Graduate School of Education
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The Graduate School of Education (GSE) at Nazarbayev University aspires to become an influential, world-class graduate school of education, effecting change in educational thinking, policy and practice at all levels of education through scholarly research, quality teaching and persuasive argument. Through its research, teaching and scholarship, the GSE is committed to working to improve education for all, sustaining a vision of education which enables individuals to maximize their own potential, free from the constrains of poverty and background, within a context of mutual understanding and global interdependence.
The GSE at Nazarbayev University shall:
engage in educational research, teaching and scholarship at the highest international standard,
mediate such research, teaching, and scholarship, locating it within broader contemporary frameworks, and
enhance capacity-building in educational research, teaching and scholarship.
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Item Open Access A Cross-Cultural Perspective about the Implementation and Adaptation Process of the Schoolwide Enrichment Model(Gifted Education International, 2015) Hernández-Torrano, Daniel; Saranli, GulsahGifted education and talent development are considered today as key elements for developing human capital and increasing competitiveness within education and the economy. Within this framework, a growing number of countries have begun to invest large amounts of resources to discover and nurture their most able students. As boundaries and differences between cultures become less pronounced in a global world, educational models to guide gifted education and talent development are also becoming more widely applicable. In this context, the Schoolwide Enrichment Model (SEM) stands as a flexible model that enables schools in different regions of the world to provide individuals with opportunities to identify their potentials and to help them reach their highest levels of competence. This paper provides an overview of the SEM and the broad range of regions in which the model is currently implemented, as well as an examination of the reasons for its widespread acceptance among educators around the world. In addition, this paper includes an interview with Dr Joseph Renzulli, inventor of SEM, in which several issues related to the cultural adaptation of the SEM are discussed. Finally, the paper presents an introduction to the SEM International Network, a newly developed project created to connect SEM users around the world and to facilitate the sharing and accessing of ideas and resources for talent development.Item Open Access Are teachers biased when nominating students for gifted services? Evidence from Kazakhstan(High Ability Studies, 2015-11-07) Hernández-Torrano, Daniel; Tursunbayeva, XeniyaThe purpose of this experimental, vignette study was to analyze whether certain demographic characteristics of students (i.e. gender, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status) influence secondary education teachers in referring students for gifted services in Kazakhstan. A sample of 132 teachers were randomly assigned to one of eight profiles describing a typical gifted student with particular demographics and requested to indicate how strongly they believed the student should or should not be recommended for gifted services. Results evidenced that gender, ethnicity, and SES did not influence the Kazakhstani teachers’ referrals. The implications of teacher nominations in students’ identification for gifted programs and the discussion on the role of gifted education as perceived by school teachers in Kazakhstan and elsewhere are provided.Item Open Access Artful Research Approaches in #amwritingwithbaby: Qualitative Analysis of Academic Mothers on Facebook(LEARNing Landscapes. Special Issue, Artful Inquiry: Transforming Understanding Through Creative Engagement, 2016) CohenMiller, A. S.This study contemplates one facet of academic motherhood through the use of artful research approaches in qualitative research to examine the (im)balance of being a mother writing academic works while raising and caring for a young child, as presented in an online hashtag Facebook campaign, #amwritingwithbaby. Specifically, this study uses an analysis of online posts and arts-based representations of findings through a comparison of narrative, poem, and word clouds. Through using popular media for representing the findings, this study helps address the accessibility of artful inquiry into the growing body of works seeking equity for women and mothers in academia.Item Open Access Assessment of learning outcomes in academic writing(Nazarbayev University Graduate School of Education, 2016-09-28) Montgomery, Philip;Item Open Access Autonomy and governance in Kazakhstani higher education institutions(Nazarbayev University Graduate School of Education, 2017)The present policy brief addresses trends in the Republic of Kazakhstan, which influence the development of shared governance1 and autonomy in higher education institutions (HEIs). Research was carried as a part of a longitudinal research project entitled “Advancing Models of Best Practice in Academic Governance and Management in Higher Education Institutions in Kazakhstan” (2014-2016) jointly conducted by the Nazarbayev University Graduate School of Education and the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education. Over the three years the research team investigated the topic of shared governance and autonomy in Kazakhstan with the purpose of developing a set of recommendations that will assist the reform efforts and offer guidelines for action. The move toward shared governance and increased autonomy are global trends as governments move away from centralized control. Given the importance of proper governance structures and mechanisms to the success of higher education systems, the study elucidates perceptions of various stakeholders on the governance reform and discusses the trends pertaining to governing HEIs in Kazakhstan.Item Open Access Becoming Bologna Capable: Strategic Cooperation and Capacity Building in International Offices in Kazakhstani HEIs(Springer International Publishing, 2015-10-13) Sparks, Jason; Ashirbekov, Adil; Li, Aisi; Parmenter, Lynne; Jumakulov, Zakir; Sagintayeva, AidaThis paper examines the roles and perspectives of International Office staff in universities in Kazakhstan, as they engage in internationalization of higher education within the framework of the Bologna Process. Drawing on data from document analysis, a national survey and in-depth interviews, the paper discusses the practices, strengths and challenges of International Offices, linking empirical data to theories on internationalization, institutional change, networks and capacity building. Main findings are that the International Offices play a role in the leadership of strategic cooperation at international, national and intra-institutional levels, and that they would have the potential to play a more major role given access to the capacity building and professional development opportunities they identify. The paper highlights tensions that need to be resolved in the division of responsibilities between Bologna Offices and International Offices at institutional level, and in the channels of communication between HEIs and the national Bologna Center.Item Open Access Beginning teachers’ professional socialization in post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan: The challenges and coping strategies(Aga Khan University, Institute for Educational Development, Karachi, 2006) Shamatov, DuishonThis qualitative study examines and develops an in-depth understanding of two beginning teachers’ professional socializations in post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan. The study is a historical and descriptive account that provides insights into the impact of socio-political upheaval on the lives of two beginning teachers. The study focuses on the challenges the teachers faced in their initial stages of work and on how they addressed these. The teachers’ professional socialization stories are described in three realms: classroom, school and community. The study examines in greater detail the professional and relational challenges that the two beginning teachers faced while interacting with their pupils, administrators, colleagues, pupils’ parents and education officials. In addition to the typical challenges of adjusting to school culture, rules and regulations and classroom management faced by beginning teachers, these individuals had to deal with additional tribulations that have manifested after and because of the collapse of the former USSR. These include insufficient resources for schools, inadequately qualified and inexperienced colleagues, high student drop-out rates, a constantly changing curriculum, lack of textbooks, low salaries with frequent delays and deductions.These young teachers, despite their circumstances, emerge as caring and considerate individuals who adopted a variety of responses, including maintaining their values and performance, while at the same time attempting to influence others as they protected themselves from criticisms. The combination of social strategies and micropolitical tactics proved useful in examining the beginning teachers’ broader positions and specific tactics of addressing the crucial challenges. The study offers insights for school administrators, experienced teachers and education authorities at district, provincial and national levels. It points out the importance of assisting beginning teachers in improving performance, retention and long-term personal and professional well-being. The thesis also highlights some of the major challenges of conducting qualitative studies in the Central Asian context. Finally, the study also revealed that there is a need to develop educational research capacity in Kyrgyzstan, a situation which must be addressed in order to improve the educational system.Item Open Access A BIBLIOMETRIC ANALYSIS OF PUBLICATIONS IN THE WEB OF SCIENCE CATEGORY OF EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY IN THE LAST TWO DECADES(Colegio Oficial de Psicologos de Madrid, 2021-01-18) Hernández-Torrano, Daniel; Ho, Yuh-ShanEducational psychology is a discipline with a relatively long and intricate history. This study contributes to the understanding of the most recent developments of educational psychology research through the exploration of 35,210 articles published in all journals indexed in the Web of Science educational psychology category for the 2000-2019 period. The results of the study show that the volume of research on educational psychology has doubled during this period and a few journals accumulate most of the research produced in the discipline. Most studies have been published in the English language and in the United States, although research produced in China has experienced the greatest growth. Recent research on educational psychology has predominantly addressed 16 research themes over the last 20 years, although research on child-age students, teaching and teacher education, learning and education, assessment and testing, socio-cultural diversity, learning environments, and educational measurement have captured the greatest attention.Item Open Access ‘BOYS MOSTLY JUST WANT TO HAVE SEX’: YOUNG INDIGENOUS PEOPLE TALK ABOUT RELATIONSHIPS AND SEXUAL INTIMACY IN REMOTE, RURAL AND REGIONAL AUSTRALIA(Sexualities, 2020) Senior, Kate; Chenhall, Richard; Helmer, JanetThis article seeks to understand Indigenous Australian young people’s relationships and their experiences of sexual intimacy. A cohort of Indigenous 16–25-year-olds from urban, rural and remote communities were invited to participate in a collaborative method involving scenario-based body mapping. In these activities, young people dis cussed the range and complexity of their relationships and how constructions and interpretations of relationships contribute to both positive and negative experiences. These rich understandings provide important insights into adolescent sexuality as ‘multidimensional, socially constructed and negotiated’. However, they also point to the continued gendered power inequalities that subordinate young women’s lives to the desires and control of young menItem Open Access Breaking the “Fourth Wall” in Qualitative Research: Participant-Led Digital Data Construction(Qualitative Report, 2018-03-12) Boivin, Nettie; CohenMiller, A. S.This article reconstructs the typical researcher-participant focus - where the participants are doing for us - instead we followed the participants’ lead in the construction of research. Using a qualitative literacy event case study as an example, we describe how participants unexpectedly co-constructed knowledge through a participant-led digital data collection. In this theoretical article, we provide an explanation of the original study, which used observations, semi-structured interviews, and home visits as a collective qualitative case study on parental participation in social literacy practices. The original investigation led to the important shift that occurred in participant-researcher roles. In this article, using an ethnographic perspective, we explain how unexpected digital data creations created by participants’ family members allowed for enhanced equity between researcher and participant through changing the research dynamic, hearing and seeing participant voice previously unavailable. Situated within socio-cultural construction and the concept of Diderot’s concept of the fourth wall (the invisible barrier between audience and actor), we explain how these new insights provide opportunities for other qualitative researchers to enhance their practices through an ontological shift, intentionally “breaking the fourth wall of research” to integrate participant co-construction of knowledge...Item Open Access Challenges and Benefits of Blended Learning in Higher Education(International Journal of Technology in Education, 2019) Namyssova, Gulnara; Tussupbekova, Gulmira; Helmer, Janet; Malone, Kathy; Mir, Afzal; Jonbekova, DilraboThis exploratory study researched the effectiveness of a graduate level blended learning course on the development of teachers, and educational leaders in Kazakhstan studying a Masters of Science in Educational Leadership at Nazarbayev University Graduate School of Education (NUGSE) in Kazakhstan. All of the student participants in this course were invited to participate in a survey and an interview. The findings include an analysis of the pedagogical practices which promote educational leadership skills among students via blended learning courses as well as the challenges both faculty and students faced during this course. Finally, the paper makes recommendations for policy and practice in relation to enhancing effectiveness of blended learning courses in higher education. It may be of particular interest to schools in the early stages of implementing blended learning...Item Open Access Challenges of Improving Teachers’ Assessment Practices(Journal of Research and Reflections in Education, 2007-06) Shamatov, DuishonThis article reports the outcomes of a qualitative case study which explored how school teachers develop their assessment while attending an in-service teacher education programme. Semi-structured interviews and document analysis were two methods used to explore the Master of Education students at Aga Khan University Institute for Educational Development (AKU-IED). These students come from developing countries in Central Asia, South Asia and East Africa. Prior to joining AKU-IED, most of these students have had experienced assessment practices characterized in my study as ‘traditional’, teaching and learning have been geared towards examinations and tests. The selective purpose of assessment selects and rejects people, and social reproduction is maintained by the traditional assessment. Additionally, traditional assessment has often caused great deal of psychological discomfort and elements of ‘unproductive competition’ reflecting on extrinsic reward in schooling. At AKU-IED, the M.Ed. students have a very intensive transformative learning experience. They are encouraged to critically examine their existing educational philosophy, including assessment notions. As a result, many students re-modify their assessment theories and practices. After the completion of the M.Ed. program the students are potentially in a position where they are able to influence assessment practices, to varying degree, when they return to their home work environments.Item Open Access Changing Teacher Beliefs and Attitudes towards Inclusion in South Africa: Lessons from Collaborative Action Research(The Social Science Journal, 2014) Makoelle, TsedisoWorldwide there is a challenge to change teacher beliefs and attitudes towards implementing full inclusive education. This paper therefore reports on a collaborative action research process that sought to change teacher beliefs and conceptions about inclusion. The study was conducted qualitatively and adopted a critical emancipatory stance. Data were collected during action research stages through collaborative action research meetings, research diaries, participant observations and interviews. The data were then analysed using both group interpretative and inductive analytical frameworks. The findings indicated, inter alia, that while change through participation is crucial, changing teacher beliefs and attitudes about inclusion requires local context-relevant practices that teachers can relate to.Item Metadata only Chapter 6 Quality Assurance in Higher Education of Kazakhstan A Review of the System and Issues(Chandos Publishing, 2017-01-01) Kerimkulova, Sulushash; Kuzhabekova, Aliya; Sulushash, KerimkulovaAbstract This chapter describes the changes in the quality assurance system, which took place in Kazakhstan during the years of its independence. Largely driven by the standards and guidelines of the Bologna Process that the country has been informally following and has officially joined in 2010, the quality assurance system in Kazakhstan has undergone two stages in its development. Over the early years of independence, the system retained the highly centralized approach to quality assurance that was adopted in the Soviet Union. The primary role at the early stage was played by the Ministry of Education, which performed a complicated set of quality assurance procedures, including licensing, attestation, accreditation, and external assessment. More recently, the approach has become more decentralized, whereby the responsibility for quality assurance has been transferred to higher educational institutions incentivized to pursue higher quality to attract more public funding and fee-paying students. Under the new regime accreditation has become the core mechanism of external quality assurance. The function of accreditation was taken away from the Ministry of Education and is performed by a combination of independent international and domestic agencies. The chapter describes the processes underlying the changes in the quality assurance approach at each of the stages, and summarizes the corresponding structure of the system. It also discusses the challenges and opportunities, which emerged in the process of implementation of the approaches.Item Metadata only Chapter 9 Global Perspectives on the Postdoctoral Scholar Experience(The Postdoc Landscape, 2018-01-01) Holley, Karri; Kuzhabekova, Aliya; Osbaldiston, Nick; Cannizzo, Fabian; Mauri, Christian; Simmonds, Shan; Teelken, Christine; van der Weijden, Inge; Karri, HolleyAbstract While widespread concerns exist over the experiences and career trajectories of postdoctoral fellows in higher education, these concerns are not always examined through the lens of a social and cultural context unique to a national system. Postdoctoral fellows do exist in various forms at academic institutions around the world. Understanding their experiences offer insight not only into the nuanced nature of doctoral and postdoctoral work but also the larger question about how various higher education systems engage in a globalized knowledge economy. This chapter examines the postdoctoral fellow's experience in various national contexts. Researchers from Australia, Kazakhstan, the Netherlands, and South Africa reflect on their higher education systems; the role of the postdoctoral fellow within the system; and how internal and external influences shape the postdoctoral experience.Item Open Access COGNITIVE LEARNING AND ROBOTICS: INNOVATIVE TEACHING FOR INCLUSIVITY(Multimodal Technologies and Interaction, 2022) Oralbayeva, Nurziya; Amirova, Aida; CohenMiller, Anna; Sandygulova, AnaraWe present the interdisciplinary CoWriting Kazakh project in which a social robot acts as a peer in learning the new Kazakh Latin alphabet, to which Kazakhstan is going to shift from the current Kazakh Cyrillic by 2030. We discuss the past literature on cognitive learning and script acquisition in-depth and present a theoretical framing for this study. The results of word and letter analyses from two user studies conducted between 2019 and 2020 are presented. Learning the new alphabet through Kazakh words with two or more syllables and special native letters resulted in significant learning gains. These results suggest that reciprocal Cyrillic-to-Latin script learning results in considerable cognitive benefits due to mental conversion, word choice, and handwriting practices. Overall, this system enables school-age children to practice the new Kazakh Latin script in an engaging learning scenario. The proposed theoretical framework illuminates the understanding of teaching and learning within the multimodal robot-assisted script learning scenario and beyond its scope.Item Open Access CONDUCTING FOCUS GROUPS IN MULTICULTURAL EDUCATIONAL CONTEXTS: LESSONS LEARNED AND METHODOLOGICAL INSIGHTS(International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 2022) CohenMiller, Anna; Durrani, Naureen; Kataeva, Zumrad; Makhmetova, ZhadyraWhat happens when focus groups are conducted in challenging situations across languages, cultures, and educational settings? What adjustments might need to be made? How can adaptations be made while still maintaining the integrity of the research? Drawing on a multi-year study of gender and schooling in post-Soviet Kazakhstan, this article brings together researcher data from (1) informal discussion occurring after each focus group between the researchers, (2) reflections and observations from notes written during the research process, and (3) individual reflexivity on the topic of conducting focus groups in multicultural contexts written retrospectively. Using a practical iterative framework, this work adds an important contribution to the qualitative research literature by leading the reader through our processes, considerations, and lessons learned for improving culturally relevant and inclusive focus groups in multicultural educational contexts.Item Open Access A contextually adapted model of school engagement in Kazakhstan(Springer, 2020-05-01) Winter, Liz; Hernández-Torrano, Daniel; McLellan, Ros; Almukhambetova, Ainur; Brown-Hajdukova, EvaThis study introduces a culturally adapted 17-item scale of school engagement. It offers an important contribution to the international literature by seeking to measure the school engagement of young people in a society undergoing transition from a collectivist to individualist mind-set alongside an education system focused on improving performance in international benchmarks such as those from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD Programme for International Student Assessment, PISA) and the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA Trends In International Mathematics And Science Study, TIMSS). To date, little has been written on how intra-individual and inter-individual factors contribute to young people’s engagement in education as societal and systemic educational reform occurs. The school engagement scale is validated by testing the empirical fit of a second-order multidimensional factor model of school engagement taken from the Western literature to large-scale data in Kazakhstan. Culturally relevant features are added such as the strong influence of ‘important others’. The model tested was formed from 1) an individual’s cognitions and behaviours associated with school and 2) the social influences of parents, peers, and teachers. 1767 secondary education students in Kazakhstan participated in the study. Confirmatory analyses supported the hypothesized additional contributory factors to school engagement. Use of the overall model indicated differences in means across gender, grade, school-type, and geographic location to show: (1) higher cognitive engagement for young women; (2) rural students with higher levels of behavioural engagement; and (3) substantial differences in social support by grade and rurality.Item Open Access Creating a Participatory Arts-Based Online Focus Group: Highlighting the Transition from DocMama to Motherscholar(The Qualitative Report, 2018-07) CohenMiller, AnnaUsing Facebook to create a participatory, arts-based online focus group, this study had two primary purposes: (1) to examine how mothers in academia present themselves as they transition from doctoral student mother (“DocMama”) to full time position as motherscholars and (2) to explore the use of a participatory, arts-based online focus group on Facebook to facilitate participant description of experiences and feelings. This study adds both to the research on online research by emphasizing a collaborative nature and art to share experiences, and also to the research about motherscholars, examining the oft overlooked transition from doctoral program to academic career as the first step in the academic ladder (CohenMiller, 2014). The four participants participated through a secret Facebook group to post images and text from geographically disperse locations across the US, Central Asia, and New Zealand. In using an arts-based online format, participants were able to continually add to and adjust their responses to best explain their experiences. Using this online dynamic format provided a useful opportunity for participants to share their experiences across time and space. To analyze the data, I used self-presentation theory (Goffman, 1959) to discover common themes relating to work and family consistent with the literature as well as an unexpected finding regarding the concept of the “ideal” motherscholar. Furthermore, results highlighted the utility of a participatory arts-based online focus group to create a supportive format for ongoing, dynamic communication, interaction, and sharing of experience across geographically distant locations.Item Open Access A Critical Review of Research on Language Learning Strategies Used by Arab Learners of English(KUIS, 2019) Hajar, AnasMore than four decades have passed since the language learning strategy (LLS) concept was first brought to wide attention by Joan Rubin (1975). Although LLS research is prolific, it has faced challenges regarding its conceptual and methodological nature. These apparent weaknesses have encouraged some proponents of LLS research (e.g. Oxford, 2011; Rose et al, 2018) to conduct a systematic review of previous LLS research, with the aim of identifying the nature of the vigorous attempts to abandon the construct of LLS in research studies. Surprisingly, perhaps, these reviews did not include any LLS research studies concerning Arab learners. Therefore, this paper examines previous research into the LLSs used by Arab learners of English taken from different databases. The analysis has indicated that the majority (22 out of 27) of studies discovered were exclusively quantitative, using Oxford’s (1990) Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (SILL). These quantitative studies correlated the Arab participants’ LLS use with other individual learner variables, especially those related to gender and language proficiency. The other five were qualitative studies, and no study had adopted a mixed-method approach. This paper concludes by suggesting some areas that deserve further investigation in future research.