Abstract:

The higher school has not only large-scale educational tasks but no less ambitious educative ones. In this regard, there is a necessity to identify negative phenomena in students’ behaviour with the aim of the correction and prevention of them. Academic procrastination is one of such negative phenomena; the essence of it is to postpone the implementation of training tasks. The purpose of this research is to conduct the theoretical analysis of procrastination, to identify the causes of its appearance and to propose the methods of its prevention. The analysis of the scientists’ positions on this issue showed that a unified theory of procrastination has not yet been created. The article reveals the relationship between the reasons for procrastination, irrational beliefs and irrational students’ attitudes. The authors propose options for replacing existing irrational attitudes with the new ones. The methods of irrational attitudes corrections in three directions are disclosed and substantiated: work with beliefs, work with emotional reactions and work with behavioural reactions. The experimental work was carried out among several groups of students studying Economics at South Ural State University. The results obtained made it possible to record a decrease in academic procrastination in experimental groups, which provides the basis for the application of the proposed methods in further pedagogical practice.