Pedagogical support for Ukrainian war-affected children: future teachers` readiness to work in crisis. Comparative analysis of research results in Ukraine and Poland

“The children and young people I had the opportunity of assisting did not have long-term or permanent plans to stay in Poland (parents' decision), so the most reasonable form was education, integration, and ensuring their well-being during their stay".

Discussion and recommendations

The survey findings revealed that student volunteers, in their efforts with ID children, tried to help restore their self-efficacy, adaptability, and resilience. For this purpose, for example, the youngest students were involved in writing postcards and playing games with adults (including parents) to create a positive tone for accepting and confronting life's hardships; to make them feel safe, and to give them less access to the news, as they feel vulnerable and depressed when experiencing difficult events.

Therefore, in the professional training of students for the implementation of pedagogical functions in primary school, it is necessary to provide a psychological module of separate topics on working with students in crisis, in particular children of war. Certainly, in light of the constantly evolving circumstances, it is crucial for educators to "adapt to the changing reality, foster mature communication even in stressful situations, and serve as a mentor to guide students towards their personal growth" (Ivanova, 2022, p. 2). At the same time, it is essential to differentiate the following individual psychological features of development that should be considered pedagogical activity:

-emotional and will sphere - the dominant mood of the child, the strength of emotional reactions, the ability to show restraint and control involuntary desires or emotional states, etc.;

- aspects related to specifics of one's character and self-regulation of behavior encompass the availability of identified accentuation and their characteristic features, the arbitrariness of behavior regulation in situations of pedagogical interaction, the ability to show responsibility in behavior, moral regulation of behavior, etc.

- the student's attitude to the surrounding world and self-reflection includes factors like possessing a stable motivation for content-based learning (cognitive, positional, social or other), personal anxiety, attitude to various activities, etc.

In the conditions of wartime, Ukrainian and Polish teachers admitted that they experienced psychoemotional tension, overload, stress, and sometimes a lack of readiness to communicate with students who have experienced significant war trauma (e.g., lost parents or other relatives, homes, were forced to move to other regions of the country or the world, etc.) Therefore, educators need psychological support and methodological assistance. According to research conducted by GoGlobal, the war in Ukraine has changed not only students (who, despite stress and disappointment, have become more empathetic, ready to help, nationally conscious, and inclined to volunteer and support the Armed Forces) but also educators. The data indicates that 54% of teachers have observed symptoms of professional burnout, presenting a significant risk to the quality of education in educational institutions (however, it is important to acknowledge that there may be subjectivity in recognizing their psychological well-being). (Education in the context of war, 2023).

The renewal of the educational process in schools and universities during martial law in Ukraine serves as a form of therapy for many educators, as it allows teachers to integrate into their typical professional role, helping them rediscover a sense of purpose and value during a challenging period for the country. Therefore, students, even if they have experienced suffering and stress, can also help each other and the teacher to "recover", draw positive energy from joint educational interaction, and engage in volunteering (for example, weaving camouflage nets for the military, making trench candles; creating amulets for Ukrainian soldiers, "motivational" drawings, greeting cards, patriotic bracelets, souvenirs, etc.).

O. Ivanova emphasizes the necessity of developing the teacher's resilience as the ability of the human psyche to recover, especially relevant in connection with the importance of resisting current stresses. The scientist offers her definition of this concept:

"[...] Resilience is a personal competence that is a natural and dynamic combination of knowledge, skills and practical abilities, ways of thinking, professional, ideological, and civic qualities, and moral, ethical, and spiritual values and determines a relatively stable ability of a person to conscious self-regulation in various life circumstances. This competence, in our opinion, should become the key [...] of the teacher's personality in the first place" (Ivanova, 2022, р. 2).

Therefore, we propose that the professional training of future teachers should include a professional development module, introducing techniques to increase stress resistance and coping with burnout in working with students who have war trauma or are experiencing other crises. It is equally important to strengthen the potential of practical psychologists in educational institutions to provide mental health and psychosocial support (to children, teachers, and parents) during (after) war. We recommend that the content of higher education for Ukrainian and Polish students should include a methodological case study on adaptation in crisis of professional activity and support for the psycho-emotional state of children and their parents.

To provide psychological and pedagogical support for the adaptation of Ukrainian students to studying in foreign educational institutions, to overcome the language barrier and communication challenges, the EU has developed a practical guide that includes simple informative images accompanied by the most commonly used phrases in Ukrainian followed by translations into different languages - English, French, German, Czech, Polish, Finnish, Latvian, etc. (Publications Office of the European Union., 2022). This is just another demonstration of boundless solidarity without borders and assistance to children of war provided by the civilized world (Fig. 6). We propose these materials to future teachers as a didactic tool for teaching students at the first stage of adaptation to the country of residence.

When training students to work with learners in crisis, we also focus on the common educational heritage of Ukraine and Poland, i.e. a special historical and pedagogical module in teaching. In this regard, for example, it is worth turning to pedagogical comparative to analyze the leading ideas of the Ukrainian humanist Vasyl Sukhomlynsky (1918-1970), who devoted his entire life to students and presented his ideas in the book "I Give My Heart to Children" (Sukhomlynsky, 1976). In this book, the author, perhaps for the first time, mentions the Polish teacher Janusz Korczak as a role model Janusz Korczak - a well-known Polish pedagogue who died in a Nazi gas cell with his foster children at the Jewish Orphanage (1942) and fulfilled his professional and moral duty with dignity, although he had the opportunity to save his life but refused to do so three times. (Korczak, 2009).

Example: Slovak-Ukrainian pictogram for children and educator

Example: German-Ukrainian pictogram for children and educators

Fig. 6 Pictograms for students and teachers, Publications Office of the European Union (2022)

Source: https://data.europa.eu/doi/10.2830/145568

Olha Sukhomlynska describes the common moral imperatives of these teachers who lived in difficult conditions, pointing out that they are united by the "idea of cordocentrism," when the development of a child's personality takes place by what Korczak called "cognition of the heart," and accordingly Sukhomlynska writes about him as "an example of unbreakable spirit," the ideal of a teacher capable of loving children to the extent of self-sacrifice (Sukhomlynska, 2021, p. 88). After all, an assault on the child's dignity, and disrespect for him or her as a small person by an adult is significantly more harmful, because this soul is defenseless, unable to protect itself, and violence breeds evil.

“Examine your own large and calloused hand in comparison to your child's small and delicate hand. Notice the contrast between your rough skin and their smooth and thin skin. Observe the little ones, completely reliant on you, without the strength to protect themselves or assert their rights. It is challenging to find a parallel in the life of an adult. No longer driven solely by passion, every strike carries a weight akin to that of a convicted prisoner." (Brzezinska-Waleszczyk, 2016).

In the conditions of the russian-Ukrainian war, the future of children is mostly in the hands of professional educators. Therefore, we consider the issues of psychological and socio-pedagogical support for children of war, including those with disabilities, to be a perspective for further research.

CONCLUSIONS

Research by foreign scholars has revealed the long-term effects of large-scale physical destruction and war on children, their level of literacy, learning conditions, and health (based on the materials of World War II) (Akbulut-Yuksel, 2014). Therefore, it is crucial to review the cause-and-effect evidence of the long-term negative impact on the development of Ukrainian education to diminish or interfere with it. Therefore, among other things, it is crucial to outline means of ensuring psychological and pedagogical support to children of war who have suffered from a full-scale russian invasion of Ukraine (2022). To achieve this, it is necessary to master the techniques and methods of overcoming stress and psychological "overload", as well as the techniques of providing psychological assistance. Therefore, it is necessary to develop, systematize, and provide parents and students with relevant information resources for helping people who are in difficult life circumstances due to forced relocation, loss of relatives, etc. These may include popular science articles, guides, webinars, tips, thematic interviews with famous people, self-help techniques, children's fiction books about the war, educational infographics, etc. Future teachers of Ukraine and Poland have already been partially involved in this work in the course of our research.

The use of electronic communication tools and distance learning actualizes a particular aspect of modern teacher training - the development of infomedia literacy, critical thinking, skills in creating a media lesson, and media hygiene. After all, in the current context, there are information wars, cyberbullying, and cybergrooming that all participants in the educational process may face. Experiencing stress and the war psychological trauma students become more sensitive and vulnerable to virtual fraudsters, mostly through social media and fake accounts.Therefore, in the post-war period, to promote the national identity of the younger generation and quality education, it is necessary, first of all, to protect the media (information) space from ideological manipulation and provocation. We applied these resources to update the content of higher pedagogical education institutions in Ukraine and Poland to train students - prospective teachers - for the pedagogical assistance of children in crisis (those with war trauma due to stress, deportation, shelling, loss of relatives, fear of death or loss of home, as well as orphans, children from single-parent families, etc.).

Acknowledgments: The research was carried out as part of the project "Preparing future teachers to work with students affected by the russian invasion of Ukraine" with the support of the "Kosciuszko Foundation Grant Program for Ukrainian Scientists" (2022). We would like to thank the Kosciuszko Foundation for supporting Ukrainian students, teachers, and scientists during the war and the entire progressive European community.

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