A QUANTITATIVE STUDY OF THE FACTORS AFFECTING STUDENTS RETENTION IN THE PRESENCE OF CULTURAL SHOCK AMONG TEACHERS

The purpose of the study was to understand the factors influencing student retention at ILE colleges in Saudi Arabia. Tinto model (1993) was guided this study. The study also investigated whether the culture shock is influencing teachers' role to support the academic and social integration in ILE colleges. This study used the quantitative method to statistically compare the persisters and non-persisters students by using the factors of the Tinto model. Furthermore, the level of culture shock level was assessed and compared with the level of social and academic integration in four campuses. The data were collected from 224 students and 52 teachers, among all students, 153 were studying at an ILE college during the current study time and 71 were withdrawn from an ILE college in the 2018-2019 study year. All data were statistically analysed using SPSS. According to the result of the study, the persisters and non-persisters students were different only in regard to the initial and later goals and institutional commitments. Regarding the pre-entry attribute, the two groups were just different in respect to the GAT scores, while there were no significant differences regarding high school scores or parent education. Therefore, there was no significant difference in pre-entry attributes. Besides, there were no significant differences between the two groups regarding the social and academic integration. Therefore, Tinto's model was not useful in identifying the differences between persisters and non-persisters students. The study also measured the difference in initial and later goals and institutional commitments among persisters. The result indicated that the later goals and institutional commitments among ILE students were higher. In regard to the culture shock and its role of students’ integration, the study found that there was no correlation between the level of shock among teachers and the social and academic integration of students