Achieving a state of flow in educational activities by university students as a development factor of sustainable behaviour

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Introduction
The relevance of this problem is confirmed by the dissatisfaction of modern students with the classical academic form of education.Without students' motivation, learning becomes uninteresting and unsatisfying.The approach based on M. Csikszentmihalyi's concept of "flow" suggests that a state of preoccupation, similar to a flow state, can be the key to successful learning.This state is characterized by complete focus on the activity and inclusion in the educational process.Creating a learning environment that promotes a state of "flow" not only restores enjoyment, but also promotes more effective learning and student development.
М. Csiksgentmihalyi, identifies seven conditions for the emergence of the state of "flow", which in the context of the educational process emphasize the factors that promote "flow" in students when solving problems [1].
1. Feedback: The learner should be able to see progress and receive feedback, which particularly favors 'flow' in playful, quasi-professional and practice-oriented activities.2. Understanding the goal and rules: Clear goals and prompt feedback structure activities, helping the learner to adapt strategies based on feedback.3. Balance of difficulty and ability: The optimal task provides a balance between difficulty and interest without causing excessive anxiety.4. Fusion of action and consciousness: The learner's full concentration favors overcoming negative qualities and excelling over competence levels.5.The importance of control: Intensive student engagement in a task increases the student's sense of control, especially when actions meet standards of success.6. Altered perception of time: Preoccupation "compresses" time, giving the impression that less time has passed than actually has.7. Activity as motivation: The state of "flow" brings satisfaction from the process itself, becoming a motivation to continue the task.
In the "flow" state, the individual is intrinsically motivated and it has been empirically confirmed that motivation, especially the fulfillment of the need for autonomy, promotes "flow".Current research focuses on the relationship of the "flow" state to an individual's motivation.Csikszentmihalyi found that "flow" is positively related to intrinsic motivation and negatively related to extrinsic and amotivation [2].Three key conditions for getting into 'flow' include clear goals, feedback and a balance between challenge and ability.Massimini investigated the role of challenges and skills, identifying that 'flow' is achieved at the edge of ability, especially when the balance of challenges and skills is above the individual's average level [3].The 'flow' model represents motivation as the result of interactions, describing it as "emergent motivation" [4].The state of "flow" in education is a response to interactions rather than the result of innate characteristics of the individual or the environment.The experience of 'flow' can change in response to events, such as anxiety or boredom, and can lead to emergent immediate goals or long-term interests.The state of "flow" is intrinsically rewarding and motivates the repetition of positive experiences.However, unlike other theories of motivation, the 'flow' model suggests that as skills develop, activities cease to be so engaging, requiring more challenging tasks to maintain 'flow'.This creates a psychological mechanism of choice that promotes skill development and the search for new avenues of growth.In personal life, 'flow activity' represents a focused attention and energy on activities in which 'flow' has previously been achieved.This is conceptually important for education because creating an environment that promotes a state of "flow" can improve the learning process and student learning outcomes [5].Additional research is required to fully understand the application of 'flow' in education and to develop empirically based interventions.
Ensuring effective learning becomes an important issue and the state of 'flow' plays a key role in this process.Research shows that "flow" is achieved by balancing the complexity of the task and the student's ability.Selecting tasks appropriate to the student's level is essential to achieving this state.The key conditions for generating "flow" are clear goals, feedback, a sense of control, and student freedom in choosing how to complete the task.Csikszentmihalyi's theory emphasizes the importance also of individual student characteristics in creating conditions of satisfaction and confidence in the learning process.Student motivation also influences the formation of a state of "flow".Understanding the meaning of the material being learnt and its practical benefits is a key factor.Thus, research into the conditions for the formation of 'flow' in learning activities makes demands for clear objectives, feedback, appropriate task complexity and consideration of individual differences, with student motivation also playing a significant role.

Materials and methods
The study involved 109 students (98 females and 11 males) of the Bachelor's, and Master's degree of the Faculty of Psychology of the Southern Federal University.The age of respondents ranged from 17 to 32 years old with an average age of 21.8.The survey was conducted using Google Forms service.To determine the expression of the components of the "flow" state in the learning activities of the respondents, we compiled a questionnaire of the expression of the components of the "flow" state in the learning activities.The questionnaire represents 4 thematic blocks (lectures, seminars, coursework and project work, student involvement) contains 27 questions with scales aimed at identifying the degree of expression of the components of the "flow" state in the learning activities.

Results
To analyze students' responses to questions containing scales, medians were determined from the respondents' answers in Table 1. 1 -There's no such thing; 10 -this happens very often.

5
How often do you feel you are in control of mastering the lecture material?
1 -There's no such thing; 10 -this happens very often. 6 In question № 3, half of the respondents choose options 7, 8, 9.This shows that many students receive quick feedback on the content of the lecture and can effectively work through the difficulties arising in understanding the topics offered to them, the data is presented in Figure 1.In question № 6, half of the students have answers 7, 8, 9, indicating that many students feel a balance between the content of the lecture and their ability to understand the content. 1 -There's no such thing; 10 -this happens very often.

7
Let us consider the most interesting in our opinion answers of the respondents.In question 3, half of the students choose options 8, 9 and 10.
In question № 4, half of the respondents choose answer options 7, 8, and 9 indicating that many students feel intrinsic satisfaction after attending seminar classes.These results are clearly illustrated in Fig 2. Almost the same situation is observed in question №. 5; the common answers of half of the respondents were 6, 7, 8.It is possible to conclude that the mastering of the topics of the seminar classes proceeds without excessive efforts.
However, it should be noted that a relatively large percentage of respondents chose answer option 6.This may indicate that the load within the framework of seminar classes is distributed optimally and designed for the zone of students' closest development.
As for the block devoted to coursework and project work, we obtained the following results, which are presented in Table 3.How often is the completion of coursework or project work easy, without excessive effort?
1 -There's no such thing; 10 -this happens very often.

6
How often do you feel a balance between the challenges of coursework or project work and your ability to meet them?
1 -There's no such thing; 10 -this happens very often.

7
How often are your thoughts solely occupied with tasks when completing coursework or project work, so that you have little or no time to distract yourself (if the deadline is still a long way off)?
1 -There's no such thing; 10 -this happens very often. 1 -There's no such thing; 10 -this happens very often.

6
In question № 1, half of the respondents choose answer options 7, 9 and 10, half of the students focus on course or project work.
Question № 2 reflects a wide range of opinions regarding the understanding of their goals for coursework and project work presented in Figure 3. Half of the respondents choose answers 5, 8, 9, which indicates that the semantic aspect for a significant number of respondents needs elaboration.
A similar situation is observed in question № 3. Half of the respondents chose answer options 5, 8, 9. Perhaps it is justified by the specifics of interaction with each teacher in turn supervising the implementation of course and project works.The data are presented in Figure 3.There is a wide range of opinions in the answers to the remaining questions.The block devoted to identifying the degree of engagement in the learning process is demonstrated by Table 4.

Discussion
The findings are in general agreement with those of researchers on this topic.Lee [5] suggested that academic procrastination, which prevents entering the "flow" state, is a motivational problem related to the difficulties in motivating procrastinators.Procrastinators who are difficult to motivate tend to put off tasks until the last moment, which can make it difficult to learn new knowledge.M. Csiksgentmihalyi [1] emphasize that "flow theory" is closely related to learning in a broad sense, whether in the learning environment or outside it.Learning involves the acquisition of new skills through tasks that stimulate concentration and provide opportunities for problem solving.S. Mustafa, N. Elias, T. Roslan, and D. Noah [6] provide empirical evidence linking "flow" to mastery goals rather than performance goals.M. Csiksgentmihalyi notes that the state of "flow" itself contributes to the emergence of motivation.A person engaged in an activity can develop motivation because of the quality of experience in the process ."Flow" also includes positive appraisal of functioning, enhancing performance and stimulating motivation [7].To develop a psychologically healthy personality, M. Csiksgentmihalyi suggests modifying the environment for ease in achieving "flow" and helping others achieve this state [8].
In addition, the state of "flow" could quite possibly be related to the meaning of education and the degree of alienation from the educational process [9,10].The data in Table 4 show that improving conditions aimed at increasing the degree of usefulness, sense of progress could indeed contribute to the level of engagement through self-regulation of one's learning activities.Self-regulation affects academic performance and is manifested in the ability to determine when to start, maintain and end purposeful actions [11].

Conclusion
The results of our study show that: 1) Students generally experience elements of the "flow" state somewhat higher in practical (seminar) classes than in lecture classes.2) Students experience elements of the "flow" state when completing project and coursework unevenly, which is probably due to the different topics they study and the peculiarities of the style of the teachers who are their supervisors.3) Increased perceptions of the class as useful to themselves, a sense of progress, clear feedback and matching tasks to skill level all strongly felt by students to increase their engagement in the class.

Fig. 1 .
Fig. 1.Answers to question № 3 of the author's questionnaire (block devoted to lectures)

5 8
How often do you feel you are in control of the task when completing coursework or project work?

Fig. 3 .
Fig. 3. Graph of answers to question № 3 of the author's questionnaire (block on coursework and project works)

Table 1 .
Student questionnaire question wording with scales and median values (lecture block)

Table 2 .
Formulation of questions of the student questionnaire with scales and values of medians (block devoted to seminars)

№ Question wording Scale poles Median
1 How often in your seminars do you focus entirely on its content?1 -There's no such thing; 10 -this happens very often.

Table 3 .
Formulation of questions of the student questionnaire with scales and median values (block devoted to coursework and project work)

Table 4 .
Formulation of questions of the questionnaire for students with scales and median values (block devoted to the identification of the degree of involvement in the educational process)