Responsibility as a quality of personality: Essence, formation, significance

The article discusses the significance of responsibility in providing safety of the environment surrounding the person. The problem is caused by the contradiction between the human need for security and impossibility in many cases to satisfy it because of inadequate fulfilment of the duties by employees. The purpose of the article is to outline the ways of solving this contradiction by pedagogical means. The methodological basis of the research is systematic, activity-based, and subject-subject approaches. The author reveals the essential features of responsible behavior and prerequisites for the formation of a responsible person: macro-level (organization of public life); family and other micro-communities; educational institutions. Importance of effort consolidation of all subjects of pedagogical influence for solving urgent educational problems is noted. The role of certain principles of education in the formation of a responsible person in the past and at the present stage is shown. Particular attention is paid to the role of higher education in the formation of responsibility, since it is in the university environment where students develop such patterns of behavior that afterwards may be used in public and everyday life, and in their profession. This approach makes a purely pedagogical issue socially important.