The experimental research of adaptation competences of Arab and Indian students

Abstract

The article presents the results of a comprehensive socio-psychological study, including qualitative and quantitative methods. The role of cultural factor in the formation of adaptation mechanisms in foreign students studying in Russian Universities is demonstrated. The number of international students is one of the indicators of how successful an institution is on the world market of educational services.  The international character of modern education can be observed in the increase of academic mobility and the growth of the number of international students. Most often, people manage to adapt to a new socio-cultural environment by modifying their stereotypes and behavioural patterns, yet, they may remain internally alienated from the social environment. An increasing number of international students in Russia and the need to create a favourable educational environment for them motivates researchers to study the peculiarities of how such students adapt to radically new living and learning conditions. Successful adaptation ensures fast integration into the learning process and an overall improvement of the quality of education for those young people.

The results of the current study will hopefully contribute to the identification of coping strategies, adaptation features, and anticipatory mechanisms depending on their cultural backgrounds. The respondents were representatives of a polychronic, polyactive and high-context culture (students from Arab countries, n = 64) and representatives of low-context and polychronic cultures (students from India, n = 73); all of them studying in Russia from one to three years. The Arabic-speaking students were found to adapt to the learning process easier than their Indian counterparts: they were more involved in a group’s activity, and situational anticipatory competence was better developed with them. At the same time, the Indian students were found to be more eager to seek social support; also it was extremely difficult for them to predict situations associated with time and interpersonal communication.

Keywords: adaptation, culture, coping strategies, anticipatory competence, sociocultural adaptation scales.