University of Applied Sciences, Fulda

Chapter 2

Review of the Related Literature

This study deals with a specific part of the 'web of culture', namely the foreign students' expectations and understanding of education systems. Foreign students who decide to study in another country will face a culture shock. They are likely to experience disappointments and surprises not only in everyday encounters but also within the new educational system. The writer has tried to show what kind of problems foreign students might face because of a lack of knowledge about the methods of teaching, learning and evaluation in higher education bodies in Germany.

Due to the fact that the writer was herself one of the participants in the program, it was possible for her both to observe and experience the problems and frustrations of the students. The perspective of a participant enabled the writer to perceive and feel things as an insider, while other factors such as age, non-permanent residence in Fulda (the city where the university is situated), and a familiarity with German culture (the writer has lived in Germany for about six years) made it possible to maintain a distance from the process the other foreign students were experiencing.
The conditions explained above prompted the writer to choose a qualitative approach to the study. Such an approach would have been more feasible if the program was a Bachelor degree, which provides more time for observation. The duration of this program is officially three terms, the first two terms of which are intensive and require almost permanent presence at the university. Hence , the
writer decided to interview the fellow students , rather than carry out observations only, at the end of the second term.
The study questions are therefore:

1. 
   How does the process of culture shock manifest itself in an educational system or environment, and where are its roots?
   
2. 
   What are the effects of such a shock?
   

In order to answer the above questions, the writer based the inquiry on a qualitative research method, namely grounded theory. The following is a review on the literature about a definition of culture , and a description of culture shock phenomenon(part one). This is preceded by a summary of the literature about qualitative approaches to data collection and the varieties of qualitative inquiry(part two).