The COVID-19 epidemic in 2020 showed that the global education system requires a certain transformation. To preserve the health of citizens, many states transferred educational institutions to a distance learning format. Such conditions can have a different psychological effect on students, therefore some of them may not be psychologically ready for them. The purpose of the research is to study the degree of students’ psychological readiness for distance learning. The study recruited 107 undergraduate and graduate students of "Preschool education" profile. The research methods were selected to cover every aspect of a person's psychological readiness: motivation, self-regulation, emotionality and evaluation. The research of psychological readiness revealed the types of students’ internal and external motivation, their features of self-regulation in the process of fulfilling intentions, purposefulness, planning, perseverance, emotional and evaluative attitude to educational activities and the chosen profile, the degree of satisfaction with studies, and how these indicators are related to each other. The survey also brought out such indicators as the need for distance learning, the possibility of deterioration in the quality of education due to ubiquitous distance learning, students' preferences for online education, the degree of their satisfaction with distance learning, and the level of their professional competencies development using distance learning. The data obtained can be used to create an individual educational route for students in case of distance learning, and to make certain recommendations for developers of distance courses. The psychological characteristics of students should be taken into account.

psychological readiness, distance learning, online learning, pedagogical education