The paper considers social perceptual representations of mother in children. The social perceptive image of mother is associated with a certain attitude, and, consequently, determines the willingness to act in a certain way, the willingness to implement a certain strategy of relationships. The paper presents the results of a large-scale empirical study comprising 7000 high school students.

The sample can be considered quite representative with all necessary parameters, including respondents from big cities and small towns and villages of Russia, complete and incomplete families, families with 1-2 children and large ones. The results of the study in the general sample show that the social perceptual portrait of the mother compises only positive qualities, and does not contain any negative descriptor.

In addition, a high level of concordance (coherence, unanimity) in the perception and assessment of the mother’s respondents was revealed. A comparative analysis is carried out of the mother’s image in the minds of young men and women, in the minds of respondents from complete and incomplete families, from urban and rural families, from families with one or two children and from large families, from large families with many children and many children with many children. As a general trend, the social perceptual portrait of the mother in all groups remains positive. However, certain differences are also found in some changes in most significant qualities. Summing uo, differences are also found in the level of concordance of the respondents’ choice in specific groups that differ in gender or social features.

The paper presents the results of the value orientation research in high school students, Moscow, Russia. The sample (N=62) included 22 education and universal values and also self-attitude parameters using the four types of emotional attitude to learning. These types of motivation profile were obtained via pre-factorization estimates of the seven values of school life using the method of semantic differential, which allowed to estimate the severity of a positional or status motivation (1), achievement motivation (2), learning and cognitive motivation, (3) and motivation of affiliation (4). This enabled to further estimate the factor and correlation analysis of the parameters studied, which shows that the system of values is significantly different in males and females of the same age, even in relation to the same mean value of motivation. Motivation, values and self-attitude organize stable systems – on the current sample allocated the four most common systems, i.e. the four factors that are specific for both males and females. Simultaneously, there are systems of values dependent on expressiveness and the combination of a certain type of motivation, and independent of the type of motivation.

Female educational and cognitive motivation and positional (status) motivation related to the values were merged into one factor, but for males one factor includes achievement motivation and (with the opposite sign) affiliation motivation. While the self-realization of females occurs in the process of learning (the value of «selfimprovement in their studies»), and in the future they see an opportunity for self-realization through the value of «happy family life», the males with this motivation connect their opportunity for self-realization with other values, i.e. «health», «recognition by other team members», «my authority.»

The goal of this work is to justify the urgency of career choice at the present stage of societal development and also to show that in terms of social and cultural modernization of education based on the implementation of the major methodological approaches in the human science there raises the possibility of establishing an effective system of psychological support of career choice.

Analyzing the main content of the systematic, activity-based, dynamic, anthropocentric, and acmeological approaches in the context of the problem, the author defines their capabilities within the research of career choice. The need to integrate methodological approaches for the development of a unified scientific theory of career choice is emphasized. The result of this integration was the view of the author that the basic principles of modern theoretical approaches to anthropology are extremely focused on the concept of the “social situation of development” by L.S. Vygotsky.

The paper shows that the optimization of the social situation of development is the main vector of psychological support for of senior students in career choice. To identify specific directions of career choice the ideas of Russian psychologists of the social situationof development are analyzed and presented in the paper. The author as a main component of the content structure of the social situation of development highlights the psychological readiness for career choice, i.e. cognitive, behavioural, motivational, personal preparedness. Reference is made to the positive author’s experience of psychological preparedness for professional career choice of children in a particular social situation of development, e.g. orphans, adolescents with deviant behaviour, children who show giftedness.