Foreign Students’ Social Adaptation to the Education Environment of a Higher Educational Institution: By the Example of S. Seifullin Kazakh Agro Technical University

Abstract

The article provides the data of the research project conducted among the students of S. Seifullin Kazakh Agro Technical University (KATU). The research objective is to estimate the level of foreign students’ social adaptation to the education environment of the higher educational institution within the program of academic mobility. The research of the problems of foreign students’ social adaptation to the Kazakh Higher School has always been the subject of scholarly attention in the theoretical as well as in the applied aspect. Until now, the national scientists have not studied the problem of foreign students’ social adaptation at Kazakh higher educational institutions. It is necessary to close this gap, because the teaching of foreign students is becoming the most important part of the education system all over the world. Problems of academic mobility have been widely discussed by the global university and academic community. Scientists have been addressing the issues of the university viable horizons in the 21st century, intercultural communication, migration and internationalization of the higher education. Besides, the scholarly discourse places special emphasis on one more peculiarity of academic mobility in the western education system—the cultural and communication strategies. In the post-soviet education system, adjustment of education programs of academic mobility, i.e. care of adaptation of education technologies, was considered a major problem, whereas leading world universities address the problems of personal adaptation to the education environment, and that has become the issue number one in the modern world. Using the methods of literature review and sociological survey, we prove the hypothesis that the problems of personal adaptation to the education environment are the most important factors for the system of academic mobility.

DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n5p184