a growing experience - Student Services - University of Melbourne

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HEALTH AND WELL-BEING OF INTERNATIONAL STUDENTSacademic or professional performance and physical health. Needless to say, there arestrong interactions among many of these variables.Time is an important dimension in the process of adjustment for sojourners such asinternational students, with discomfort usually reducing as the new culture becomesmore familiar. It has been suggested, however, that the process might not be one ofgradual and continuing improvement over time, even allowing for the expected upsand downs of the annual academic cycle. Some, such as Adler (1975), have proposedthat sojourners go through stages in their adjustment to the host country, with theseincluding an initial time of excitement and elation, a subsequent period of discomfortas the realities of living within a different culture become apparent, and a later timewhen a level of acculturation has been achieved. In contrast, Ward and her associates(Ward, Okura, Kennedy & Kojima, 1998; Ward & Rana-Dueba, 1999) see thegreatest adjustment challenges and difficulties to be in the initial period of time in thenew culture for both psychological and sociocultural adjustment, with socioculturalproblems then decreasing gradually and levelling out, but psychological distressshowing a different pattern of variability over time. Length of stay is an importantvariable to be considered in relation to international students’ sense of well-being.Another variable held to be of particular importance to the process of adjustment isthe cultural distance between the sojourner’s culture of origin and the host culture, inother words the degree of difference or similarity between the two cultures (Ward etal., 2001), with greater distance implying more difficulty in adjustment. Severalcultural classification systems have been proposed, with component categories beingbased on perceived underlying characteristics of cultural values, beliefs andbehaviours. The best known of these is the set of dimensions delineated by Hofstede(1997). He defined four dimensions: power distance (acceptance by the less powerfulin the society that power is distributed unevenly), masculinity/femininity (competitionversus nurturance), uncertainty avoidance (tendency to be threatened by the unknownor uncertain) and individualism/collectivism (the focus of concern is on oneself andone’s task as opposed to personal relationships and lifelong loyalty to strong andprotective family or other groups).Australian and Asian cultures tend to fall at opposite ends of each of these fourdimensions, with particularly strong differentiation being found on theindividualism/collectivism dimension. This cultural dimension has been used toexplain some of the difficulties Asian international students have experienced in theirapproaches to learning in Australia (Faculty of Education and Asialink, 2004). Ward(1997; Ward & Rana-Deuba, 1999) argues that cultural distance, together withlanguage competence, length of stay in the new culture, and the amount of contactwith host nationals, typically influences sociocultural adaptation, whereaspsychological adjustment is influenced by other factors, such as personality and socialsupport.The degree of social interaction that the sojourner establishes within the host countryis also considered an important variable in adjustment, with stronger social interactionbeing seen as conducive to a more positive process of adaptation. Initially such socialinteraction was defined in terms of interaction with host nationals. The variables thataffect the likelihood of this occurring are many, for example verbal and non-verbalcommunication skills, cultural attitudes and stereotypes, cultural expectations andRosenthal, Russell & Thomson, 2006 17
HEALTH AND WELL-BEING OF INTERNATIONAL STUDENTSnorms of friendship, anxiety and threat to self-esteem, and perceived statusdifferences (Church, 1982). While achieving a satisfying level of social interactionwith host nationals is undoubtedly a challenging process, it does provide internationalstudents with the opportunity for developing an understanding of and adaptation to thenew culture (Li & Gasser, 2005). The level of social interaction between sojournersand host nationals has generally been found to be low, with sojourners wanting tohave more interaction with locals than they experience (Church, 1982; James &Devlin, 2001; Daroesman et al., 2005)Another form of social interaction that has been considered is participation innetworks of co-culturals, a more comfortable, familiar and less stressful approach thatprovides security, support, connection and a means of sharing knowledge about thenew culture (Al-Sharideh, 1998: Carr, Koyama, & Thiagarajan, 2003; Church, 1982).If, however, this becomes the sole form of social interaction or develops into anenclave of intolerance towards the new culture, then adaptation to the new culture willbe inhibited. The critical issue is to achieve an optimal balance between interactionand identification with the home and host cultures. Berry (1997) argues thatsojourners who adopt an integrative acculturation strategy, valuing both the originaland the new cultures and maintaining relations with both groups, will experience alow level of adjustment stress. On the other hand, those who maintain a relationshipwith their own culture only - who do not value or relate to the new, keepingthemselves separate from it - these are the sojourners who will experience high levelsof acculturation stress.A high proportion of international students attending Australian universities fall intothe late adolescent/early adult age group. In 2004, 12.1 per cent of internationalstudents enrolled in Australian universities were aged 19 or under, while a further49.1 per cent were aged between 20 and 24. Most of these students would belong tothe 57.9 per cent of international students who were enrolled in undergraduate degrees(DEST, 2005). An even stronger representation of young international studentsenrolled in undergraduate degree is to be found at the University of Melbourne thisyear. A total of 75.7 per cent of all international student enrolments are of studentsaged 24 or below, with 15.8 per cent being aged 19 or under. Some 74 per cent of allinternational students in 2005 are enrolled in undergraduate degrees 2 .Adolescence is often portrayed as a time of experimentation, of trying out new waysof thinking, behaving, believing, interacting, presenting oneself - a time for workingout and developing one’s adult identity (Erikson, 1965). Undergraduate students whoarrive at the university after the structured and regulated life of a school studentexperience much greater freedom to make their own choices, to control and organisetheir own lives, and so to test out different ways of being. For international studentsentering universities in a new culture, this is also true. The freedom from structure,however, is magnified by their movement away from home, family and familiarsociety. In these circumstances, there might well be young international studentsentering university for the first time who experiment with different behaviours,ranging from the more superficial, such as adopting different clothing and haircolouring, to ones with potentially more serious consequences.2 Source: Student Management Systems, Student Administration., The University of Melbourne, 3March, 2005Rosenthal, Russell & Thomson, 2006 18
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