Tkachova Natalia

Ph.D Doctor in Pedagogy, Professor

Schteimiller Irina

V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University

THEORETICAL AND METHODOLOGICAL ACCULTARATION SUPPORT OF FEREIGN STUDENTS IN UKRAINIAN TRADITIONAL UNIVERSITIES

The article highlights the benefits of modern classical universities compared to other types of educational institutions. The features of acculturation of international students in Ukrainian classical university are analyzed. The theoretical and methodological support of acculturation of international students in this educational institute is performed.

Keywords: theoretical and methodological support, acculturation, foreign students, Ukrainian classical university.

The active modernization in the Ukrainian educational system has a positive influence on the progress of quality of education according to European and international requirements, and as a result, causes a gradual increase in the international rank.

In foreign countries, therefore, classical universities which are very popular take one of the first places, have all kinds of benefits comparing with other types of higher education. In particular, among the main advantages of modern classical university scientists determine the following:

1. The presence of the high range of widely qualified teachers in different specialties, giving the University an opportunity to act as a generator of changes in the field of higher education, including organizing training in new specialties and fields, to create conditions for students to get the second additional "market-oriented" specialty, to implement integrative approach in education. Besides, the characteristics of the modern university is to involve leading scholars in the field of basic sciences, to create internationally renowned research schools in the higher institution itself, which allows the preparation of the competent professionals for knowledge-intensive industries and also to create technology parks (large-scale innovation and technology centers, where a variety of innovative scientific and technical projects are performed by representatives of science and industry); to create business-incubators (which deal with support of start-ups by young entrepreneurs at all stages starting from the design of concept to its commercialization); to create venture funds (oriented to work with innovative companies and start-up projects, and as a result - to invest in securities or shares of companies with a high or relatively high risk in anticipation of extremely high profit).

2. The creation of appropriate preconditions (material-technical, scientific and technological) will provide high-level of training in the magistracy, postgraduate and doctoral studies, to held systemic career guidance, to exercise training and skills development which will allow to have an expansion of close relationships with educational institutions at all levels accreditation and with the widest range of employers, providing an effective system of educational practices. This, in its turn, will help to solve the problem of specialists’ employment, and on a larger scale - to inculcate lifelong learning throughout the whole life.

3. The latitude range of specialists and areas in which the training of future specialists in classical universities are held, gives the possibility to prepare qualified workers for all spheres of social life (social, economical, spiritual, political), thus acting as a leader in the implementation of the educational function of high school. In addition, today classical university is a major field for testing various innovations connected with the development of educational content and technologies. These innovations primarily aimed to strength the fundamental part of professional training, to implement widely the results and technologies of modern scientific researches into educational process, to deep interdisciplinary knowledge.

4. The unicity of traditions have been consisted for decades and even centuries, the ideas of democracy, governance, autonomy, the exercise system, rich in diversified extracurricular activities make these educational institutes the centrs of high morality and spirituality [4].

In light of the above, relevant to the present day problem is to improve the quality of training future professionals in the Ukrainian classical universities. However, as it was set out in the course of the study, the problem for foreign students is closely connected to the problem of ensuring their acculturation at the university.

The analysis of scientific literature shows that scientists have made a significant contribution in its research. However, the findings of experts and the results of the Pilot study ascertain the overall insufficient level of cultural adaptation of foreign students, which confirms the need to continue scientific research in a certain direction. In particular, there is urgent need to develop theoretical methods of the above process.

The aim of the article is the representation of theoretical-methodological providing of acculturation of international students in Ukrainian classical university.

It is obviously, that risen problem requires a clear definition of the concept of "acculturation". As it was concerned in different scientific sources, this phenomenon is defined as:

· the process and the result of interference of different cultures, in which all or part of the members of one culture adopt norms, values and traditions of the other, herewith each person tries, on the one hand to learn a new culture for his/her ethno-social culture, on the other hand - to maintain his/her own cultural identity [2];

· the process of changing material culture, customs and beliefs, which is held in direct contact and mutual influence of different socio-cultural systems [5];

· The assimilation of new culture as a result of direct contact with it, which can be held as 1) the gradual acquisition of child behavior, typical for the culture (subculture) where they grow; 2) the process of borrowing, the perception of other cultures in terms of close cooperation with it [7].

As we can see, the interpretation of the concept "acculturation" by different scientists has some differences. According to the author's understanding of this phenomenon, acculturation – is the process of individual adaptation according to the conditions of life in a foreign country, providing an acquaintance with new culture and assimilation to cultural norms, traditions, and values-based ethnic self-identity preserving.

According to the research results it was established that in most cases the impact of a new culture on immigrants from other countries has stressors in nature, causing serious mental shock [6, p. 23].

This effect was given a definition in the scientific literature as "culture shock".

It is known that firstly this term was used in K. Oberg’ writings. The author also defined the characteristic symptoms of this phenomenon:

· tension conditioned on efforts to ensure human adaptation to the new environment (home, language, food, etc.) of its life;

· feelings of loss, deprivation of many familiar things (friends, status, occupation, property, etc.);

· feeling of rejection of a new culture bearers, or conversely, psychological reluctance to accept them, fear of contact with them, a manifestation of hostility;

· mismatch in expectations in social roles, psychological feelings, values, process personal self-identity etc.;

· feeling of constant anxiety, irritability as a result of awareness of realization of cultural differences which were not perceived earlier;

· existence of self-doubt because of the unwillingness of rapid adaptation to the new environment;

· occurrence of insomnia, depression, suicidal intent, moments of alcohol or drugs misuse [1] .

However, modern scientists have claimed that fact that the power of culture shock for different people varies greatly among themselves, and therefore the effects of the migration process can range from very positive to very negative adaptation. Obviously, these effects depend on many factors, including the range of cultural differences between traditional migrant culture and foreign culture of the country in which he/she moved in for some reason [3; 6].

In particular, the results of pilot study, foreigners moved to Ukraine and joined one of the traditional universities have difficulties in different fields: socio-cultural, linguistic, educational, climate, household and more. However, it was founded that only a third of them are trying to learn not only a new language, but also the culture of the country of residence in the whole. In addition, these studies have shown that only about half of the teachers who work with foreigners, deliberately trying to promote their acculturation in Ukrainian society. There is no doubt that the provision of appropriate assistance to foreigners (psychological, linguistic, educational, etc.) facilitates the process of their acculturation greatly. This help gets a significant importance for foreign students who have to adapt to training course in domestic universities and moreover to general life in Ukrainian society, and to join a new culture. One of the effective ways to solve this difficult task is to develop and implement appropriate theoretical-methodological methods of providing acculturation for international students in Ukrainian classical university.

Basing on J. Hinich scientific opinions [8, p. 9] in research we understand conceptually grounded theoretical-methodical system as theoretical-methodological support of acculturation of international students in the educational process of national classical university, the implementation of which contributes to successful development of their new culture as a prerequisite for professional and personal development of each.

In the course of the study it was determined that the first component of the theoretical-methodological support is motivational target. As its known, motivation is a system of specific determinants of reasons, incentives, motivations that encourage people to certain activities. That’s why to get effective acculturation of international students we need to form an adequate motivation to master the host country culture, which will encourage young people to learn the language of communication between people in the country of residence and to build effective communication, learn certain rules and behaviors which are consistent with the standards and values of new culture for them.

It should be also noted that one of the major characteristics of the individual is conscious goal-setting. And the purpose of nominating a perfect future performance precedes it in time. Therefore the effectiveness of the acculturation process for international students will increase significantly in condition of the carrying out process as a sequence of conscious realization, up-to-date and correctly defined goals by each individual of educational interaction.

Thus, the implementation of motivational-target component of theoretical-methodological providing of acculturation of international students in the educational process of Ukrainian in classical universities aimed at modeling constant motivation of the language usage, traditions, rules of conduct and other components of their new culture, a clear definition of the sequence corresponding to teachers’ objectives, that have to be realized and taken into account as by foreigners’ individual level as by students themselves. Practical implementation of this component is to use such working methods and forms: lectures and conversations on cultural nature, attracting foreigners to participate in the celebration of national holidays and important events, ethnic celebrations and festivals, showing films and other multimedia materials on Ukrainian history and culture, as well as the implementation of students pedagogical support during their assembly as individual programs aimed at intensifying the process of acculturation and their implementation in practice.

During the research it was also found that the second component of the above theoretical-methodological support is the cognitive-activity component. It is connected with the foreign students’ assimilation of the process of acculturation knowledge and skills (informational-gnostic, project- analytical, communicative-organizational) required for successful implementation and accumulation of different types experience activities (reproductive, productive, creative) which ensures the successful development for an individual with a new culture. The implementation of this component is done by enriching the content of teaching material in the classroom with the information related to various aspects of cultural adaptation, and also by conducting appropriate extracurricular work. In particular, this work includes:

· organization of various educational activities: curatorial hours, get-in-acquainted meetings, meetings with famous experts of Ukrainian culture field, evening sessions, quizzes, visiting theaters and museums (historical, art, archeology and ethnography), art galleries, city tours, etc.;

· realization individual and group consultations, providing the necessary foreign individual assistance by a group of volunteers (which includes both Ukrainian and foreign students and postgraduates) and curatorial groups to overcome the current difficulties (linguistic, educational, residential, etc.);

· implication of foreign students to a variety of business and role-playing games, training sessions aimed at practicing the above skills and study the desirable ways of behavior.

The third component of the developed theoretical-methodological implementation is the value-orientational component. It’s responsible for stable positive emotionally- valuable attitude of foreign students to the national culture of the country of residence, and for mastering country’s leading social values. This component was provided through a variety of activities (debates, discussions, attracting foreigners to participate in the performance of Ukrainian national songs and dances, workshops on making products in the traditional style, various volunteering activities, etc.) which were aimed at activation of human cultural self-determination process and, in particular, pushing students to determine the preferences in consumption of spiritual values on the basis of their own ethnic identity.

In the process of scientific research, it was determined that the fourth component of theoretical-methodological implementation is controlling-correcting component. It provides the organization and quality control and analysis by teachers, and self-control and self-analysis by international students and the study of current acculturation process results, and the implementation of corresponding changes into the process if necessary.

Thus, we can conclude that we have developed a system of theoretical-methodological implementation of acculturation for international students in the educational process in national classical university which includes the following components: motivational target, cognitive-active, value-orientational, controlling-correcting. In a further research it is planned to carry out an experimental verification of these implementations in practice.

REFERENCES

1. Oberg K. Cultural Shock : Adjustment to New Cultural Environments / K. Oberg // Practical Anthropology. – 1960. – № 7. – Рр. 177-182.

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