The article under consideration presents the diagnosis of social and pedagogical trends in the development of students in a professional educational organization. A comparative analysis of the diagnostic experiment is given. The experiment carried out within the framework of the study showed a significant shift in the spiritual, moral and patriotic value orientations of students to a pragmatic orientation. In the pedagogical diagnostics, which was carried out within the framework of the study, the object was the spiritual, moral and patriotic orientations of students, which manifested themselves in various facts of their attitudes and behavior. This made it possible to track the development of students' civic engagement, since the diagnostic procedure is used to detect changes in the cause and disclose their manifestation in pedagogical practice. An experimental analysis of the problem under consideration has shown that modern conditions require the energetic entry of the individual into the spiritual space and the development of spiritual, moral and patriotic orientations, which are associated with the direction of the development of civic activity of the individual, the harmonization of humanity and pragmatism, becomes essential.