Social ideas about people with disabilities and people with disabilities among students of various professional orientations: the experience of cross-regional research

Relevance. Broadcasting of inclusive public attitudes expands the boundaries of perception and interaction with people with disabilities and disabilities. The study of the meaningful characteristics of social representations among Russian respondents of different professional orientation, united by a common educational space of higher professional education, but living in regions with different territorial location, ethnic, cultural and religious characteristics, is in demand. 
Purpose of the study is to study the cross-regional characteristics of students' social representations of various professional orientations about people with disabilities and people with disabilities.
Materials and methods. The research is based on the theory of social representations. The study involved students from Russian regions (Makhachkala, Izhevsk, Kursk) studying in various areas of professional training (medical care; social work; agroengineering). The total sample size is 758 respondents. Research methods: theoretical literature analysis, testing, content analysis.
Results. The respondents of both groups have similar phenomena: the presence of tolerant attitudes towards people with disabilities and the disabled; consistency in the content of the social level of social representations ("help", "care"; "support"); the presence of sympathetic associations in the core area of social representation ("pity"). Specific characteristics: the predominance of emotional associations in the content of social representations in groups of "non-specialists"; assessment of persons with disabilities and people with disabilities from the position of physical limitations - in groups of "specialists"; in multicultural groups, there is a predominance of statements reflecting the mental and behavioral activity of people with disabilities; in monocultural groups, there are statements reflecting their mental and communicative activity. 
Conclusions. In general, the study revealed the presence of contradictory trends in respondents' social perceptions of people with disabilities: the presence of tolerance, sympathetic associations, and the need to form inclusive interaction skills, which may indicate not the stigmatization of respondents' social perceptions, but their shift from stigmatization to the pole of a positive attitude.

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