Background. Studying students’ and teachers’ views on the goals and purposes of the teaching and upbringing process is important in connection with the modernization of school education. Their attitude to these issues characterizes the social psychological context that determines the role of school in cultural and value-based education of adolescents.

The Objective of the research is to determine the differences between the students’ and teachers’ views on the goals and purposes of school education in relation to the three areas of analysis: between students and teachers, between members of schools types (general education, in-depth study of particular subjects, gymnasium and lyceum), between generations of teachers and students as of 1991 and 2017.

Design. The paper presents the results of survey questionnaire conducted by the Centre for Sociology of Education, IEM RAE, Moscow, Russia, in 2017. The sample included 11 803 students of 7-11 grades and 4 999 school teachers. The data are further compared with the results of the survey 1 conducted in 1991 (sample included 162 students and 681 teachers). Questions concerning goal orientations of school education are considered at two levels: pragmatic ("What should school give to students?") and value-based ("Who should schools prepare their students for?").

Research Results. At the pragmatic level, students attach greater importance to the issues of professional identity, whereas teachers regard the traditional functions of education. At the value-based level for students, the individualistic attitudes are more typical, whereas teachers place a greater value on socially regular patterns. Members of the gymnasia and lyceums more often note the importance of the cultural development as well as communication and interaction between students. Unlike gymnasia and lyceums, general education schools put a greater emphasis on normal behaviour and participation in public life. The admission requirements have increased for socializing functions and training, and also the individualistic attitudes in modern education compared with 1991 have been in the focus of attention. Simultaneously, the importance of creative activity is decreasing and education is aimed at supporting social institution. Factor analysis has revealed three meaningful juxtapositions in relation to which the goals of school education are structured: "norm – self-actualisation", "convention – principle", "romantic approach – pragmatic approach".

Conclusion. This research reveals particular goals and purposes for modern school education in students’ and teachers’ minds that allows them to improve the educational process.

The paper highlights the relation between the relevance of coping behaviour and increasing interest to phenomena of uncertainty. The reviewing of coping as complicated setting notion including several levels is offered. The relevance of studying conscious and unconscious levels of coping is validated. Using coping questionnaires’ deficit of prognosis validity and the relevancy of using projective methods that are effective and useful in diagnostics of coping’ unconscious components are discussed. Due to the changes in viewing difficult life situations’ range and focusing on subjective perception of difficulties, the frustration situations are reviewed as difficult daily life situations. The Rosenzweig Picture Frustration test could be used for diagnosing coping’ unconscious components that compose meaning set level and coping behaviour basis.

The relations among personal characteristics (tolerance/intolerance to uncertainty, noetic orientations, personal anxiety, locus of control) and three types and three directions of subjects’ responses in test’ situations were examined, generalized linear models were used. The subjects of the research are 199 teachers from secondary schools of Russian Federation, mean age is 40.6 years old. The results showed significant relations between particular personal characteristics and types and directions of the responses: ego-defense type and tolerance to uncertainty, obstacle-dominance type and personal anxiety, intropunitive direction and personal anxiety, obstacledominance type and noetic orientations. The common discussion of current results and results obtained in previous studies demonstrates potential existence of mediating relations between particular coping strategies and types and directions of subjects’ responses in The Rosenzweig Picture Frustration test.

The paper is an attempt to present a new approach to anxiety research, namely to describe social psychological determinants of anxiety in adolescents, and also to present teachers’, parents’ and students’ views on “anxiety-causing” situations in adolescents are compared.

The article presents a brief description of the main concepts related to the subject of anxiety: the interpretation of the phenomenon of anxiety, differences between the concepts of anxiety and fear, causes described by various authors. The author also pays attention to various types of anxiety: situational vs personal, adequate vs inadequate anxiety, anxiety in various fields of human life, and in particular at school.

The paper describes the results of the empirical study devoted to the communicative situations in which adolescents experience anxiety and the estimation of these situations by teachers and parents are presented.

The research is qualitative and consisted of several stages: focused interviews with teachers and then with the adolescents’ parents, focus groups of adolescents (the questionnaire is presented in respective part of the article). The study involved 6 teachers, 6 parents, 15 adolescents aged from 12 to 14 years. Based on the research results the set of situations that cause anxiety in adolescents is identified and the perception of these situations by parents and teachers is analyzed. The article also presents the similarities and differences of the perception of adolescents’ communicative anxiety in the three categories of respondents.

The results of the study show that the interactional situations causing anxiety among adolescents primarily involve social estimation of an adolescent both by peers and adults.