LEGAL ANXIETY OF STUDENTS AS A FACTOR REDUCING THE EFFECTIVENESS OF MASTERING THE COURSE “LEGAL STUDIES”: DIAGNOSIS AND METHODS OF OVERCOMING

Abstract

The current higher education system in the Russian Federation faces a challenge that lies at the intersection of legal pedagogy, educational psychology, and the sociology of law. This challenge stems from a persistent and pervasive gap between the formal level of legal knowledge demonstrated by students majoring in non-law fields and their actual behavior in situations requiring independent legal action. This article introduces a new pedagogical construct – student legal anxiety. It is understood as a subject-specific form of academic anxiety that arises in students majoring in non-law fields when working with legal information and reduces the effectiveness of their learning in the discipline “Jurisprudence.” The relevance of this topic stems from the persistent gap between students’ declared level of legal knowledge and their actual behavior in the legal sphere. This gap is commonly attributed to a lack of classroom time and a low level of legal culture, while its emotional and psychological aspects remain ignored. Drawing on the concept of subject-specific anxiety developed in mathematics and foreign languages, as well as domestic research on legal consciousness, the authors introduce the construct of «legal anxiety» and distinguish it from related phenomena – legal nihilism and general personal anxiety. Based on this analysis, a system of pedagogical tools for neutralizing legal anxiety in the course “Jurisprudence” is proposed. The theoretical value of this work lies in expanding the understanding of subject-specific learning anxiety to a new area – legal pedagogy; the practical value lies in providing diagnostic and methodological tools for improving the effectiveness of legal training for students majoring in other fields.