碩士 / 國立臺灣大學 / 社會工作學研究所 / 105 / This case study is about ELIV International Service, an agency of overseas volunteer. It explores culture shock and coping experience of short-term oversea volunteer leaders. Culture shock refers to the negative influence on a person’s biological and psychological aspect when one’s losing familiar culture factors and facing challenges from the new cultural environment. It might cause difficulties for a person to interact with the new culture effectively. The research questions include coping strategies of the leaders to help themselves and volunteers deal with their culture shock experiences, and the institutional mechanisms in preparation to respond to the cultural adaptation of leaders and volunteers. This research interviewed 4 volunteer leaders, 2 project managers and 1 project director from Cambodia and Myanmar project. With interview materials and secondary data about the agency, the research found out that:
1. Leaders experience cultural shock with respect to work, interaction and general life facets when leading volunteer groups. Most leaders have positive personalities and rich cross-cultural experience, therefore they are able to integrate strategies to overcome the culture shock. In addition, ELIV develops training related to cross-cultural competence, and provides immediate support systems to help leaders to deal with the cultural shock effect on their biological, psychological and social aspect in trip.
2. Volunteers experience culture shock in work, interaction and general life facets. In general, the volunteers owns positive attitude and personality that lead them to observation and behavior imitation to deal with cultural shock. The supports from ELIV and group leaders are necessary to help the volunteers adapting to the cultural differences. These supports include cross-cultural training courses that develop healthy attitude and adequate knowledge about host country, immediate supports from the group leaders and ELIV agents during the trip, and reflective learning of their volunteer experience led by leaders. By using these strategies, ELIV and leaders can help volunteers establish cross-cultural competence and adapt to the new culture environment.
3. Projects that are carefully designed may prevent a lot of culture shock of the group leaders and volunteers. For example, the schedule has considered a decent degree of cross-cultural contact. The host country, community served, and local agencies are culturally close to Taiwan. Therefore, the negative effects culture shock are dramatically buffered or prevented.
4. In addition to the cultural shock experience brought by cultural difference between countries, cultural factors at micro and meso levels among volunteers, leaders and ELIV agents are influential. This type of cultural shock also requires help and support from ELIV, such as emotional and leading knowledge supports.
5. Leaders would like to learn more cross-cultural knowledge and practice skills of sharing, a way of guiding volunteers to achieve reflective learning with the institutional response of ELIV.
Based on the finding, the study has two suggestion. First, oversea volunteer organizations should recognize the key role of leaders in a service project. They should design cross-cultural training courses and activities for leaders by using lecture, interactive and experiential methods. Organizations should also systematically collect techniques of guiding volunteers’ reflective learning. Respectively, the social work profession and human service organizations should also establish cross-cultural training and integrates the reflective learning techniques, so that the workers can effectively interact with clients with multi-cultural background.
Second, following research should care about the negative meaning of “cultural shock” for the people involved. Other than case studies of certain organization or host countries, researchers can target at different forms of organizations, services, and groups such as the directors or tutors of long-term oversea volunteers.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TW/105NTU05201027 |
| Date | January 2017 |
| Creators | Hui-Chung Yang, 楊惠淳 |
| Contributors | Yi-Yi Chen, 陳怡伃 |
| Source Sets | National Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations in Taiwan |
| Language | zh-TW |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | 學位論文 ; thesis |
| Format | 209 |
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