Adaptation of Students from Far Abroad and Neighboring Countries at South-Russian Universities

Abstract

The problem of successful adaptation of foreign students is considered from the perspective of strengthening the international status of not only Russian education, but also the government as a whole. Two sides of the adaptation – psychological (generalized) and socio-cultural (expressed) – were studied on 397 foreign students from southern Russian universities using diagnostic tools designed on A.L. Sventsitsky “Self-assessment of psychological adaptability”, and the scales “Cultural commitment to the country” and “Social commitment to the country” from S.V. Frolova’ questionnaire. Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient was used for statistical data processing. Psychological and socio-cultural adaptation were considered in the relation “isolation – identification” (V.I. Slobodchikov) and found a correlation ρ<0.01. According to the results, students from far abroad showed impoverished psychological adaptability with high demands for the success of socio-cultural adaptation. Assistance in its achievement from university teachers will occur when they will combine academic work with solving problems of educational and professional as well as social and communicative content. Students from the neighboring countries demonstrated an interconnected set of claims for successful socio-cultural adaptation, focusing on social ties and moving away from cultural ones. In this regard, the work of teachers is required to ensure the positive dynamics of intercultural relations with the involvement of the traditions of interethnic good-neighborliness in the territory of the southern region of Russia. Professional development programs for teaching staff should take into account the difference in cultural distance, manifested through the difficulties of a linguistic, cooperative, national, confessional nature.