Session Information
23 SES 11 C, Learning about Leadership Challenges and Strategies in Nationwide Education Reform: Twenty Years after Kazakhstan’s Independence
Symposium
Contribution
This paper will examine the last in the raft of reforms in Kazakhstan, that of the reform of initial teacher education. This could be said to be one of the hardest areas to reform and this will be examined. The paper will begin with a detailed analysis of the situation of teacher preparation in Kazakhstan, showing that the following problems are prevalent and these problems are common to many systems of education. They are a low quality of intake, an oversupply of teachers, a lack of quality controls or debates, a system that is now out of sync with the reforms taking place in secondary education, a history of a low quality, part time system of teacher education and low status for teachers. The majority of students and teachers are in rural multi-graded schools and preparation for this location is one of the key challenges. The historical and cultural influences are very prevalent. The pre independence influence of the old Soviet system, which emphasised amongst many things theoretical learning, which was privileged over pedagogical knowledge or pedagogical preparation, and subject knowledge particularly the sciences. Good teaching was measured by winning Olympiads and having students with high content knowledge reproduced in a national test of 100 set questions. The power or status system placed schoolteachers and pedagogical knowledge below university generated knowledge. There are few links between teacher preparation institutions and schools. The paper will examine the particular and general challenges of reforming teacher education institutions and of generating a fit for purpose teacher education system. It will also examine other global attempts to reform teacher education systems such as in Canada, Ireland and Finland. It will critically review the models being used and look at the particular challenges in a post Soviet context. It will also examine what is particular about reforming pedagogical institutes and why this is seen as so difficult
References
Anel Kulakhmetova, Colleen McLaughlin & Nazipa Ayubayeva (2014) Preparing Teachers: an international review of the evidence on initial teacher education. Unpublished. Darling-Hammond, L. (2006), Constructing 21st-century teacher education, Journal of Teacher Education 57:10 Darling-Hammond L. Rothman R., Eds (2011), Teacher and leader effectiveness in high-performing education systems, Washington, DC: Alliance for Excellent Education and Stanford, CA: Stanford Centre for Opportunity Policy in Education, pp. 14-15 Department for Employment and Learning (DELNI) (2014), Aspiring to Excellence. Final report of the international review panel on the structure of initial teacher education in Northern Ireland, June. Mourshed, Chijoke, and Barber (2010), How the world’s most improved school systems keep getting better, McKinsey & Company Nazarbayev University Graduate Schools of Education (2014) Development of Strategic Directions for Education Reforms in Kazakhstan for 2015-2010, Diagnostic Report. Astana, Kazakhstan: Indigo Print OECD (2014), Reviews of national policies of education: secondary education in Kazakhstan, Ontario Ministry of Education, 2015-2016 Teacher Learning and Leadership Programme, Ontario Ministry of Education, http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/teacher/tllp.html UNICEF (2011), Teachers: Study on Recruitment, Salaries of Teachers in the CEECIS Region.
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