Assessing cultural needs is an essential step towards planning cultural development, achieving justice, and improving social relationships of an institution. Therefore, considering the importance of taking steps to extend the rich Iranian-Islamic culture to internationa
More
Assessing cultural needs is an essential step towards planning cultural development, achieving justice, and improving social relationships of an institution. Therefore, considering the importance of taking steps to extend the rich Iranian-Islamic culture to international students, it is important to identify the cultural priorities of international students for appropriate cultural planning.The present study examines the cultural priorities and needs of international students to gain a better understanding of how international student can acclimatize to Iranian-Islamic culture, while embarking on their studies. For this purpose, 130 international students of Tehran University of Medical Sciences used a researcher-made questionnaire (reliability 0.874). The questionnaire consisted of 65 items and was categorized into four major sections including review of tools needed to better understand Iranian-Islamic culture, the needs of international students upon arrival to Iran, the cultural needs after entry into Iran and international student’s interest in cultural related courses. In order to examine the cultural priorities in the various sections, a binomial test was used. In the sections on needs upon arrival in Iran, cultural needs after arrival and interest in participating in training courses, the chi-square test was used. The data was analyzed using SPSS software. The results showed that "visiting cultural centers" had the highest frequency of selection as a better tool to get acquainted with Iranian culture. The highest need in Iran at the upon arrival was "familiarity with the university and its facilities". Moreover, studying Persian language was the first priority of the cultural needs of international students and also showed the highest indicators of interest in participating in training courses.
Manuscript profile
