TRILINGUAL REFORM AND KAZAKHSTANI TEACHERS’ AGENCY: A COMPARATIVE CASE STUDY OF ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE (EFL) TEACHERS’ AGENCY IN TWO DIVERSE SCHOOL CONTEXTS

Abstract

In Kazakhstan and in many other countries, educational reform or curriculum changes is the responsibility of teachers, who need to be change agents (Fullan, 1993). Yet, policy-makers rarely reflect on how educational reform aligns with teachers’ beliefs and values, crucial to implementing new reforms. Therefore this study focuses on EFL teachers’ transition to the updated curriculum policy that requires teachers to embrace progressive pedagogies such as communicative language teaching (CLT), the purpose of this study was to explore how educational reform influenced two EFL teachers’ agency in two different Kazakhstani school contexts. It was a qualitative comparative case study that consisted of three research tools which were document analysis of the updated curriculum, multimodal questionnaires, and semi-structured interviews. The study found that the participants’ professional identities, self-efficacy and personal beliefs enabled their agency. Meanwhile, parental attitudes about teachers’ roles and applying for promotions restricted teachers’ agency. Nevertheless, the study concluded that the experienced EFL instructors are agentic in their teaching practice, classrooms, and school contexts despite external and situational constraints. Thus the study recommends that novice teachers’ agency needs future attention.