur at the age
of 22 and 24, when there is a decline in the level of development of thinking. At low indicators of the
development of attention, their relative stability is preserved, and variability is noted in thinking at high
indicators. In the future, the dynamics in the ratio of levels of development of thinking and attention
changes [
Vocational influence to the intelligence structure has been studied by V. Bodriakov and N. Fomina [
It is possible to conclude that intelligence is a dynamic, developing system, and “slices” of the state of the intellectual system can be adequately understood only in the context of the principle of development and targeted function. According to the author of the structural-dynamic theory of intelligence D. Ushakov, the structure of intelligence is a result of individual intellectual development and takes place by interaction of three main factors such as individual intellectual potential, cognitive mechanisms of intellectual functions and the influence of the environment. But we strongly believe it is reasonable to add one more important factor “purposeful mental activity” that can play a significant role in adolescence, because such an activity afect the structure of intelligence transformation.
As it has been demonstrated in our past pilot study, the technique proposed for assessment of “hidden” abilities of schoolchildren for the high non-profiled schools and realized as a special ICT can be used in common education practice. Indices (important to define math- and/or IT-abilities of pupils) include elements of the intellects structure, personality structure and balance of psychological qualities. Those results of such an analysis articulated that pupils with math and IT abilities (8th-10th grads of the same school) had similar features in comparison with rest pupils, but all three set of test indices (intellect structure, psychological preferences and vegetative balance) were important in formation of psychophysiological portrait of studied groups. The question that was discussed in psychological literature up to now dealt with the relationship of vegetative features and psychological preferences.
Because have found that math and IT abilities had similar features, we analyze these two vocational groups together in this study, paying particular attention to dynamic changes of indices registered over a time of school and university. The method of analysis was a screening observation that can produce another results than monitoring of the same young people during the same period. But, at the same time, the monitoring has its own ‘incorrectness’ because of “jumping’ of environment and social conditions when former pupils cross the boundary of school learning. Besides, according to practice, many math school pupils change their vocational education and prefer to obtain IT professions, as well as some of IT pupils can go to another professions. From this point of view, both university future professions (students of IT and math) are not represented by only school pupils of the same vocation.
Understanding these dificulties in maintaining uniformity in school and university learning groups in
the specified professions, as well as keeping in mind the final goal of university education (to become a
professional in IT), we study indices of intelligence (Int), personality (Pers) and balance of psychological
qualities (BPQ) of subjects performed corresponding tests on-line as volunteers who were motivated to
get real information concerned their special features important for IT specialty. The starting point to
use particular these tests was findings of B. Shneiderman who clearly demonstrated eficiency of such
an approach for understanding psychology of software designers [
Data obtained after investigation (tests performance) were averaged by the year of learning (4 high school years, 4 Bachelor’s degree, 2 Master’s degree; SY, BD and MD, respectively) indices included in analysis: 11 indices of the intellect structure, 8 indices of personality and 8 indices of BPQ.
From the first look, results of verbal (VI), non-verbal (NI) and integrated (II) intelligence indices’ change over 10 years can be unexpected (figure 1), because they increase year-by-year at school, are lower in BD, and increasing in MD.
This result can be explained by the “bluring” of BD indices because of students entered the university on the base of academic skills, but not intelligence abilities. The MD level is a result of a special selection of BD students with abilities and achievements to research activity, in general case.
More detailed analysis of the intelligence structure has revealed that LS component (testing of language, ability to formulate judgments) demonstrates the highest level of developments from the 8th grad to the end of university learning (figure 2).
It is noteworthy that the WU (spatial thinking) indicator is the lowest for university students in all years. Another dynamic have intelligence structure indices GE (conceptual intuitive thinking), AN (combinatorial abilities, mobility and ability to switch thinking), RA (ability to solve practical computational problems character) that increase in MD students, but are not significant in BDs. Component AN needs to be studied more particular in future, because it has a significant value in MD students of 1 st year, but decreased in MD students of the 2nd year that was not expected and can be explained easily.
Importance of every intelligence component for professional skills is clear from the vector diagram where learners’ and experienced professional IT specialists’ indices are presented together (figure 3). As it was possible to expect, almost all intelligence components have higher values in professionals. But the conceptual intuitive thinking GE is slightly higher in MD students of the 2nd year. It should be noted, however, that this indicator varies little across all subject groups. What is noteworthy is that the working memory indicator of professionals is lower than in all other groups. This may indicate that for professional IT specialists, verbal memory as such is of less importance than abilities related to handling both non-verbal and verbal information.
The greatest diference between IT-professionals and IT-learners is manifested in ability to solve practical computational tasks RA and operation with spacial objects (FS and WU). This may indicate that these qualities are not so much developed during learning process, but are developed and trained during professional activity. In turn, this may serve as an indication to specialists in the teaching IT learners of the need to include special training of these professionally important qualities, possibly with the help of tasks for their non-specific development.
To analyze principal diferences between school and university learners in the intelligence structure and balance of psychological qualities of learners, the forward stepwise discriminant analysis has been carried out (Statistica 6.0). The most significant indices were included into the discriminant model according to the criteria of the highest value of D2-Makhalanobis factor. A significant diference has been revealed by two indices: WU (spatial thinking) indicator and GE (conceptual intuitive thinking) at the significance level < 0.001. This fact corresponds data analyzed above, namely, their opposite dynamics: at school WU is better than at students, and GE vise versa. It looks like the GE index is trained in IT-learners over education period.
It is recognized by psychologists and educators that the education process forms human personality features in general, not only psychometric intelligence. To study their mutual influence, we analyzed correlation of measured personality trait indices with intelligence structure indices as well as balance of psychological qualities over the high school and university learning period, because development of the individuum is not quick process and we expected that some personal features could have common relationship with professional development.
It was used the forward stepwise multiregression analysis to describe every psychological index from measured. Three steps selection allowed to evaluate the most informative indices. The results (table1) have shown that multiple correlation can be very high and significant. Only Pers’ features perception P and thinking T did not have significant and high relationship with indices of Int and BPQ.
The most influenive index from BPQs for development of personality trait in IT-learners
concentricityeccentricity C turned out. At the same time, among intelligence indices, the index of combinatorial
abilities, mobility and ability to switch thinking AN was important in relation to criterion scales
orientation-of-consciousness E–I and decision-making F-T. It is possible to suppose that those indices
could be professionally important qualities for IT professionals. That result corresponded earlier findings
of B. Shneiderman [
IT-related occupations are in the focus of the global economics and business. Many young people want to get appropriate education and job hoping to achieve success in life. Educators are actively involved in this expanding process and rely on their practical experience and digital tools. Almost all career guidance technologies, standards and approaches relate to technical or soft skills, but do not take into account that not all people can become the masters in IT domain because of some limitations of their abilities. Unfortunately, human psychophysiological abilities are often out of HRs’ focus. That is why, we wished to study important abilities of IT-learners in projection on professionally important qualities of IT professionals from point of view of evolution (changes) of some intelligence and personality indices on the edge of a human transformation from adolescent to young adult as a future IT-specialist.
It has been revealed that the structure of intelligence can change at micro-age intervals over high school and university learning. However, the most popular view of researchers was a relatively stable level of intelligence after 15 years old. Besides, our research demonstrated a diference in that structure in high school pupils and university students even though all students studied in specialized classes or faculties and represented selective samples (vocational learning) independently on a particular organization of the education process of subjects.
Our findings allowed to propose educators to adapt educational process of IT-learners with regard to specific and/or non-specific training such professionally important psychological qualities as ability to solve practical computational tasks and operation with spacial objects (both 2D and 3D). However such interventions should be made about specifics of a particular educational institution, its education process organization as well as an individual style of student learning. Particular techniques and their implementation have to correspond to particular education environment’s opportunities.
The tasks of relationship between structural components of intelligence and psychological features of a human personality trait can give deeper understanding of personality development in relation to IT professional skills and are planned for future study.
Some limitations of such a study are predefined by providing the online test performance to maintain equal opportunities for all subjects (observed persons) and comparability of test performance results.