Exploring the role of student affairs office in enhancing the cultural experiences of international students in China

• In Event: Is China up for its responsibilities to globalization? Exploring Chinese higher education policies, practices, and programs from critical perspectives

Proposal

Purpose and Research Question:
The purpose of this study was to explore the foreign students’ perceptions towards the role played bystudent affairs office in helping foreign students to cope with culture shock in their first year at university.
General question: What experiences do foreign students describe towards the role played by student affairs office in helping foreign students to cope with culture shock within the university?

Literature Review:
I review secondary data which written about the related topic from different scholars. The main themes were divided into three parts include:
Cross- Culture Transition: In this theme, literature was retrieved from various scholars such as (Ye & Edwards, 2015), (Mallinckrodt & Leong, 1999), (Chen, 1999), and (Sandhu, 1991).
Culture shock: This can be referred to as crisis-phase which describes the actual Culture Shock, some literature also explains about this theme on the causes and symptoms of culture shock. (Manz, 2003), (Yost & Lucas, 2002), and (Robinson, 1992)
Students Adjustment: In this theme, some literature suggested several implications for helping foreign students of any kind of easy adjustment to the host culture. (Furham, 2012), Huntley (1993), and (Pedersen,1991)

Research Method
This research used an empirical study. To achieve the research aim, this study employed a case study design of qualitative research, that includes six focus groups with 32 International graduate students in Xiamen University. International students were randomly selected from 12 countries based on their time and accessibility. To obtain a wide range of evidence the data were also collected through review several kinds of literature as a secondary data which written about the related topic from different scholars. The process of analyzing data was done by reviewing each note and audio records after group discussion, similar ideas were clustered together and coded according to their theme related to the research question.

Findings And Recommendation
Results indicated that international students experienced substantial difficulties in their coping with culture shock due to cultural differences such as language, food, time difference and other ways of living. Nevertheless, the study suggested that, the existence of culture shock among the international students it does not indicated that the Overseas Student Affairs Office (OSAO) in Xiamen University did not play any role to help the international students to cope with host culture, because there were some efforts taken by OSAO, such as establishing a social group called English-Chinese corner, teaching of Chinese language for one semester, short orientation for the new students (only based on an academic setting) and availability of Overseas Student Affairs Office (OSAO) which was the most frequently used office for International students to seek help. Although all these roles were not very effective as it was suggested by the international students during the interview. The paper concludes with recommendations that the emphasis on cultural orientation, improving student counseling, interaction with host students and strengthening language support for international students are dynamic for the successful adjustment of international students in universities.

Author

• Robert Kaniki, Institute of Education, Xiamen University, China