Foreign Students` Tolerance Formation As Condition Of Safe Integration Into Russian Reality

Abstract

Currently, the world continues to increase the tendency to open borders between the countries, so that more and more people can freely transect national borders in order to find a suitable job, get a good education, find a place to stay away from military conflicts, etc. Unfortunately, modern society is increasingly facing the problem of the impossibility to integrate migrants and receive their cultural environment, this is caused by the reluctance to understand and respect the traditions, laws, rules of conduct of the host side and the aggressive planting of their cultural landmarks. Education to insinuate toleration and respect for citizens of other cultures - the most important task of the modern society, in the decision which, in our opinion, is a specific role for secondary and higher education institutions, which educate future workers. The purpose of this study is to identify the level of toleration of foreign students of Elabuga Institute of Kazan Federal University and develop methods and techniques of formation of educational toleration of migrants and respect to citizens of other cultures through social and humanities disciplines. The study convincingly demonstrated that, in the formation of tolerance of foreign students the discipline of social and humanities play an important role, as well as the educational environment of high school.

Keywords: Migrantsforeign studentstoleranceeducationRussia

Introduction

Relevance of the subject of research is determined by the problems caused by global migratory processes in modern society. Nowadays, the tendency for countries to open their borders continues to increase, owing to the fact that an increasing number of people freely cross the state boundaries with the purpose of finding suitable jobs, getting quality education, finding a place for accommodation far from the military conflicts, etc. Unfortunately, due to this, modern society faces a problem of the impossibility to integrate migrants and receive their cultural environment, this is caused by the reluctance to understand and respect the traditions, laws, rules of conduct of the cultural mark. The designated sociocultural conflict is caused by the fact that migrants who arrive from monocultural countries have no skills of existing in polycultural societies in which it is vital to be respectful to other cultures, religions, points of view, etc. In other words, in migrants, qualities such as tolerance is not created. In this research, we proceed from the interpretation of this concept formulated in the Declaration of the principles of tolerance in which tolerance is understood not as tolerance (as it is often declared by many from high stands), but as "respect, acceptance and the correct understanding of rich variety of cultures in our world, our forms of self-expression and methods of manifestation of human identity" (The declaration of tolerance principles 1995). At the same time in the document, it is noted that tolerance is not a concession, indulgence and does not demand refusal of the beliefs formed by centuries of traditions, laws, standards of behaviour.

Problem Statement

Education for immigrants to respect citizens of other culture is the most important task of modern society, and it is a special duty for average and higher educational institutions schooling migrants of different age, as it is noted in the Declaration, to promoted the knowledge of tolerance through study. By means of educational process the knowledge base (Kneller, 1971) is purposefully transmitted through various educational institutions (schools, lyceums, institutes, universities, etc.) from one generation to another.

Tolerance formation process is long and not simple, it demands a systematic approach and continuous realization and therefore belongs to the duties of each teacher of educational institution

Research Questions

The analysis of the works devoted to tolerance of foreign students establishes the high demand of this subject: the attention of researchers is drawn by psychological aspects of tolerance (Kislitsin, 2013; Novikova, 2010; Talysheva, Gayfullina, 2013; Zinovyev, 1998), general questions of education of the tolerant identity of foreign students (Abdul Hussain Bashar, 2013; Sysoeva, 2014), problems of formation of communicative tolerance of foreign pupils (Donskova, 2015; Tatarenkova, 2014), and long-term experience of pedagogical collectives is presented (Artamonova & Tremovova, 2007). Detailed consideration of the works performed in the designated direction has shown that the problem of formation of tolerant consciousness of foreigners studying in average and higher educational institutions is still diminutively studied. In particular, as researchers fairly note, formation of tolerance of foreign students in educational processes of educational institutions is insufficiently studied

Purpose of the Study

At the Elabuga institute of KFU more than 300 foreigners from neighbouring countries, generally from Central Asia are students. On structure the student's groups, there are polycultural groups in which representatives of different countries (including Russia) study together, and monocultural groups made of only Russian students.

It is revealed in earlier researches devoted to studying the adaptation of foreign students of the Elabuga institute of KFU to the educational environment of the small city that 62.2% of foreign students living for a long time in the Republic of Tatarstan, haven't got acquainted with culture of Russia, with traditions of the Russian and Tatar people yet; 56, 6% - haven't studied the history of Russia, 32% - don't know and don't celebrate the Russian holidays. Nearly 20% of respondents admitted that it isn't comfortable for them to live in a polycultural city, and more than 43% of recipients doubt that Russia can become their second Homeland (Gapsalamov et al., 2016).

The purpose of the real research is to identify the level of tolerance of foreign students of the Elabuga institute of KFU, and development of methods of formation of tolerant and respect for citizens of other culture by means of disciplines of a social and humanitarian cycle.

Figure 1: Indicators of level of tolerance of students of 1 - 3 courses of faculty of philology and history and Faculty of Economics and Management. September, 2016.
Indicators of level of tolerance of students of 1 - 3 courses of faculty of philology and history and Faculty of Economics and Management. September, 2016.
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Research Methods

The theoretical basis - methodological base of a research was made by the provisions reflected in the following works: the idea of tolerance which is the cornerstone of the Declaration of the principles of the tolerance approved by the Resolution 5.61 UNESCO General Conferences of November 16, 1995, and the idea of formation of the tolerant identity of Russian students reflected in works of Fakhrutdinova (2010), Vasilyeva (2014), Tolstikova (2012), concept of polycultural education (Banks, 2001), principles of transcultural education (Kirabayev, 2003; Malkovskaya, 2005; Tlostanova, 2005), model of the tolerant student Vodneva, (2014), provision of pedagogics of tolerance (Gershunsky, 2002; Zinoviev, 1998).

The adapted express questionnaire "A tolerance index" (Soldatova, Kravtsov, Hukhlayev, Shaygerova, 2008) including statements incentives making three subscales, has been applied to identify the level of tolerance of foreign students of Elabuga institute KFU. First, we used the findings from the subscale "ethnic tolerance". Secondly, the structure and part of the formulated findings were corrected according to specifics of the cultural environment in which students hail from. For example, the suggestion "I can present a black person as my close friend" have been replaced with two statements which correspond to our polycultural region: "I can present a Russian as my close friend" and "I can present a Tatar as my close friend". Thirdly, the amount of possible answers were reduced. Survey was conducted on 1st – 3rd course students of the faculty of philology and history and Faculty of Economics and Management. More than 120 students participated in the poll. The results of the poll are presented in a percentage ratio in figure 01 .

Results of poll showed that foreign students in general are characterized by an average level of tolerance (20 – 31 point). It should be noted that students of mono-groups, unlike polycultural groups, had a lower threshold of points (20 – 22 points) which is brings them closer to low levels of tolerance. The reason for this fact was discovered by an interview result of the poll. The property called (by Tedzhfel) "a phenomenon of group favouritism" in which the person prefers the community which he associates himself with (Tajfel 1982) is more inherent in the students studying in mono-groups.

In our opinion, bringing them out of the peculiar single-crop isolation, and creating skills of tolerant thinking and behaviour is possible by means of using the elements of transcultural training which purpose is "education of special outlook within which other cultures, traditions and civilizations are not considered as obstacles needing reduction to a common denominator, but as quite independent subjects or phenomena with their own dispositions and characteristics with which it is necessary to enter a dialogue …" (Kirabayev, Tlostanova 2009, page 30). The main stages of forming tolerance considering transcultural approach, in our opinion, can be referred as the following:

•collecting culturological material taking into account the taught discipline;

•comparison of "personal" and "foreign" culture;

•identification of a common ground, "platitudes" of "personal" and "foreign" culture, understanding of what unites representatives of different cultures and, what is important for everyone;

•finding the importance of features of "foreign" culture;

•understanding that cultural difference should be perceived as having full authority for existence.

Inclusion of the designated stages is obviously possible in the process of teaching a number of disciplines in social and humanitarian cycles. It should be noted that work on formation of tolerance according to the specified phases goes along with development of various subjects. We will consider their application on the example of teaching in Elabuga institute KFU disciplines such as "The modern Russian literary language" and "History".

Formation of interethnic tolerance within the discipline - "The modern Russian literary language" needs to be commenced with selection of a training material with contents in which universality of a denotata is combined with cultural specifics of a significant. We convey theme words groups to materials of this sort "The related relations", "Wedding", "Friendship", "Good", "Evil", "House", "Food", "Standards of behaviour of a person", "Holiday", etc.; proverbs, sayings, etc. Universality of a denotata allows to find what is general and inherent in all people, and so, pulls together them. The national originality of structure of values testifies to uniqueness and originality of the cultures reflected in language and says that each culture, each people, each person has the right to exist and are worthy of respectful attitude to their culture. To reach the aforesaid, the teacher creates a problem situation on livelihood: by means of appealing to language facts, one’s experience, historical information, etc, to reveal positive sides of a presence in the consciousness of two and more cultures at preservation of all distinctive features of one’s own culture. It is an effective heuristic method of conversation within which the system of the questions thought over by the teacher brings students to the answers, leading them to a thought of cultural and ethnical equivalence, and allows to unravel the objective.

Findings

The experiment on introduction was conducted in Russian, history and economy of elements of transcultural training classes from September 2016 to December 2016, (during one semester) at the faculty of philology and history and Faculty of Economics and Management of Elabuga institute of KFU. After the completion of the experiment, a survey for the purpose of determining the level of tolerance has been conducted again.

Figure 2: Indicators of level of tolerance of students of 1 - 3 courses of faculty of philology and history and Faculty of Economics and Management. December 2016.
Indicators of level of tolerance of students of 1 - 3 courses of faculty of philology and history and Faculty of Economics and Management. December 2016.
See Full Size >

As shown by the poll results, the high level of tolerance has grown in the third-year students by 9%, in the second-year students –3%, and in the first-year students –2%. The number third-year students with an average level of tolerance has decreased by 9% due to an increase in the high level of tolerance, and there is no record of third-year students with a low level. The number of second-year students with an average level of tolerance has increased by 3%, in first-year students –5%. Reduction of number of students with low levels of tolerance: the number of such foreigners was reduced by 6% both in the first, and in the second-year students.

Thus, data of poll confirm growth (even though insignificant) in the number of students who recognize the rights of people, try to accept other cultures, and are positive to the representatives of other nationalities.

Conclusion

As a result of a research it has been convincingly proved that, in the formation of tolerance of foreign students, a large role is played by social and humanitarian disciplines, and also the educational environment of higher education institution. Formation of tolerance in occupational (long, laborious and difficult) processes as well as during educational trainings, it is necessary to train students to know the basis of the subject of tolerance, and to develop skills of cogitative operations such as; analysis, comparison, generalization, identification with history, traditions, features of mentality of other people, to bring about respect for other culture.

Acknowledgments

The work is performed according to the Russian Government Program of Competitive Growth of Kazan Federal University

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31 August 2017

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Cite this article as:

Zakirova, O. V., Gapsalamov, A. R., & Gallyamova, Z. V. (2017). Foreign Students` Tolerance Formation As Condition Of Safe Integration Into Russian Reality. In R. Valeeva (Ed.), Teacher Education - IFTE 2017, vol 29. European Proceedings of Social and Behavioural Sciences (pp. 890-896). Future Academy. https://doi.org/10.15405/epsbs.2017.08.02.102