 Some students found the learner centred approach in TAMK liberating and became critical of the teacher centred approach.
This four-month-period of time changed myself completely. Learning, now that I have found my motivation, has become surprisingly enjoyable. I’ve overcome my insecurities, my social anxieties and my feeling of unworthiness. It feels like my whole school experience has changed. My learning methods have changed from passive to active. This lead to amazing changes in my learning attitudes from pessimistic to optimistic. What is more, I can use the positive attitude to deal with every problem relating to learning.
In other words, learning in another culture has made it possible to evolve from the ways learnt in the past, from learning because you are told to do so to learning because you want to do so.. Students have acquired in their own culture a coherent body of experience – associations, concepts, values, feelings – frames of reference that shape their expectations, perceptions, cognition, and feelings in new culture. Transformation is the process of change in student’s frame of reference (Mezirow 1991).
Combination of familiar and new. Some students were critical of the suggestion that they should completely assume a new approach to learning and give up approaches and practices learnt in their culture. They were striving to create a merger of the old and the new.
Looking back and reflecting how my learning style has changed I realized that my current learning style is a modified combination of collective and individual system. Students should flexibly combine both passive and active way to achieve the highest efficiency in learning. They can benefit from a combination instead of getting distract in a Teacher-Centered education or losing their goals with a completely Learning-Centered class.
Learning about the host cultures’ values, customs and social codes can aid a positive psychological behavioural adaptation, while maintaining the individual’s own cultural values (Calvez 2008). Adaptation is a dual process that includes not only cultural but also psychological change This shift in personal identification does not change, however, the core of who the student is as an individual (Berry 2005; Smith & Demjanenko 2011; Tran, 2011).
Conclusions and Recommendations
Teacher and student are an archetypal role pair in virtually any society. When teacher and student come from different cultures, complexities can arise due to differences in expected teacher-student interaction or to different social positions of teachers and students.
The findings of this study suggest that there are many positive effects in starting to study in a foreign culture. However, different pedagogical approaches and solutions may be needed to ease the students’ first months in a foreign culture and to facilitate them in their learning processes. It is important to discuss possible problems and the learning culture in Finland: What is expected from students? How to learn academic practices? Is it ok to contact the teachers? It is important to increase feelings of connectedness to studying in a Finnish higher education institution.
Students, teachers and other staff members need to be aware that both positive and negative incidents can provoke feelings of confusion, disappointment and frustration. Listening to international students’ experiences and reflecting on their perspectives creates a basis for co-operation, communication, understanding and support.
Berry, J.W. 2005. Acculturation: Living Successfully in Two Cultures. International Journal of Intercultural Relations 29 (6), 697–712.
Brown, L. & Holloway, I. 2008. The Initial Stage of the International Sojourn: Excitement or Culture Shock? British Journal of Guidance & Counselling 36 (1), 33–49.
Calvez, S.S. 2008. Exploring Knowledge of Canadian Values and Social Axioms in International and Landed Immigrant Students’ Adaptation to Canada. Master’s Thesis, Department of Psychology, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK, Canada.
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