[lg policy] Re: lgpolicy-list Digest, Vol 71, Issue 15

[Bridget Goodman]

In response to Professor Schiffman's queries about Kazakhstan:

I confess that 6 months ago I shared much of your skepticism, and there is
still anecdotal evidence that teachers and scholars are concerned as well,
or unaware of how to implement such a policy. Research on this issue is
still ongoing, some of it being conducted by my thesis advisees who are
educators at the center of this issue.

For now, I'd like to say there is currently a trilingual policy or "Trinity
of Languages" in education that is part of the Ministry of Education's
"State Program for the Development of Education in the Republic of
Kazakhstan" 2011-2020".  It involves the use of English, Russian, and
Kazakh as media of instruction in secondary education for different
subjects depending on grade level.

At the moment, the financial and logistical resources for this policy are
focused on the experimental network of Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools (
http://nis.edu.kz/en/), which has received significant financial support
from the government of Kazakhstan as well as consultation support from the
University of Pennsylvania, the University of Cambridge, and top scholars
in the field such as Fred Geneese. The "Daryn" network of gifted schools
and the Kazakh-Turkish Lyceums are also implementing trilingual education;
collectively these three networks make up less than 100 schools in a
country of 16 million.

Future plans include the "transfer" of best practices from NIS schools to
other schools in Kazakhstan, though it remains to be seen whether these
partner schools of NIS will be allocated the same level of financial or
material resources (let alone what best practices are ready for transfer).
There are numerous pedagogical universities in the country and a general
strategic plan for having them offer degrees in "polylingual education", (
http://en.tengrinews.kz/edu/Training-of-polylingual-teachers-will-start-this-year-in-11381/)
but
I have yet to come across anything concrete on their implementation.

Nazarbayev University Graduate School of Education, which is also funded by
the Kazakh government and has Penn and Cambridge as strategic partners, is
currently involved in offering Master's Degrees in School Leadership,
Multilingual Education, and Ph.D. degrees in education as well as a number
of Professional Development Programs and research activities in this area (
gse.nu.edu.kz).

For further information, you can read the 2014 edited book *Educational
reform and internationalisation: The case of school reform in Kazakhstan*,
edited by David Bridges of Cambridge, which includes a chapter on the
trilingual policy. There are also representatives presenting at the
Comparative and International Education Society conference in Washington,
DC this week, and there is an annual NIS conference in October which
attracts presentations on implementation of educational reforms at NIS and
beyond.

To sum up, I agree that much of this is top down and there are practices
for which we can and should serve as critical friends, but neither is it as
dictatorial or absolute as the sound bite (
http://www.kaztag.kz/en/news/detail.php?ID=349622) suggests.

Best,

Bridget Goodman, PhD
Assistant Professor of Multilingual Education
Graduate School of Education
Nazarbayev University
Astana, Kazakhstan

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In the
1.  Where is Kazakhstan going to find a huge group of science/math teachers
who are fluent in English?

2. If there are none, how will Kazakhstan go about training some?  Does it
have a teachers' college that can handle this?

3.  How much will this cost, and how long will it take to produce enough
teachers to meet the needs of all the country's schools?

4.  Is there a schedule for how this will be implemented?  How will it be
verified that the trainees have attained the proficiency required of them
in both STEM subjects and English?

5.  Has Mr. Nazarbayev looked more closely at the situation in Malaysia
that he is trying to replicate?  Does he know that things have not gone
smoothly there, and that some people are demanding a return to teaching
STEM subjects in Malay?  Does he know that rural areas with small schools
are having a much harder time attracting and keeping competent teachers?

6.  This whole business looks like the worst kind of language planning, the
kind where a strong leader *ordains* a policy, but shows no understanding
of what is involved in implementing and carrying out an effective language
policy, but expects things to happen just because he wants it to be so.

HS
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