Chapter 1. Introduction
1.1 Project Background
As each country had their own cultures, individuals need to adapt with the new situation once they enter a new society, including international students who leave their home country to pursue further study abroad. Atwater (cited in Shaifa & Supriyadi, 2013) suggested that international students that continue their study in a country with different cultural background often encounter difficulties in adapting with a new environment and society, especially in the first 6 months. International students experience cultural shock when they try to adapt into the new environment and new culture. Cultural shock itself is defined as a state of transition from a familiar environment to an unfamiliar environment where the old behavioral pattern becomes impervious when used in a new environment (Ryan & Twibell, 2000). Several studies have also discussed international students who experience problems in adaptation. The problems in the adaptation can impact their learning process and the daily experience of international students (Alavi & Mansor, 2011; Araiza & Kutugata, 2013; Desa, et al., 2012; Vergara, et al., 2010).
In order to capture the social phenomena which included war, natural disaster, and history, many studies utilize photography techniques. Photography techniques have been used in past studies talking about narrative photography, interpreting images, street photography and so on. Despite the rising popularity of photography techniques to capture social phenomena, there are only few studies presenting the experience of international students through photography. Photography itself is not only a main way to deliver the story but also interesting for creating the imagination space for an audience.
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photography also including the image of our daily life especially when we are travelling and learning in a new culture or country. All image-makers and also image readers, images are a rich source of data for us to understand the social world and representing our knowledge of that social world. Sandra Mathison (2007) in her journal Seeing Is Believing: The Credibility of Image-Based Research and Evaluation expressed that pictures can make us understand the process better because many of us are visual learners, who memorize content more effectively if it happens to be image-based. In fact, images also like any other data that can be used to lie, to question, to imagine, to critique, to theorize, to mislead, to flatter, to hurt, to unite, to narrate, to explain, to teach, to represent (Mathison, 2007). In some cases, an image can help people to understand a situation better under any circumstances. For example, as when a foreigner goes to a Taiwanese local restaurant, some restaurants do not have an English menu but they use the picture to change the way they communicate. In anthropology, sociology and psychology images have been used for some time as data, and as an alternative approach to represent research results because they offer a different form for researchers and participants to express their experience and present themselves and their knowledge (Chaplin, 1994; Prosser, 1998; Rose, 2001). In real life, we do not necessarily need to see to believe but, indeed we believe many things we cannot or do not see directly.Mathison.S (2009) also mention about seeing is intricately interconnected with believing, and knowing at the individual, cultural or global levels of knowledge. Indeed, there is
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biological evidence that seeing, at least in the context of space, is more reliable than other sources of data and that the central nervous system summarizes visual information in a statistically optimal way (Witten & Knudsen, 2005). Although there are many ways to represent the life of people, one of the best ways to record people’s stories from cross cultural adaptation is through pictures. As Douglas Harper mentions the theory, which is from Whyte (1980), in his journal called Visual Sociology: Expanding Sociological Vision using the method of photographs to study the social interaction in an urban public area. Douglas (1988) said not all sociological data can be photographed, in studies of social or environmental ecology and social interaction, but the camera still can gather information that cannot be gathered with the human eye or other recording devices.
Therefore, photography on cross culture adaptation and communications of Indonesian students in Taiwan become an important part of this project. Considering the aforementioned situations, this research focuses on capturing the cross cultural adaptation and communication process of Indonesian students who study in Taiwan. Furthermore, the context of Indonesian students is also still under-explored.
Indonesia is the context in this study as the relationship between Indonesia and Taiwan is getting stronger over the year, especially after the President Tsai Ing-wen was elected in 2016. She later announced the New Southbound Policy (NSP) in 2017 which also promotes the cooperation with some countries, including Indonesia (Ministry Of Foreign Affairs [MOFA], 2017). This policy focuses on human resource development and encourages bilateral interactions or cooperation in the fields of industry, investment, education, culture, tourism, and agriculture between Taiwan and the countries in South and South East Asia, Australia and New Zealand. In addition, the Taiwanese government
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also imposes one policy in an effort to increase the number of students from these areas by 20% per year, so it can be estimated that more and more international students are coming to Taiwan, not to mention Indonesian students. There is a recent phenomenon that has shifted the trend in studying abroad as previously Asian students prefer to go to the West (the US or Europe) to study.
According to the new data from the recent news posted by Keoni Everington in Taiwan News (2018), the number of students from the New Southbound Policy countries studying in Taiwan had surpassed Chinese students for the first time in 2017.
Furthermore, based on the data of the Ministry of Education (MOE) (2017), from 117,970 international students who studied in Taiwan in 2017, 37,999 of them came from countries that were parts of Taiwan's New Southbound Policy, including 10 ASEAN countries, six South Asian countries, and also Australia as well as New Zealand. In 2017, following Chinese students, the second largest number of students in Taiwan came from Malaysia with 17,070 students. In third place was Hong Kong with 8,761 students and taking the fourth spot was Japan at 8,387. Another largest sources of students from Southeast Asia, was Vietnam taking the second place 7,339 students, followed by Indonesia with 6,453 and Thailand at 2,125 students.
Since the enforcement of the New Southbound Policy, there is an increase in the Indonesian students’ interest to come to Taiwan for study-related purposes, particularly in higher education (Herlijanto&Paramitaningrum, 2016). However, Indonesian and Taiwanese societies have several major differences, for instance in language and culture.
When Indonesian students want to study in Taiwan, especially as Indonesian Overseas Chinese Students (OCSs), they are expected to already possess Chinese
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proficiency as the school classes are mostly conducted in Chinese. Therefore, to help the OCSs sharpen their Chinese skill and have better preparation, Taiwan institutions provides supplementary training prior to university entrance exams. However, this condition does not apply to other international students from Indonesia that the system provided scholarship was different by the government institution.