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Teacher collaboration for professional learning: Case studies of three schools in Kazakhstan
This thesis explores the nature of teacher collaboration for professional learning, key enabling and inhibiting factors, and their implication for the development of a culture of collaboration for professional learning in Kazakhstani schools. The current teacher professional development reform initiative in Kazakhstani secondary education has incorporated teacher collaboration as a strategy to encourage teachers to take ownership of innovations and changes. The underlying assumption for it is that when teachers engage in professional collaboration, there is both an individual and collective benefit. However, an increasing scepticism that followed the initial enthusiasm about the benefits of teacher collaboration in Western countries, where a second look at collaboration from a cultural and micropolitical perspective identified the contradictions between human agency and power, voluntarism and determinism, action and settings. Against this background, this study was undertaken to examine the Kazakhstani teachers’ beliefs, values and attitudes towards collaboration and interdependence.
The study draws upon case study data gathered in three purposefully selected Kazakhstani schools. The first two schools represent Kazakhstani schools established during the Soviet communist era. One of them is selected from among the comprehensive rural schools and the second is a gymnasium located in a district town. The third one is an autonomous school tasked to serve as a platform to pilot a new reform initiative before its dissemination to all the mainstream schools of the country. Each case-study was covered during a six-to-seven week period, which corresponds to a term in a school year in Kazakhstan.
The findings demonstrate the dependence of teachers’ personal beliefs and values about teacher collaboration on micropolitical, school organisational culture, and socio-political factors, mainly inherited as a legacy of the Soviet education system, as well as ambiguities in the understanding and implementation of reform initiatives dictated from the top. The study suggests that Kazakhstani school history and the culture of the teaching profession possess the potential to overcome these barriers, for there is a tradition of peer evaluation and peer observation in the system with teachers expected to observe and be observed by other teachers on a frequent basis within an appropriately defined school organisational structure, which historically is seen by the authorities as a means of control. The study concludes that it is of particular importance to build on the momentum of the recent reform initiatives and help teachers to develop agency by providing the support and conditions conducive to the continued development of professional learning communities based on teacher collaboration for learning.Nazarbayev Universit
DIAGNOSTIC REPORT
The final report on the first phase (2013) of the “Development of the strategic directions for education reform in Kazakh- stan for 2015-2020” project was implemented by the Graduate School of Education at Nazarbayev University on behalf of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Kazakhstan. The purpose of this research is to conduct a diagnosis of the education system of the Republic of Kazakhstan in order to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the educational system and the subsequent identification of areas for further modernization at each level
DIAGNOSTIC REPORT
The final report on the first phase (2013) of the “Development of the strategic directions for education reform in Kazakh- stan for 2015-2020” project was implemented by the Graduate School of Education at Nazarbayev University on behalf of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Kazakhstan. The purpose of this research is to conduct a diagnosis of the education system of the Republic of Kazakhstan in order to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the educational system and the subsequent identification of areas for further modernization at each level
‘It is the research of self experience’: feeling the value in action research
This article tells the story of an attempt to bring about major educational reform of the curriculum and educational values in Kazakhstan, using action research as part of that process. The article begins with a brief and selective review of the literature on aspects of emotion and moves to an account of the context and history of the reforms, before focusing on the ‘self experience’ of the participants and the authors. Emotion, its centrality and the interrelationship of three areas – the nature of teaching and teacher learning, the process of change and the experience of research – are explored in relation to reform and action research. The paper concludes with a reflection on the implications for the use of action research as a strategy for reform