Coping behavior among students of different ethnic groups

• Черемискина Ирина Игоревна

  I.I. Cheremiskina. Vladivostok State University of Economics and Service. Vladivostok. Russia

The training of  foreign  students  in Russian universities is becoming  an increasingly  common practice and their number is growing every year; in the Far East of Russia, in comparison with central  universities,  students  are  mainly  from  Southeast  Asia.  These  first-year  students  face
double stress associated not only with adaptation to a new social role, but also with sociocultural adaptation in a new country, where customs and traditions are fundamentally different from their usual ones. There is an urgent need for measures to adapt these students, which, in
our opinion, should be developed taking into account ethnically determined personal resources in overcoming stressful situations. The aim of the study was to study and describe coping behavior strategies in students of different ethnic groups, in particular, Chinese, Laotian and Russian
students. The subject is coping strategies. The novelty of the study lies in the use of projective methods that exclude the comparison of the results with the norms obtained in the Russian sample, as is usually the case when using questionnaires. As a result, it was proved that Russian
students in stressful situations are more active and aggressive, tend to resort to the help of others, which helps to overcome these situations. Chinese students behave passively, try not to show emotions and tend to blame themselves for what happened. Lao students show passivity
and calmness in stress, tend to devalue such situations and become isolated in conflict. The identified features can lead to problems in the interaction of foreign students and, in general, to low academic performance, therefore, the development and build-up of more adaptive coping
strategies is required. That is, the results obtained can be taken into account in the process of creating adaptation programs for foreign students.
Keywords: adaptation to learning, adaptation stress, coping strategies, Russian, Chinese and Lao students